It's pretty hard to worry about something we can't see =)
But this asteroid we can see...
And it passes close enough to our own planet that they perturb each other, and it passes nearby often enough in the next 600 years that we cannot predict if it will hit us or not, or when.
After each near miss, of course, we can observe the movement of the asteroid and get a better understanding of its motion, but until it misses we actually don't know if it's going to hit!
And I quote "Among the possible orbital solutions there are some that undergo a close approach in August 2027, but no impact is possible. However, the period of the asteroid may be perturbed in such a way that it returns to an approach to the Earth at either of the possible encounter points."
It goes on to note that their accuracy isn't good for more than a decade after each pass, and that each successive pass makes it worse...
Not something you want to ignore when there is a greater danger from it, than say, Y2k or something...
I'm going to take a gamble and bet some comments will be up soon as to the elite and special nature of Linux, and how this is going to ruin everything...
Or on how by dumbing down the OS this way, Linux will be no more and no better than Windows...
Or how Linux is their OS, meant and built for hackers, and not meant for idiots, newbies, the clueless, or the Great Unwashed Masses...
Please, I just gave all three, so don't feel you need to add any more.
That out of the way, I feel this is a good thing, but not perfect. Consumer space is important, especially if you feel that M$ doesn't deserve it and that Apple repeatedly makes routine screwups in the arena. Linux needs enough support to garner first class citizenship from consumer hardware manufacturers; USB drivers and support, AGP and 3d acceleration, perhipherals like TV tuners, scanners, sound cards, and most importantly, consumer space Applications.
User Friendly Linux, regardless of distro or brand name, needs to have an easier setup than M$s. Fill in a bunch of checkboxes and defaults in one dialogue, and allow install without further user interaction. Automatic repair, in case the user screws up or something goes wrong... Refer to some sort of image, and restore from CD or something. Automatic update of safety image as user adds or removes components and hardware. Default security and protection, without the user worrying about patches and updates and holes... Like Netscape's or M$'s autoupdate, check routinely for patches and such, and if possible, download and ask for user permission to install, detailing the changes and allowing for selective removal and uninstall...
You're point seems to support my argument all the more...
Only Anglo-American and Russian civilizations have a habit of trying to conquer nature, as per your statement, with Japanese, Chinese, and Indian civilizations much more intelligent about their role with nature...
However, China and India are no less a threat to global war, nuclear holocaust, and other nasty human killing effects than any of the western states. And until they were put down in the WW, Japan was as much a threat as any other nation.
My point still fits your evidence; whatever the threat humans pose to nature, we pose still more threat to each other. China, Japan, and India included.
But a difference in PSX1 vs PSX2 is that Sony controls who gets SDKs and who can develop or license for the console...
If there were a software only package, all Bleem or Connectix have to do is release their own libraries and such for development on the PSX, and Sony loses control of their baby...
In the software emulation scenario, Sony loses all control and profits from licensing of the SDKs and libraries because competitive distrobutions exist for alternative platforms...
In the PSX2 case, Sony could just deny approval of games if a company were to release a PSX1 game in the PSX2 era...
AS
Not to knock all these good comments...
on
Gene Leakage
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· Score: 3
A lot of people are fixating on how dangerous GM foods and genengineering is.
Yes, we're playing with fire here. It's a habit of the human race. Note the ironic application of an old cliche? We're playing with fire.
That's probably how this all got started anyway.
I'm not sure that our priorities are in the right direction...
I'm pretty sure that as a whole, humans are a greater threat to each other than to nature, or than nature to the human race. Nature is reliable in her methods and attempts to deal with us.
We are an evolutionary force of nature unto ourselves, and there isn't anything we can do about it. We can be more careful, certainly, and cautious, and all, but I don't think we mean anything more than minor nuisance, no matter how much we reshape and rework our environment. Whole continents have been rearranged and destroyed, formed and buried under ice, waters have risen and lowered, etc etc, and life has survived and prevailed.
We should worry about what we are doing to ourselves and to each other too.
I don't have any idea who would outlast the other; nature or humans.
But I do wonder sometimes that our worst foe and enemy are... ourselves.
We create the political mess, the infighting, the squabbling and bickering. I can cite optimism to defend the idea that people will outlive whatever nature can throw at it.
I can cite the grandeur of nature to put humans in their place. Either work, it's your own choice on what to believe..
However, despite nature and it's struggles, can we really survive ourselves?
Some issues that may or may not be true: Sony may *not* want the PSX game base to last longer, especially with their PSX2 close to fruitation. With a healthy emulator, their PSX games would not die; people would still release games for it and people would still buy them, especially as PC hardware gets more powerful.
Imagine that the PSX2 is out, but likewise that the average PC is P3-450, with a TNT2 level accelerator as the base. Bear with me, this is like 2 years from now... Bleem has released version 2.0, fully backwards compatible with all original PSX games, but also enabled with additional features, now that the original PSX is no longer available on the market. Sony won't license out new games and SDKs in an effort to feed their PSX2 developer base, but a second tier game development community will arise around Bleem, shortchanging Sony of a bunch of profit.
All the big players like Square and Konami will be releasing PSX2 games of course for the console, but dinky small no name companies who still want to reach a large audience and want to use a decent stable platform will code for the PSX1, plus additional features!
Can you imagine? How ironic that the PSX emulators create a truly crossplatform gaming situation, with hardware acceleration and all! I don't know if this is the case, but if Bleem and Connectix VGS became standard on PCs and Macs, then M$'s Direct3d would lose some of its fire when such a stable, available, and open platform exists...
If anyone's been successfully able to link and read the article, since it's/., I'd much appreciated if you could respond and tell us all what the speculation is?
I believe it's more a logo change than a name change, but again, I can't read the article...
There are already several excellent comments on the value of college, and probably many many more who write in to add support to the belief 'I don't need college, I can learn anything I want to about programming in the real world'
That's true, if programming, by analogy, is a skill no higher than a technician; someone tells you what they need and when, and you do it.
There are absolutely lots of things that cannot be learned except by college, unless you are a genius along the ranks of Feynman, Newton, or Einstein. If you were that smart though, you'd probably in college with 2 or 3 degrees, right?
I'm not trying to insult people who haven't gone to college(yet), I'm making a point to those people who are considering and wavering. As mentioned in other posts, there are plenty of things you learn in college that isn't taught, ethics among them, but there are just as many things you won't be able to figure out in the real world. Predicate calculus, program correctness, and big O complexity. Or semiconductor physics, and why transistors act the way they do, and how an entrepreneurial physicist/engineer can take advantage of their quirks and unleash the next big(say a thin flat light cheap LCD) thing on the world. Or even math, and alternatives to 2d linear algebra; 3d or 4d math...
The best things one learns are from classes not related to your main interests, but from which if one makes the effort, can be applied to your main interests in new and uniquely satisfying ways...
This, as been aptly pointed out by many in the forum, is a tape drive, with uncompressed storage close to 15GB or 25GB on a variable speed media. Evidently it also has data write speeds up to 2mb/s, and currently supports only Windows solutions with Linux support soon, and other OSes such as Mac at a later date...
Why are they targetting the Windows market? Are there that many Windows systems that need tape backup that it makes more sense to do Windows first and Linux/Unix second? I thought servers with high data requirements were still predominantly Unix boxes, though perhaps they aren't targetting servers. Who is their target market then?
Maybe some clued in Windows sysadmin will be able to tell me differently, or someone will know of a use that begs for this solution in the large Windows desktop market, or perhaps the workstation market?
That's very true; a company wants loyalty in its workers...
But it has to go both ways. The current job market seems to incur no loyalty between workers and companies, what with regular layoffs, temp workers, and part time employees.
My original post shouldn't be taken too seriously exactly for problems like this...
Hmm, I guess the point I was meditating about is perhaps a 'company' or organization who's job is to qualify and provide quality professional sysadmins. Colleges are entities who provide CEs, EEs, CSes, MEs, chem Es, etc... I'm not sure such an organization exists for sysadmins. It's main purpose is not to wield power or abuse it.
For whatever reason that catchphrase, 'Information wants to be free' irks me. Maybe it's because everyone I know who proclaims this is annoying and a pirate, so they've lost major respect points by irritating me and flouting the socio-economic structure in existence in the US...
An interesting concept would be for O'Reilly to provide an online documentation center, all the while having a pane atop or to the left or something with advertisements/links(same thing) to their books and works, as well as for other companies...
IE, an information/documentation portal, with advertisements from hardware, software, internet service, and user support companies, among other things...
I don't think their sales of hardcopy books would drop, but would actually rise as more people are exposed to their site and their works... It may be tough to sell the concept to authors, however.
It's nice to have something free and available, but for a real reference, for example when on a slow connection, not online, or one doesn't want to spend hours staring at a monitor, or you just want to hold something in a comfortable chair...
The online documentation would be added value/service, I think...
That might be scary actually, if there were some sort of accredited sysadmin union or something...
Companies seeking to hire qualified sysadmins would look at the webpage for the union(like they'd have a physical location? Pshaw!), search by area code, phone number, or street address, and contact the closest 10 or 20 in the area...
However, the scary part is the power they could wield, in part and separately. If, for example, this union or guild of sysadmins wants to send a message about some state tax, or a bill to control immigration, or even how Clinton is handling international politics, they can hide many small messages, comments, and statements throughout a system, in fortunes, in sigs, in updates, etc.
Even worse, they could, if they decided to boycott for a day to bring city/state/national attention to a subject, they *could* shut down an entire industry, if only for an hour!
Call the local/state news agencies, give them a message like 'If we don't get a response in 10 days by , we are going to shut down/slow down for the period of
As an example, we might be able to get all the banks in a city or state to bear pressure or call attention to an environmental issue or two, or to get a bill passed, etc.
Of course this is very coarse, crude, and clumsy. I'm sure all the practice sysadmins reading/. will have much better suggestions, and much more real examples, of what they could do if they decided to wield their power openly...
Good news and all, but I'm worried about the negative issues I've seen about CtP on www.gamecenter.com. While the review in general was overall saying good things about CtP, there are some points it brings up:
No autosave (Which can actually can be addressed with an Aborted() messagebox with a contained SaveGame(...) function... check out the SLIC)
Difficulty in identifying units on the map (There may be something doable with the SLIC as well, by using a permanent or popup box which labels every unit you select or click on...)
Lack of explore/patrol (Hmmm... looks like SLIC may be able to do something with this as well, though my be just a bit clunky)
I also wonder if the SLIC allows for the creation of Wonders and new effects...
I guess actually trying the game with some SLIC script would be the only way to find out.
I wonder what CmdrTaco(he does have the Linux port beta, doesn't he?) or other beta testers think of the review and these 'problems'. AS
So I'm not yet a contributor to the movement. I haven't written code, submitted patches, or even run Linux. Despite that I think I believe in the process of Open Source and what they stand for.
Disclaimer out of the way, I'll continue with the rant. Open Source seems to be two things that are tied together by the people involved. A philosophy of sharing, openness, cooperation and interoperability, and a practice of which involves massively distributed parallelism, high turn around and response, self involvment through self interest, and the end result of increased participation and code quality.
I'm sure many businesses could care less about the philosophy while expressing interest in the practice. These are not individuals we are speaking off, but corporate entities with a dedication to output and income. As such they may seek to incorporate the many strengths and benefits of Open Source without changing their own corporate culture, but I really can't see that happening. The process will change them by its very nature.
I would extend an analogy; Open Source is akin to stock options or performance based bonuses, in which an individual's choices and performance are reflected in their rewards. For many the reward can be seen in an excellent sample of code, a working piece of software, the esteem and respect of their peers, or getting their hardware operational. Traditionally non Open Source models used a paycheck as reward for any and all of those; pay an individual to slave away to produce those results. Open Source models would instead substitute more code and more problems as a reward, to be worked on, analyzed, and dissected.
It would seem that in traditional models the reward is the ends, and the work the means. Perhaps in Open Source it is the path and the journey which are the reward, with no real ends in sight. The value of the process is inherent in the process itself, though of course pleasure and happiness exists with a working end product. I suspect that for many involved in Open Source the act of coding and programming is a joy and an ends in of itself, and a working end product merely a beneficial side effect of the process. IE, nature enthusiasts enjoy the hike and the climb as much as the waterfall or cliffs or lake at the end of their journey, if not more.
That being said, I don't see how a company can tap into Open Source and remain closed and proprietary at the same time. If the supporters and contributors don't or can't have access to the final product, they won't know that their contribution means anything at all, or worse yet, if they have to buy the product they contributed, they have to pay just to see the fruits of their labors, if it even got included!
It may seem contradictory to espouse the value of the journey and then speak of the end product, but in any journey one ostensibly has a goal, even if it is never reached or seen. It is the destination one is walking towards, rather than just walking in circles, even as one enjoys and absorbs the value of the journey itself.
This is just an observation of one who is surrounded by OS geeks and nerds(I'm a CS major at Caltech!), by Slashdot, and the chaos that is the www, as well as a sometime student of economics and philosophy...
It's not actually a bad idea or necessarily bad for the OS movement. Let me explain:
It's about market forces where just about everything is driven by financial initiatives, and now Open Source is one of them. There is of course more than just a buzzword with the label. It is a process and philosophy, and if by adopting and co-opting that process and philosophy the company gains, so does Open Source, as a vindication of the processa and a legitamitzation of the concept, that it indeed is workable and useable in the marketplace.
I'm not so sure I can agree with you that there lies a beauty in the elite nature of the movement and its software. I find it hard to envision any justification in which the term elite can be applied in a positive manner. An elite cadre of programmers describes the top notch talent of the programmers. Open Source being elite just seems to be a form of discrimination and arrogance, as it is a philosophy and a practice, not a social standing or ranking.
Open Source's strength and power would not be diluted even if everyone and their brother use the operating system and software associated with Open Source. The concepts and philosophies don't get watered down, don't get diluted by usage, and likewise it's elitist nature doesn't make it powerful. This sounds suspiciously similar to the arguments and rationalizations of devout Mac-heads or OS/2 proponents. Elitism is only justified by actions and respect, not by the trappings and choices you make. Using Linux, driving a Lexus, eating caviar does not make one Elite. Being able to scan and debug assembly in machine code, write 3d engines in a bored afternoon stupor, or surfing the jaws of Hawaii with the best are all examples of being elite.
Open Source should not become an issue of Us vs Them. As a philosophy I can understand the desire to remain unsullied, unpolluted, undesecrated by commercial interests, but it is also a practice and a principle which can be applied, and that any enterprising business would be stupid to just ignore out of hand.
Hey! Weren't those telegraphs you're speaking of, that used pulses to send signals, spark gap arc telegraphs? They were incredibly dangerous, incredibly power hungry, incredibly spectrum polluting, and didn't transmit using antennas at all, if I recall correctly....
Heehe, I like your thinking and arguments, especially on treating source code as a new form of expression to be regulated and protected under trademark patent and IP laws.
Depends on what you are claiming is nothing new... Magneplanar/Electrostatics, no... NXT's flat panel? Yes. Instead of driving the surface of the panel which drives the air to create the sound, you 'inject' the panel with energy in such a way as to create the panel to vibrate, and these vibrations help to create the sound...
So instead of a driver pushing the entire plane, or a ribbon or a strip across the panel, molecular clumps of atoms become drivers. The interplay and interaction of the fundamental vibrational modes of the panel(which is required to be rigid and inflexible, for these purposes) with the air cause the sound...
Perhaps an inverse example might make more sense. A panel of glass will vibrate when any sound impacts on it. Laser mics use this property to capture sound off a flat rigid purpose. The glass itself isn't moving, like a speaker driver and cone moves, but rather vibrations across the surface of the glass can be detected on a laser beam reflected off the surface, and these vibrations can be used to reconstruct the original source sound.
Reverse this technique, and create sound from the vibrations off a rigid flat panel. It can be 1/4 of an inch thick, rigid and transparent(Like an LCD screen on a notebook!), is very frequency independent, which means no more need for the tweeters and midrange, at least, and because it isn't drive by a 'point' source, the sound isn't directional; it's a flat plane of sound energy!
I'm not sure if it can be detected... IE, it isn't a directed pulse as seen in a radar gun, so if you don't know the signal coding, I don't see how you can detect it.
Likewise to interfere with it.
If you wanted to just overwhelm them with static, you'd also probably interfere with other legitimate devices, such as your own cell phone, or the cell phone in the car next to you.
Heck, it would also mean that the police could tell how fast you were going if they knew your cellphone coding, without necessarily being able to decode and listen in on your conversation!
I'm pretty sure you can't block a radar gun functioning on this principle except to absorb all the radar with a stealth coating.
Magneto-resistive drives are highly suseptible to outside magnetic influence, so the use of optical writing methods help protect the data.
Current magneto-optical devices are slow because of the head technology, and have relatively low density because of the size of the spot and magnetic domains.
Combining the two allows for the stability of optical data and the density of magnetic storage methods...
Unless you're being sarcastic, you're tape drive won't be of much use for large amounts of data needed to be accessed quickly...
I don't see how this technology allows for half of the speculation described in the article.
How can the same tech that allows directional distance pinpointing of a handheld cellular watch also be undetectable and untraceable in a marine communications device?
I would imagine the directionality and distance is a direct product of data smearing, that differnt frequencies and such of the same data pulse would travel at different velocities, so a single pulse train, under observation, can be analyzed to figure out how far it traveled, and the relative direction if an array of 3 receivers were used to determine which gets distorted most and least to triangulate a direction
It's not that this tech doesn't use radio waves, it just doesn't rely on the radio waves themselves as data.
Confusing statement, I guess. Anyhow, as an example, digital cell phones pollute the radio spectrum, because (quote your favorite signal analysis source, since I'm not an expert) sending a fast sharp clear pulse (dirac deltas!) can be described as an infinite series of signals in differing frequencies (Fourier series, each term describing a different radio frequency)
Did I get that description right? Anyway, this pulse technique, rather than using frequency hopping to distribute data across many different frequencies and allowing multiple devices to coexist at once, uses many frequencies at once, relying on a time domain discriminator to differentiate multiple devices. I think. I am unsure how they can do this, and perhaps someone else can supplement my data, spotty as it is.
The very use of many frequencies is necessary for ultrafast digital communication, or inversely, the decision to use digital communication forces the use of entire swathes of radio frequencies. Both are the same statement, I think.
It may not interfere with traditional radio frequency devices, but I think they would appear as noise and such to today's digital wireless devices, such as cell phones.
I also imagine this tech doesn't work very well across large distances, say a state or country without conversion to an alternative communications method, though within a city, what with its extremely dense packing of people and devices, it may be perfectly useable and possible. I say it may not work across long distances because each frequency would be attenuated differently by the atmosphere, would reflect differently on the layers of the atmosphere, and may be detected at different times as the originally sharp pulse gets smeared into a fuzzier packet of data.
Still, should make wireless lans a distinctly enticing possibility AS
I was wondering if one speaker using NXT's flat panel technology was capable of 3d sound =)
If one could encode phase variation to be played by the speakers, perhaps the speakers could produce truly directional sound, like the way phase array radar works; a grid/array of radar units can actually scan directionally despite being immobile and stationary, by some sort of differential phase calculations.
Likewise NXT panels, since they may be thought as an array of millions of speakers, can you encode delay into the sound and play directionally delayed sound from one panel?
The left edge producing a different direction than the right edge? The middle?
Because it's a panel, you can conceivably create a flat 1 foot tall curved speaker wrapping around an entire room!
Slashdot Mirror
It's pretty hard to worry about something we can't see =)
But this asteroid we can see...
And it passes close enough to our own planet that they perturb each other, and it passes nearby often enough in the next 600 years that we cannot predict if it will hit us or not, or when.
After each near miss, of course, we can observe the movement of the asteroid and get a better understanding of its motion, but until it misses we actually don't know if it's going to hit!
And I quote
"Among the possible orbital solutions
there are some that undergo a close approach in August 2027, but no impact is possible. However, the period of the asteroid may be perturbed in such a way that it returns to an approach to the Earth at either of the possible encounter points."
It goes on to note that their accuracy isn't good for more than a decade after each pass, and that each successive pass makes it worse...
Not something you want to ignore when there is a greater danger from it, than say, Y2k or something...
AS
I'm going to take a gamble and bet some comments will be up soon as to the elite and special nature of Linux, and how this is going to ruin everything...
Or on how by dumbing down the OS this way, Linux will be no more and no better than Windows...
Or how Linux is their OS, meant and built for hackers, and not meant for idiots, newbies, the clueless, or the Great Unwashed Masses...
Please, I just gave all three, so don't feel you need to add any more.
That out of the way, I feel this is a good thing, but not perfect. Consumer space is important, especially if you feel that M$ doesn't deserve it and that Apple repeatedly makes routine screwups in the arena. Linux needs enough support to garner first class citizenship from consumer hardware manufacturers; USB drivers and support, AGP and 3d acceleration, perhipherals like TV tuners, scanners, sound cards, and most importantly, consumer space Applications.
User Friendly Linux, regardless of distro or brand name, needs to have an easier setup than M$s. Fill in a bunch of checkboxes and defaults in one dialogue, and allow install without further user interaction. Automatic repair, in case the user screws up or something goes wrong... Refer to some sort of image, and restore from CD or something. Automatic update of safety image as user adds or removes components and hardware. Default security and protection, without the user worrying about patches and updates and holes... Like Netscape's or M$'s autoupdate, check routinely for patches and such, and if possible, download and ask for user permission to install, detailing the changes and allowing for selective removal and uninstall...
Am I missing anything?
AS
You're point seems to support my argument all the more...
Only Anglo-American and Russian civilizations have a habit of trying to conquer nature, as per your statement, with Japanese, Chinese, and Indian civilizations much more intelligent about their role with nature...
However, China and India are no less a threat to global war, nuclear holocaust, and other nasty human killing effects than any of the western states. And until they were put down in the WW, Japan was as much a threat as any other nation.
My point still fits your evidence; whatever the threat humans pose to nature, we pose still more threat to each other. China, Japan, and India included.
AS
But a difference in PSX1 vs PSX2 is that Sony controls who gets SDKs and who can develop or license for the console...
If there were a software only package, all Bleem or Connectix have to do is release their own libraries and such for development on the PSX, and Sony loses control of their baby...
In the software emulation scenario, Sony loses all control and profits from licensing of the SDKs and libraries because competitive distrobutions exist for alternative platforms...
In the PSX2 case, Sony could just deny approval of games if a company were to release a PSX1 game in the PSX2 era...
AS
A lot of people are fixating on how dangerous GM foods and genengineering is.
Yes, we're playing with fire here. It's a habit of the human race. Note the ironic application of an old cliche? We're playing with fire.
That's probably how this all got started anyway.
I'm not sure that our priorities are in the right direction...
I'm pretty sure that as a whole, humans are a greater threat to each other than to nature, or than nature to the human race. Nature is reliable in her methods and attempts to deal with us.
We are an evolutionary force of nature unto ourselves, and there isn't anything we can do about it. We can be more careful, certainly, and cautious, and all, but I don't think we mean anything more than minor nuisance, no matter how much we reshape and rework our environment. Whole continents have been rearranged and destroyed, formed and buried under ice, waters have risen and lowered, etc etc, and life has survived and prevailed.
We should worry about what we are doing to ourselves and to each other too.
AS
I don't have any idea who would outlast the other; nature or humans.
But I do wonder sometimes that our worst foe and enemy are... ourselves.
We create the political mess, the infighting, the squabbling and bickering. I can cite optimism to defend the idea that people will outlive whatever nature can throw at it.
I can cite the grandeur of nature to put humans in their place. Either work, it's your own choice on what to believe..
However, despite nature and it's struggles, can we really survive ourselves?
AS
Some issues that may or may not be true:
Sony may *not* want the PSX game base to last longer, especially with their PSX2 close to fruitation. With a healthy emulator, their PSX games would not die; people would still release games for it and people would still buy them, especially as PC hardware gets more powerful.
Imagine that the PSX2 is out, but likewise that the average PC is P3-450, with a TNT2 level accelerator as the base. Bear with me, this is like 2 years from now... Bleem has released version 2.0, fully backwards compatible with all original PSX games, but also enabled with additional features, now that the original PSX is no longer available on the market. Sony won't license out new games and SDKs in an effort to feed their PSX2 developer base, but a second tier game development community will arise around Bleem, shortchanging Sony of a bunch of profit.
All the big players like Square and Konami will be releasing PSX2 games of course for the console, but dinky small no name companies who still want to reach a large audience and want to use a decent stable platform will code for the PSX1, plus additional features!
Can you imagine? How ironic that the PSX emulators create a truly crossplatform gaming situation, with hardware acceleration and all! I don't know if this is the case, but if Bleem and Connectix VGS became standard on PCs and Macs, then M$'s Direct3d would lose some of its fire when such a stable, available, and open platform exists...
AS
If anyone's been successfully able to link and read the article, since it's /., I'd much appreciated if you could respond and tell us all what the speculation is?
I believe it's more a logo change than a name change, but again, I can't read the article...
Thanks much!
AS
There are already several excellent comments on the value of college, and probably many many more who write in to add support to the belief
'I don't need college, I can learn anything I want to about programming in the real world'
That's true, if programming, by analogy, is a skill no higher than a technician; someone tells you what they need and when, and you do it.
There are absolutely lots of things that cannot be learned except by college, unless you are a genius along the ranks of Feynman, Newton, or Einstein. If you were that smart though, you'd probably in college with 2 or 3 degrees, right?
I'm not trying to insult people who haven't gone to college(yet), I'm making a point to those people who are considering and wavering. As mentioned in other posts, there are plenty of things you learn in college that isn't taught, ethics among them, but there are just as many things you won't be able to figure out in the real world. Predicate calculus, program correctness, and big O complexity. Or semiconductor physics, and why transistors act the way they do, and how an entrepreneurial physicist/engineer can take advantage of their quirks and unleash the next big(say a thin flat light cheap LCD) thing on the world. Or even math, and alternatives to 2d linear algebra; 3d or 4d math...
The best things one learns are from classes not related to your main interests, but from which if one makes the effort, can be applied to your main interests in new and uniquely satisfying ways...
AS
What a waste of alignment points... Oh well.
This, as been aptly pointed out by many in the forum, is a tape drive, with uncompressed storage close to 15GB or 25GB on a variable speed media. Evidently it also has data write speeds up to 2mb/s, and currently supports only Windows solutions with Linux support soon, and other OSes such as Mac at a later date...
Why are they targetting the Windows market? Are there that many Windows systems that need tape backup that it makes more sense to do Windows first and Linux/Unix second? I thought servers with high data requirements were still predominantly Unix boxes, though perhaps they aren't targetting servers. Who is their target market then?
Maybe some clued in Windows sysadmin will be able to tell me differently, or someone will know of a use that begs for this solution in the large Windows desktop market, or perhaps the workstation market?
AS
That's very true; a company wants loyalty in its workers...
But it has to go both ways. The current job market seems to incur no loyalty between workers and companies, what with regular layoffs, temp workers, and part time employees.
My original post shouldn't be taken too seriously exactly for problems like this...
Hmm, I guess the point I was meditating about is perhaps a 'company' or organization who's job is to qualify and provide quality professional sysadmins. Colleges are entities who provide CEs, EEs, CSes, MEs, chem Es, etc... I'm not sure such an organization exists for sysadmins. It's main purpose is not to wield power or abuse it.
AS
For whatever reason that catchphrase, 'Information wants to be free' irks me. Maybe it's because everyone I know who proclaims this is annoying and a pirate, so they've lost major respect points by irritating me and flouting the socio-economic structure in existence in the US...
An interesting concept would be for O'Reilly to provide an online documentation center, all the while having a pane atop or to the left or something with advertisements/links(same thing) to their books and works, as well as for other companies...
IE, an information/documentation portal, with advertisements from hardware, software, internet service, and user support companies, among other things...
I don't think their sales of hardcopy books would drop, but would actually rise as more people are exposed to their site and their works... It may be tough to sell the concept to authors, however.
It's nice to have something free and available, but for a real reference, for example when on a slow connection, not online, or one doesn't want to spend hours staring at a monitor, or you just want to hold something in a comfortable chair...
The online documentation would be added value/service, I think...
AS
That might be scary actually, if there were some sort of accredited sysadmin union or something...
/. will have much better suggestions, and much more real examples, of what they could do if they decided to wield their power openly...
Companies seeking to hire qualified sysadmins would look at the webpage for the union(like they'd have a physical location? Pshaw!), search by area code, phone number, or street address, and contact the closest 10 or 20 in the area...
However, the scary part is the power they could wield, in part and separately. If, for example, this union or guild of sysadmins wants to send a message about some state tax, or a bill to control immigration, or even how Clinton is handling international politics, they can hide many small messages, comments, and statements throughout a system, in fortunes, in sigs, in updates, etc.
Even worse, they could, if they decided to boycott for a day to bring city/state/national attention to a subject, they *could* shut down an entire industry, if only for an hour!
Call the local/state news agencies, give them a message like 'If we don't get a response in 10 days by , we are going to shut down/slow down for the period of
As an example, we might be able to get all the banks in a city or state to bear pressure or call attention to an environmental issue or two, or to get a bill passed, etc.
Of course this is very coarse, crude, and clumsy. I'm sure all the practice sysadmins reading
AS
Good news and all, but I'm worried about the negative issues I've seen about CtP on www.gamecenter.com. While the review in general was overall saying good things about CtP, there are some points it brings up:
No autosave
(Which can actually can be addressed with an Aborted() messagebox with a contained SaveGame(...) function... check out the SLIC)
Difficulty in identifying units on the map
(There may be something doable with the SLIC as well, by using a permanent or popup box which labels every unit you select or click on...)
Lack of explore/patrol
(Hmmm... looks like SLIC may be able to do something with this as well, though my be just a bit clunky)
I also wonder if the SLIC allows for the creation of Wonders and new effects...
I guess actually trying the game with some SLIC script would be the only way to find out.
I wonder what CmdrTaco(he does have the Linux port beta, doesn't he?) or other beta testers think of the review and these 'problems'.
AS
So I'm not yet a contributor to the movement. I haven't written code, submitted patches, or even run Linux. Despite that I think I believe in the process of Open Source and what they stand for.
Disclaimer out of the way, I'll continue with the rant. Open Source seems to be two things that are tied together by the people involved. A philosophy of sharing, openness, cooperation and interoperability, and a practice of which involves massively distributed parallelism, high turn around and response, self involvment through self interest, and the end result of increased participation and code quality.
I'm sure many businesses could care less about the philosophy while expressing interest in the practice. These are not individuals we are speaking off, but corporate entities with a dedication to output and income. As such they may seek to incorporate the many strengths and benefits of Open Source without changing their own corporate culture, but I really can't see that happening. The process will change them by its very nature.
I would extend an analogy; Open Source is akin to stock options or performance based bonuses, in which an individual's choices and performance are reflected in their rewards. For many the reward can be seen in an excellent sample of code, a working piece of software, the esteem and respect of their peers, or getting their hardware operational. Traditionally non Open Source models used a paycheck as reward for any and all of those; pay an individual to slave away to produce those results. Open Source models would instead substitute more code and more problems as a reward, to be worked on, analyzed, and dissected.
It would seem that in traditional models the reward is the ends, and the work the means. Perhaps in Open Source it is the path and the journey which are the reward, with no real ends in sight. The value of the process is inherent in the process itself, though of course pleasure and happiness exists with a working end product. I suspect that for many involved in Open Source the act of coding and programming is a joy and an ends in of itself, and a working end product merely a beneficial side effect of the process. IE, nature enthusiasts enjoy the hike and the climb as much as the waterfall or cliffs or lake at the end of their journey, if not more.
That being said, I don't see how a company can tap into Open Source and remain closed and proprietary at the same time. If the supporters and contributors don't or can't have access to the final product, they won't know that their contribution means anything at all, or worse yet, if they have to buy the product they contributed, they have to pay just to see the fruits of their labors, if it even got included!
It may seem contradictory to espouse the value of the journey and then speak of the end product, but in any journey one ostensibly has a goal, even if it is never reached or seen. It is the destination one is walking towards, rather than just walking in circles, even as one enjoys and absorbs the value of the journey itself.
This is just an observation of one who is surrounded by OS geeks and nerds(I'm a CS major at Caltech!), by Slashdot, and the chaos that is the www, as well as a sometime student of economics and philosophy...
Comment away!
AS
It's not actually a bad idea or necessarily bad for the OS movement. Let me explain:
It's about market forces where just about everything is driven by financial initiatives, and now Open Source is one of them. There is of course more than just a buzzword with the label. It is a process and philosophy, and if by adopting and co-opting that process and philosophy the company gains, so does Open Source, as a vindication of the processa and a legitamitzation of the concept, that it indeed is workable and useable in the marketplace.
I'm not so sure I can agree with you that there lies a beauty in the elite nature of the movement and its software. I find it hard to envision any justification in which the term elite can be applied in a positive manner. An elite cadre of programmers describes the top notch talent of the programmers. Open Source being elite just seems to be a form of discrimination and arrogance, as it is a philosophy and a practice, not a social standing or ranking.
Open Source's strength and power would not be diluted even if everyone and their brother use the operating system and software associated with Open Source. The concepts and philosophies don't get watered down, don't get diluted by usage, and likewise it's elitist nature doesn't make it powerful. This sounds suspiciously similar to the arguments and rationalizations of devout Mac-heads or OS/2 proponents. Elitism is only justified by actions and respect, not by the trappings and choices you make. Using Linux, driving a Lexus, eating caviar does not make one Elite. Being able to scan and debug assembly in machine code, write 3d engines in a bored afternoon stupor, or surfing the jaws of Hawaii with the best are all examples of being elite.
Open Source should not become an issue of Us vs Them. As a philosophy I can understand the desire to remain unsullied, unpolluted, undesecrated by commercial interests, but it is also a practice and a principle which can be applied, and that any enterprising business would be stupid to just ignore out of hand.
AS
Hey! Weren't those telegraphs you're speaking of, that used pulses to send signals, spark gap arc telegraphs? They were incredibly dangerous, incredibly power hungry, incredibly spectrum polluting, and didn't transmit using antennas at all, if I recall correctly....
Cool. I think =)
AS
Heehe, I like your thinking and arguments, especially on treating source code as a new form of expression to be regulated and protected under trademark patent and IP laws.
AS
Depends on what you are claiming is nothing new...
Magneplanar/Electrostatics, no...
NXT's flat panel? Yes.
Instead of driving the surface of the panel which drives the air to create the sound, you 'inject' the panel with energy in such a way as to create the panel to vibrate, and these vibrations help to create the sound...
So instead of a driver pushing the entire plane, or a ribbon or a strip across the panel, molecular clumps of atoms become drivers. The interplay and interaction of the fundamental vibrational modes of the panel(which is required to be rigid and inflexible, for these purposes) with the air cause the sound...
Perhaps an inverse example might make more sense. A panel of glass will vibrate when any sound impacts on it. Laser mics use this property to capture sound off a flat rigid purpose. The glass itself isn't moving, like a speaker driver and cone moves, but rather vibrations across the surface of the glass can be detected on a laser beam reflected off the surface, and these vibrations can be used to reconstruct the original source sound.
Reverse this technique, and create sound from the vibrations off a rigid flat panel. It can be 1/4 of an inch thick, rigid and transparent(Like an LCD screen on a notebook!), is very frequency independent, which means no more need for the tweeters and midrange, at least, and because it isn't drive by a 'point' source, the sound isn't directional; it's a flat plane of sound energy!
That's why it's new tech...
AS
I'm not sure if it can be detected...
IE, it isn't a directed pulse as seen in a radar gun, so if you don't know the signal coding, I don't see how you can detect it.
Likewise to interfere with it.
If you wanted to just overwhelm them with static, you'd also probably interfere with other legitimate devices, such as your own cell phone, or the cell phone in the car next to you.
Heck, it would also mean that the police could tell how fast you were going if they knew your cellphone coding, without necessarily being able to decode and listen in on your conversation!
I'm pretty sure you can't block a radar gun functioning on this principle except to absorb all the radar with a stealth coating.
AS
Magneto-resistive drives are highly suseptible to outside magnetic influence, so the use of optical writing methods help protect the data.
Current magneto-optical devices are slow because of the head technology, and have relatively low density because of the size of the spot and magnetic domains.
Combining the two allows for the stability of optical data and the density of magnetic storage methods...
Unless you're being sarcastic, you're tape drive won't be of much use for large amounts of data needed to be accessed quickly...
AS
Anyone given to the idea of a single strip speaker, using NXT flat panel technology, one foot high, 1/2 inch think, and surrounding an entire room?
Or a theatre placing large flat panels as the projector screen and along the walls for even sround sound?
AS
I don't see how this technology allows for half of the speculation described in the article.
How can the same tech that allows directional distance pinpointing of a handheld cellular watch also be undetectable and untraceable in a marine communications device?
I would imagine the directionality and distance is a direct product of data smearing, that differnt frequencies and such of the same data pulse would travel at different velocities, so a single pulse train, under observation, can be analyzed to figure out how far it traveled, and the relative direction if an array of 3 receivers were used to determine which gets distorted most and least to triangulate a direction
AS
It's not that this tech doesn't use radio waves, it just doesn't rely on the radio waves themselves as data.
Confusing statement, I guess.
Anyhow, as an example, digital cell phones pollute the radio spectrum, because (quote your favorite signal analysis source, since I'm not an expert) sending a fast sharp clear pulse (dirac deltas!) can be described as an infinite series of signals in differing frequencies (Fourier series, each term describing a different radio frequency)
Did I get that description right?
Anyway, this pulse technique, rather than using frequency hopping to distribute data across many different frequencies and allowing multiple devices to coexist at once, uses many frequencies at once, relying on a time domain discriminator to differentiate multiple devices. I think. I am unsure how they can do this, and perhaps someone else can supplement my data, spotty as it is.
The very use of many frequencies is necessary for ultrafast digital communication, or inversely, the decision to use digital communication forces the use of entire swathes of radio frequencies. Both are the same statement, I think.
It may not interfere with traditional radio frequency devices, but I think they would appear as noise and such to today's digital wireless devices, such as cell phones.
I also imagine this tech doesn't work very well across large distances, say a state or country without conversion to an alternative communications method, though within a city, what with its extremely dense packing of people and devices, it may be perfectly useable and possible. I say it may not work across long distances because each frequency would be attenuated differently by the atmosphere, would reflect differently on the layers of the atmosphere, and may be detected at different times as the originally sharp pulse gets smeared into a fuzzier packet of data.
Still, should make wireless lans a distinctly enticing possibility
AS
I think I forgot to explain something...
I was wondering if one speaker using NXT's flat panel technology was capable of 3d sound =)
If one could encode phase variation to be played by the speakers, perhaps the speakers could produce truly directional sound, like the way phase array radar works; a grid/array of radar units can actually scan directionally despite being immobile and stationary, by some sort of differential phase calculations.
Likewise NXT panels, since they may be thought as an array of millions of speakers, can you encode delay into the sound and play directionally delayed sound from one panel?
The left edge producing a different direction than the right edge? The middle?
Because it's a panel, you can conceivably create a flat 1 foot tall curved speaker wrapping around an entire room!
AS