If you look at the numbers their complete budget for 2000 was only $95.7 billion. Assuming it starts now & ends on time, without any cost overruns, we're looking at something like 12% of the government's spending going towards this project.
That's some commitment to closing the 'digital divide'. Well, as long as they make reasonably affordable computers available to their citizens when this thing goes live.
Well, it's a bit of a stretch from the concept of the article and the spirit of natural language processing, it could be an interesting compromise. Considering that all current human/computer interactions put some stress on the human to communicate on the computer's terms.
OTOH, with whistles, you'd probably lose the ability to do voice-print identifications..
This is not always a good thing. I just recently got stuck with the task of unifying a dozen or so different access databases & moving the over to a 'real' database. They all had essentially the same information, but their layouts were completely inconsistant....and it was all in one table.
In a normalized form, it was 13-14 tables. It's dangerout to give people a tool with the kind of power a database has without helping them out along the way and showing them how to use it right....and based on my (limited) experience with Access, it's like most MSFT software; ease of use is only an illusion. The simple things are easy, but anything non-trivial becomes torturous.
It's not that uncommon for things done outside of school to be dealt with through the school. Outside of obvious exceptions (school trips, sporting events, etc) it's pretty common for fights between students (even when off school hours & time) to be dealt with by the school.
Even as a sophomore in college, I nearly got kicked out of the dorms because one of my room mates reported on some (admittedly fucked up, but nowhere near as overblown as he made it) stuff I did at a party. Off campus. Sixty miles away. During break.
Like the time I spent 4 hours on hold, telling them that the drivers they shipped with the machine (and still had on their webzit) were causing HDD corruption. I mean, when you get a system from somebody 'reliable' like Dell, you don't expect the box to have wonky drivers that eat the HDD...
Vendors such as SuSe, RedHat, and Debian (to an extent) do heavy testing and certification of Hardware. Face it SuSe and RedHat are "Enterprise Grade" in their testing processes. Gentoo will likely never be supported as it is constantly evolving to bleeding edge updates maintained by tons of packagers who generally aren't directly employeed by Gentoo.
Here's a quote from an anonymous friend who's a Gentoo dev : "I probably should've tested this ebuild before I committed it to CVS..."
Fake transparancies on terminals have always been gay, even before they entered the whole GNOME/KDE thing. Even when we do get real alpha blending, they'll still be gay.
The one the things in Sun's favour here that seems to be overlooked is the additional experience they have in large-scale deployments. Planning, deploying & configuring a large number of systems, spread across a country the size of China is not going to be a trivial thing.
I doubt any of the major Linux vendors (Redhat, Mandrak, SuSE,...) have any real experience with the kinds of issues that come up here. Sun, OTOH, has probably done stuff on this scale a few times before.
Try joining the military. No way in hell they'd be able to sue you for that (and win) even if you went into a job field that was exactly the same....of course there'd be other personal freedom issues involved, but...
So, what you're saying is "If you stick a bunch of subatomic particles together, they become more stable". Umm... if you stick enough sub-atomic particles together, won't you eventually get something that's kinda like a nice stable atom?
I thought that was the whole reason that people studied it... I mean, you make an entire career on 'doing' string theory and never have to really worry about being shown wrong.
We're talking about commercial/enterprise desktops; an environment where the normal users shouldn't be messing with drivers and system settings. These are computers that would be managed by an IT department and all the user needs to worry about is if the apps they have to use are there and they work.
XL is a language that uses indentation to define blocks.
If you've read any of the stories about Python on/., you realize that this is a v. unpopular idea 'round here. I'm suprised that somebody hasn't started railing on XL for this yet.
What do you mean by 'decent'? What do you consider an acceptable price range?
Radeon 9200s are currently in the $50 price range and have 'decent' performance for most things on the market (you may have to cut back resolution and IQ for some cutting edge games). For 3-4x the price ($150-200 range for all but ATI's top cards)) you can get some extra performance (less than 2x) and pick up DX9 and better IQ.
Of course, they are shooting pretty high for their first release. Look at where they claim they'll be positioning their products in the market. They claim their high-end cards will be able to perform on the same level as ATI's (current) highest level card, the Radeon 9800.
I really have to wonder if they'll be able to properly pull this off. Look at nVidia and ATI's entries into the high-end graphics market; it took them a few product cycles to achieve equality and then a few more to get dominance.
Of course, if they can even reach parity with the middle high-end chips (which may be low high-end chips by the time XGI finally ships) and price things at or below the competion, we could have something interesting on our hands.
Something about this article seems familiar, but I'm not sure where I saw it before. It makes reference to using UML as a 'easy-to-understand interface' for desigining programs.
Please.
Essentially, what his idea comes down to, is finding representations that are more removed from what's going on under the hood, such as using pictures to represent program flow instead of the current textual representation. This is not only an old, established idea, but completely bypasses the fact the the fundamental difficulty in designing software is coming up with formal specifications.
Take his example of turbine blades; he states that " you were to use the most meticulous craftsman to make them, you still wouldn't get anywhere near the degree of accuracy you need". Unfortunately, turbine blades are still designed by highly skilled engineers; what he wants to do is give somebody the ability to say "I want a fan-like-thing that moves a big metal bird" and have a jet engine pop out.
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If you look at the numbers their complete budget for 2000 was only $95.7 billion. Assuming it starts now & ends on time, without any cost overruns, we're looking at something like 12% of the government's spending going towards this project.
That's some commitment to closing the 'digital divide'. Well, as long as they make reasonably affordable computers available to their citizens when this thing goes live.
You beat me to it. Damned good program, other than a few minor UI quirks and some minor printing difficulties.
Same here. Since I live off-campus, the only I ever bothered using it for was ISO downloads (too much trouble sneakernet other stuff).
Damned dorm-rats.
I really hope this does take off and is a good replacement for BT AND the campus admins don't block the ports on it like they did for BT.
Well, it's a bit of a stretch from the concept of the article and the spirit of natural language processing, it could be an interesting compromise. Considering that all current human/computer interactions put some stress on the human to communicate on the computer's terms.
OTOH, with whistles, you'd probably lose the ability to do voice-print identifications..
This is not always a good thing. I just recently got stuck with the task of unifying a dozen or so different access databases & moving the over to a 'real' database. They all had essentially the same information, but their layouts were completely inconsistant. ...and it was all in one table.
...and based on my (limited) experience with Access, it's like most MSFT software; ease of use is only an illusion. The simple things are easy, but anything non-trivial becomes torturous.
In a normalized form, it was 13-14 tables. It's dangerout to give people a tool with the kind of power a database has without helping them out along the way and showing them how to use it right.
It's not that uncommon for things done outside of school to be dealt with through the school. Outside of obvious exceptions (school trips, sporting events, etc) it's pretty common for fights between students (even when off school hours & time) to be dealt with by the school.
Even as a sophomore in college, I nearly got kicked out of the dorms because one of my room mates reported on some (admittedly fucked up, but nowhere near as overblown as he made it) stuff I did at a party. Off campus. Sixty miles away. During break.
I could tell you horror stories about Dell...
Like the time I spent 4 hours on hold, telling them that the drivers they shipped with the machine (and still had on their webzit) were causing HDD corruption. I mean, when you get a system from somebody 'reliable' like Dell, you don't expect the box to have wonky drivers that eat the HDD...
Here's a quote from an anonymous friend who's a Gentoo dev : "I probably should've tested this ebuild before I committed it to CVS..."
Fake transparancies on terminals have always been gay, even before they entered the whole GNOME/KDE thing. Even when we do get real alpha blending, they'll still be gay.
As another poster mentioned, China recently recieved Windows' source. If reading that wouldn't get you to switch, I doubt anything would.
The one the things in Sun's favour here that seems to be overlooked is the additional experience they have in large-scale deployments. Planning, deploying & configuring a large number of systems, spread across a country the size of China is not going to be a trivial thing.
I doubt any of the major Linux vendors (Redhat, Mandrak, SuSE,...) have any real experience with the kinds of issues that come up here. Sun, OTOH, has probably done stuff on this scale a few times before.
Try joining the military. No way in hell they'd be able to sue you for that (and win) even if you went into a job field that was exactly the same. ...of course there'd be other personal freedom issues involved, but...
What? Morons read Slashot? Whoodathunkit.
So, what you're saying is "If you stick a bunch of subatomic particles together, they become more stable". Umm... if you stick enough sub-atomic particles together, won't you eventually get something that's kinda like a nice stable atom?
I thought that was the whole reason that people studied it... I mean, you make an entire career on 'doing' string theory and never have to really worry about being shown wrong.
I thought he just silently switched to Welsh.
Umm.. I think you miss the context here.
We're talking about commercial/enterprise desktops; an environment where the normal users shouldn't be messing with drivers and system settings. These are computers that would be managed by an IT department and all the user needs to worry about is if the apps they have to use are there and they work.
XL is a language that uses indentation to define blocks.
/., you realize that this is a v. unpopular idea 'round here. I'm suprised that somebody hasn't started railing on XL for this yet.
If you've read any of the stories about Python on
What do you mean by 'decent'? What do you consider an acceptable price range?
Radeon 9200s are currently in the $50 price range and have 'decent' performance for most things on the market (you may have to cut back resolution and IQ for some cutting edge games). For 3-4x the price ($150-200 range for all but ATI's top cards)) you can get some extra performance (less than 2x) and pick up DX9 and better IQ.
Whatever you say may be generally true but Tom is the only one who's gotten his hands on an XGI card.
Of course, they are shooting pretty high for their first release. Look at where they claim they'll be positioning their products in the market. They claim their high-end cards will be able to perform on the same level as ATI's (current) highest level card, the Radeon 9800.
I really have to wonder if they'll be able to properly pull this off. Look at nVidia and ATI's entries into the high-end graphics market; it took them a few product cycles to achieve equality and then a few more to get dominance.
Of course, if they can even reach parity with the middle high-end chips (which may be low high-end chips by the time XGI finally ships) and price things at or below the competion, we could have something interesting on our hands.
...just like Microsoft (who has larger cash reserves than most banks) rolls their cash into further spending...
Technically, you would only need one time traveler convention
I suppose you're one of the asshats that thinks buying a traffic light switcher is a perfectly acceptable thing to do?
Something about this article seems familiar, but I'm not sure where I saw it before. It makes reference to using UML as a 'easy-to-understand interface' for desigining programs.
Please.
Essentially, what his idea comes down to, is finding representations that are more removed from what's going on under the hood, such as using pictures to represent program flow instead of the current textual representation. This is not only an old, established idea, but completely bypasses the fact the the fundamental difficulty in designing software is coming up with formal specifications.
Take his example of turbine blades; he states that " you were to use the most meticulous craftsman to make them, you still wouldn't get anywhere near the degree of accuracy you need". Unfortunately, turbine blades are still designed by highly skilled engineers; what he wants to do is give somebody the ability to say "I want a fan-like-thing that moves a big metal bird" and have a jet engine pop out.