Do you think that I would be happy to be "tracked" by my phone's location, just so those assholes could have been caught? I sure will.
Now please explain why the government would need some Echelon system to spy on everyone, violating your privacy as well as mine, while you've already established which phone the asshole is using (namely your father's). If this is just because you forgot your dad's cell phone number the problem can probably be fixed with less harsh measures.
-- Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death -- G.W. Bush
I totally agree... all this newish hype about having graphics inside your browser... Why would anyone need that?!? What's wrong with ASCII art? Who would want to put GIFs on a webserver?
Now if you're looking for some innovative file brwosing, try XCruise!
Well, it depends on what you call an "OSS company", but IBM seems to be doing OK. Cooperating with the OSS community and other companies does not necessarily mean you give away all your assets for nothing.
...But of course I cannot deny Micro$oft has been doing incredibly well in these hard times.
Lowering Microsoft's prices, thus levelling the playing field and letting the best product win... these are all objectives of the Open Source movement.
I am not sure that lowering Microsoft's prices will level the field. With Microsoft's multi-billion capital they could - at least on the short term - lower prices without hurting their business, while hurting the business of competing companies like Novell and Sun as well as open source efforts.
Levelling the playing field is a matter of decreasing Microsoft's dominance, not just their prices.
One source of criticism for the Open Source movement is that it concentrates too little on idealism and too much on pragmatism.
True. However, the OSS movement is idealistic about the belief that the best product can never be closed source software, even if it were free ($0,00). Hence, the open source community should be happy about IBM releasing GPL stuff or Netscape spinning off Mozilla and not about Microsoft lowering their prices.
Wow. So Hailstorm wasn't about a brave new e-service. Rather just another plot of Microsoft to take over the movie industry. But it's sad they need German scientists to cover up their involvement, why can't they just admit they like both Hollywoon and potatoes?
-- The right to be heard does not include the right to be taken seriously
Okay. I appologise for bashing Intel. My critique was aimed at contemporary systems rather than their silicon. Indeed, power source, hard drives and cooling fans are likely to cause trouble long before the CPU's end of life.
All I'm saying is that the computers we use in our daily lives may be a lot faster, but they aren't made to last anymore. Ah. Back in the days, when we was young... snif.
Moore's Law includes price. Did you take into account, that you might have payed less when purchasing your 1982 C64 than was spent on CSIRAC, 20 years earlier?
Btw, C64's feature 64kB which is 32 times 2kB, so at least memory size doubled five times in 20 years, that is: it doubled every four years.
-- In theory there is no difference between practice and theory. But in practice there is -- Jan L.A. van Snepscheut
Just imagine how big a computational problem could be solved in 50 years with contemporary P4 hardware, if only Intel would build its hardware to last 50 years....Or anything over 5 years - for that matter...
Now this may not be a problem for home users that buy a complete new system every two-three years (regardless of environmental effects), but I'm sure happy they don't sent out space probes which rely on today's state-of-art.
-- The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in: we're computer professionals, we cause accidents -- Nathaniel Borenstein
I agree completely. Moreover, with LotR releases the suspense is not with the story - since Tolkien fans know the story inside out - but with seeing it come to life on a big screen. For me, that's the only point in seeing the movie at all.
Same goes more or less for Star Wars, the only difference being that even though you may not know the plot, you're certain it won't surprise you.
-- God is the only form of extraterrestrial life that we could ever possibly communicate with -- SETI is a joke, people
> Joe Sixpack doesn't even notice when there is a shuttle mission up. Nobody cares anymore.
Agree. Joe Sixpack cares/cared about space exploration just enough to follow the cold war propaganda in 60s space missions.
Sixties are overrated
on
Redirecting NASA
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
> How long do we have to wait until NASA becomes as ingenious as they were in the sixties?
I don't mean to flame, but isn't it true that nothing much happened in the 60s from a scientific perspective. Ingenious is great, but I support NASA's move from being a PR department in a cold-war setting to actually exploring the universe currently.
Isn't the problem with space (and science more generally) that "the people" just don't care about it, but rather like watching spectacles and human drama (the chalenger crash, Apollo 13).
RiscOS has some really neat GUI features, although the OS has failed to evolve and is currently light years behind contemporary preemptive multithreading, networked, journalling blah-di-blah OSs.
Indeed one of the things Acorn got right long before Apple, Microsoft, and most others, is that primarily the OS should integrate applications; you shouldn't expect to integrate with each other. This most clear with Microsoft Office, which over the years has consistently integrated perfectly with itsself, while keeping possible competitors or "plug-in" suppliers away from their honeypot.
Ah well. I guess RiscOS might have been pretty much alive if only Acorn would have taken their loss and GPLed all their sources after one of their bankrubsies...
> 3.06 MHz is over 3 times faster than a C64... >...but the C64 still got better sound.
I agree: despite al the claims about Moore's Law and technological advances, this proves that tripling the speed of a good ol' 6510 CPU has some disadvantages as well: Give a little to gain a little. 8-)
More seriously: graphics have improved since the early eighties, but what about gameplay? Isn't Mame the only thing that really justifies buy PC hardware now and then?
-- Money is the root of all evil (Send $30 for more info)
Is it theft to listen to the music comming from a car passing by? Is it theft to look into a shopping window without the intent of buying anything? If so, I'd have to agree with Nokia, otherwise they're just talking utter nonsense.
> I hope that RedHat successfully forces both Gnome and KDE to become compatible with one another which would result in the creation of a single desktop. This would be the greatest gift to the Linux world.
Would it? I agree that technically speaking it would be great to have a single API and a single (though configurable) UI combining the best of both worlds. But notice that this is only tempting because GUI developments (on a conceptual level) have been tame an converging for the last couple of years. Wrt. the Gnome, KDE, Windows 98 & XP looks and feels there have been some small changes here and there but hardly any innovative stuff. Many core developers in gnome, kde and M$ team would (or should) admit they have fairly modest ambitions in UI design - merely copying the neat stuff they see others do.
Now would not "the Linux world" REALLY benefit from more dary designs? I would happily trade some compatibility to gain the divergence necessary to see some more innovative and radically new designs.
Slick example: OS X. Geek example: XCruise-file browser. More generally: get some GUI professionals to do GUI design (sorry, no offence intended)
-- The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in: we're computer professionals, we cause accidents -- Nathaniel Borenstein
> I find the combination of valgrind and boehm-weiser to be much more effective than Purify in practice, and it's free.
Thanks for the tips. To be honest, I'm really not that much into the code analysis "market", but I probably should have known about these tools.
On a first glance, the tools don't seem to have the "easy-to-use" GUI-appeal that Rational's tools tend to have. Though that's just a front end thing, I guess I'd personally have a hard time convincing my manager to switch to a tools that lacks plug-and-pray features, have no "customer support" and might not support all platforms we're supporting....But since these are all minor issues, you've convinced me to give these tools a try - even if is has to be outside company walls!
> You're better off using efence and spending the $3000 worth of debugging time than dropping $5000 on Purify.
Though I'm not an advocate of closed software, I still think Rational has a good product that is worth its money. To support my previous arguments I could add development time: save two weeks a year and you're ready to sell your product two weeks earlier. Ergo: development costs are covered by revenue two weeks earlier. That's almost 4%. In our case (10 developers, user licenses at $50k-$100k), having your project ready on time is of life importance.
That being said, I'm going to give the stuff you suggested a try - the "free" part in Free Software should be tempting to my manager, and if indeed it's better in finding bugs, I'm in!
I'm not sure what you're trying to imply, but I guess you're trying to express your concern that it's too expensive. Well, it's not - IMHO. First, compare it to more or less similar products, like Intel's VTune profiler or Metroworks' products. Second, do some basic math. In many cases, software development and maintenance is basically debugging. I dare say a good coder spends (at least) two-three months a year debugging a piece of code he/she or someone else wrote - no methodoligy can change that. Good code instrumentation can't prevent bugs but helps a lot in finding them. Based on experience, I'd say it saves you a week or two per year. A good coder costs $2500-$5000 per month. This excludes management, QA and facilities. Add these and the price doubles. Therefore, it saves a company (that takes QA seriously) $1000-$5000 a year. The investment returns eventually.
$5000 is a lot of money, true. $5000 is way too much for a Linux hobbyist that payed nil for downloading his distro, but rest assure that any large commercial company will gladly pay for a couple of licenses. I guess the main concern should be if Rational can ever break even on a product that took years of development.
--
Programming is like sex... make one mistake and support it the rest of your life
> Does this mean that the RISC/CISC battle is over with CISC winning?...Or does it mean that contemporary Operation Systems are becoming more and more architecture independent? (...And this might kill Microsoft, eventually...)
Anyway, hasn't the RISC/CISC-war been fought through hardware marketing rather than software all along?
Slashdot Mirror
Do you think that I would be happy to be "tracked" by my phone's location, just so those assholes could have been caught? I sure will.
Now please explain why the government would need some Echelon system to spy on everyone, violating your privacy as well as mine, while you've already established which phone the asshole is using (namely your father's). If this is just because you forgot your dad's cell phone number the problem can probably be fixed with less harsh measures.
--
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death -- G.W. Bush
I totally agree... all this newish hype about having graphics inside your browser... Why would anyone need that?!? What's wrong with ASCII art? Who would want to put GIFs on a webserver?
Now if you're looking for some innovative file brwosing, try XCruise!
Well, it depends on what you call an "OSS company", but IBM seems to be doing OK. Cooperating with the OSS community and other companies does not necessarily mean you give away all your assets for nothing.
...But of course I cannot deny Micro$oft has been doing incredibly well in these hard times.
Lowering Microsoft's prices, thus levelling the playing field and letting the best product win ... these are all objectives of the Open Source movement.
I am not sure that lowering Microsoft's prices will level the field. With Microsoft's multi-billion capital they could - at least on the short term - lower prices without hurting their business, while hurting the business of competing companies like Novell and Sun as well as open source efforts.
Levelling the playing field is a matter of decreasing Microsoft's dominance, not just their prices.
One source of criticism for the Open Source movement is that it concentrates too little on idealism and too much on pragmatism.
True. However, the OSS movement is idealistic about the belief that the best product can never be closed source software, even if it were free ($0,00). Hence, the open source community should be happy about IBM releasing GPL stuff or Netscape spinning off Mozilla and not about Microsoft lowering their prices.
Wow. So Hailstorm wasn't about a brave new e-service. Rather just another plot of Microsoft to take over the movie industry. But it's sad they need German scientists to cover up their involvement, why can't they just admit they like both Hollywoon and potatoes?
--
The right to be heard does not include the right to be taken seriously
Okay. I appologise for bashing Intel. My critique was aimed at contemporary systems rather than their silicon. Indeed, power source, hard drives and cooling fans are likely to cause trouble long before the CPU's end of life.
All I'm saying is that the computers we use in our daily lives may be a lot faster, but they aren't made to last anymore. Ah. Back in the days, when we was young... snif.
Moore's Law includes price. Did you take into account, that you might have payed less when purchasing your 1982 C64 than was spent on CSIRAC, 20 years earlier?
Btw, C64's feature 64kB which is 32 times 2kB, so at least memory size doubled five times in 20 years, that is: it doubled every four years.
--
In theory there is no difference between practice and theory. But in practice there is -- Jan L.A. van Snepscheut
Just imagine how big a computational problem could be solved in 50 years with contemporary P4 hardware, if only Intel would build its hardware to last 50 years. ...Or anything over 5 years - for that matter...
Now this may not be a problem for home users that buy a complete new system every two-three years (regardless of environmental effects), but I'm sure happy they don't sent out space probes which rely on today's state-of-art.
--
The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in: we're computer professionals, we cause accidents -- Nathaniel Borenstein
I agree completely. Moreover, with LotR releases the suspense is not with the story - since Tolkien fans know the story inside out - but with seeing it come to life on a big screen. For me, that's the only point in seeing the movie at all.
Same goes more or less for Star Wars, the only difference being that even though you may not know the plot, you're certain it won't surprise you.
--
God is the only form of extraterrestrial life that we could ever possibly communicate with -- SETI is a joke, people
>But here is the kicker: Will those 100 teraflops be flops that can use thousands of inputs?
...And, to go with that, will they find someone smart enough to actually implement some adaptive technique that emulates a human brain?
--
God is the only form of extraterrestrial life that we could ever possibly communicate with -- SETI is a joke, people
> [...] - primarily because it is intrinsically complicated.
Yeah right. And databases, math and user interfaces are not?
> Nasa should drop all manned missions!
Yes! Have space tourists pay for their own trip.
> Robots are cheaper!
And they're more resistant to G-forces
> Joe Sixpack doesn't even notice when there is a shuttle mission up. Nobody cares anymore.
Agree. Joe Sixpack cares/cared about space exploration just enough to follow the cold war propaganda in 60s space missions.
> How long do we have to wait until NASA becomes as ingenious as they were in the sixties?
I don't mean to flame, but isn't it true that nothing much happened in the 60s from a scientific perspective. Ingenious is great, but I support NASA's move from being a PR department in a cold-war setting to actually exploring the universe currently.
Isn't the problem with space (and science more generally) that "the people" just don't care about it, but rather like watching spectacles and human drama (the chalenger crash, Apollo 13).
--
XCruise your own universe
RiscOS has some really neat GUI features, although the OS has failed to evolve and is currently light years behind contemporary preemptive multithreading, networked, journalling blah-di-blah OSs.
Indeed one of the things Acorn got right long before Apple, Microsoft, and most others, is that primarily the OS should integrate applications; you shouldn't expect to integrate with each other. This most clear with Microsoft Office, which over the years has consistently integrated perfectly with itsself, while keeping possible competitors or "plug-in" suppliers away from their honeypot.
Ah well. I guess RiscOS might have been pretty much alive if only Acorn would have taken their loss and GPLed all their sources after one of their bankrubsies...
> FOR 1975!!!
Jump back in time... even further
Mhz = mega herz
mhz = milli herz
Imagine a computer that's triggered every 11 minutes... with hyperthreading!
Wow. It might have stunned Charles Babbage...
> 3.06 MHz is over 3 times faster than a C64... ...but the C64 still got better sound.
>
I agree: despite al the claims about Moore's Law and technological advances, this proves that tripling the speed of a good ol' 6510 CPU has some disadvantages as well: Give a little to gain a little. 8-)
More seriously: graphics have improved since the early eighties, but what about gameplay? Isn't Mame the only thing that really justifies buy PC hardware now and then?
--
Money is the root of all evil (Send $30 for more info)
'gues that would be http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/05/im ages/021007_quaoar.jpg (without the space in /im ages/)
--
Discover your own (solar) system!
> Consumers across Europe can now purchase self-cleaning glass that promises to keep windows free from dirt.
Sorry, could not resist.
> If Nokia made WAN gear, I'm sure they wouldn't be quite as vocal about it...
...Or like their *friends* at Ericsson: Combining the two?
(This more informative article is unformtunatiely in that awful language.)
Or...
Is it theft to listen to the music comming from a car passing by? Is it theft to look into a shopping window without the intent of buying anything? If so, I'd have to agree with Nokia, otherwise they're just talking utter nonsense.
--
Facts are stupid things -- R. Reagan
> I hope that RedHat successfully forces both Gnome and KDE to become compatible with one another which would result in the creation of a single desktop. This would be the greatest gift to the Linux world.
Would it? I agree that technically speaking it would be great to have a single API and a single (though configurable) UI combining the best of both worlds. But notice that this is only tempting because GUI developments (on a conceptual level) have been tame an converging for the last couple of years. Wrt. the Gnome, KDE, Windows 98 & XP looks and feels there have been some small changes here and there but hardly any innovative stuff. Many core developers in gnome, kde and M$ team would (or should) admit they have fairly modest ambitions in UI design - merely copying the neat stuff they see others do.
Now would not "the Linux world" REALLY benefit from more dary designs? I would happily trade some compatibility to gain the divergence necessary to see some more innovative and radically new designs.
Slick example: OS X.
Geek example: XCruise-file browser.
More generally: get some GUI professionals to do GUI design (sorry, no offence intended)
--
The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in: we're computer professionals, we cause accidents -- Nathaniel Borenstein
> $ for i in *.mp3 do; sox $i ${i%mp3}wav; oggenc -o ${i%mp3}ogg ${i%mp3}wav; rm ${i%mp3}wav; done
;-)
Good start...
But I wonder...
Will this script REALLY improve audio quality?
--
What one believes to be true either is true or becomes true -- John Lilly
> I find the combination of valgrind and boehm-weiser to be much more effective than Purify in practice, and it's free.
...But since these are all minor issues, you've convinced me to give these tools a try - even if is has to be outside company walls!
Thanks for the tips. To be honest, I'm really not that much into the code analysis "market", but I probably should have known about these tools.
On a first glance, the tools don't seem to have the "easy-to-use" GUI-appeal that Rational's tools tend to have. Though that's just a front end thing, I guess I'd personally have a hard time convincing my manager to switch to a tools that lacks plug-and-pray features, have no "customer support" and might not support all platforms we're supporting.
> You're better off using efence and spending the $3000 worth of debugging time than dropping $5000 on Purify.
Though I'm not an advocate of closed software, I still think Rational has a good product that is worth its money. To support my previous arguments I could add development time: save two weeks a year and you're ready to sell your product two weeks earlier. Ergo: development costs are covered by revenue two weeks earlier. That's almost 4%. In our case (10 developers, user licenses at $50k-$100k), having your project ready on time is of life importance.
That being said, I'm going to give the stuff you suggested a try - the "free" part in Free Software should be tempting to my manager, and if indeed it's better in finding bugs, I'm in!
> Five grand US, that is.
I'm not sure what you're trying to imply, but I guess you're trying to express your concern that it's too expensive. Well, it's not - IMHO. First, compare it to more or less similar products, like Intel's VTune profiler or Metroworks' products.
Second, do some basic math. In many cases, software development and maintenance is basically debugging. I dare say a good coder spends (at least) two-three months a year debugging a piece of code he/she or someone else wrote - no methodoligy can change that. Good code instrumentation can't prevent bugs but helps a lot in finding them. Based on experience, I'd say it saves you a week or two per year. A good coder costs $2500-$5000 per month. This excludes management, QA and facilities. Add these and the price doubles. Therefore, it saves a company (that takes QA seriously) $1000-$5000 a year. The investment returns eventually.
$5000 is a lot of money, true. $5000 is way too much for a Linux hobbyist that payed nil for downloading his distro, but rest assure that any large commercial company will gladly pay for a couple of licenses. I guess the main concern should be if Rational can ever break even on a product that took years of development.
--
Programming is like sex... make one mistake and support it the rest of your life
> Does this mean that the RISC/CISC battle is over with CISC winning? ...Or does it mean that contemporary Operation Systems are becoming more and more architecture independent? (...And this might kill Microsoft, eventually...)
Anyway, hasn't the RISC/CISC-war been fought through hardware marketing rather than software all along?