It's possible to fit MacMinix + an old version of the system software on a floppy; this works pretty well for those systems which can support MacMinix.
Unfortunately, MacMinix currently only works with 68K Macs which use 24 bit addressing (or which have no more than 16 MB of ram), due to some nasties in the memory management system.
Hmmm...based on my experience as a programmer, I don't think I can agree with your assertions here.
Self organizational structure is hardly uncommon....Evolution is not the creation of life from non-life. Intelligent design proponents invariably get caught in the cycle of the origin of the designer. Once it is accepted that said designer was not designed but arose spontaneously, the need for a designer to give rise to complex organic systems disappears....Your argument seems to be based on the highly flawed concept that self organizational structure is somehow rare or unusual.
But--self-organizational structure is rare and unusual. Experience in everyday life will confirm this. Computer designers and programmers take great pains to avoid corrupting memory; 'mutations' in computer code do not, in virtually all cases, produce improvements of any great sort; and a system which has too many 'mutations' is quickly killed off. Causing similar effects in other everyday objects is likewise futile; randomly assembling plumbing fittings will not lead to an oil refinery. All complex systems which have arisen in human memory have certain common key elements, including a design of some sort (and a designer making conscious decisions about the design) and the requirement for maintenance to avoid problems with the parts of the systems from causing failure of the whole. These apply whether the systems are physical entities--machines--or social entities.
Biological organisims are machines, the design of which is encoded in, very loosly speaking, a programming language of sorts (DNA descriptions of proteins). Why different laws should apply to biological machines than to non-biological machines is very bizzare--especially seeing as 'other' laws of physics clearly apply.
A year or so ago, Michael Behe (sp), in his book Darwin's Black Box, gave a far more detailed and better-stated argument for intelligent design than I can. I'd urge anybody interested in the subject to look up the book. (I'd also urge anyone who likes engineering-ish subjects to read the book, if only for the readable and facinating descriptions of biological systems. It's a great book, even if the philosophical arguments--the core of the book--are skipped entirely.)
(Attempting to return to the subject, I do feel that evolutionary theory must be taught in the public schools, but more because an understanding of evolution is essential for understanding modern biology than because I believe the theory to be correct.)
Erm...1090 feet/second is more like 750-760 miles per hour where I come from.
If the speed of sound were 66 mph, I bet speeding on the New York Thruway (speed limit 65 mph) might be a bit less common. (Cruising at Mach 8 on a B-747 would be cool, though.)
Another really good free book site--10,000+ books
on
Free Books Online
·
· Score: 1
As far as I know, the best site indexing free books is http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/ , which has links to over ten thousand free books online. They're searchable by author and title, and the site is constantly being updated.
As far as I know, it is the definitive free book page.
As others have said, it doesn't seem (to me, at least) like a *big* *deal* that computers are uniquely identifiable. (If I recall correctly, some workstations have had machine-readable serial numbers for quite some time; Sun-3's, for instance, IIRC).
But, even supposing they could find that you purchased a cpu, and that said cpu was used to make a document or whatever, what has been proven? Not much--certainly not that a particular computer user did said actions. After all, the cpu has no way of really knowing who is typing away at the keyboard.
Further, maintaining a database of CPU ID's vs. consumers would be virtually impossible, with the number of consumer-level CPU vendors, the number of people selling computers, the number of times cpu's are swapped between machines in some environments, etc. etc.
Finally, assuming this is a document which is being tracked, what is to stop the paranoid user from changing the ID in the document? from saving it in some format which doesn't contain the ID? It will be hard to reliably track outrageous HTML code to the malefactor via a cpu ID.
Personally, I think the benefits outweigh the problems; it's really, really infuriating to have to look up codes to re-enable software after, say, upgrading one's operating system or getting a new hard drive or whatever. (Yes, I do use commercial software. Don't flame me and say that OSS is the only way to go; I daresay that there is no OSS package which is anywhere near as capable as, say, the Mentor Graphics suite, or Synopsys Design Compiler, or Lemmings, or....)
As has been pointed out already, cars also have unique identifying numbers; indeed, I am also required to have a small sign on my car which law enforcement types can use, in approximately real time, to determine who is responsible for said car. In fact, they can even use this information to bill me for any unpaid parking tickets or to track me down for arrest. Yet how many/.er's are up in arms over liscense plates?
An excellent point, but... I am reminded of a story one of the profs once mentioned during a software engineering class here (at RIT) about a spreadsheet he once worked on. It seems they got a service call about a crash in the program. He asked the caller how important the software was to the organization--to determine how soon the problem needed fixing, I guess. The caller responded that he was a surgeon who used this software to keep track of patient information, and he was in the midst of open heart surgery. The moral? Even a spreadsheet can be safety-critical, to the point of human lives depending on it. (Yes, the problem was solved quickly enough. Yes, the surgeon should not have been relying on the spreadsheet for such important data. That matters little when the problem presented itself, however.)
Be claims (and has consistantly claimed) that they were not supporting the newer PPC boxes because Apple would not give them technical information. Since they haven't generally lied in the past, I find it difficult to believe they are lying about this.
Think about it--it would surely be to their advantage to develop for the G3 PMacs, what with PMacs being the platform of choice for many graphic artists.
Has anybody else looked at the (old) "Guide to Macintosh Family Hardware", which details (some of) the technical aspects of the earlier Macs? The hardware designs of those varied considerably, and were not generally as clean as the OS made them seem.
To my eye, Be's explanation seems to fit the evidence. If someone donated a few of these quad G3 boards to them, and could demonstrate a market for BeOS on them (such as might justify the cost of porting), I have little doubt that Be, Inc. would be quite happy to do so.
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It's possible to fit MacMinix + an old version of the system software on a floppy; this works pretty well for those systems which can support MacMinix.
Unfortunately, MacMinix currently only works with 68K Macs which use 24 bit addressing (or which have no more than 16 MB of ram), due to some nasties in the memory management system.
But...
Scantron: papers move through an optical reader.
Punched card: Cards move through an optical reader.
I'm afraid I don't really see the great reduction in moving parts here. Card readers have been optical for quite some time.
Self organizational structure is hardly uncommon....Evolution is not the creation of life from non-life. Intelligent design proponents invariably get caught in the cycle of the origin of the designer. Once it is accepted that said designer was not designed but arose spontaneously, the need for a designer to give rise to complex organic systems disappears....Your argument seems to be based on the highly flawed concept that self organizational structure is somehow rare or unusual.
But--self-organizational structure is rare and unusual. Experience in everyday life will confirm this. Computer designers and programmers take great pains to avoid corrupting memory; 'mutations' in computer code do not, in virtually all cases, produce improvements of any great sort; and a system which has too many 'mutations' is quickly killed off. Causing similar effects in other everyday objects is likewise futile; randomly assembling plumbing fittings will not lead to an oil refinery. All complex systems which have arisen in human memory have certain common key elements, including a design of some sort (and a designer making conscious decisions about the design) and the requirement for maintenance to avoid problems with the parts of the systems from causing failure of the whole. These apply whether the systems are physical entities--machines--or social entities.
Biological organisims are machines, the design of which is encoded in, very loosly speaking, a programming language of sorts (DNA descriptions of proteins). Why different laws should apply to biological machines than to non-biological machines is very bizzare--especially seeing as 'other' laws of physics clearly apply.
A year or so ago, Michael Behe (sp), in his book Darwin's Black Box, gave a far more detailed and better-stated argument for intelligent design than I can. I'd urge anybody interested in the subject to look up the book. (I'd also urge anyone who likes engineering-ish subjects to read the book, if only for the readable and facinating descriptions of biological systems. It's a great book, even if the philosophical arguments--the core of the book--are skipped entirely.)
(Attempting to return to the subject, I do feel that evolutionary theory must be taught in the public schools, but more because an understanding of evolution is essential for understanding modern biology than because I believe the theory to be correct.)
Erm...1090 feet/second is more like 750-760 miles per hour where I come from.
If the speed of sound were 66 mph, I bet speeding on the New York Thruway (speed limit 65 mph) might be a bit less common. (Cruising at Mach 8 on a B-747 would be cool, though.)
As far as I know, it is the definitive free book page.
Enjoy. Happy Thanksgiving (for the Americans).
As others have said, it doesn't seem (to me, at least) like a *big* *deal* that computers are uniquely identifiable. (If I recall correctly, some workstations have had machine-readable serial numbers for quite some time; Sun-3's, for instance, IIRC).
/.er's are up in arms over liscense plates?
But, even supposing they could find that you purchased a cpu, and that said cpu was used to make a document or whatever, what has been proven? Not much--certainly not that a particular computer user did said actions. After all, the cpu has no way of really knowing who is typing away at the keyboard.
Further, maintaining a database of CPU ID's vs. consumers would be virtually impossible, with the number of consumer-level CPU vendors, the number of people selling computers, the number of times cpu's are swapped between machines in some environments, etc. etc.
Finally, assuming this is a document which is being tracked, what is to stop the paranoid user from changing the ID in the document? from saving it in some format which doesn't contain the ID? It will be hard to reliably track outrageous HTML code to the malefactor via a cpu ID.
Personally, I think the benefits outweigh the problems; it's really, really infuriating to have to look up codes to re-enable software after, say, upgrading one's operating system or getting a new hard drive or whatever. (Yes, I do use commercial software. Don't flame me and say that OSS is the only way to go; I daresay that there is no OSS package which is anywhere near as capable as, say, the Mentor Graphics suite, or Synopsys Design Compiler, or Lemmings, or....)
As has been pointed out already, cars also have unique identifying numbers; indeed, I am also required to have a small sign on my car which law enforcement types can use, in approximately real time, to determine who is responsible for said car. In fact, they can even use this information to bill me for any unpaid parking tickets or to track me down for arrest. Yet how many
An excellent point, but...
I am reminded of a story one of the profs once mentioned during a software engineering class here (at RIT) about a spreadsheet he once worked on.
It seems they got a service call about a crash in the program. He asked the caller how important the software was to the organization--to determine how soon the problem needed fixing, I guess. The caller responded that he was a surgeon who used this software to keep track of patient information, and he was in the midst of open heart surgery.
The moral? Even a spreadsheet can be safety-critical, to the point of human lives depending on it.
(Yes, the problem was solved quickly enough. Yes, the surgeon should not have been relying on the spreadsheet for such important data. That matters little when the problem presented itself, however.)
Be claims (and has consistantly claimed) that they were not supporting the newer PPC boxes because Apple would not give them technical information. Since they haven't generally lied in the past, I find it difficult to believe they are lying about this.
Think about it--it would surely be to their advantage to develop for the G3 PMacs, what with PMacs being the platform of choice for many graphic artists.
Has anybody else looked at the (old) "Guide to Macintosh Family Hardware", which details (some of) the technical aspects of the earlier Macs? The hardware designs of those varied considerably, and were not generally as clean as the OS made them seem.
To my eye, Be's explanation seems to fit the evidence. If someone donated a few of these quad G3 boards to them, and could demonstrate a market for BeOS on them (such as might justify the cost of porting), I have little doubt that Be, Inc. would be quite happy to do so.