Then I tried to bring my class of high school aged kids into Second Life to go on a virtual field trip to these places... only to be thwarted by Linden Labs policy of not allowing more than five people to log into the world from the same location.
1. High school aged kids shouldn't be in Second Life. It's an 18+ world.
2. There is no such limit. There are people who have hundreds of bots logged in from the same location.
3. Seriously. High school kids should be in Teen SL.
The article asks "why it's raking in more cash than ever before" - erm, this must be some new meaning of the phrase "went wrong" that I wasn't previously aware of!
So, basically, this was a simple case of code misconverting from BCD to binary, interpreting 4-bit nybbles representing 1 ten and zero ones as 1 sixteen and zero ones. Or, to summarize the summary, they were hexed.
Not even Microsoft has said you're not allowed to disable their software updates, and IT departments all over the world run their own update schedules and policies. Meanwhile when Apple started including unrelated software in THEIR software updates, people went haywire, but Apple's software updates can be turned off or merely deferred. You can't turn off Google Update, not in the software, and not in their Terms of Service. I wonder what happens when Google starts trying to enforce this:
11. Software updates
11.1 The Software which you use may automatically download and install updates from time to time from Google. These updates are designed to improve, enhance and further develop the Services and may take the form of bug fixes, enhanced functions, new software modules and completely new versions. You agree to receive such updates (and permit Google to deliver these to you) as part of your use of the Services.
Since Chrome is Webkit-based, it's basically Safari in an ugly new skin. I'm sticking with Firefox and Safari.
Do you, or do you not have trouble reading text that appears reflected in a conventional mirror?
Somewhat, but not the way many people seem to. The first time someone pointed out that "ambulance" was written backwards on the front of an ambulance, so that people could read it in the rear view mirror, I thought they were joshing me... even while I was looking at it.
The distinction between "netbook with keyboard" and "tablet with keyboard emulator" is more a choice of the options you're interested in than a difference in technology.
With luck, the current generation of dedicated ebook readers will shuffle off to proprietary hell, and low end netbooks and tablets will replace them as the high end of handhelds.
But not running pure tethered platforms like Chrome OS, please.
In the US, cheap phones that only do "phone stuff" cost *more* than fancier phones, because the major carriers include a "free phone" in their contracts (you pay for the phone whether you want to or not), and arrange their contract terms so that it's cheaper to sign a two year contract (free phone included) than go month-to-month for two years with your own phone.
Even the low end carriers and PAYG plans include a web browser and usually a camera and mp3 player in THEIR cheapest phones.
2. Those cheap phone have cheap batteries.
I want a plain old cellphone not because I'm allergic to features, but because I want a cellphone with decent battery life, like my old Nokia bar phone that could easily go a long weekend on a charge. Not one that needs to be charged every night. But since charge-every-night is the standard, why would a company making phones on minimal margins do any better?
XP already has a bunch of stuff running that it shouldn't. Turning that stuff off and turning it back into Windows 2000 is most of the tweaking I've ever done to it.
I don't think I've been into "tweaking every setting" since I had an Amiga.
I don't consider them worth the cost in battery life. Having to charge every day means having to be prepared to charge it more often than every day, when you have a high usage day.
No, I don't carry around "four different pocket sized devices". I consider the ability to make a phone call when I need to more important. Especially after having my first semi-smart phone go dead on me when I was trying to call my insurance company after an accident.
I wish Windows 7 had less features. All I want is the ability to write a letter
I wish Windows 7 had fewer features. All I want is an OS, not an entertainment center loaded with DRM so that people who want to watch movies on their PC can do it without buying the "entertainment center" version. I don't want Aero Glass and the Sidebar and System Restore and all the other memory- and laptop-battery-wasting CRAP that Windows has accumulated over the years. When I use Windows, I use Windows 2000 or XP.
I want a phone that just does "phone stuff", so the power that goes to the faster CPU can go to giving me longer standby time, so the space taken up by the large screen and camera and flip-out keyboard can go to a larger battery instead. Because my first cellphone was a dumb bar phone, just a phone, with a battery pack that could go three days without a recharge... and for my current phone I have a charger at home, a charger in my office, and a charger in my car just in case. Text, sure, but leave out the MP3 player and camera and web browser and all the rest of the glitz until battery technology is up to the job.
Being interested in technology doesn't make one automatically in favor of stupid ideas just because they're shiny.
I've been looking through my collection of eBooks, all but one non-DRMed Mobipocket or PalmDoc format, and the first ones I got were in January of 2000, right after I bought my first PDA. For me, eBooks were the "killer product" for a PDA.
Near as I can tell the big reason these things haven't taken off are:
1. The format wars. We need an "MP3 of eBooks". Mobipocket format is pretty common, and it's good enough.
2. The price. People aren't going to pay higher-than-paperback prices for an electronic book. They know how cheap electronic distribution is, that needs to be part of the deal.
We all make grandiose statements about "security theater," how worthless new rules are going to be, vowing never to fly again, etc. etc etc...but how many of us take our comments beyond a Slashdot post?
Prior to 9/11 I flew several times a year. After my first post-9/11 flight I sent out a flurry of nastygrams to all the usual suspects _and_ I haven't been in a plane since.
And, yes, the airlines do care if people stop flying.
If the Linux community had taken the necessary steps to promote a proprietary software ecosystem on top of Linux, then Linux would have at least 20% of the desktop market by now. Instead, the job of delivering an OS that doesn't suck that supports software that doesn't suck has fallen to Apple... who have done a damn good job of it, with a software packaging scheme that's perfect for commercial binary software. If not for the high price of Apple hardware, it would be well on its way to wiping Windows from the home desktop.
It's not too late. Let's see a good solid well-supported Linux desktop, using GNUstep or equivalent with NeXT-style application bundles instead of Linux' maze of centralized repositories and tricky packaging schemes. It's far more important to get a free software platform out there on people's desks than to demand they all buy in to the free software ethos for the applications they run on it.
It's hard to pin down how many server-hours C++ would actually save. PHP might be spending most of its time running code from C libraries (memcached lookups, HTML/XML parsing, regexp evaluations) instead of interpreting PHP. The article doesn't say what portion of the servers are running PHP, and the 10 to 1 efficiency ratio is pulled out of thin air. The server farm might be I/O-bound instead of CPU-bound, and if it's not, it's quite possible that it would *become* I/O-bound if you rewrote everything in C++, preventing any 10-to-1 savings.
Indeed. Compute-bound code might be 10 times faster in C++, but both PHP and C/C++ will spend the same amount of time waiting for MySQL or PostgreSQL to get back with the results of a SELECT or UPDATE. But even if it's only 2* as fast, on average, that's a lot of servers to save.
As you say, the main thing to do isn't to recode everything in C++ or C, it's to identify the places where PHP performance is the bottleneck... and look for *well factored* shortcuts that can be implemented in a more efficient language.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, people who've been around a while have seen any number of cool presentations, but no flying cars. We're a tough audience.
I'm serious. What are they actually doing other than making cool looking presentations? Show me the code.
What do they actually do other than make unrealistic presentations for government consultants?
The reason kids aren't allowed in SL is to protect the adults.
Then I tried to bring my class of high school aged kids into Second Life to go on a virtual field trip to these places... only to be thwarted by Linden Labs policy of not allowing more than five people to log into the world from the same location.
1. High school aged kids shouldn't be in Second Life. It's an 18+ world.
2. There is no such limit. There are people who have hundreds of bots logged in from the same location.
3. Seriously. High school kids should be in Teen SL.
The article asks "why it's raking in more cash than ever before" - erm, this must be some new meaning of the phrase "went wrong" that I wasn't previously aware of!
+1 Funny.
So, basically, this was a simple case of code misconverting from BCD to binary, interpreting 4-bit nybbles representing 1 ten and zero ones as 1 sixteen and zero ones. Or, to summarize the summary, they were hexed.
Not even Microsoft has said you're not allowed to disable their software updates, and IT departments all over the world run their own update schedules and policies. Meanwhile when Apple started including unrelated software in THEIR software updates, people went haywire, but Apple's software updates can be turned off or merely deferred. You can't turn off Google Update, not in the software, and not in their Terms of Service. I wonder what happens when Google starts trying to enforce this:
Since Chrome is Webkit-based, it's basically Safari in an ugly new skin. I'm sticking with Firefox and Safari.
Hello, the '80s are calling and want their news back.
They only sell their product to DRM fanatics?
Do you, or do you not have trouble reading text that appears reflected in a conventional mirror?
Somewhat, but not the way many people seem to. The first time someone pointed out that "ambulance" was written backwards on the front of an ambulance, so that people could read it in the rear view mirror, I thought they were joshing me... even while I was looking at it.
The distinction between "netbook with keyboard" and "tablet with keyboard emulator" is more a choice of the options you're interested in than a difference in technology.
With luck, the current generation of dedicated ebook readers will shuffle off to proprietary hell, and low end netbooks and tablets will replace them as the high end of handhelds.
But not running pure tethered platforms like Chrome OS, please.
Napster came pre-tarnished, and if anything it's been rehabilitated.
Well, you got one out of four predictions right. Better than average for slashdot.
Oh-kay. Gotcha.
o_O;;;
...mind-control patsies of one sort or another...zombie mode...
What do you mean by this?
1. Things are different in the US.
In the US, cheap phones that only do "phone stuff" cost *more* than fancier phones, because the major carriers include a "free phone" in their contracts (you pay for the phone whether you want to or not), and arrange their contract terms so that it's cheaper to sign a two year contract (free phone included) than go month-to-month for two years with your own phone.
Even the low end carriers and PAYG plans include a web browser and usually a camera and mp3 player in THEIR cheapest phones.
2. Those cheap phone have cheap batteries.
I want a plain old cellphone not because I'm allergic to features, but because I want a cellphone with decent battery life, like my old Nokia bar phone that could easily go a long weekend on a charge. Not one that needs to be charged every night. But since charge-every-night is the standard, why would a company making phones on minimal margins do any better?
XP already has a bunch of stuff running that it shouldn't. Turning that stuff off and turning it back into Windows 2000 is most of the tweaking I've ever done to it.
I don't think I've been into "tweaking every setting" since I had an Amiga.
You consider an mp3, camera and browser useless?
I don't consider them worth the cost in battery life. Having to charge every day means having to be prepared to charge it more often than every day, when you have a high usage day.
No, I don't carry around "four different pocket sized devices". I consider the ability to make a phone call when I need to more important. Especially after having my first semi-smart phone go dead on me when I was trying to call my insurance company after an accident.
I wish Windows 7 had less features. All I want is the ability to write a letter
I wish Windows 7 had fewer features. All I want is an OS, not an entertainment center loaded with DRM so that people who want to watch movies on their PC can do it without buying the "entertainment center" version. I don't want Aero Glass and the Sidebar and System Restore and all the other memory- and laptop-battery-wasting CRAP that Windows has accumulated over the years. When I use Windows, I use Windows 2000 or XP.
I want a phone that just does "phone stuff", so the power that goes to the faster CPU can go to giving me longer standby time, so the space taken up by the large screen and camera and flip-out keyboard can go to a larger battery instead. Because my first cellphone was a dumb bar phone, just a phone, with a battery pack that could go three days without a recharge... and for my current phone I have a charger at home, a charger in my office, and a charger in my car just in case. Text, sure, but leave out the MP3 player and camera and web browser and all the rest of the glitz until battery technology is up to the job.
Being interested in technology doesn't make one automatically in favor of stupid ideas just because they're shiny.
I've been looking through my collection of eBooks, all but one non-DRMed Mobipocket or PalmDoc format, and the first ones I got were in January of 2000, right after I bought my first PDA. For me, eBooks were the "killer product" for a PDA.
Near as I can tell the big reason these things haven't taken off are:
1. The format wars. We need an "MP3 of eBooks". Mobipocket format is pretty common, and it's good enough.
2. The price. People aren't going to pay higher-than-paperback prices for an electronic book. They know how cheap electronic distribution is, that needs to be part of the deal.
We all make grandiose statements about "security theater," how worthless new rules are going to be, vowing never to fly again, etc. etc etc...but how many of us take our comments beyond a Slashdot post?
Prior to 9/11 I flew several times a year. After my first post-9/11 flight I sent out a flurry of nastygrams to all the usual suspects _and_ I haven't been in a plane since.
And, yes, the airlines do care if people stop flying.
How does this hurt the consumer?
I hope that someone who's charged but not convicted sues their redneck arses.
If the Linux community had taken the necessary steps to promote a proprietary software ecosystem on top of Linux, then Linux would have at least 20% of the desktop market by now. Instead, the job of delivering an OS that doesn't suck that supports software that doesn't suck has fallen to Apple... who have done a damn good job of it, with a software packaging scheme that's perfect for commercial binary software. If not for the high price of Apple hardware, it would be well on its way to wiping Windows from the home desktop.
It's not too late. Let's see a good solid well-supported Linux desktop, using GNUstep or equivalent with NeXT-style application bundles instead of Linux' maze of centralized repositories and tricky packaging schemes. It's far more important to get a free software platform out there on people's desks than to demand they all buy in to the free software ethos for the applications they run on it.
It's hard to pin down how many server-hours C++ would actually save. PHP might be spending most of its time running code from C libraries (memcached lookups, HTML/XML parsing, regexp evaluations) instead of interpreting PHP. The article doesn't say what portion of the servers are running PHP, and the 10 to 1 efficiency ratio is pulled out of thin air. The server farm might be I/O-bound instead of CPU-bound, and if it's not, it's quite possible that it would *become* I/O-bound if you rewrote everything in C++, preventing any 10-to-1 savings.
Indeed. Compute-bound code might be 10 times faster in C++, but both PHP and C/C++ will spend the same amount of time waiting for MySQL or PostgreSQL to get back with the results of a SELECT or UPDATE. But even if it's only 2* as fast, on average, that's a lot of servers to save.
As you say, the main thing to do isn't to recode everything in C++ or C, it's to identify the places where PHP performance is the bottleneck... and look for *well factored* shortcuts that can be implemented in a more efficient language.