What an arrogant attitude. The kernel developers need to be reminded that widespread acceptance of Linux might very well require the support of big commercial enterprises, not just hobbiests and open source enthusiasts. Few companies are going to make major investments in Linux if they have to deal with prima donna programmers who love fucking with them.
I see your point, but I respectfully disagree. Linux will ultimately be accepted or rejected by businesses based on the cost of running it versus the cost of running a competing OS. I do not believe that forcing commercial developers to evolve their products to match changes in Linux will increase the relative cost of running Linux, because commercial developers typically have to do this for other OS's anyway. Regularly paying for upgrades of your commercial software is standard practice.
By indefinitely supporting obsolete (and potentially bad) features, however, the kernel developers could actually drive up the relative cost of running Linux. Why? Because there's less motivation for commercial developers to modify their products to utilize the new-and-improved features and, ultimately, make the system as a whole more robust and less costly to operate.
Open source software already has the disadvantage of not necessarily being driven by short-term economic gain. I say disadvantage, because short- term economic gain is an easy thing to sell to people. Given this disadvantage, a little arrogance and strong-arming is not only justified, it's essential.
And while we're on the topics of JDeveloper and Rational, it's worth noting that JDev now integrates class and activity UML diagramming tools. Also, the 9i developer suite includes an Oracle repository-based SCM tool. So, apparently, Oracle has decided to go their own way on the UML and SCM fronts (although, oddly enough, I recall that a couple of years ago some Oracle people I was working with were discussing rumours of Oracle buying Rational).
I'll second the opinion that it's a good IDE. It's straight Java...I run it on Win2K, Linux, and Solaris. Get it here if you're curious.
A bit after the beginning, there were some self-replicating molecules. Some of them might have been proteins, and some of them might have been nucleic acids, and I suppose some of the might have been something we haven't thought of. The molecules that were really good at self-replication did it quite a bit, and there got to be more of them, especially when they had access to the necessary raw materials.
One day, or more likely on a large number of different days, a bunch of these self-replicating molecules all found themselves trapped together inside a sphere made of phospholipids floating in a puddle and started interacting in a synergistic kind of way.
The new story:
A somewhat shorter bit after the beginning, some basic molecules got spewed out of an ocean vent and all found themselves trapped together inside a sphere of rock at the bottom of the ocean. These basic molecules interacted a bit (thanks to their proximity) and formed some self-replicating molecules, which were of course trapped, too. The molecules that were really good at self-replication did it quite a bit, and there got to be more of them, which was easy because they had access to the raw materials they needed to self replicate (because said materials were, as we have said, trapped).
One day, or more likely on a large number of different days, a bunch of these self-replicating molecules all found themselves trapped together inside the same sphere of rock and started interacting in a synergistic kind of way. At some point they must have made their collective way into a phospholipid sphere, I suppose, or else our cell membranes would be made out of rock.
Although I'm wary of biology:computer analogies, in the context of "information wants to be alive", storage and data format obsolesence is a good example of natural selection.
Consider: there are finite amounts of human attention, human/machine effort, time, money, bandwidth, and storage. These are all resources for which information competes. Useful information will receive enough of these resources to ensure its survival; it will be copied from old, degrading media and old, obsolete formats onto new ones. Less useful information may not; it may sit on a tape until oxidation renders it unreadable; it may reside in a forgotten file format; it may linger on an optical disk for which no working drives exist.
The original Domesday book hasn't survived because paper is such a great storage medium. It's survived because it's interesting. How many other pieces of paper circa 1086 haven't been sufficiently interesting to survive to this day? Almost all of them. Would Shakespeare's work really be extinct if he'd written it on a PC? No. Are the hardcopies of my 1982 high school essays extinct? Hell yes. It's not the medium, it's the message.
Which begs the question: does anybody really care about the BBC Domesday project, or is it only of interest to us because it's a good example of information doomed to extinction not by technology, but by its own worthlessness?
NYCwireless looks like a great initiative, but I have to wonder how sustainable not-for-profit wireless networks like this are. Even if sponsorship covers the initial infrastructure (and I can see a "give 'em the network, sell 'em the network adapters" strategy perhaps working for Lucent, Cisco, et. al.), there must be a substantial ongoing operational cost. Does anyone know whether NYCwireless or any similar operations have announced their long-term strategies?
It was inevitable. Faithfully following Moore's law, the volume of semiconductor news has been doubling every 18 months since the invention of the integrated circuit. The last issue of the Electronic News was about 43 billion pages long, and the print run consumed the entire output of the British Columbia pulp and paper industry.
From what I've seen of it, TSOL is a far cry from what you might expect when a guy as creative as Wil Wright wields the resources of Maxis to create a virtual online nation. The economy, for example, can only be described as surreal. The concept of each server as a "city" is true only in the sense of its population; there are no definable neighborhoods or any true concept of location -- travel between individual buildings is accomplished through teleportation, making location and distance irrelevant. Obviously, this is a game of social interaction at a level slightly above that of a graphical chat room with avatars. It may be interesting to observe in that sense, but by no means is it a simulation of a nation or even a city. I'm sure it will attract legions of fans (my wife seems to like it), but it's certainly not of interest to me.
Maxis' other forthcoming product, on the other hand, does look very promising. SimCity 4 appears to be a genuine evolution of the SimCity line. If you're a/.'er looking to while away some hours, I suspect you'll find it much more appealing than TSOL.
Technologists have promised the digital library for decades. In 1945, Vannevar Bush, who was technology adviser to several US presidents, wrote an article in The Atlantic magazine outlining how computers might one day augment libraries.
Microsoft responded to Taiwan's requests by recalling to Pearl Harbour the USS Carl Vinson and her battle group, currently in the Taiwan strait observing Chinese naval exercises. Micrsoft also suggested that further extensions of China's "most favoured nation" trade status may no longer be contingent upon Chinese non-aggression towards Taiwan.
Good article. I'm reminded of a couple of bits of wisdom from The Pragmatic Programmer. The authors describe a condition they call "Programming By Coincidence", which occurs when a programmer somehow comes up with code that works, but doesn't understand the system well enough to be able to explain why it works, and is therefore unable to properly maintain or debug his code. Frequently, I tbink, it is the underlying abstractions that are misunderstood by the programmer.
The authors also refer to "Evil Wizards", which are code generators used by programmers who mindlessly employ the generated code, completely without understanding it. Personally, I consider various frameworks and libraries to be potentially "evil" in this sense as well.
It's incredible that even the cable companies are too dense to realize that trying to sell someone a service by *reducing* its value is a losing strategy. It's ironic that the same applications -- such as streaming media -- that make broadband Internet access so appealing to the general public are being made less accessible (more expensive) through things like bandwidth caps. Furthermore, as the article notes, reducing the service available to the average user is a disincentive to those developing new applications (e.g., VOIP) that (ordinarily) would help to increase consumer interest in broadband services, because the market for such applications is effectively reduced.
Surely a more effective strategy would be to *encourage* customers to make use of broadband-oriented applications, thereby increasing their reliance on broadband services and solidifying and expanding the customer base of both the cable companies and of the content providers. The current approach will only drive to consumers to use existing, more affordable and more accessible non-Internet delivery channels (voice telephony, television, radio, print media, CD/DVD, etc.).
Cringely prides himself on the accuracy of his predictions.
10. Finally, I think last year's prediction for Cisco Systems will come true this year. I wrote "The answer to every problem with the Internet will continue to be 'pay more money to Cisco.' At current prices the stock is a bargain."
The answers to your questions are there in the article, really...it's just that the language the authors use is imprecise and hence confusing.
In simplest terms, Hubble can't "see" it because it's too dark. Optical telescopes just scoop up light in the visible spectrum; if the object you're interested in doesn't produce enough such light, then you won't see it.
SCUBA isn't looking for visible light, though; it's looking for electromagnetic radiation in a different area of the spectrum (different frequencies/wavelengths) than visible light. Since the object produces significant radiation at these frequencies, SCUBA can "see" it.
Regarding temperature: yes, it's cold where Hubble is (in the shade; it's very hot if you're in the sun), but that doesn't affect its ability to detect visible light. What matters is whether there's other visible light to interfere with the visible light it's interested in. In other words, if you're an optical telescope, you want it to be DARK around you...in an ideal world, the only source of light would be from the object you're trying to observe. Optical telescopes are looking for the difference between "absolutely dark" and "not quite absolutely dark". SCUBA, on the other hand, doesn't care about darkness, because it's not interested in visible light, but it does care very much about temperature, because at the wavelengths it deals with, heat energy affects its ability to "see", so it wants it to be COLD all around it; it's looking for the difference between "absolute zero" temperature and "not quite absolute zero".
It might help to: instead of "see", think "detect"; instead of "light", think "electromagnetic radiation"; and, consider temperature, wavelength, and frequency to all be ways of describing which part of the spectrum you're interested in.
Taking a risk on a smaller company when you have no dependents and no long term debt (like when you are first out of college) is a must. Hmph. Well, I guess those who have the sort of financial means necessary to graduate from college without a long-term debt would feel more comfortable taking risks...
Help me out here. Polarization modulation is nothing new, right? The trick here is cancelling out the chaotic variations by sending the signal twice and doing the comparison?
I'm asking because the first sentence of the press release makes it sound like these guys invented polarization modulation, and I'm pretty sure I read about that a looooong time ago.
If you're interested in the generation of manorial-sized settlements for RPG's, I highly recommend Columbia Games' "HarnManor" rules. Very authentic and well-researched.
At the time that I graduated from high school, I was planning on a career in medicine or medical research. It made perfect sense because I loved science in general and biology in particular, and I was pretty good at it. So, I spent the next several years getting an honours B.Sc. in molecular biology. In my third year, I started my own software company to help with school expenses. By the time I graduated, I'd decided that, fascinating as it was, biology just wasn't a career thing for me, and I've been in IT ever since.
From that story, you might conclude that the time and money I spent in school was a waste, but that's far from the truth. First, I picked up plenty of soft skills, like research and writing, that I use every day. Second, and more importantly, I discovered what I really wanted to do. And of course, the whole university experience is not something to miss.
So, my suggestion would be to go to school. Don't tie yourself to a career path at the age of 17 or 18. Get exposed to a few different things, have some fun, and give yourself some time to decide.
True, the business practices that some domain registrars have been employing have ranged from the appalling (see article and links) to the amusing and rather clever (marketing the Western Samoa domain digraph -.ws - as "website"). But when it comes right down to it, we're all paying way less than we did when NSI was the only game in town. Given a choice, I'd rather keep careful records and read the fine print than subsidize yet another monopoly.
Slashdot Mirror
OK...but of course, it's not my population you're controlling. I'd probably feel differently if I actually lived in a hurricane zone.
What an arrogant attitude. The kernel developers need to be reminded that widespread acceptance of Linux might very well require the support of big commercial enterprises, not just hobbiests and open source enthusiasts. Few companies are going to make major investments in Linux if they have to deal with prima donna programmers who love fucking with them.
I see your point, but I respectfully disagree. Linux will ultimately be accepted or rejected by businesses based on the cost of running it versus the cost of running a competing OS. I do not believe that forcing commercial developers to evolve their products to match changes in Linux will increase the relative cost of running Linux, because commercial developers typically have to do this for other OS's anyway. Regularly paying for upgrades of your commercial software is standard practice.
By indefinitely supporting obsolete (and potentially bad) features, however, the kernel developers could actually drive up the relative cost of running Linux. Why? Because there's less motivation for commercial developers to modify their products to utilize the new-and-improved features and, ultimately, make the system as a whole more robust and less costly to operate.
Open source software already has the disadvantage of not necessarily being driven by short-term economic gain. I say disadvantage, because short- term economic gain is an easy thing to sell to people. Given this disadvantage, a little arrogance and strong-arming is not only justified, it's essential.
I'll bet videocameras will exceed keyboard input by that standard
I'm guessing that such things don't fall into the category of "human-to-computer information input".
And while we're on the topics of JDeveloper and Rational, it's worth noting that JDev now integrates class and activity UML diagramming tools. Also, the 9i developer suite includes an Oracle repository-based SCM tool. So, apparently, Oracle has decided to go their own way on the UML and SCM fronts (although, oddly enough, I recall that a couple of years ago some Oracle people I was working with were discussing rumours of Oracle buying Rational).
I'll second the opinion that it's a good IDE. It's straight Java...I run it on Win2K, Linux, and Solaris. Get it here if you're curious.
No, no: Visual _Turbo_ Pascal.NET
The old story:
A bit after the beginning, there were some self-replicating molecules. Some of them might have been proteins, and some of them might have been nucleic acids, and I suppose some of the might have been something we haven't thought of. The molecules that were really good at self-replication did it quite a bit, and there got to be more of them, especially when they had access to the necessary raw materials.
One day, or more likely on a large number of different days, a bunch of these self-replicating molecules all found themselves trapped together inside a sphere made of phospholipids floating in a puddle and started interacting in a synergistic kind of way.
The new story:
A somewhat shorter bit after the beginning, some basic molecules got spewed out of an ocean vent and all found themselves trapped together inside a sphere of rock at the bottom of the ocean. These basic molecules interacted a bit (thanks to their proximity) and formed some self-replicating molecules, which were of course trapped, too. The molecules that were really good at self-replication did it quite a bit, and there got to be more of them, which was easy because they had access to the raw materials they needed to self replicate (because said materials were, as we have said, trapped).
One day, or more likely on a large number of different days, a bunch of these self-replicating molecules all found themselves trapped together inside the same sphere of rock and started interacting in a synergistic kind of way. At some point they must have made their collective way into a phospholipid sphere, I suppose, or else our cell membranes would be made out of rock.
Although I'm wary of biology:computer analogies, in the context of "information wants to be alive", storage and data format obsolesence is a good example of natural selection.
Consider: there are finite amounts of human attention, human/machine effort, time, money, bandwidth, and storage. These are all resources for which information competes. Useful information will receive enough of these resources to ensure its survival; it will be copied from old, degrading media and old, obsolete formats onto new ones. Less useful information may not; it may sit on a tape until oxidation renders it unreadable; it may reside in a forgotten file format; it may linger on an optical disk for which no working drives exist.
The original Domesday book hasn't survived because paper is such a great storage medium. It's survived because it's interesting. How many other pieces of paper circa 1086 haven't been sufficiently interesting to survive to this day? Almost all of them. Would Shakespeare's work really be extinct if he'd written it on a PC? No. Are the hardcopies of my 1982 high school essays extinct? Hell yes. It's not the medium, it's the message.
Which begs the question: does anybody really care about the BBC Domesday project, or is it only of interest to us because it's a good example of information doomed to extinction not by technology, but by its own worthlessness?
NYCwireless looks like a great initiative, but I have to wonder how sustainable not-for-profit wireless networks like this are. Even if sponsorship covers the initial infrastructure (and I can see a "give 'em the network, sell 'em the network adapters" strategy perhaps working for Lucent, Cisco, et. al.), there must be a substantial ongoing operational cost. Does anyone know whether NYCwireless or any similar operations have announced their long-term strategies?
It was inevitable. Faithfully following Moore's law, the volume of semiconductor news has been doubling every 18 months since the invention of the integrated circuit. The last issue of the Electronic News was about 43 billion pages long, and the print run consumed the entire output of the British Columbia pulp and paper industry.
I can only imagine what it would be like if they had pets in the game. A bunch of dead neglected dogs, cats, birds, hamsters, etc.
It'd be like this.
From what I've seen of it, TSOL is a far cry from what you might expect when a guy as creative as Wil Wright wields the resources of Maxis to create a virtual online nation. The economy, for example, can only be described as surreal. The concept of each server as a "city" is true only in the sense of its population; there are no definable neighborhoods or any true concept of location -- travel between individual buildings is accomplished through teleportation, making location and distance irrelevant. Obviously, this is a game of social interaction at a level slightly above that of a graphical chat room with avatars. It may be interesting to observe in that sense, but by no means is it a simulation of a nation or even a city. I'm sure it will attract legions of fans (my wife seems to like it), but it's certainly not of interest to me.
/.'er looking to while away some hours, I suspect you'll find it much more appealing than TSOL.
Maxis' other forthcoming product, on the other hand, does look very promising. SimCity 4 appears to be a genuine evolution of the SimCity line. If you're a
Technologists have promised the digital library for decades. In 1945, Vannevar Bush, who was technology adviser to several US presidents, wrote an article in The Atlantic magazine outlining how computers might one day augment libraries.
Those who find this subject interesting, but who may not be familiar with Vannevar Bush's work, might want to read the paper to which Brewster Kahle refers.
Microsoft responded to Taiwan's requests by recalling to Pearl Harbour the USS Carl Vinson and her battle group, currently in the Taiwan strait observing Chinese naval exercises. Micrsoft also suggested that further extensions of China's "most favoured nation" trade status may no longer be contingent upon Chinese non-aggression towards Taiwan.
Good article. I'm reminded of a couple of bits of wisdom from The Pragmatic Programmer. The authors describe a condition they call "Programming By Coincidence", which occurs when a programmer somehow comes up with code that works, but doesn't understand the system well enough to be able to explain why it works, and is therefore unable to properly maintain or debug his code. Frequently, I tbink, it is the underlying abstractions that are misunderstood by the programmer.
The authors also refer to "Evil Wizards", which are code generators used by programmers who mindlessly employ the generated code, completely without understanding it. Personally, I consider various frameworks and libraries to be potentially "evil" in this sense as well.
Well, perhaps M$'s efforts will come to naught if India's developers band together with India's physicists. ;-)
It's incredible that even the cable companies are too dense to realize that trying to sell someone a service by *reducing* its value is a losing strategy. It's ironic that the same applications -- such as streaming media -- that make broadband Internet access so appealing to the general public are being made less accessible (more expensive) through things like bandwidth caps. Furthermore, as the article notes, reducing the service available to the average user is a disincentive to those developing new applications (e.g., VOIP) that (ordinarily) would help to increase consumer interest in broadband services, because the market for such applications is effectively reduced.
Surely a more effective strategy would be to *encourage* customers to make use of broadband-oriented applications, thereby increasing their reliance on broadband services and solidifying and expanding the customer base of both the cable companies and of the content providers. The current approach will only drive to consumers to use existing, more affordable and more accessible non-Internet delivery channels (voice telephony, television, radio, print media, CD/DVD, etc.).
Cringely prides himself on the accuracy of his predictions.
10. Finally, I think last year's prediction for Cisco Systems will come true this year. I wrote "The answer to every problem with the Internet will continue to be 'pay more money to Cisco.' At current prices the stock is a bargain."
OK, this one, maybe not so much the accuracy, eh?
I can't wait to see how MS trys to make money selling apache
Probably the same way as Oracle.
The answers to your questions are there in the article, really...it's just that the language the authors use is imprecise and hence confusing.
In simplest terms, Hubble can't "see" it because it's too dark. Optical telescopes just scoop up light in the visible spectrum; if the object you're interested in doesn't produce enough such light, then you won't see it.
SCUBA isn't looking for visible light, though; it's looking for electromagnetic radiation in a different area of the spectrum (different frequencies/wavelengths) than visible light. Since the object produces significant radiation at these frequencies, SCUBA can "see" it.
Regarding temperature: yes, it's cold where Hubble is (in the shade; it's very hot if you're in the sun), but that doesn't affect its ability to detect visible light. What matters is whether there's other visible light to interfere with the visible light it's interested in. In other words, if you're an optical telescope, you want it to be DARK around you...in an ideal world, the only source of light would be from the object you're trying to observe. Optical telescopes are looking for the difference between "absolutely dark" and "not quite absolutely dark". SCUBA, on the other hand, doesn't care about darkness, because it's not interested in visible light, but it does care very much about temperature, because at the wavelengths it deals with, heat energy affects its ability to "see", so it wants it to be COLD all around it; it's looking for the difference between "absolute zero" temperature and "not quite absolute zero".
It might help to: instead of "see", think "detect"; instead of "light", think "electromagnetic radiation"; and, consider temperature, wavelength, and frequency to all be ways of describing which part of the spectrum you're interested in.
Taking a risk on a smaller company when you have no dependents and no long term debt (like when you are first out of college) is a must.
Hmph. Well, I guess those who have the sort of financial means necessary to graduate from college without a long-term debt would feel more comfortable taking risks...
Help me out here. Polarization modulation is nothing new, right? The trick here is cancelling out the chaotic variations by sending the signal twice and doing the comparison?
I'm asking because the first sentence of the press release makes it sound like these guys invented polarization modulation, and I'm pretty sure I read about that a looooong time ago.
If you're interested in the generation of manorial-sized settlements for RPG's, I highly recommend Columbia Games' "HarnManor" rules. Very authentic and well-researched.
Crap, I left my lights on.
At the time that I graduated from high school, I was planning on a career in medicine or medical research. It made perfect sense because I loved science in general and biology in particular, and I was pretty good at it. So, I spent the next several years getting an honours B.Sc. in molecular biology. In my third year, I started my own software company to help with school expenses. By the time I graduated, I'd decided that, fascinating as it was, biology just wasn't a career thing for me, and I've been in IT ever since.
From that story, you might conclude that the time and money I spent in school was a waste, but that's far from the truth. First, I picked up plenty of soft skills, like research and writing, that I use every day. Second, and more importantly, I discovered what I really wanted to do. And of course, the whole university experience is not something to miss.
So, my suggestion would be to go to school. Don't tie yourself to a career path at the age of 17 or 18. Get exposed to a few different things, have some fun, and give yourself some time to decide.
True, the business practices that some domain registrars have been employing have ranged from the appalling (see article and links) to the amusing and rather clever (marketing the Western Samoa domain digraph - .ws - as "website"). But when it comes right down to it, we're all paying way less than we did when NSI was the only game in town. Given a choice, I'd rather keep careful records and read the fine print than subsidize yet another monopoly.