It was state of the art when it was announced, but the state of the art is always on the move.
Well that's a massive overstatement. This thing was state of the art in one very specific dimension: OLED display size. However, when looking at other dimensions, like size, resolution, and appearance (chassis, not display), it was worse than mediocre.
No, the reality is that the advantages of OLED (incredible contrast ratio, excellent colour reproduction, low power draw) weren't enough to justify the cost in the face of all the ways this display fell behind the curve the minute it hit the street.
What you are thinking of as "Evolution" is simply biological evolution
Well, given that the article is explicitely about biological (actually, I prefer to refer to it as "scientific", since the process applies to more than just biology) evolution, I don't see what your point is. Or do you just like changing the subject?
Evolution is definitely the right word, and you don't have to stretch the definition at all.
Correct. You just picked a different one entirely. But "evolution", in the context of this article is *not* the same thing as "evolution" in the general colloquial sense, and it's absolutely wrong to suggest that scientific evolution is simply "change over time".
If you go to an extreme you can say the all structures in our Universe are evolved with the loosest definition of Evolution as: "Change over time."
Uh, that's not evolution. That's... change over time.
Evolution requires just three things: replication, random mutation, and a fitness function. That's basically it. But those pieces are absolutely *necessary* for any process to be considered an evolutionary process.
We're human beings. We're flawed. We do that sort of thing. Some leave their coffees, their groceries, or even their CHILDREN on top of their cars when they drive off. Some forget to take the iron off the board when they leave and their house burns down. Some forget to put the bar in the window and their child falls out when the screen gives way. Some turn around to talk to their kid about some detail of the day and drift in front of a semi. And none of us are immune to this sort of thing.
No. But you also don't have dumbasses excusing this behaviour, saying moronic things like "Yup, we all do stupid things. Lose our car keys, forget to lock up our guns, dont wear a condom...", as if any of those things is even remotely equivalent to losing a firearm or leaving their child on the top of their car.
Just like idiot parents should be reprimanded severely for leaving their kid on the top of their car and driving off (an action which, I'm certain, would wind you up in court for charges of negligence), cops should be reprimanded severely for losing their firearms. Period. No if's, and's, or but's. It's inexcusable behaviour from someone entrusted with my life, not to mention a dangerous weapon.
Oh, but when it comes to a cop, they better be more than perfect.
Yes. Exactly.
We're talking about *cops*. We entrust them with our lives, and give them power over us, so yes, I think it's reasonable to expect them to be a little less careless than the average slashbot such as yourself. If they can't handle those expections, they should #gtfo, because they don't deserve the responsibility they've been given.
We're also not talking about a set of keys, here. We're talking about a *firearm*. Last I checked, most people aren't dumb enough to lose their 38 special between the seat cushions of their couch.
So you're saying the military are incompetent idiots and that the technology *doesn't* actually work? That, while they claimed to have validated the technology, they actually didn't? Do you have a source for these allegations?
Wrong. I can't believe you are being modded up. You are basically making the argument that closed platforms are more secure than open platforms.
Uh. They are. Closed platforms, ones that are locked down to prevent unauthorized software from running on them, are by their very definition more secure. Hell, that's one of the reasons TPM was invented: being able to prevent malicious code from running on hardware makes the platform more resilient.
In this case, users would never tolerate a PC that prevented them from installing arbitrary software, including software which enables cheating. However, they are more than happy to purchase a videogame console that's locked down tighter than a nuclear silo.
Just because the platform is closed, doesn't mean it is hack proof.
Who said anything about hack *proof*? We're talking about resilience. PCs are *far* more hackable by their very nature. Consoles far less so. If you don't understand that, quite frankly, you're an idiot.
OpenGL/hardware accelerated interfaces don't necessarily perform better than Evas' own software engine and in several cases are actually worse
That greatly depends on your definition of "better". The whole point of offloading those operations to the graphics accelerator is so the main CPU isn't bogged down performing those operations. On a mobile platform, that may make the difference when it comes to battery life, as it's possible the graphics chipset can perform those operations more efficiently (if not necessarily faster). Not to mention the general application performance gains possible if the core processor isn't tied up performing on-the-fly alpha blending operations.
It's not, no. It's just a cart with a microsd slot and the necessary electronics to convince the DS that the storage on that card represents a DS ROM. It's a modchip in the same way that a CF -> IDE adapter is a "modchip" for your computer.
Learn C, Smalltalk, and Lisp. Then you can use all of the above, as well, will have a breadth of knowledge in the major programming paradigms, and as a bonus, you can avoid the hideous monstrosity that is C++. *shudder*
Did you ever want to work a couple extra hours because you were really into what you were doing?
No. I stop, go home, and then return the next day and pick up where I left off.
Honestly, why the *hell* would you *voluntarily* put in unpaid overtime just for kicks? Don't you have a life outside your career? Wouldn't you rather go home and do something for yourself, rather than wasting that time slaving for your boss?
Frankly, this is exactly the attitude that gets you young bucks preferred over older, more experienced folk. The older guy has a life outside work, and chooses to go home at the end of the day because he or she realizes that work is work and life is life, and balance between the two is important. Meanwhile, the younger guy goes on and on about how work provides free breakfast and cots, and puts in 18 hours a day while only being paid for 8, and is convinced that they're *lucky* to have such a great job!
Sorry, fuck that. I'd rather spend those extra hours at home working on my own projects or putting effort into other, non-programming hobbies. Unpaid overtime? You can keep it.
In the long run this will also be likely linked to Aspergers Syndrome and other dissociative / personality disorders that we are diagnosing with much greater frequency today in that it reduces peoples interactions with actual human beings (at least vs our 'un-evolved' predecessors) to the point where children are not growing up with a firm grasp of social cues in relation to body language, tone of voice, etc....
What, so suddenly Asperger's isn't an autism spectrum disorder, ie one that's genetically determined? It's all just social conditioning? Which just need to make sure these children "[grow] up with a firm grasp of social cues"?
Well that's great news! You should publish a paper!
Yeah, the AC did read what you said. That's why he suggested to "start operating the courts in English" as opposed to legalese that only superficially looks like English but has completely different non-obvious meanings for words that ordinary people use all the time.
Except plain English isn't precise. "Legalese" evolved to deal with ambiguities in written language. Or would you prefer we just throw out the legal definition of "insane" in favour of our colloquial definition?
Typical juries don't even know that they don't know the meaning of the words. The words are ones they use all the time, so they think they know the meaning and see no need to ask for an official definition. It is the legal system that perverts those meanings.
Oh, come down off your high horse. It has nothing to do with "perverting" words, and I think, deep down, you know it.
Or do you think the medical or computing professions should throw away their lingo in favour of colloquialisms, just so that the common public can participate in our discourse? Please.
If you want the jury to get it right, come up with a list of commonly misunderstood (for the courtroom meaning) words and make sure to spend some time educating the jurors.
Now *that* is a good idea. Specifically, a jurisdiction-specific legal dictionary would be an excellent resource to hand out to jurors. Perhaps you should try suggesting that to your local government?
I would be much more likely to try to look it up myself instead of asking the judge to explain it. For one thing, even the friendliest of judges is very intimidating, just because he is a judge and you are in his courtroom, whether you're the one on trial or not.
Well, next time you're on a jury, try not being a pussy. Your job is to educate yourself about the facts of the trial, and that includes the definitions of terminology in use. If you can't handle that responsibility because you're afraid of the big, bad judge, you shouldn't be participating in the trial.
Really? You've polled some statistically meaningful portion of the judges in the US and concluded that every single one of them will explicitly tell you that jury nullification doesn't exist? I don't suppose you have evidence for this rather outrageous claim, do you? You wouldn't just be throwing out baseless, controversial claims, would you?
Simple. People are idiots. They're say "but my Twitter update isn't 'discussing the case'", or "but YouTube isn't news". So you pass an explicit law that people can't argue with.
If, as a car driver, I pass a cyclist, and then reach a red light, why does the cyclist always ride along the right-hand side of all the cars in the line and go straight to the front of the line?
Because they're inconsiderate idiots with a deathwish?
No, really, I'm a cycle commuter, and that very behaviour drives me *batty*. It's a fantastic way to get nailed by right-turning traffic at an intersection or cars that drift right as they slow down, it pisses people off, and it's just generally a dick move.
The correct thing to do is, upon approaching stopped traffic, to move fully into the lane and take up a normal spot just like a vehicle. Unfortunately, too many cyclists see themselves as exceptions to pesky rules like that (and, for the record, I do selectively break rules, like running stop signs at unoccupied intersections, but there are certain behaviours I absolutely refuse to participate in, and this is one of them).
Sounds more and more like a reactionary band-aid to me. Looking for and finding the bottlenecks in the current codebase is a tactical solution to performance issues, not a strategic one.
And if such an approach is sufficient to achieve their performance goals, *who cares*?
Your argument seems to be that they should rearchitect their entire solution because, well, you say so. My response to that is, no, if they can achieve their performance goals through other means, then it's smarter to keep the existing codebase around, as rebuilding it from scratch is an absurd waste of time in that context.
And, again, you have absolute no idea what their performance problems are, and are utterly clueless about their underlying architecture. Meanwhile, the Facebook folks claim they can achieve *substantial* performance gains by building a new PHP engine. So either you're wrong, are they are. And given they know a hell of a lot more about their codebase and performance issues than you do, I think it behooves you to assume they know what they're doing.
Frankly, your arrogance is pretty astounding, here. Like a remarkable number of Slashdotters I've encountered, you seem to believe that, with the mere trickle of information you have, you can better judge how Facebook should run their business than they can, which is incredibly absurd. Then again, you are, apparently, the god of all software architects, with the necessary omniscience to judge Facebook's entire software architecture and codebase without having ever looked at a line of their code. Good for you! With powers like that, you should be able to make some big bank fixing everyone's scalability problems.
Facebook needs to come up with a new architecture, and stop trying to fix the limited tools used by the current architecture.
You have absolutely *no* idea what the sources of Facebook's performance problems are. None. You're simply guessing based on your personal biases.
Facebook, on the other hand, has benchmarked their code and determined that by optimizing the PHP engine, they can achieve substantial performance gains. Who the hell are you to decide that they're wrong and you're right?
One does not need to be smarter, only to have a more objective view of the problem and possible solutions, and be less emotionally attached to the current solution.
Yes, you, with your baseless guessing, are clearly being the more objective one...
By rewriting their entire codebase, a codebase that has invested it in likely hundreds of thousands, if not millions of manhours in debugging, testing, etc, thus representing millions of dollars worth of IP.
Yeah. Good call. Clearly you're *way* smarter than the guys running Facebook...
BTW, where's your website that's used by millions of users daily?
Nevertheless, that's a pretty pale replacement for generic multitasking. Yes, it addresses the specific use cases I was harping on, but multitasking *is* very useful for a device as powerful as the iPad, no matter what Apple would have us believe. Hell, just being able to run a third party music player in the background is reason enough to want multitasking support...
But, in the end, I guess we'll see. Maybe Palm was right after all. *shudder*
Slashdot Mirror
It was state of the art when it was announced, but the state of the art is always on the move.
Well that's a massive overstatement. This thing was state of the art in one very specific dimension: OLED display size. However, when looking at other dimensions, like size, resolution, and appearance (chassis, not display), it was worse than mediocre.
No, the reality is that the advantages of OLED (incredible contrast ratio, excellent colour reproduction, low power draw) weren't enough to justify the cost in the face of all the ways this display fell behind the curve the minute it hit the street.
What you are thinking of as "Evolution" is simply biological evolution
Well, given that the article is explicitely about biological (actually, I prefer to refer to it as "scientific", since the process applies to more than just biology) evolution, I don't see what your point is. Or do you just like changing the subject?
Evolution is definitely the right word, and you don't have to stretch the definition at all.
Correct. You just picked a different one entirely. But "evolution", in the context of this article is *not* the same thing as "evolution" in the general colloquial sense, and it's absolutely wrong to suggest that scientific evolution is simply "change over time".
If you go to an extreme you can say the all structures in our Universe are evolved with the loosest definition of Evolution as: "Change over time."
Uh, that's not evolution. That's... change over time.
Evolution requires just three things: replication, random mutation, and a fitness function. That's basically it. But those pieces are absolutely *necessary* for any process to be considered an evolutionary process.
We're human beings. We're flawed. We do that sort of thing. Some leave their coffees, their groceries, or even their CHILDREN on top of their cars when they drive off. Some forget to take the iron off the board when they leave and their house burns down. Some forget to put the bar in the window and their child falls out when the screen gives way. Some turn around to talk to their kid about some detail of the day and drift in front of a semi. And none of us are immune to this sort of thing.
No. But you also don't have dumbasses excusing this behaviour, saying moronic things like "Yup, we all do stupid things. Lose our car keys, forget to lock up our guns, dont wear a condom...", as if any of those things is even remotely equivalent to losing a firearm or leaving their child on the top of their car.
Just like idiot parents should be reprimanded severely for leaving their kid on the top of their car and driving off (an action which, I'm certain, would wind you up in court for charges of negligence), cops should be reprimanded severely for losing their firearms. Period. No if's, and's, or but's. It's inexcusable behaviour from someone entrusted with my life, not to mention a dangerous weapon.
Oh, but when it comes to a cop, they better be more than perfect.
Yes. Exactly.
We're talking about *cops*. We entrust them with our lives, and give them power over us, so yes, I think it's reasonable to expect them to be a little less careless than the average slashbot such as yourself. If they can't handle those expections, they should #gtfo, because they don't deserve the responsibility they've been given.
We're also not talking about a set of keys, here. We're talking about a *firearm*. Last I checked, most people aren't dumb enough to lose their 38 special between the seat cushions of their couch.
Frankly, I'm shocked this even surprises you.
No one else has proven capable.
Next question?
So you're saying the military are incompetent idiots and that the technology *doesn't* actually work? That, while they claimed to have validated the technology, they actually didn't? Do you have a source for these allegations?
Wrong. I can't believe you are being modded up. You are basically making the argument that closed platforms are more secure than open platforms.
Uh. They are. Closed platforms, ones that are locked down to prevent unauthorized software from running on them, are by their very definition more secure. Hell, that's one of the reasons TPM was invented: being able to prevent malicious code from running on hardware makes the platform more resilient.
In this case, users would never tolerate a PC that prevented them from installing arbitrary software, including software which enables cheating. However, they are more than happy to purchase a videogame console that's locked down tighter than a nuclear silo.
Just because the platform is closed, doesn't mean it is hack proof.
Who said anything about hack *proof*? We're talking about resilience. PCs are *far* more hackable by their very nature. Consoles far less so. If you don't understand that, quite frankly, you're an idiot.
I still hope they will squash cheaters because in my personal view they are scum comparable to child molesters.
Wow, talk about a distorted sense of proportion...
We are well beyond the need to save ink.
Yes, because the purpose of contractions is solely to save ink, thus elegantly explaining their ubiquity in spoken language...
OpenGL/hardware accelerated interfaces don't necessarily perform better than Evas' own software engine and in several cases are actually worse
That greatly depends on your definition of "better". The whole point of offloading those operations to the graphics accelerator is so the main CPU isn't bogged down performing those operations. On a mobile platform, that may make the difference when it comes to battery life, as it's possible the graphics chipset can perform those operations more efficiently (if not necessarily faster). Not to mention the general application performance gains possible if the core processor isn't tied up performing on-the-fly alpha blending operations.
It's not, no. It's just a cart with a microsd slot and the necessary electronics to convince the DS that the storage on that card represents a DS ROM. It's a modchip in the same way that a CF -> IDE adapter is a "modchip" for your computer.
Learn C, Smalltalk, and Lisp. Then you can use all of the above, as well, will have a breadth of knowledge in the major programming paradigms, and as a bonus, you can avoid the hideous monstrosity that is C++. *shudder*
Did you ever want to work a couple extra hours because you were really into what you were doing?
No. I stop, go home, and then return the next day and pick up where I left off.
Honestly, why the *hell* would you *voluntarily* put in unpaid overtime just for kicks? Don't you have a life outside your career? Wouldn't you rather go home and do something for yourself, rather than wasting that time slaving for your boss?
Frankly, this is exactly the attitude that gets you young bucks preferred over older, more experienced folk. The older guy has a life outside work, and chooses to go home at the end of the day because he or she realizes that work is work and life is life, and balance between the two is important. Meanwhile, the younger guy goes on and on about how work provides free breakfast and cots, and puts in 18 hours a day while only being paid for 8, and is convinced that they're *lucky* to have such a great job!
Sorry, fuck that. I'd rather spend those extra hours at home working on my own projects or putting effort into other, non-programming hobbies. Unpaid overtime? You can keep it.
In the long run this will also be likely linked to Aspergers Syndrome and other dissociative / personality disorders that we are diagnosing with much greater frequency today in that it reduces peoples interactions with actual human beings (at least vs our 'un-evolved' predecessors) to the point where children are not growing up with a firm grasp of social cues in relation to body language, tone of voice, etc....
What, so suddenly Asperger's isn't an autism spectrum disorder, ie one that's genetically determined? It's all just social conditioning? Which just need to make sure these children "[grow] up with a firm grasp of social cues"?
Well that's great news! You should publish a paper!
Yeah, the AC did read what you said. That's why he suggested to "start operating the courts in English" as opposed to legalese that only superficially looks like English but has completely different non-obvious meanings for words that ordinary people use all the time.
Except plain English isn't precise. "Legalese" evolved to deal with ambiguities in written language. Or would you prefer we just throw out the legal definition of "insane" in favour of our colloquial definition?
Typical juries don't even know that they don't know the meaning of the words. The words are ones they use all the time, so they think they know the meaning and see no need to ask for an official definition. It is the legal system that perverts those meanings.
Oh, come down off your high horse. It has nothing to do with "perverting" words, and I think, deep down, you know it.
Or do you think the medical or computing professions should throw away their lingo in favour of colloquialisms, just so that the common public can participate in our discourse? Please.
If you want the jury to get it right, come up with a list of commonly misunderstood (for the courtroom meaning) words and make sure to spend some time educating the jurors.
Now *that* is a good idea. Specifically, a jurisdiction-specific legal dictionary would be an excellent resource to hand out to jurors. Perhaps you should try suggesting that to your local government?
I would be much more likely to try to look it up myself instead of asking the judge to explain it. For one thing, even the friendliest of judges is very intimidating, just because he is a judge and you are in his courtroom, whether you're the one on trial or not.
Well, next time you're on a jury, try not being a pussy. Your job is to educate yourself about the facts of the trial, and that includes the definitions of terminology in use. If you can't handle that responsibility because you're afraid of the big, bad judge, you shouldn't be participating in the trial.
Really? You've polled some statistically meaningful portion of the judges in the US and concluded that every single one of them will explicitly tell you that jury nullification doesn't exist? I don't suppose you have evidence for this rather outrageous claim, do you? You wouldn't just be throwing out baseless, controversial claims, would you?
Wait, so you're saying that private citizens aren't covered under the first amendment (freedom of speech) if they're not a member of the press?
I think maybe you should refrain from commenting on American constitutional law, as, apparently, you have no idea what the hell you're talking about.
Simple. People are idiots. They're say "but my Twitter update isn't 'discussing the case'", or "but YouTube isn't news". So you pass an explicit law that people can't argue with.
Welcome to the Idiocracy.
If, as a car driver, I pass a cyclist, and then reach a red light, why does the cyclist always ride along the right-hand side of all the cars in the line and go straight to the front of the line?
Because they're inconsiderate idiots with a deathwish?
No, really, I'm a cycle commuter, and that very behaviour drives me *batty*. It's a fantastic way to get nailed by right-turning traffic at an intersection or cars that drift right as they slow down, it pisses people off, and it's just generally a dick move.
The correct thing to do is, upon approaching stopped traffic, to move fully into the lane and take up a normal spot just like a vehicle. Unfortunately, too many cyclists see themselves as exceptions to pesky rules like that (and, for the record, I do selectively break rules, like running stop signs at unoccupied intersections, but there are certain behaviours I absolutely refuse to participate in, and this is one of them).
Sounds more and more like a reactionary band-aid to me. Looking for and finding the bottlenecks in the current codebase is a tactical solution to performance issues, not a strategic one.
And if such an approach is sufficient to achieve their performance goals, *who cares*?
Your argument seems to be that they should rearchitect their entire solution because, well, you say so. My response to that is, no, if they can achieve their performance goals through other means, then it's smarter to keep the existing codebase around, as rebuilding it from scratch is an absurd waste of time in that context.
And, again, you have absolute no idea what their performance problems are, and are utterly clueless about their underlying architecture. Meanwhile, the Facebook folks claim they can achieve *substantial* performance gains by building a new PHP engine. So either you're wrong, are they are. And given they know a hell of a lot more about their codebase and performance issues than you do, I think it behooves you to assume they know what they're doing.
Frankly, your arrogance is pretty astounding, here. Like a remarkable number of Slashdotters I've encountered, you seem to believe that, with the mere trickle of information you have, you can better judge how Facebook should run their business than they can, which is incredibly absurd. Then again, you are, apparently, the god of all software architects, with the necessary omniscience to judge Facebook's entire software architecture and codebase without having ever looked at a line of their code. Good for you! With powers like that, you should be able to make some big bank fixing everyone's scalability problems.
Facebook needs to come up with a new architecture, and stop trying to fix the limited tools used by the current architecture.
You have absolutely *no* idea what the sources of Facebook's performance problems are. None. You're simply guessing based on your personal biases.
Facebook, on the other hand, has benchmarked their code and determined that by optimizing the PHP engine, they can achieve substantial performance gains. Who the hell are you to decide that they're wrong and you're right?
One does not need to be smarter, only to have a more objective view of the problem and possible solutions, and be less emotionally attached to the current solution.
Yes, you, with your baseless guessing, are clearly being the more objective one...
Speed of "Java" and ".Net"? Is it a joke?
No, it's not.
"Java" hangs all the time
No it doesn't.
and the ".Net" code to do a simple task is so convoluted that it is just ridiculous.
No, it's not.
Honestly, you really have no fucking clue what you're talking about, do you?
By rewriting their entire codebase, a codebase that has invested it in likely hundreds of thousands, if not millions of manhours in debugging, testing, etc, thus representing millions of dollars worth of IP.
Yeah. Good call. Clearly you're *way* smarter than the guys running Facebook...
BTW, where's your website that's used by millions of users daily?
Yeah. Thought so.
Nevertheless, that's a pretty pale replacement for generic multitasking. Yes, it addresses the specific use cases I was harping on, but multitasking *is* very useful for a device as powerful as the iPad, no matter what Apple would have us believe. Hell, just being able to run a third party music player in the background is reason enough to want multitasking support...
But, in the end, I guess we'll see. Maybe Palm was right after all. *shudder*