...right now. I've got a laser to shine on it, a motor to spin it, a photodetector to pick up the reflections of the laser light and a program on my pc that takes those electrical impulses and then uses them to generate various sounds and visual pixel patterns on my crt.
It's really pretty cool. I can watch and listen for hours at a time. Sometimes the pixel and sound patterns can really be captivating. If there are any really neat pattern sequences, I can make the laser go back and shine on the same section of the polycarb disk and it will make the same sequence of sound and visual patterns again. Just the same, if there are any boring sections, I can make it skip over those.
You can find these polycarbonate disks in lots of places. They come in these flat, square little boxes. The boxes have pretty pictures all over them. If you buy the box, you get the disk inside for free! I guess you could use them as coasters to hold your drink while you are looking at the pictures on the box, play catch with your dog or something) One thing that I found out is that if you buy another box with the same set of pictures, then the patterns made by the light reflected off of the disk inside are the same. The really neat part is that if you make sure that you buy a box with different pictures on the outside each time, then the sound and pixel patterns are different for each disk!
I guess you'd have to qualify "excessive". Divers have been breathing "relatively high" helium mixtures for years and I have not read anything about brain cancer produced by it.
This is hardly news and any sysadmin that leaves a system up and open with documented default passwords deserves to be shot, not the vendor that shipped the software.
...There are also some particular problems that simply do not convert to parallel processing very well if at all. Some say that running win9x is the largest problem of this type.;-) So the time required to solve the problem depends upon the time that the fastest cpu can run through the code. The only way to get an answer quicker is to build a faster cpu.
An alternative that is being explored is finding a different, parallelizable algorithm that can solve the same problem, but that research also requires work and resources. If you spent those resources on building a faster cpu, then not only would you have a faster solution to your particular problem, but also a faster solution to other problems as well.
So...in most cases the best choice as to where to spend those resources is to spend them building a faster cpu.
> Also, code reviews were mentioned in the
> article. They don't seem very useful if you're
> the only one who's going to use or maintain the
> program.
Indeed they are not. That is one of the features of efficiency of the OS model. Make up an example bit of code. Here it is. I've built it and it works OK for me. Now what do I do with it? Just keep it to myself and use it? That's one option. What if I let the world see it, review it, and use it as well? It will do me no harm since I have already met my own goals and it might help others. So...I pass on the code and guess what? Someone else does use it, does change it, and just possibly, they modify it to improve it and make it a better fit for their own needs.
What happens to me if their mods are also impovements from my perspective? Just by releasing the code, I end up with a better tool than I had built myself.
What happens if their mods don't suit me? No problem, I've still got my origial and they have their own version. The world is still a better place. Even if I don't like their changes, I might get inspired or educated simply by having the opportunity to peruse someone else's work.
No loss, and in the worst case at least an opportunity for gain for all involved.
It implies free. As in free for you to with as you wish. Use it, improve it, discard it, ignore it, whatever. The group-ish features of OS seem to develop from the roots of courtesy. As in: "Thank you for showing me your work. I've seen and used your stuff and made these changes that I think are improvements. Here take them and do the same with them as I have done with yours." I think that the GPL is an embodiment, or legal description, perhaps an enforcement of this courtesy. It starts out singular and the group only develops after someone else has provided feedback.
As an art form, software is unlike other "mainstream" arts. The two main differences are that in the case of OS code, it is the coders that are both the artists and the critics, and that the work of art itself is dynamic. Imagine a novel, a sculpture, or whatever that was produced and offered to the critics. They in turn critiqued, modified, and proposed changes to be incorporated. The cycle is repeated and thus the art work is no longer static, but changing over time.
The only other art that seems comparable is music where the composer constructs one component of the art work, then the performer adds on their own touches and thus each rendition is unique and none are static.
What do you sell when you code?
What does a fashion model sell?
What does a pro-sports player sell?
How about the coach?
The trainer?
The team doctor?
The "manager"?
The engineer?
Is somehow selling a particular and considering the demand, a very necessary service bad?
Sorry, AC, years of industry experience don't add up to diddly if you don't think during all those years.
Nothing at all wrong with being a prostitute, especially since if you aren't selling yourself, you're a bum, or you're living off the land. That's all that's left.
> In the bazaar, design decisions are often made
> by people who have no idea what the market wants.
The problem is, your comment is not applicable. The very point being that in the open source world, the designer/coder does not work for "the market". S/he works for their own need, not that of a marketdroid's vision. If the market likes the designer's work, that's great. If the market has no use for the designer's work, that's no problem either.
OTOH, the OS coder has a known minimum market of one, that being his or herself. So, from that perspective, the coders in the bazaar know exactly what the market wants and can thus hit the design goals precisely and very efficiently.
The premiere example of this is the Linux kernel itself. It was written for a target market of one. One person wanted it for his own use and he hit his own goal on target. Surprise! So many others also had similar needs and thus we are where we are today.
The events happen at a particular time, aka "NOW". They happen at the same "time" all over the world. The fact that clocks or calendars display different numbers has nothing to do with it. It does not matter that some clocks are 15hrs ahead or 9 hrs behind + one "day". This is especially true for those poor folks that are suffering by living somewhere besides the self centered US eastern time zone. There are some of us that are just "12 hours away" from Sydney and guess what? It does not matter what day it is. We are still 12 hours away. The everyday American sports viewer will not care if the date in Sydney is "tomorrow", "today", or "yesterday". He does not care that it is "Summer down there" and "Winter up here". What he cares about is that the events are happening "NOW", and "NOW" is "3AM here in front of my tv screen".
>...time difference of 15 hours between Australia and New York...
Duh! I wonder which reporter/proofreader didn't pass 1st grade arithmetic class? Or was it geography? Perhaps they forgot that the Earth is a spheroid? Anyway, 9 hours is still a big enough difference to disrupt the live-tv business.
I wonder if we'll have a return of the "plausibly live" broadcasts?
>... requested that IE4 was the minimum browser, with *no* fall through.
Did you tell them that they would be turning away business, potential customers? Did you show them competitors' sites and demonstrate multiple browsers? If you did all of this and they still chose to deliberately exclude certain users, so be it. It is their loss. You might bring it up at the next stockholders meeting;-)
Used to be associated with happy. Saying "SomethingXYZ is so gay" used to mean something like "SomethingXYZ makes me so happy". I guess sometimes it still does. How the word "gay" ever got associated with homosexuality I don't know. Must be something to do with PCness I guess.
That is, you can't even tell that sodium and chlorine fell in, much less salt or a salt crystal. Depending on conditions, you might get electrons and protons with particular trajectories back since in addition to the mass of whatever is swallowed, the charge and angular momentum is also conserved.
The encyclopedia is much too macro to be a decent example.
If you want to analyze the slope of your account balance or take the second derivative to find out where it might be in the future, solve for limits(heh, minimum != 0) or other stuff like that, then it could be a math problem.;-)
I have a "spare" drive that is only 100MB in size. It holds a 20MB swap partition and a working Slack installation including X in the rest. It is just your basic stuff that allows it to drive my ISA ethernet card, ppp on a modem, firewall/routing tools, xterms, disk recovery and repair tools, lynx, ftp and mail clients and the basic daemons. There is no netscape, gnome/KDE, kernel sources, dev tools, xeyes, games, or anything like that. It used to run on an ISA only 386sx40 w/16MB RAM that was the computer that I used to access the 'net while the kids were hogging the main box. Now it's just sitting in the closet.
I don't think that I could have built it "from scratch" without another working box.
When your keyword scanner comes across something suspicious, pop up a dialog that says something like "This software has detected data that might be offensive. It could be pornography, obscenity, hate speech, or blabla. Here is a sample: 'sentence or phrase where keywords were found' Do you wish to continue?
Then log the site address, the context message, the userid and the response.
At least this way you can actually educate people about what things some people consider obscene and keep track of answers in case someone gets pissed. You provide the freedom to someone to say "yes" to something like "...the tumor was found in the left breast..." while researching breast cancer.
If you get a lot of "yes" answers at a particular site, you could then "white-list" it and improve or custom fit your filter to the users.
When our ideals meet the real world, they flex. If we are strong enough, committed enough, "ideal" enough, then being human, we modify the world to suit us and our ideals.
That is what humans do. Unlike other living things, when we meet something that doesn't suit us, we can change it. What happens depends on you, your ideals, your convictions, your strength and the "resistiveness" of the real world. Sometimes the real world wins and you are modified. Each and every day someone faces a part of the real world that doesn't match up with their idea of that it should be. It is up to each one to change the world to fit them, or to change themselves to fit reality.
You need to update your stats. A recent study by a prof at the U. Chicago estimates ~2 million uses of guns each year for self defense. Most of the time the criminal just runs away.
When someone successfully defends themselves, it is hardly ever reported in the media. See this page for a bunch of references. Including this pertinent group of stats:
> Each year, potential victims kill between 2,000
> and 3,000 criminals; they wound an additional
> 9,000 to 17,000. Moreover, mishaps are rare.
> Private citizens mistakenly kill innocent people
> only thirty times a year, compared with about
> 330 mistaken killings by police.
>And those that have unavoidable risk factors get
>denied employment, get denied insurance, or pay
>exorbinant premiums.
Please define "exorbitant". By definition, an insurance contract is a bet upon the future between you and the insurance company. Just like any other contract, there are risks and rewards. They bet that the premiums you pay will cover your forecast risks. You bet that they will not. If this is not the case, then one or both of the parties involved would be better off not engaging in the contract. You would be better off saving or investing the money that you would otherwise spend on insurance(for a rainy day) and the insurance company would be better off gambling with someone else.
>They would basically be unable to have any decent
>standard of living.
Nonsense, they just have to work harder, or be satisfied with the hand they are dealt. That's the way that the world is. People that are smarter have it easier, sometimes. People that are stronger have it easier, sometimes. People that work harder, have it better. There are already clearly defined genetic or other advantages for some and disadvantages for others. We already "grade" people based on these factors.
This situation already exists and yet the doom and gloom that you forecast does not. Do you have an explanation?
>That's just plain evil.
So instead you advocate some form of socialism, AKA theft, where I am *required* by law to sacrifice my standard of living for others? Remember that there are many factors that contribute to my standard of living. These include the place where I was born, the effort of my parents in education and upbringing, my own efforts, and indeed my own genes. Which is most important? Based on my personal experience, genetic factors are limiting only in extreme cases, and people in those situations are generally dependent upon charity even today.
So what's the big deal? This is nothing new.
If you have a problem with "Big Evil Insurance Companies" making "exorbitant" profits, then beat them at their own game. Buy their stock and share their profits; or better yet, start your own insurance company, or co-op. That is how insurance companies and co-ops get started, someone decides to do so.
I still haven't figured out why some people fear or get upset about the "potential" use of technology for screening and assignment of varying insurance rates to risk factors that are derived from the results of the screening. It happens all the time. That's why teenage boys pay higher car insurance rates than I do. That's why older people pay more for life insurance than younger people. Why not charge someone that is healthy and has good genes less than someone that smokes and shows genetic defects?
All it really is is another incentive to live a healthy life.
Remember that the ones that gain from insurance resource pooling are the un-healthy or high risk individuals. Those that naturally are or make a daily effort to be healthy have to pay higher premiums to support those that are more frequently sick.
...If they are going to have to increase the size of the load sharing pool. IOW, they have X *BSD boxes running the show right now. How many w2k boxes at what MHz will be needed?
Slashdot Mirror
...right now. I've got a laser to shine on it, a motor to spin it, a photodetector to pick up the reflections of the laser light and a program on my pc that takes those electrical impulses and then uses them to generate various sounds and visual pixel patterns on my crt.
It's really pretty cool. I can watch and listen for hours at a time. Sometimes the pixel and sound patterns can really be captivating. If there are any really neat pattern sequences, I can make the laser go back and shine on the same section of the polycarb disk and it will make the same sequence of sound and visual patterns again. Just the same, if there are any boring sections, I can make it skip over those.
You can find these polycarbonate disks in lots of places. They come in these flat, square little boxes. The boxes have pretty pictures all over them. If you buy the box, you get the disk inside for free! I guess you could use them as coasters to hold your drink while you are looking at the pictures on the box, play catch with your dog or something) One thing that I found out is that if you buy another box with the same set of pictures, then the patterns made by the light reflected off of the disk inside are the same. The really neat part is that if you make sure that you buy a box with different pictures on the outside each time, then the sound and pixel patterns are different for each disk!
It's great fun, you ought to try it out!
I guess you'd have to qualify "excessive". Divers have been breathing "relatively high" helium mixtures for years and I have not read anything about brain cancer produced by it.
...I'm working hard right now(I'm 40) to make sure that my kids' kids do just that. Of course it also means that I'll end up with a lot as well. ;-)
...because we all know about it already.
This is hardly news and any sysadmin that leaves a system up and open with documented default passwords deserves to be shot, not the vendor that shipped the software.
What's the BFD?
What do you want MS to fix?
...There are also some particular problems that simply do not convert to parallel processing very well if at all. Some say that running win9x is the largest problem of this type. ;-) So the time required to solve the problem depends upon the time that the fastest cpu can run through the code. The only way to get an answer quicker is to build a faster cpu.
An alternative that is being explored is finding a different, parallelizable algorithm that can solve the same problem, but that research also requires work and resources. If you spent those resources on building a faster cpu, then not only would you have a faster solution to your particular problem, but also a faster solution to other problems as well.
So...in most cases the best choice as to where to spend those resources is to spend them building a faster cpu.
> Also, code reviews were mentioned in the
> article. They don't seem very useful if you're
> the only one who's going to use or maintain the
> program.
Indeed they are not. That is one of the features of efficiency of the OS model. Make up an example bit of code. Here it is. I've built it and it works OK for me. Now what do I do with it? Just keep it to myself and use it? That's one option. What if I let the world see it, review it, and use it as well? It will do me no harm since I have already met my own goals and it might help others. So...I pass on the code and guess what? Someone else does use it, does change it, and just possibly, they modify it to improve it and make it a better fit for their own needs.
What happens to me if their mods are also impovements from my perspective? Just by releasing the code, I end up with a better tool than I had built myself.
What happens if their mods don't suit me? No problem, I've still got my origial and they have their own version. The world is still a better place. Even if I don't like their changes, I might get inspired or educated simply by having the opportunity to peruse someone else's work.
No loss, and in the worst case at least an opportunity for gain for all involved.
> Anyway, open-source seems to imply group
It implies free. As in free for you to with as you wish. Use it, improve it, discard it, ignore it, whatever. The group-ish features of OS seem to develop from the roots of courtesy. As in: "Thank you for showing me your work. I've seen and used your stuff and made these changes that I think are improvements. Here take them and do the same with them as I have done with yours." I think that the GPL is an embodiment, or legal description, perhaps an enforcement of this courtesy. It starts out singular and the group only develops after someone else has provided feedback.
As an art form, software is unlike other "mainstream" arts. The two main differences are that in the case of OS code, it is the coders that are both the artists and the critics, and that the work of art itself is dynamic. Imagine a novel, a sculpture, or whatever that was produced and offered to the critics. They in turn critiqued, modified, and proposed changes to be incorporated. The cycle is repeated and thus the art work is no longer static, but changing over time.
The only other art that seems comparable is music where the composer constructs one component of the art work, then the performer adds on their own touches and thus each rendition is unique and none are static.
What do you sell when you code?
What does a fashion model sell?
What does a pro-sports player sell?
How about the coach?
The trainer?
The team doctor?
The "manager"?
The engineer?
Is somehow selling a particular and considering the demand, a very necessary service bad?
Sorry, AC, years of industry experience don't add up to diddly if you don't think during all those years.
Nothing at all wrong with being a prostitute, especially since if you aren't selling yourself, you're a bum, or you're living off the land. That's all that's left.
> In the bazaar, design decisions are often made
> by people who have no idea what the market wants.
The problem is, your comment is not applicable. The very point being that in the open source world, the designer/coder does not work for "the market". S/he works for their own need, not that of a marketdroid's vision. If the market likes the designer's work, that's great. If the market has no use for the designer's work, that's no problem either.
OTOH, the OS coder has a known minimum market of one, that being his or herself. So, from that perspective, the coders in the bazaar know exactly what the market wants and can thus hit the design goals precisely and very efficiently.
The premiere example of this is the Linux kernel itself. It was written for a target market of one. One person wanted it for his own use and he hit his own goal on target. Surprise! So many others also had similar needs and thus we are where we are today.
...nor does the equator.
The events happen at a particular time, aka "NOW". They happen at the same "time" all over the world. The fact that clocks or calendars display different numbers has nothing to do with it. It does not matter that some clocks are 15hrs ahead or 9 hrs behind + one "day". This is especially true for those poor folks that are suffering by living somewhere besides the self centered US eastern time zone. There are some of us that are just "12 hours away" from Sydney and guess what? It does not matter what day it is. We are still 12 hours away. The everyday American sports viewer will not care if the date in Sydney is "tomorrow", "today", or "yesterday". He does not care that it is "Summer down there" and "Winter up here". What he cares about is that the events are happening "NOW", and "NOW" is "3AM here in front of my tv screen".
>...time difference of 15 hours between Australia and New York...
Duh! I wonder which reporter/proofreader didn't pass 1st grade arithmetic class? Or was it geography? Perhaps they forgot that the Earth is a spheroid? Anyway, 9 hours is still a big enough difference to disrupt the live-tv business.
I wonder if we'll have a return of the "plausibly live" broadcasts?
> ... requested that IE4 was the minimum browser, with *no* fall through.
;-)
Did you tell them that they would be turning away business, potential customers? Did you show them competitors' sites and demonstrate multiple browsers? If you did all of this and they still chose to deliberately exclude certain users, so be it. It is their loss. You might bring it up at the next stockholders meeting
Used to be associated with happy. Saying "SomethingXYZ is so gay" used to mean something like "SomethingXYZ makes me so happy". I guess sometimes it still does. How the word "gay" ever got associated with homosexuality I don't know. Must be something to do with PCness I guess.
That is, you can't even tell that sodium and chlorine fell in, much less salt or a salt crystal. Depending on conditions, you might get electrons and protons with particular trajectories back since in addition to the mass of whatever is swallowed, the charge and angular momentum is also conserved.
The encyclopedia is much too macro to be a decent example.
If you want to analyze the slope of your account balance or take the second derivative to find out where it might be in the future, solve for limits(heh, minimum != 0) or other stuff like that, then it could be a math problem. ;-)
I have a "spare" drive that is only 100MB in size. It holds a 20MB swap partition and a working Slack installation including X in the rest. It is just your basic stuff that allows it to drive my ISA ethernet card, ppp on a modem, firewall/routing tools, xterms, disk recovery and repair tools, lynx, ftp and mail clients and the basic daemons. There is no netscape, gnome/KDE, kernel sources, dev tools, xeyes, games, or anything like that. It used to run on an ISA only 386sx40 w/16MB RAM that was the computer that I used to access the 'net while the kids were hogging the main box. Now it's just sitting in the closet.
I don't think that I could have built it "from scratch" without another working box.
Why not flag it, present it, ask, and log it?
When your keyword scanner comes across something suspicious, pop up a dialog that says something like "This software has detected data that might be offensive. It could be pornography, obscenity, hate speech, or blabla. Here is a sample: 'sentence or phrase where keywords were found' Do you wish to continue?
Then log the site address, the context message, the userid and the response.
At least this way you can actually educate people about what things some people consider obscene and keep track of answers in case someone gets pissed. You provide the freedom to someone to say "yes" to something like "...the tumor was found in the left breast..." while researching breast cancer.
If you get a lot of "yes" answers at a particular site, you could then "white-list" it and improve or custom fit your filter to the users.
When our ideals meet the real world, they flex. If we are strong enough, committed enough, "ideal" enough, then being human, we modify the world to suit us and our ideals.
That is what humans do. Unlike other living things, when we meet something that doesn't suit us, we can change it. What happens depends on you, your ideals, your convictions, your strength and the "resistiveness" of the real world. Sometimes the real world wins and you are modified. Each and every day someone faces a part of the real world that doesn't match up with their idea of that it should be. It is up to each one to change the world to fit them, or to change themselves to fit reality.
Yeah, we're OT, but in a long gone discussion like this, no one will notice. Anyway, I have no email for you. If you want to keep talking, email me.
You need to update your stats. A recent study by a prof at the U. Chicago estimates ~2 million uses of guns each year for self defense. Most of the time the criminal just runs away.
When someone successfully defends themselves, it is hardly ever reported in the media. See this page for a bunch of references. Including this pertinent group of stats:
> Each year, potential victims kill between 2,000
> and 3,000 criminals; they wound an additional
> 9,000 to 17,000. Moreover, mishaps are rare.
> Private citizens mistakenly kill innocent people
> only thirty times a year, compared with about
> 330 mistaken killings by police.
>And those that have unavoidable risk factors get
>denied employment, get denied insurance, or pay
>exorbinant premiums.
Please define "exorbitant". By definition, an insurance contract is a bet upon the future between you and the insurance company. Just like any other contract, there are risks and rewards. They bet that the premiums you pay will cover your forecast risks. You bet that they will not. If this is not the case, then one or both of the parties involved would be better off not engaging in the contract. You would be better off saving or investing the money that you would otherwise spend on insurance(for a rainy day) and the insurance company would be better off gambling with someone else.
>They would basically be unable to have any decent
>standard of living.
Nonsense, they just have to work harder, or be satisfied with the hand they are dealt. That's the way that the world is. People that are smarter have it easier, sometimes. People that are stronger have it easier, sometimes. People that work harder, have it better. There are already clearly defined genetic or other advantages for some and disadvantages for others. We already "grade" people based on these factors.
This situation already exists and yet the doom and gloom that you forecast does not. Do you have an explanation?
>That's just plain evil.
So instead you advocate some form of socialism, AKA theft, where I am *required* by law to sacrifice my standard of living for others? Remember that there are many factors that contribute to my standard of living. These include the place where I was born, the effort of my parents in education and upbringing, my own efforts, and indeed my own genes. Which is most important? Based on my personal experience, genetic factors are limiting only in extreme cases, and people in those situations are generally dependent upon charity even today.
So what's the big deal? This is nothing new.
If you have a problem with "Big Evil Insurance Companies" making "exorbitant" profits, then beat them at their own game. Buy their stock and share their profits; or better yet, start your own insurance company, or co-op. That is how insurance companies and co-ops get started, someone decides to do so.
I still haven't figured out why some people fear or get upset about the "potential" use of technology for screening and assignment of varying insurance rates to risk factors that are derived from the results of the screening. It happens all the time. That's why teenage boys pay higher car insurance rates than I do. That's why older people pay more for life insurance than younger people. Why not charge someone that is healthy and has good genes less than someone that smokes and shows genetic defects?
All it really is is another incentive to live a healthy life.
Remember that the ones that gain from insurance resource pooling are the un-healthy or high risk individuals. Those that naturally are or make a daily effort to be healthy have to pay higher premiums to support those that are more frequently sick.
...If they are going to have to increase the size of the load sharing pool. IOW, they have X *BSD boxes running the show right now. How many w2k boxes at what MHz will be needed?
...when a generation of neglect and the resulting poor education shows it's ugly face like this...damn what did your parents teach you, anything?
See this. at Scientific American.