OK, so I'm off topic, probably flamebaiting and in effect contributing (in short measure) to the thing I'm complaining about, but there's nowhere else to vent my spleen on this one.
Slashdot posts dupes, so what? If you're not interested, either because it's a dupe or just beacuse you're plain not interested, then don't RTFA. Skip over it. Ignore it. Let it go...
What is *far* more irritating (to me) than dupes are the lame posts of smart arse tossers whining on about dupes and about how crap slashdot is. If you don't like it, fuck off and read something else. Is someone holding a gun to your head and forcing you to read it? Go make you own version or something do something a bit more constructive.
I'll bet the total number of devices with PDA like functionality sold is still growing. 'People' know and understand phones so a phone with a built in PDA is a big seller.
On the other hand, 'people' think PDAs are for geeks, so a PDA with a built in phone stays on the shelves, even if it were identical to the phone with the built in PDA.
On most high end phones now, the actual phone probably represents less than a third of the functionality, but it's still called a phone. That's amrketing.
If it stores my contacts, diary, memos and whatnot, I don't care what the marketdroids choose to call it, it's a PDA.
Why can't one software product "beat" it's competition simply by being better?
Sadly, there are few markets where being 'best' automagically makes you number one. Factors such as installed base, brand perception and pure and simple FUD can always swing things for a far poorer product.
The PCIMG have had the 2.16OPEN standard around for a while and it's supported by a goodly number of manufacturers offering a wide range of cards, not just blades. 2.16 defines a cPCI chassis where cards (blades) use twin ethernet, initally over the backplance, to communicate with each other and the outside world via a pair of switches, one at each end of the rack. mmmm....., redundancy.
I'm not sure how much overlap there is in the target markets, but the concept seems more or less identical to this 'new breakthrough'. The artcicle's/IBM's statement that to date, no standard exists to pull together blades and switches, making the Cisco-IBM solution "a de factor (sic) standard," according to an IBM spokesperson seem like blinkered wishful thinking from their marketing departement.
Personally, I have to disagree. My mobile phone stays at home most of the time, I only take it out when I know in advance I'llwant/need to use it or be contacted. My Palm, on the other hand (a Tunsgten E having upgraded from the original Zire, top little gadget) goes with me everywhere.
On a more general note, don't you think that the mobile phone is dead and the PDA is the way forward? I mean how can something that is 10% phone and 90% PDA be condidered a phone? You're correct in that the combined PDA/phone market (smartphone) is the growth area, but irrespective of the name, that's due to growth in PDA usage and functionality, not phones. Phones pretty much hit the limit already.
Maybe it's just the name, but take a serious look at what is driving the sale of smartphones, it's the advance in PDA style over telephony functionality that's doing the business.
To my mind, Red Dwarf presents the only worthwile treatment of a robotic futures. 'Talky', a sentient bread obsessed toaster so cheerfully irritating as to be unbearable, that's where we're heading.
Also, the functional programming language which made my university existence sheer hell, Standard ML already exists as is widely (within long beardy circles at least) known as SML.
Black Cabs (Taxis) are allowed to pick up passengers anywhere, i.e be flagged down. They have to pay a fair bit for the licence which allows them to do this. Mini Cabs (Private Hire) have to be booked and must pick you up from a pre-arranged location. AFAIK, there is no reason that you cannot book a Black Cab, though perhaps the hotel staff gets a better backhander from the mini cabs.
Why do we need to waste the time and effort of so many skilled coders and frontiersmen of the Open Source revolution on a Web server project that should clearly be marked -1, Redundant?
Maybe...
For the fun of it!
To see if we can!
To hack, tinker, improve and innovate?
OK, so a lot of open source projects start up to fill a gap and a lot of open source projects start up to replace a proprietary or expensive solution, but a lot start up just to try and do something in a new way or innovative way, to experiment or to learn. It's the hacker way.
OS is so productive becasue of this hacker attitude, stifle it at your peril.
Put enough hardware together and you can probably match the brains processing power, but you still need some code to use all those flops like a brain.
It isn't going to look very smart if it's sitting there running seti@home.
Re:Encryption and compression make a lot of sense.
on
PKWare Zips to Growth
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Fair point, encryption and compression are commonly used together, but I still have my doubts about bundling functions into a single (bloating) app in this way.
These programs are essentailly filters and the most logical and flexible way to provide them is as seperate entities.
For folks who want to combine them: use a script, or a GUI or a simple wrapper app to hide the details - none of this is procluded by keeping the logically different functions involved seperate and independently usable at a lower level.
Re:Since the author didnt mention it...
on
Design Patterns
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Is this book worthy of my money or is it antiquated piece of shit? The author of this review didn't include any sort of this question.
That's kind of subjective, one man's 'must have' is another man's 'antiquated piece of shit', so it's always a tricky proposition to make such a sweeping generalisation in a review.
On the other hand, you should be able to get a flavour of the book from the review and decide if it's something you *might* be interestd in. Then you spend and hour or two in your local bookstore (remember them?) reading and deciding for yourself - which, having never come across the book before and having had my interest roused, is what I'll probably end up doing.
Every time I read about Forth it takes me back, I had a Jupiter Ace as a kid. Sad to say that it was easier to get my ZX81 to do cool stuff so it got kind of neglected. Shame.
Maybe it's time to google up an emulator and indulge in a bit of notsalgia.
We're one year on from the indefensible murder of several thousand civilians in New York. No right minded person can have anything but condemnation for that act of pure evil.
We should remember however, that the pain and sense of loss from the destruction of an innocent life is the same all over the world and for those of all religions.
The lasting legacy of the WTC attack should not be war nor more death and suffering.
I tend to agree, but then I also have an uneasy feeling that Google, having become very popular for whatever reason (good reason in this case) could start to abuse that popularity in the same way as, oh, for example, Micro$oft.
It's not the same thing nor on the same scale, but none the less there are parallels to be drawn.
Maybe the 'if you don't like it' arguement is not as clear cut as you think.
--
just more weapons
on
The Drone War
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
All through history weapons have (sadly) evolved to, amonst other things, seperate the person(s) 'weilding' the weapon from the victim in order to reduce the risk of the victim striking back. It's nothing new. The seperation has been anything from a long stick (pike) to being in a concrete bunker on a different continent (ICMB).
These so called drones are simply the continuation of a develompment process that has been going on for thousands of years.
The 'dramtic' results in recent asymmertic conflicts (Iran Afghanistan) attributed to them are no more dramatic than, say, the Germans Panzers aginst the Polish Cavalry, were at the time.
If the sides are evenly matched they'll eventually run out of each technology and end up hand to hand. c.f. The trenches in WWI.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, so I'm off topic, probably flamebaiting and in effect contributing (in short measure) to the thing I'm complaining about, but there's nowhere else to vent my spleen on this one.
Slashdot posts dupes, so what? If you're not interested, either because it's a dupe or just beacuse you're plain not interested, then don't RTFA. Skip over it. Ignore it. Let it go...
What is *far* more irritating (to me) than dupes are the lame posts of smart arse tossers whining on about dupes and about how crap slashdot is. If you don't like it, fuck off and read something else. Is someone holding a gun to your head and forcing you to read it? Go make you own version or something do something a bit more constructive.
Bye, bye, karma!
I'll bet the total number of devices with PDA like functionality sold is still growing. 'People' know and understand phones so a phone with a built in PDA is a big seller.
On the other hand, 'people' think PDAs are for geeks, so a PDA with a built in phone stays on the shelves, even if it were identical to the phone with the built in PDA.
On most high end phones now, the actual phone probably represents less than a third of the functionality, but it's still called a phone. That's amrketing.
If it stores my contacts, diary, memos and whatnot, I don't care what the marketdroids choose to call it, it's a PDA.
Was the site linked from slashdot 'cos it shutdown,
or shutdown 'cos it was linked from slashdot?
Why can't one software product "beat" it's competition simply by being better?
Sadly, there are few markets where being 'best' automagically makes you number one. Factors such as installed base, brand perception and pure and simple FUD can always swing things for a far poorer product.
The PCIMG have had the 2.16 OPEN standard around for a while and it's supported by a goodly number of manufacturers offering a wide range of cards, not just blades. 2.16 defines a cPCI chassis where cards (blades) use twin ethernet, initally over the backplance, to communicate with each other and the outside world via a pair of switches, one at each end of the rack. mmmm....., redundancy.
I'm not sure how much overlap there is in the target markets, but the concept seems more or less identical to this 'new breakthrough'. The artcicle's/IBM's statement that to date, no standard exists to pull together blades and switches, making the Cisco-IBM solution "a de factor (sic) standard," according to an IBM spokesperson seem like blinkered wishful thinking from their marketing departement.
Personally, I have to disagree. My mobile phone stays at home most of the time, I only take it out when I know in advance I'llwant/need to use it or be contacted. My Palm, on the other hand (a Tunsgten E having upgraded from the original Zire, top little gadget) goes with me everywhere.
On a more general note, don't you think that the mobile phone is dead and the PDA is the way forward? I mean how can something that is 10% phone and 90% PDA be condidered a phone? You're correct in that the combined PDA/phone market (smartphone) is the growth area, but irrespective of the name, that's due to growth in PDA usage and functionality, not phones. Phones pretty much hit the limit already.
Maybe it's just the name, but take a serious look at what is driving the sale of smartphones, it's the advance in PDA style over telephony functionality that's doing the business.
To my mind, Red Dwarf presents the only worthwile treatment of a robotic futures. 'Talky', a sentient bread obsessed toaster so cheerfully irritating as to be unbearable, that's where we're heading.
The NASA earth observatory thang has some images taken from MIR of the area. Maybe that's about as close as I'd want to get for now.
Well I hear folks asking "Y Windows?" all the time so it must be getting popular.
... and he also had some fairly radical proposals on the subject of spelling.
Also, the functional programming language which made my university existence sheer hell, Standard ML already exists as is widely (within long beardy circles at least) known as SML.
Black Cabs (Taxis) are allowed to pick up passengers anywhere, i.e be flagged down. They have to pay a fair bit for the licence which allows them to do this. Mini Cabs (Private Hire) have to be booked and must pick you up from a pre-arranged location. AFAIK, there is no reason that you cannot book a Black Cab, though perhaps the hotel staff gets a better backhander from the mini cabs.
Maybe...
OK, so a lot of open source projects start up to fill a gap and a lot of open source projects start up to replace a proprietary or expensive solution, but a lot start up just to try and do something in a new way or innovative way, to experiment or to learn. It's the hacker way.
OS is so productive becasue of this hacker attitude, stifle it at your peril.
Put enough hardware together and you can probably match the brains processing power, but you still need some code to use all those flops like a brain.
It isn't going to look very smart if it's sitting there running seti@home.
Fair point, encryption and compression are commonly used together, but I still have my doubts about bundling functions into a single (bloating) app in this way.
These programs are essentailly filters and the most logical and flexible way to provide them is as seperate entities.
For folks who want to combine them: use a script, or a GUI or a simple wrapper app to hide the details - none of this is procluded by keeping the logically different functions involved seperate and independently usable at a lower level.
Neurosis?
Is this book worthy of my money or is it antiquated piece of shit? The author of this review didn't include any sort of this question.
That's kind of subjective, one man's 'must have' is another man's 'antiquated piece of shit', so it's always a tricky proposition to make such a sweeping generalisation in a review.
On the other hand, you should be able to get a flavour of the book from the review and decide if it's something you *might* be interestd in. Then you spend and hour or two in your local bookstore (remember them?) reading and deciding for yourself - which, having never come across the book before and having had my interest roused, is what I'll probably end up doing.
OK, so things are sluggish at work.
A quick trawl came up with the following 'Nix based
emulator
Every time I read about Forth it takes me back, I had a Jupiter Ace as a kid. Sad to say that it was easier to get my ZX81 to do cool stuff so it got kind of neglected. Shame.
Maybe it's time to google up an emulator and indulge in a bit of notsalgia.
We're one year on from the indefensible murder of several thousand civilians in New York. No right minded person can have anything but condemnation for that act of pure evil.
We should remember however, that the pain and sense of loss from the destruction of an innocent life is the same all over the world and for those of all religions.
The lasting legacy of the WTC attack should not be war nor more death and suffering.
I tend to agree, but then I also have an uneasy feeling that Google, having become very popular for whatever reason (good reason in this case) could start to abuse that popularity in the same way as, oh, for example, Micro$oft.
It's not the same thing nor on the same scale, but none the less there are parallels to be drawn.
Maybe the 'if you don't like it' arguement is not as clear cut as you think.
--
All through history weapons have (sadly) evolved to, amonst other things, seperate the person(s) 'weilding' the weapon from the victim in order to reduce the risk of the victim striking back. It's nothing new. The seperation has been anything from a long stick (pike) to being in a concrete bunker on a different continent (ICMB).
These so called drones are simply the continuation of a develompment process that has been going on for thousands of years.
The 'dramtic' results in recent asymmertic conflicts (Iran Afghanistan) attributed to them are no more dramatic than, say, the Germans Panzers aginst the Polish Cavalry, were at the time.
If the sides are evenly matched they'll eventually run out of each technology and end up hand to hand. c.f. The trenches in WWI.