Re:The Science Of Discworld
on
Thief of Time
·
· Score: 1
All this sounds suspiciously like a takeoff on Larry Niven's Ringworld and The Science of Ringworld, except the plots are decidedly different. On the other hand I read a short story some 30 years ago in Galaxy or Analog or one of the old SF mags that sure sounds like the Discworld plot. Anybody remember that? Last line something like "Above them the stars began winking out..." But Pratchett sounds like he may be worth a read.
Raskin's user class differs greatly from the expert users who frequent SLASHDOT. I performed his keystroke experiment some twenty years ago when I was writing graphics drivers for VMS and Unix systems. I found that expert users were upset if they didn't see screen response immediately after sitting down and typing, whereas novice users were not concerned about longer delays.
In 1940 Philip Wylie, a futurist and SF writer, wrote a story about war in the far future with atomic bombs. He thought his concepts were really novel, until the FBI showed up at his door, demanding where he stole the information from. At first he was scared of going to prison. Then he started wondering why the FBI was there, and got really scared!
Yeah. That was the week IT took away my Unix-based mail and made me switch to Microsoft Outlook. Now they warn me not to open attachments that could flim-flam Microsoft Sillyware.
Until the CarterPhone decision of 1972 the law told us what phone technology we were allowed to have in this country, and Ma Bell was the law! See "The President's Analyst" for an insight into the climate of that day.
Anyhow, with the state of electronics in those days you would have needed a backpack to carry your cell phone!
Its become apparent over the last twenty years - at least to geneticists - that the genome acts more like a hologram than a one-to-one map of traits. I don't know of any geneticist of the last generation who subscribes to the one gene-one protein school of the 19th century.
Microsoft has said they want to dominate the auto industry's embedded computers. Can you imagine hitting your computer-controlled brakes and having an hourglass appear on your dash?
A few embedded projects ago our management insisted that we do a WinCE version of one of our products. It worked, more or less, but was slower, less stable and much more costly than our standard version. I was amazed at how many customers went for the Microsoft-blessed version. They'd been brainwashed by the Rodents of Redmond!
This problem's been around for quite a while in another form. Suppose MightyConglomerate wants to buy software from GarageShop, which doesn't want to release the source code for obvious reasons. MightyConglomerate requires GarageShop to escrow the source code, to be released to buyers in case GarageShop goes under. Its done all the time. It could also be done with keys.
The current patent system needs more than an overhaul, it needs a trashing! In the Monsanto case canola was being grown on adjacent farms. Defendent had refused to buy Monsanto seed, preferring to save seed from his harvest, as he'd done for 50 years. Monsanto, which is making a full-court-press to force all canola farmers to buy seed from them, tested plants growing along the ditch in front of the defendent's farm and found their own brand growing there. On that basis they went to court.
I don't use canola oil anymore because of this case; I use Italian olive oil instead.
I once toiled in the Bible Belt, and hated the hypocrisy surrounding liquor laws - like the local mayor blasting "Demon Rum" in public and buying moonshine at the barber shop in private. Give me the Silicon Forest where, within five minutes of work, I can sit outdoors enjoying an excellent microbrew or local wine with my compatriots!
A friend of mine built and bench-tested a scramjet for a H.S. science fair project 45 years ago. Building a demonstration model is trivial. Making it practical is what the NASA and Boeing engineers get paid for. BTW - they decided long ago that they didn't want hydrogen gas or liquid sitting around airports or any population centers many years ago. The explosion of just a modest amount could turn O'Hare into a moon crater!
I was part of a small team that developed a WinCE product a couple of years ago. We also had a VxWorks version that was far superior. Our salespeople went around asking customers if they were willing to pay twice as much for a product with half the speed and a fraction fo the capability and reliability, but had the Microsoft imprimateur. Amazingly, most said yes! Marketing is everything!
I have written hundreds of thousands of lines of code in many different languages. Nowhere did I consider this different than the engineering drawings I used to produce for an airplane manufacturer. The drawings, though creative expressions that could be rendered in several ways, were never granted First Amendment protections; it boggles the mind that code should be.
Depending on the scope of your class, there's lots of Unix training materials out there that could be used as-is or easily adapted. I used to teach BSD Unix driver/OS classes/networking classes, but that was three jobs ago, and no longer have the materials. But I never invented when I could plagiarize!
Get real! The French aren't telling Yahoo to stop advertising this stuff - they're telling Yahoo to do whatever they can to make sure stuff doesn't get delivered to French addresses. Probably not doable, but this is the business of the French. Germany has similar laws. I'm old enough to have served occupation duty in Germany, and they were extremely touchy about letting Nazis get another foothold in the system. They still are. I don't agree with their methods of censorship at all, but hey, its none of my business. Or yours. Unless you live in France or Germany.
"Just run both" doesn't work for personnel reasons. A M/S-oriented IS staff will eventually cut off all access to the Unix side, as happened at my company. In my job its extremely important to search mail text from time to time. Outlook has no capability for this. The calendar capabilities are a joke; I went back to my Unix calendar in an Exceed window very quickly. Between these and the virii that strike Outlook periodically, I feel that I've had an arm cut off. I could go on, but the upshot is, we traded a reliable and competent mail system for one that is neither.
I'm not anti-M/S - I've written lots of s/w for their systems over the years and they do some things very well. But I am anti-bad-software, and Outlook is bad software.
Get real! Old IT workers get fired because they don't spend the time to upgrade their skills. I'm 62, get a very competitive salary, and stay employed because I reinvent myself every few years. More than half the programmers in my present place of employment are over 40. So quit whining. Read a book! Take a course! Or else plan on flipping burgers in your old age!
Chuck in Beaverton
I've written many dozens of drivers over the years, for all kinds of devices, and I'm torn on this one. On the one hand, a company puts a lot of hard cash into developing a driver, which they don't want to give away. On the other hand its nice to have lots of knowledgeable people out there reviewing one's code and pointing out errors. I could write a book of war stories of how companies have lost credibility, even hard cash, because they went closed-source.
Slashdot Mirror
All this sounds suspiciously like a takeoff on Larry Niven's Ringworld and The Science of Ringworld, except the plots are decidedly different. On the other hand I read a short story some 30 years ago in Galaxy or Analog or one of the old SF mags that sure sounds like the Discworld plot. Anybody remember that? Last line something like "Above them the stars began winking out..." But Pratchett sounds like he may be worth a read.
Raskin's user class differs greatly from the expert users who frequent SLASHDOT. I performed his keystroke experiment some twenty years ago when I was writing graphics drivers for VMS and Unix systems. I found that expert users were upset if they didn't see screen response immediately after sitting down and typing, whereas novice users were not concerned about longer delays.
In 1940 Philip Wylie, a futurist and SF writer, wrote a story about war in the far future with atomic bombs. He thought his concepts were really novel, until the FBI showed up at his door, demanding where he stole the information from. At first he was scared of going to prison. Then he started wondering why the FBI was there, and got really scared!
Yeah. That was the week IT took away my Unix-based mail and made me switch to Microsoft Outlook. Now they warn me not to open attachments that could flim-flam Microsoft Sillyware.
Until the CarterPhone decision of 1972 the law told us what phone technology we were allowed to have in this country, and Ma Bell was the law! See "The President's Analyst" for an insight into the climate of that day. Anyhow, with the state of electronics in those days you would have needed a backpack to carry your cell phone!
Its become apparent over the last twenty years - at least to geneticists - that the genome acts more like a hologram than a one-to-one map of traits. I don't know of any geneticist of the last generation who subscribes to the one gene-one protein school of the 19th century.
Microsoft has said they want to dominate the auto industry's embedded computers. Can you imagine hitting your computer-controlled brakes and having an hourglass appear on your dash? A few embedded projects ago our management insisted that we do a WinCE version of one of our products. It worked, more or less, but was slower, less stable and much more costly than our standard version. I was amazed at how many customers went for the Microsoft-blessed version. They'd been brainwashed by the Rodents of Redmond!
This problem's been around for quite a while in another form. Suppose MightyConglomerate wants to buy software from GarageShop, which doesn't want to release the source code for obvious reasons. MightyConglomerate requires GarageShop to escrow the source code, to be released to buyers in case GarageShop goes under. Its done all the time. It could also be done with keys.
The current patent system needs more than an overhaul, it needs a trashing! In the Monsanto case canola was being grown on adjacent farms. Defendent had refused to buy Monsanto seed, preferring to save seed from his harvest, as he'd done for 50 years. Monsanto, which is making a full-court-press to force all canola farmers to buy seed from them, tested plants growing along the ditch in front of the defendent's farm and found their own brand growing there. On that basis they went to court. I don't use canola oil anymore because of this case; I use Italian olive oil instead.
Curses! Those clever scientists and engineers have found us out! But don't tell the VC's - otherwise I might have to work for a living!
I once toiled in the Bible Belt, and hated the hypocrisy surrounding liquor laws - like the local mayor blasting "Demon Rum" in public and buying moonshine at the barber shop in private. Give me the Silicon Forest where, within five minutes of work, I can sit outdoors enjoying an excellent microbrew or local wine with my compatriots!
A friend of mine built and bench-tested a scramjet for a H.S. science fair project 45 years ago. Building a demonstration model is trivial. Making it practical is what the NASA and Boeing engineers get paid for. BTW - they decided long ago that they didn't want hydrogen gas or liquid sitting around airports or any population centers many years ago. The explosion of just a modest amount could turn O'Hare into a moon crater!
I was part of a small team that developed a WinCE product a couple of years ago. We also had a VxWorks version that was far superior. Our salespeople went around asking customers if they were willing to pay twice as much for a product with half the speed and a fraction fo the capability and reliability, but had the Microsoft imprimateur. Amazingly, most said yes! Marketing is everything!
I have written hundreds of thousands of lines of code in many different languages. Nowhere did I consider this different than the engineering drawings I used to produce for an airplane manufacturer. The drawings, though creative expressions that could be rendered in several ways, were never granted First Amendment protections; it boggles the mind that code should be.
Depending on the scope of your class, there's lots of Unix training materials out there that could be used as-is or easily adapted. I used to teach BSD Unix driver/OS classes/networking classes, but that was three jobs ago, and no longer have the materials. But I never invented when I could plagiarize!
Get real! The French aren't telling Yahoo to stop advertising this stuff - they're telling Yahoo to do whatever they can to make sure stuff doesn't get delivered to French addresses. Probably not doable, but this is the business of the French. Germany has similar laws. I'm old enough to have served occupation duty in Germany, and they were extremely touchy about letting Nazis get another foothold in the system. They still are. I don't agree with their methods of censorship at all, but hey, its none of my business. Or yours. Unless you live in France or Germany.
"Just run both" doesn't work for personnel reasons. A M/S-oriented IS staff will eventually cut off all access to the Unix side, as happened at my company. In my job its extremely important to search mail text from time to time. Outlook has no capability for this. The calendar capabilities are a joke; I went back to my Unix calendar in an Exceed window very quickly. Between these and the virii that strike Outlook periodically, I feel that I've had an arm cut off. I could go on, but the upshot is, we traded a reliable and competent mail system for one that is neither. I'm not anti-M/S - I've written lots of s/w for their systems over the years and they do some things very well. But I am anti-bad-software, and Outlook is bad software.
Get real! Old IT workers get fired because they don't spend the time to upgrade their skills. I'm 62, get a very competitive salary, and stay employed because I reinvent myself every few years. More than half the programmers in my present place of employment are over 40. So quit whining. Read a book! Take a course! Or else plan on flipping burgers in your old age! Chuck in Beaverton
I've written many dozens of drivers over the years, for all kinds of devices, and I'm torn on this one. On the one hand, a company puts a lot of hard cash into developing a driver, which they don't want to give away. On the other hand its nice to have lots of knowledgeable people out there reviewing one's code and pointing out errors. I could write a book of war stories of how companies have lost credibility, even hard cash, because they went closed-source.