I know that a lot of people enjoy bashing Micro$oft when a hole like this turns up in their products, but just for perspective, this will apply to any application that has sufficient integration. And as far as that goes, even the Privacy Foundation says that the integration is potentially useful and they recommend keeping it there. Just wait a little while; integration and component reuse is a very important feature of MS Windows, but Linux is catching up quickly. Soon we'll have this sort of problem also.
Apple published the name in the court filing. The story says that news.com didn't publish the name to avoid embarassing people with the same name.
My take on the story is that Apple is justified in prosecuting (although perhaps not persecuting) people who leak their secrets. After all, they are very secretive, and they make their people sign NDA's precisely to avoid situations like this one. Totally ignoring whether leaks hurt or help them, they are justified both legally and morally in acting against employees who leak data.
Ok, this story seems quite bogus, but still it would not surprise me at all to see huge flaws in CSIS. They are The World's Least Competent Spy Agency. Seriously, you could probably steal their secrets by hanging around Ottawa and looking for dropped documents bearing their name. No computer espionage necessary. On the other hand, using software without source available for very sensitive purposes sounds rather stupid. If I was running a security agency (paid to paranoid), I'd want my own team to review everything. I'd use either software developed in house, or only the most proven secure solutions available (OpenBSD comes to mind, and nothing else, although I wouldn't be terribly surprised if big three letter agencies have roto-rooters that can roll over it just as quickly as they can over a Linux or NT box). But there goes CSIS. Blecch. They are an embarassment to Canada. I bet they exchange data by anonymous ftp. Oh well. It does beat living in certain other countries that have secret services that take themselves way too seriously.
Give the story submitter a break. He's from the company that makes the product, he's problably been brainwashed into it... FreeVeracity this... FreeVeracity that... FreeVeracity and the kitchen sink... Trust me, I've done the same thing.
1. Gamers don't want it. It has more lag than a telephone modem! With my new high speed satellite connection, I'm going to whip yo... damn, dead already.
2. No one who can get cable or DSL wants it. It's more expensive, and it's no more portable. Even if one of these dishes is small enough to mount on your BMW, you still have to power, and much worse, aim the lousy thing.
3. So the people left are ones in the country who are willing to pay lots of money for high speed Internet service. Computer illiterates, swamp dwellers and underpaid rednecks need not apply. Well, if I lived in the middle of nowhere, you could count me in. My guess though, is that the seven people above who have proclaimed their support are the only ones. Take advantage of it now guys, it's not going to last long!
1394, in no current or planned incarnation, has nearly enough bandwidth for 3d graphics. I think there's plenty of room in the market for two standards that DON'T EVEN COMPETE. I can't speculate too much since there wasn't any information provided, but I would guess it tries to deal with some of the issues arising from limited main memory bandwidth. Don't ask me how; so long as it's faster, I'll be happy to buy it, or whatever it displaces from the high price point, depending upon how much money I have at the time.
A number of people have already said that choosing one platform only for a class makes a lot of sense, because otherwise testing is a nightmare, and TA's may have difficulty if asked to help people with a whole bunch of environments. I agree completely, but further, I think that using MS Windows for an introductory level course makes a lot of sense. Many of the people in your class won't have seen a unix system before. Since programming concepts are emphasized over environments or languages, this is a way of easing them in when everything else is new. I'm not sure if this second point applies to you (it didn't to me, but my first courses were on Solaris gcc anyway), but some introductory courses can have a mix of people in them, sometimes as broad as computer science, through physical science, and even some of the more technical other programs, like business. Probably not all that range in one course, but still. The first types will almost certainly use unix systems later in their education, but a business major isn't likely to. They might have a lot of difficulty learning to use a unix system, for no great end.
So have I many mp3's which I will never buy the cd's. Without Napster I wouldn't. But practically, I can't be held responsible because there are a million people with just as many or more. I'd love to be held accountable (well... I wouldn't do it if I was, anyway), but that isn't really an option. On the other hand, Napster built this infrastructure for the sole purpose of copyright violations. Surely there's no justice in that either. There must be some way to stop this without overloading everyone's moral operators. It will just take a lot of finesse in the laws, which is what I guess I have to look for now. As for websites and ftp and whatnot, yeah, I can use that to, but the point is I didn't, because they were too inconvenient for mp3's for someone who doesn't care, like me.
I am strongly of the opinion that Napster should be held accountable for copyright infringement on their system, so I applauded the initial ruling, but in light of this, I'm not so sure. Looking at what they say, the ruling does seem pretty draconian. There is a big difference between a system whose primary purpose is copyright infringement like Napster, and one where copyright infringement is possible, like almost any information sharing system, and shutting down anything with the capability to share files would be a huge mistake. I guess the lesson is we have to be very careful when making rules, because they can serve a lot more than the intended purpose. I really hope the final ruling takes this into account, because even though I agree with them in this case, I doubt the RIAA will show restraint or discretion in attacking other technologies where their wrath is harmful and unjustified.
I'd say that monitors on punch card systems probably constituted the first OS's. Simple, primitive, and not providing the services of modern OS's, but still. I'm just saying this because it's the first organized step that my OS prof gave in his "history and motivation of the OS" lecture, though. I don't consider an individual program that runs nothing but itself to be an OS, and that's all that I can think of preceeding such systems.
Touting ET life at every possible opportunity is wonderful for arousing interest in space exploration among people who have no clue. I say, explore space for the sake of exploring space, with an eye out for profit, cool stuff, and yes, life also. But we at least should know better than to expect everything to find life, or that finding life is the primary purpose of exploring space.
C'mon, we can do without the whole "could be life!" thing. All the evidence looks tantalizing, but on closer examination, it doesn't hold up. Like me looking for bugs in my code: "could be here! Nope. Could be there! Nope..."
When we find extraterrestrial life, if we find extraterrestrial life, that will be cool. Until then, just forget about it. Besides, we don't need the media hype. This is Slashdot; we're excited already!
origin of creativity neither commercial nor free
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Free For All
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· Score: 1
Truly new ideas usually stem from research. This can be in academia, in private labs, even by individuals or small groups working in the fringes sometimes. What happens next depends upon who is doing it and where. Sometimes they will commercialize it, through a startup or by giving the idea to a large corporation. Other times they will implement and give it out as free software. Most times, the ideas just sink into obscurity until someone interested finds them or redoes the work.
What we see as innovation, in both free and commercial software, is just taking an idea that is not commonly visible and implementing it, or combining a few ideas and implementing them. Napster: peer to peer file sharing + Internet technology. Innovative? Hardly. Here in Ontario, Telus Mobility was considered innovative for implementing Cantonese voice mail. Innovative? Hardly. Most anything you see that is good like that an old idea whose time has come, or an old idea with a slight twist on it.
Personally, I'd like to see a lot more ideas implemented, both commercially and for free. I don't mind if not everyone has access to the latest and greatest; I'd much rather see it out there for someone to use, and the rest of us to imitate or wait twenty years until the patent expires, than buried in a shelf and going to waste.
They have been taught that sharing is wrong and that license fees feed the programmers who write the software. Having difficulty understanding the fundamental error in this reasoning is often the reason why these individuals fail to grasp even the basic concepts of free software.
Having difficulty understanding the fundamental error in this reasoning is probably also the reason Mr. Oberg forgot to explain it to us. Personally, I'm a big fan of writing software, selling licenses, and using the money to pay people, who can then buy food. In my mind, it really beats the one where I write software, and release it free, and get kicked out on the street and starve to death. If someone wanted to pay me to write free software, that would be great, but I have a feeling I'm stuck in this model for the rest of my working life.
Personally my political leanings are corporate anarchist... kind of give power to groups of people, your traditional multinational corporation being one type of group to consider. Ok, having admitted my complete difference in views with yours, how about this: consumer power and corporate power are pretty much the same thing. After all, who listens to consumers but corporations? And listen they do, whether you speak with your overly enlightened brain or your greed and your dollar. If more people put the two together, they might even get what they really want, instead of what they claim to want or what they act like they want. If you want to avoid corporate power, I'm sure there are populist systems that would do it, but consumers is inherently pro-corporate. Finally, I'm on the other side of Napster than you. I don't particularly care, but I'll speculate that the reason is that I'm in the computer field to have fun, and make a living at the same time, not to get cheap thrills or steal from anyone. Sorry for sounding like a flame. I'm sure you can articulate your views better than you did. It's just hard to think rigorously in the absence of critiscism.
I believe that Intel can pull of decent volumes of P4's. Because of the new architecture, they won't have the same very low yield problems at high clock rates that the 6th generation had... remember, that core was designed to run at 150-200 mhz initially. This one is designed to run at 1.5-2 ghz initially, with the ability to bump it up significantly beyond that a major design consideration. It probably won't beat a P3 or Athlon at the same clock speed, but if they can keep a huge lead in clock speed over the competition (which at this point looks like a credible strategy), they may be able to have the faster chip anyway.
Since they serve mostly banner ads, any censorware that blocks this blocks banner ads. It's a tradeoff: no p0rn, but no banner ads either. I'd take that one any day!
Two absurdities argued with this logic:
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Is UNIX An OS?
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· Score: 2
1. I have two cars. On the first, the windows don't move; they can not be raised or lowered. Since raising and lowering (or at least being able to raise and lower) the windows is an integral part of the experience associated with modern cars, this car is not a car. The second car has power windows, but the electrical systems aren't working properly, so the windows do not raise or lower. I'm not sure if this one is a car.
On my computer I have two operating systems. The first, Linux, doesn't have a GUI. Since that is an integral part of the experience associated with modern OS's, this is not an OS. The second is Windows 3.1. It has a GUI, but it is very broken. I'm not sure if it is an OS.
2. My web browser is an integral part of my modern user experience. I use it all the time, and many of the programs I run on my computer use its components or rely on it being there. Anything that does not come with a web browser built in is not an OS.
My word processor and my spreadsheet program are an integral parts of my modern user experience. I use them all the time, and many of the programs I run on my computer use their components or rely on them being there. Anything that does not come with a word processor and a spreadsheet program built in is not an OS.
My mouse is an integral part of my modern user experience. I use it all the time, and many of the programs I run on my computer use its components or rely on it being there. Anything that does not come with a mouse built in is not an OS.
Ok, so the mouse one was a low blow, since it's really easy to define around. But the point stands: a technical definition only when further information modifies the premises of the original definition. What was an OS is still an OS will be an OS. The set of software required to make a viable consumer computing platform will change, and if you want to define a word or phrase that refers to that set, or a snapshot of that set at a particular time, fine. But "operating sytem" is not that; OS is already taken.
Ah well, that's why I'm in computers, not chemistry. I WAS going to look it up, but I didn't even bother keeping those texts. Anyway, does it really matter, if the curve was different, wouldn't the liquid be under really, really high pressure at those temperatures anyway? Or is it a difference of really really high vs. a couple orders of magnitude higher really really high? Or am I completely wrong? It wouldn't be very effective if you had to refrigerate it; you'd drive your car into the wilderness, go canoe camping for a week, come back and you're 200 km from anywhere and out of gas.
Well, actually, the interesting part of this is that it doesn't involve electricity or burning anything. That said, read the post about it being low grade energy. I believe that gasoline engines run at many hundreds of Kelvins, whereas this works at a measly three hundred, with a difference that is a only significant fraction of that. So I agree with you that hydrogen is a better fuel, put it in a fuel cell (just for your information, much "big Detroit money" is now behind fuel cell research), but we'll have to see whether they finally work on H2, alcohol, or even gasoline. Haha, they also work at a measly few hundred Kelvins, but it doesn't matter since the valuable energy produced is electrical, instead of direct mechanical energy.
It is very different from a standard gasoline engine, where you burn gas, and the expansion caused by burning a liquid with air and producing very hot vapours pushes a piston.
In this case, you don't burn anything. The final exhaust stream is room temperature (ambient environment, actually, but close enough), so you don't need to heat anything up. As for storage, it doesn't require any energy to store; you just stick it in a container when it's cold, cap it really tight, and it stays liquid because it can't expand into a gas.
To get energy out of it, just let it out of the container slowly. When it warms up it will try to expand and create a high pressure (it will warm up in storage, so you need to seal it in tightly in a tank that can withstand high pressures), which you can use to push a piston, just like in a gasoline engine.
It's a pretty neat idea, the article says it has three times the energy density of batteries, which is not bad. Nitrogen gas (N2, not NOx like from gasoline cars) is completely non polluting, so it's environmentally friendly once it's in the car. Nitrogen is also a renewable resource, so no worries about resource depletion.
There are some obvious difficulties, too, though. Battery energy density will likely improve with new technologies, whereas this won't. Batteries can be recharged on the go with solar panels, also. Fuel cells and gas-electric hybrids will both have much higher energy densities. That means this comes out on the low side when it comes to range before refuelling. I'm not sure about performance. It depends on the pressure, but I would not be surprised if it comes in behind even electric cars. I strongly doubt it will come anywhere near matching gasoline cars. That's just conjecture, though. Safetywise, you need a high pressure tank, and refuelling could be a problem. You will probably have to cool it down until it liquefies at standard pressures, or pump it in at very high pressure so it stays liquid; both methods have big problems. Finally is the issue of compressing the gas to a liquid. That takes a lot of energy, so this isn't exactly free environmentally. If your electricity source is a coal generating station, these cars would probably pollute just as much as gasoline cars.
With all the problems, I doubt this is the way of the future, but still, a very interesting and unique idea.
I've only taken two courses on architecture so far, and no practical design experience, so I'm not a huge expert, but applying the relevant parts of my education tells me that, yeah, x86 in fact does inherently suck. I'm not sure the order of difference between IA32 and IA64, so I can't say if Intel has gone far enough, or even in the right direction, but my somewhat informed opinion is that leaving x86 was a good move.
I think the difference is in the actual time spent designing code and reviewing it. I also think reducing deadline constraints helps, and obviously sensible management (ie. that facilitates communication and doesn't constantly change specs) is important. I would certainly dispute any claims that the space shuttle code group is more productive than anyone else! Perhaps it is justified in their case, but I think most software can do without reviewing that is that extensive. I also don't think working conditions (like 9 to 5) make that much difference. Whatever is comfortable, so long as the all important process is in place, followed by the coders, and supported by managers.
Although I tend to agree that deadline pressures and the like that are found in industry can put a huge strain on coders and add a lot of bugs to the process, I don't think open source is quite the panacea that he makes it out to be.
For starters, it does suffer from exactly the same shortage of coders as industry; probably the shortage is even more acute, since industry pays so much more in most cases. We gotta eat, remember! I'd expect that even the ratio of incompetent coders to good ones is just as bad, and that the difference is that no one uses really bad open source software. It is likely also mitigated by the lack of deadline pressures, though, so do mark that as a small advantage for open development.
With regards to fixes and features, I think that there isn't really any big advantage there for open source. Getting a patch into a release is much simpler than in the closed commercial world, particularly if dealing with software from external suppliers, but what of the features covered? They have to be ones that scratch the itch of someone who writes code. Why has it taken so long to get even the inklings of a decent open source word processor (and lets face it, StarOffice-under-new-name is more bloated but less featureful than MS Office)? I rarely write long documents, and when I do, I'm happy using LaTeX, a programming language, to write them. That just isn't an itch that we get very often. The difference is even bigger when considering stuff like special software for musicians.
Ok, that's that, and please don't take this as a rant against the open source development model. It obviously works well, often. So does closed commercial development. Both models have big problems, and neither is vastly superior; the two can exist in parallel. Perhaps the can even have a symbiotic relation, who knows?
I wonder what would have happened with regards to this if the Corel/ Inprise merger had gone through. We all know that Corel pissed off several people by making a number of mistakes a little while ago but since then they (or their PR people at least) have been working very hard to clean up the situation. If the two companies had merged, I wonder if this would have not happened in the first place, or if it would have just been more fuel on the fire.
PS. I may be lacking a few details--I couldn't read the article, as the link was broken.
Slashdot Mirror
I know that a lot of people enjoy bashing Micro$oft when a hole like this turns up in their products, but just for perspective, this will apply to any application that has sufficient integration. And as far as that goes, even the Privacy Foundation says that the integration is potentially useful and they recommend keeping it there. Just wait a little while; integration and component reuse is a very important feature of MS Windows, but Linux is catching up quickly. Soon we'll have this sort of problem also.
My take on the story is that Apple is justified in prosecuting (although perhaps not persecuting) people who leak their secrets. After all, they are very secretive, and they make their people sign NDA's precisely to avoid situations like this one. Totally ignoring whether leaks hurt or help them, they are justified both legally and morally in acting against employees who leak data.
Ok, this story seems quite bogus, but still it would not surprise me at all to see huge flaws in CSIS. They are The World's Least Competent Spy Agency. Seriously, you could probably steal their secrets by hanging around Ottawa and looking for dropped documents bearing their name. No computer espionage necessary. On the other hand, using software without source available for very sensitive purposes sounds rather stupid. If I was running a security agency (paid to paranoid), I'd want my own team to review everything. I'd use either software developed in house, or only the most proven secure solutions available (OpenBSD comes to mind, and nothing else, although I wouldn't be terribly surprised if big three letter agencies have roto-rooters that can roll over it just as quickly as they can over a Linux or NT box). But there goes CSIS. Blecch. They are an embarassment to Canada. I bet they exchange data by anonymous ftp. Oh well. It does beat living in certain other countries that have secret services that take themselves way too seriously.
Give the story submitter a break. He's from the company that makes the product, he's problably been brainwashed into it... FreeVeracity this... FreeVeracity that... FreeVeracity and the kitchen sink... Trust me, I've done the same thing.
1. Gamers don't want it. It has more lag than a telephone modem! With my new high speed satellite connection, I'm going to whip yo... damn, dead already.
2. No one who can get cable or DSL wants it. It's more expensive, and it's no more portable. Even if one of these dishes is small enough to mount on your BMW, you still have to power, and much worse, aim the lousy thing.
3. So the people left are ones in the country who are willing to pay lots of money for high speed Internet service. Computer illiterates, swamp dwellers and underpaid rednecks need not apply. Well, if I lived in the middle of nowhere, you could count me in. My guess though, is that the seven people above who have proclaimed their support are the only ones. Take advantage of it now guys, it's not going to last long!
1394, in no current or planned incarnation, has nearly enough bandwidth for 3d graphics. I think there's plenty of room in the market for two standards that DON'T EVEN COMPETE. I can't speculate too much since there wasn't any information provided, but I would guess it tries to deal with some of the issues arising from limited main memory bandwidth. Don't ask me how; so long as it's faster, I'll be happy to buy it, or whatever it displaces from the high price point, depending upon how much money I have at the time.
A number of people have already said that choosing one platform only for a class makes a lot of sense, because otherwise testing is a nightmare, and TA's may have difficulty if asked to help people with a whole bunch of environments. I agree completely, but further, I think that using MS Windows for an introductory level course makes a lot of sense. Many of the people in your class won't have seen a unix system before. Since programming concepts are emphasized over environments or languages, this is a way of easing them in when everything else is new. I'm not sure if this second point applies to you (it didn't to me, but my first courses were on Solaris gcc anyway), but some introductory courses can have a mix of people in them, sometimes as broad as computer science, through physical science, and even some of the more technical other programs, like business. Probably not all that range in one course, but still. The first types will almost certainly use unix systems later in their education, but a business major isn't likely to. They might have a lot of difficulty learning to use a unix system, for no great end.
So have I many mp3's which I will never buy the cd's. Without Napster I wouldn't. But practically, I can't be held responsible because there are a million people with just as many or more. I'd love to be held accountable (well... I wouldn't do it if I was, anyway), but that isn't really an option. On the other hand, Napster built this infrastructure for the sole purpose of copyright violations. Surely there's no justice in that either. There must be some way to stop this without overloading everyone's moral operators. It will just take a lot of finesse in the laws, which is what I guess I have to look for now. As for websites and ftp and whatnot, yeah, I can use that to, but the point is I didn't, because they were too inconvenient for mp3's for someone who doesn't care, like me.
I am strongly of the opinion that Napster should be held accountable for copyright infringement on their system, so I applauded the initial ruling, but in light of this, I'm not so sure. Looking at what they say, the ruling does seem pretty draconian. There is a big difference between a system whose primary purpose is copyright infringement like Napster, and one where copyright infringement is possible, like almost any information sharing system, and shutting down anything with the capability to share files would be a huge mistake. I guess the lesson is we have to be very careful when making rules, because they can serve a lot more than the intended purpose. I really hope the final ruling takes this into account, because even though I agree with them in this case, I doubt the RIAA will show restraint or discretion in attacking other technologies where their wrath is harmful and unjustified.
I'd say that monitors on punch card systems probably constituted the first OS's. Simple, primitive, and not providing the services of modern OS's, but still. I'm just saying this because it's the first organized step that my OS prof gave in his "history and motivation of the OS" lecture, though. I don't consider an individual program that runs nothing but itself to be an OS, and that's all that I can think of preceeding such systems.
Touting ET life at every possible opportunity is wonderful for arousing interest in space exploration among people who have no clue. I say, explore space for the sake of exploring space, with an eye out for profit, cool stuff, and yes, life also. But we at least should know better than to expect everything to find life, or that finding life is the primary purpose of exploring space.
When we find extraterrestrial life, if we find extraterrestrial life, that will be cool. Until then, just forget about it. Besides, we don't need the media hype. This is Slashdot; we're excited already!
What we see as innovation, in both free and commercial software, is just taking an idea that is not commonly visible and implementing it, or combining a few ideas and implementing them. Napster: peer to peer file sharing + Internet technology. Innovative? Hardly. Here in Ontario, Telus Mobility was considered innovative for implementing Cantonese voice mail. Innovative? Hardly. Most anything you see that is good like that an old idea whose time has come, or an old idea with a slight twist on it.
Personally, I'd like to see a lot more ideas implemented, both commercially and for free. I don't mind if not everyone has access to the latest and greatest; I'd much rather see it out there for someone to use, and the rest of us to imitate or wait twenty years until the patent expires, than buried in a shelf and going to waste.
They have been taught that sharing is wrong and that license fees feed the programmers who write the software. Having difficulty understanding the fundamental error in this reasoning is often the reason why these individuals fail to grasp even the basic concepts of free software.
Having difficulty understanding the fundamental error in this reasoning is probably also the reason Mr. Oberg forgot to explain it to us. Personally, I'm a big fan of writing software, selling licenses, and using the money to pay people, who can then buy food. In my mind, it really beats the one where I write software, and release it free, and get kicked out on the street and starve to death. If someone wanted to pay me to write free software, that would be great, but I have a feeling I'm stuck in this model for the rest of my working life.
Personally my political leanings are corporate anarchist... kind of give power to groups of people, your traditional multinational corporation being one type of group to consider. Ok, having admitted my complete difference in views with yours, how about this: consumer power and corporate power are pretty much the same thing. After all, who listens to consumers but corporations? And listen they do, whether you speak with your overly enlightened brain or your greed and your dollar. If more people put the two together, they might even get what they really want, instead of what they claim to want or what they act like they want. If you want to avoid corporate power, I'm sure there are populist systems that would do it, but consumers is inherently pro-corporate. Finally, I'm on the other side of Napster than you. I don't particularly care, but I'll speculate that the reason is that I'm in the computer field to have fun, and make a living at the same time, not to get cheap thrills or steal from anyone. Sorry for sounding like a flame. I'm sure you can articulate your views better than you did. It's just hard to think rigorously in the absence of critiscism.
I believe that Intel can pull of decent volumes of P4's. Because of the new architecture, they won't have the same very low yield problems at high clock rates that the 6th generation had... remember, that core was designed to run at 150-200 mhz initially. This one is designed to run at 1.5-2 ghz initially, with the ability to bump it up significantly beyond that a major design consideration. It probably won't beat a P3 or Athlon at the same clock speed, but if they can keep a huge lead in clock speed over the competition (which at this point looks like a credible strategy), they may be able to have the faster chip anyway.
Since they serve mostly banner ads, any censorware that blocks this blocks banner ads. It's a tradeoff: no p0rn, but no banner ads either. I'd take that one any day!
1. I have two cars. On the first, the windows don't move; they can not be raised or lowered. Since raising and lowering (or at least being able to raise and lower) the windows is an integral part of the experience associated with modern cars, this car is not a car. The second car has power windows, but the electrical systems aren't working properly, so the windows do not raise or lower. I'm not sure if this one is a car.
On my computer I have two operating systems. The first, Linux, doesn't have a GUI. Since that is an integral part of the experience associated with modern OS's, this is not an OS. The second is Windows 3.1. It has a GUI, but it is very broken. I'm not sure if it is an OS.
2. My web browser is an integral part of my modern user experience. I use it all the time, and many of the programs I run on my computer use its components or rely on it being there. Anything that does not come with a web browser built in is not an OS.
My word processor and my spreadsheet program are an integral parts of my modern user experience. I use them all the time, and many of the programs I run on my computer use their components or rely on them being there. Anything that does not come with a word processor and a spreadsheet program built in is not an OS.
My mouse is an integral part of my modern user experience. I use it all the time, and many of the programs I run on my computer use its components or rely on it being there. Anything that does not come with a mouse built in is not an OS.
Ok, so the mouse one was a low blow, since it's really easy to define around. But the point stands: a technical definition only when further information modifies the premises of the original definition. What was an OS is still an OS will be an OS. The set of software required to make a viable consumer computing platform will change, and if you want to define a word or phrase that refers to that set, or a snapshot of that set at a particular time, fine. But "operating sytem" is not that; OS is already taken.
Ah well, that's why I'm in computers, not chemistry. I WAS going to look it up, but I didn't even bother keeping those texts. Anyway, does it really matter, if the curve was different, wouldn't the liquid be under really, really high pressure at those temperatures anyway? Or is it a difference of really really high vs. a couple orders of magnitude higher really really high? Or am I completely wrong? It wouldn't be very effective if you had to refrigerate it; you'd drive your car into the wilderness, go canoe camping for a week, come back and you're 200 km from anywhere and out of gas.
Well, actually, the interesting part of this is that it doesn't involve electricity or burning anything. That said, read the post about it being low grade energy. I believe that gasoline engines run at many hundreds of Kelvins, whereas this works at a measly three hundred, with a difference that is a only significant fraction of that. So I agree with you that hydrogen is a better fuel, put it in a fuel cell (just for your information, much "big Detroit money" is now behind fuel cell research), but we'll have to see whether they finally work on H2, alcohol, or even gasoline. Haha, they also work at a measly few hundred Kelvins, but it doesn't matter since the valuable energy produced is electrical, instead of direct mechanical energy.
In this case, you don't burn anything. The final exhaust stream is room temperature (ambient environment, actually, but close enough), so you don't need to heat anything up. As for storage, it doesn't require any energy to store; you just stick it in a container when it's cold, cap it really tight, and it stays liquid because it can't expand into a gas.
To get energy out of it, just let it out of the container slowly. When it warms up it will try to expand and create a high pressure (it will warm up in storage, so you need to seal it in tightly in a tank that can withstand high pressures), which you can use to push a piston, just like in a gasoline engine.
It's a pretty neat idea, the article says it has three times the energy density of batteries, which is not bad. Nitrogen gas (N2, not NOx like from gasoline cars) is completely non polluting, so it's environmentally friendly once it's in the car. Nitrogen is also a renewable resource, so no worries about resource depletion.
There are some obvious difficulties, too, though. Battery energy density will likely improve with new technologies, whereas this won't. Batteries can be recharged on the go with solar panels, also. Fuel cells and gas-electric hybrids will both have much higher energy densities. That means this comes out on the low side when it comes to range before refuelling. I'm not sure about performance. It depends on the pressure, but I would not be surprised if it comes in behind even electric cars. I strongly doubt it will come anywhere near matching gasoline cars. That's just conjecture, though. Safetywise, you need a high pressure tank, and refuelling could be a problem. You will probably have to cool it down until it liquefies at standard pressures, or pump it in at very high pressure so it stays liquid; both methods have big problems. Finally is the issue of compressing the gas to a liquid. That takes a lot of energy, so this isn't exactly free environmentally. If your electricity source is a coal generating station, these cars would probably pollute just as much as gasoline cars.
With all the problems, I doubt this is the way of the future, but still, a very interesting and unique idea.
I've only taken two courses on architecture so far, and no practical design experience, so I'm not a huge expert, but applying the relevant parts of my education tells me that, yeah, x86 in fact does inherently suck. I'm not sure the order of difference between IA32 and IA64, so I can't say if Intel has gone far enough, or even in the right direction, but my somewhat informed opinion is that leaving x86 was a good move.
I think the difference is in the actual time spent designing code and reviewing it. I also think reducing deadline constraints helps, and obviously sensible management (ie. that facilitates communication and doesn't constantly change specs) is important. I would certainly dispute any claims that the space shuttle code group is more productive than anyone else! Perhaps it is justified in their case, but I think most software can do without reviewing that is that extensive. I also don't think working conditions (like 9 to 5) make that much difference. Whatever is comfortable, so long as the all important process is in place, followed by the coders, and supported by managers.
For starters, it does suffer from exactly the same shortage of coders as industry; probably the shortage is even more acute, since industry pays so much more in most cases. We gotta eat, remember! I'd expect that even the ratio of incompetent coders to good ones is just as bad, and that the difference is that no one uses really bad open source software. It is likely also mitigated by the lack of deadline pressures, though, so do mark that as a small advantage for open development.
With regards to fixes and features, I think that there isn't really any big advantage there for open source. Getting a patch into a release is much simpler than in the closed commercial world, particularly if dealing with software from external suppliers, but what of the features covered? They have to be ones that scratch the itch of someone who writes code. Why has it taken so long to get even the inklings of a decent open source word processor (and lets face it, StarOffice-under-new-name is more bloated but less featureful than MS Office)? I rarely write long documents, and when I do, I'm happy using LaTeX, a programming language, to write them. That just isn't an itch that we get very often. The difference is even bigger when considering stuff like special software for musicians.
Ok, that's that, and please don't take this as a rant against the open source development model. It obviously works well, often. So does closed commercial development. Both models have big problems, and neither is vastly superior; the two can exist in parallel. Perhaps the can even have a symbiotic relation, who knows?
PS. I may be lacking a few details--I couldn't read the article, as the link was broken.