Does this apply to Titan AE? Seems like the timing of the ruling means Titan AE won't be getting any Oscars. The screening was in a theater, but it was delivered over the internet...
Well, these are "essential" in the sense that they are classics, and many of us watched 'em when we were little without realizing what they were:
Speed Racer (mahha go-go: mach #5) Gigantor (tetsujin juhachi-go: iron-man #18) [forgot the title: early power-rangers anime with Casey Kasem as the voice of the leader]
I don't know if Lensman is even available in the US.
What would be cool is if Compaq would contribute code to GCC, as for example IBM has done for the Power PC.
Compaq's CCC for Alpha has been specifically tuned for the various Alpha architectures. GCC works pretty well already (I use it all the time and have no complaints), but there are some examples where CCC produces better code. If Compaq would donate their Alpha backend, I'm sure some of those optimizations could be used.
I applaud Compaq for making their compiler and math libraries available for Linux, but it would be even better if we could see the source code.
William Gibson, in _Idoru_, describes a computer case made from molded and fused sand, with silver and turquoise inlays. Of course that computer had VR goggles, sense-gloves, and optical data ports, too, but the case was a hand-made work of art.
Is there anybody out there in the fully-custom case market? Can I get a case that's more valuable than the components I plug into it?
I guess you haven't been over to http://www.alphalinux.org/ lately. You can find many links to GPLed and Open Source fast math routines for Alpha - libffm, blas, etc. (yes, the standard libm that comes with GCC is slow on Alpha, but closed source libs are NOT the only alternative).
You might also want to visit the EGCS site, which mentions Alpha updates to GCC as recently as March. GCC does support the newer EV6 architecture. The problem with Linux is more that large portions of it are hand-coded for the GCC assembler -- and optimizing kernel code doesn't do much since so little time is spent in the kernel anyway.;-)
Many Linux distros default to completely open, insecure installations with dozens of daemons running that never get used, telnets and ftps that send passwords over the network in the clear, and other such problems with known solutions.
Do you think it is the responsibility of the vendors to provide default installations that are more secure? Certainly it seems that Joe User can't be depended upon to edit inetd.conf or install SRP telnet.
Are there any plans for a "secure" slackware that requires the user to enable ports he or she wants to have open, and other security features (a crypto package for example).
sigh. not a single one of the "moderated up" replies to this article are worth reading.i suppose it only stands to reason when slashdot is reporting articles from the "New Scientist" as real science. That's a rag.
the system provides a signal to the inner ear (through electrodes mounted behind the ears and on the forehead) that is non-specific and designed to effectively turn the balance system off -- the system cannot tell your ear that you are tilting left or right -- it simply blasts your ears with a 2 Hz electrical wave. With your inner ears shut down, the visual input provides the only motion cues. Note also that the patent *includes* the use of visual input. The medical-use stimulators are already patented, of course. So, there's still plenty of room for all you wetware hackers to figure out the correct electrical signals to actually stimulate the inner ears correctly (instead of just shorting them out).
In a recent lecture, Murray Gell-Mann reported that "Physics is done". All that remains is just working out the details. Now, considering the obvious huge discrepancy between quantum mechanics and relativity, this seems rather premature. How close are we really to "the end of Physics"? Is this even a meaningful concept?
Perhaps you've heard this point of view: "Physics is done, because Physics is simple. Biology is far more complicated than Physics, and in fact, Physics is a special case of universal Biological laws." (paraphrased from Rosen, 1991).
Do you think there is any truth to the notion that questions like "What is Life?" are unanswerable by current Physical Theory? Or can Biology inform Physics in the search for the "End" of Physics?
It's not only the companies, the patent office itself is loony tunes, allowing patents on anything and everything (this is an International Patent). Given the power they are handing out (authority to kick the ass of anybody using their "patented" technology) some checks and balances are in order. Peer review at least.
The real problem with online shopping is all the middlemen that have inserted themselves into the clickstream between buyer and vendor to skim the top off e-commerce. Claiming to provide valuable services for the vendors, such as demographics, fancy web design, and first choice on the broker-owned portal search engine (for an extra fee), all they really provide is poor quality web forms, out of date listings, and lost orders.
I as a client don't need any of the services they are providing to the vendor. In fact, I may even object to the fact that they are collecting demographics and I certainly object to the way that various portals reorder their search results according to the vendors they have on special that day (AltaVista and Yahoo are both guilty here -- I use only Google now).
I don't live in the US, and I have been faced with stupid web forms put up by these para-sites that let you choose any country from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, and then require a State and 5 digit zip code (postal codes in Japan are 7 digits, and there are no States) or they'll refuse to process your order (* required field).
These sites are often out of date. This has bitten me twice this year, once severely (a hotel refused to honor a reservation because the price on the agent's web page was out of date). And I had a toy company email me 3 days after I submitted a form to tell me they were out of stock.
Another hotel never got my reservation (the agent was supposed to FAX it to them!).
I have no sympathy for vendors that can't write their own web pages. Only a year or two ago, before all these portal sites crawled out of the ether, buying on-line was just like the normal mail-order catalog model of buying. Now it's a maze of bad code and bad service, and I for one now refuse to shop at any company that can't take the time to update their own web pages, and I don't use portal sites that get paid to order their search results.
The gov't. doesn't want you to download crypto, but you can download diseases (from gov't servers, even). Note that it may be possible to use this information to create deadly plagues. If not now, then someday.
Not to mention HIV, hepatitis, tuberculosis, foot-and-mouth disease, encephalitis, chlamydia, strepp, and 3600 others.
You get the idea. I can't download Netscape with 128-bit crypto (since I'm in Japan), but I can download some of the world's worst mass-murderers. Of course, synthesizing Ebola isn't easy. Probably.
Cosm is a hard sci-fi story by Gregory Benford about a RHIC experiment that produces a macroscopic manifestation of the quark-gluon plasma (I won't say more -- read the book).
But basically, it's an entire book about exactly this issue. And much better done.
First, thanks for the comments that have been posted so far. Second, let me repeat that this isn't about which GUI to use, this is about how to write an app that can run under any desktop (or none) and still be theme-able, drag-n-drop-able, dock-able, etc.
So, there were several specific points made:
Berlin -- Seems to be a replacement for X that is highly modular, including lots of gui/desktop code. Isn't this just another environment we'd want to support?
wxWindows -- This contains an abstract GUI API, and several libraries that implement specific GUIs. You write your app for the abstract API. This doesn't address the problem of running under KDE or Gnome, although if the abstract GUI API can be extended to encompass desktop functionality, this might be a good place to start. The difficulty of creating one abstract API that encompasses all known desktops, GUIs, event models, themes, etc. is quite hairy, however.
Desktop standards -- The KDE and GNOME teams are working together to create interoperability standards such as window manager hints and so on. This is good and should continue. Is there a standard for themes?
Client/server model -- Write your app with a gui/desktop/window manager-independent core, and several specific frontends. This seems to be what you have to do now (and it's really just a good design policy). The amount of code that you have to rewrite is limited to the part that interfaces with the desktop environment. This part could be loaded dynamically, and possibly automatically generated. The trick of course is the API - maybe an extension of the wxWindows GUI API would be useful here.
Parrot/Glade/Fluid -- While not all of these were specifically mentioned, they are programs that create GUIs based on some abstract definition. These tools may evolve into something that can automatically generate the frontends mentioned above.
So the answer is mostly "Not Yet" but the future looks bright. I hope that the various desktop environment makers can agree on some more standards that will allow apps to run anywhere, and I also applaud the efforts of those working on automatic generation of frontend modules.
I'll be writing my app in as much of a UI-independent fashion as possible for now, and hope that the dynamically loadable GUI/Desktop Environment API is done before I am.
Is it just me, or do other people find it highly annoying that something released for "Linux" is only available for x86 systems? "Linux" is not a hardware specific term. In my opinion, if you say it "runs under Linux" then it should be 1) source code (which SGI's thing is not) or 2) available for ALL architectures that Linux supports (e.g. Alpha, PPC, etc.).
Let me add my voice to the choir of app developers who want their app to run under KDE/Gnome/Any/None desktop environment without major changes. Are there any architectural design rules you can suggest that would make that possible? Are there any libraries/toolkits which provide an abstract desktop API without forcing the choice of a widget set or programming language? I'm not just talking about drag&drop. I'm talking about e.g. writing an applet or standalone app that can be./configured --enable-kde or --enable-gnome, and have it Just Work on KDE, Gnome, or any future compliant desktop.
Slashdot Mirror
Does this apply to Titan AE? Seems like the timing of the ruling means Titan AE won't be getting any Oscars. The screening was in a theater, but it was delivered over the internet...
Well, these are "essential" in the sense that they
are classics, and many of us watched 'em when we
were little without realizing what they were:
Speed Racer (mahha go-go: mach #5)
Gigantor (tetsujin juhachi-go: iron-man #18)
[forgot the title: early power-rangers anime
with Casey Kasem as the voice of the leader]
I don't know if Lensman is even available in the US.
What would be cool is if Compaq would contribute code to GCC, as for example IBM has done for the Power PC.
Compaq's CCC for Alpha has been specifically tuned for the various Alpha architectures. GCC works pretty well already (I use it all the time and have no complaints), but there are some examples where CCC produces better code. If Compaq would donate their Alpha backend, I'm sure some of those optimizations could be used.
I applaud Compaq for making their compiler and math libraries available for Linux, but it would be even better if we could see the source code.
P.S. No I'm not the same Dr. Tom
William Gibson, in _Idoru_, describes a computer case made from molded and fused sand, with silver and turquoise inlays. Of course that computer had VR goggles, sense-gloves, and optical data ports, too, but the case was a hand-made work of art.
Is there anybody out there in the fully-custom case market? Can I get a case that's more valuable than the components I plug into it?
Obviously I meant the standard GNU libm compiled with GCC...
You might also want to visit the EGCS site, which mentions Alpha updates to GCC as recently as March. GCC does support the newer EV6 architecture. The problem with Linux is more that large portions of it are hand-coded for the GCC assembler -- and optimizing kernel code doesn't do much since so little time is spent in the kernel anyway. ;-)
It is only available for Linux on Pentium processors.
... shall I go on?
I *hate* it when people say "Available for Linux"
when they really mean Linux/x86.
It is not available for Linux/PPC or Linux/Alpha or Linux/S390 or
no, I don't want OpenBSD, I want Linux.
Linux CAN be more secure. Why NOT!!
is all moderation done in the first five minutes or does nobody really care about security?
Many Linux distros default to completely open,
insecure installations with dozens of daemons
running that never get used, telnets and ftps that
send passwords over the network in the clear, and
other such problems with known solutions.
Do you think it is the responsibility of the vendors
to provide default installations that are more secure?
Certainly it seems that Joe User can't be
depended upon to edit inetd.conf or install
SRP telnet.
Are there any plans for a "secure" slackware that
requires the user to enable ports he or she wants to have open,
and other security features (a crypto package for example).
Moderate this up!
sigh. not a single one of the "moderated up" replies to this article are worth reading.i suppose it only stands to reason when slashdot is reporting articles from the "New Scientist" as real science. That's a rag.
Here's a better SRP link:
http://berlin.arcot.com/srp/
Here's a python implementation of the protocol:
http://www.aist.go.jp/NIBH/~tomh/sr psocket.html
the system provides a signal to the inner ear (through electrodes mounted behind the ears and on the forehead) that is non-specific and designed to effectively turn the balance system off -- the system cannot tell your ear that you are tilting left or right -- it simply blasts your ears with a 2 Hz electrical wave. With your inner ears shut down, the visual input provides the only motion cues.
Note also that the patent *includes* the use of visual input. The medical-use stimulators are already patented, of course.
So, there's still plenty of room for all you wetware hackers to figure out the correct electrical signals to actually stimulate the inner ears correctly (instead of just shorting them out).
In a recent lecture, Murray Gell-Mann reported that "Physics is done". All that remains is just working out the details. Now, considering the obvious huge discrepancy between quantum mechanics and relativity, this seems rather premature. How close are we really to "the end of Physics"? Is this even a meaningful concept?
Perhaps you've heard this point of view: "Physics is done, because Physics is simple. Biology is far more complicated than Physics, and in fact, Physics is a special case of universal Biological laws." (paraphrased from Rosen, 1991).
Do you think there is any truth to the notion that questions like "What is Life?" are unanswerable by current Physical Theory? Or can Biology inform Physics in the search for the "End" of Physics?
APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING AN ANTIGRAVITATIONAL FORCE
It's not only the companies, the patent office itself is loony tunes, allowing patents on anything and everything (this is an International Patent). Given the power they are handing out (authority to kick the ass of anybody using their "patented" technology) some checks and balances are in order. Peer review at least.
The real problem with online shopping is all the middlemen that have inserted themselves into the clickstream between buyer and vendor to skim the top off e-commerce. Claiming to provide valuable services for the vendors, such as demographics, fancy web design, and first choice on the broker-owned portal search engine (for an extra fee), all they really provide is poor quality web forms, out of date listings, and lost orders.
I as a client don't need any of the services they are providing to the vendor. In fact, I may even object to the fact that they are collecting demographics and I certainly object to the way that various portals reorder their search results according to the vendors they have on special that day (AltaVista and Yahoo are both guilty here -- I use only Google now).
I don't live in the US, and I have been faced with stupid web forms put up by these para-sites that let you choose any country from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, and then require a State and 5 digit zip code (postal codes in Japan are 7 digits, and there are no States) or they'll refuse to process your order (* required field).
These sites are often out of date. This has bitten me twice this year, once severely (a hotel refused to honor a reservation because the price on the agent's web page was out of date). And I had a toy company email me 3 days after I submitted a form to tell me they were out of stock.
Another hotel never got my reservation (the agent was supposed to FAX it to them!).
I have no sympathy for vendors that can't write their own web pages. Only a year or two ago, before all these portal sites crawled out of the ether, buying on-line was just like the normal mail-order catalog model of buying. Now it's a maze of bad code and bad service, and I for one now refuse to shop at any company that can't take the time to update their own web pages, and I don't use portal sites that get paid to order their search results.
He won the 1996 IgNobel Chemistry award for this one: he lit a campfire grill with liquid oxygen.
I think this definitely qualifies. Original, clever, and it involves large fireballs.
"Anything will burn if you soak it in Liquid Oxygen."
The gov't. doesn't want you to download crypto, but you can download diseases (from gov't servers, even). Note that it may be possible to use this information to create deadly plagues. If not now, then someday.
u ery?uid=4262346&form=6&db=n&Dopt=g
Here's Ebola, complete genome:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/q
Not to mention HIV, hepatitis, tuberculosis, foot-and-mouth disease, encephalitis, chlamydia, strepp, and 3600 others.
You get the idea. I can't download Netscape with 128-bit crypto (since I'm in Japan), but I can download some of the world's worst mass-murderers. Of course, synthesizing Ebola isn't easy. Probably.
P.S. I have 128-bit Netscape anyway.
Set your character set to "Japanese auto-detect".
It looks munged on the main comments page but when
I hit reply it showed up OK. Dunno why.
¥¥é¥¥å¥É¥Ã¥È
Cosm is a hard sci-fi story by Gregory Benford about a RHIC experiment that produces a macroscopic manifestation of the quark-gluon plasma (I won't say more -- read the book).
2 1/002-5358506-5702609
But basically, it's an entire book about exactly this issue. And much better done.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/03807905
So, there were several specific points made:
So the answer is mostly "Not Yet" but the future looks bright. I hope that the various desktop environment makers can agree on some more standards that will allow apps to run anywhere, and I also applaud the efforts of those working on automatic generation of frontend modules.
I'll be writing my app in as much of a UI-independent fashion as possible for now, and hope that the dynamically loadable GUI/Desktop Environment API is done before I am.
Is it just me, or do other people find it highly annoying that something released for "Linux" is only available for x86 systems? "Linux" is not a hardware specific term. In my opinion, if you say it "runs under Linux" then it should be 1) source code (which SGI's thing is not) or 2) available for ALL architectures that Linux supports (e.g. Alpha, PPC, etc.).
Let me add my voice to the choir of app developers who want their app to run under KDE/Gnome/Any/None desktop environment without major changes. Are there any architectural design rules you can suggest that would make that possible? Are there any libraries/toolkits which provide an abstract desktop API without forcing the choice of a widget set or programming language? I'm not just talking about drag&drop. I'm talking about e.g. writing an applet or standalone app that can be ./configured --enable-kde or --enable-gnome, and have it Just Work on KDE, Gnome, or any future compliant desktop.
get it from the Tcl archives, or via www.scriptics.com