Congratulations, your OS got endorsed by Intel's OEM. They'll go on to make lots of cash without thanking you or giving anything back to FreeBSD. Meanwhile, Intel will go on supporting Linux.
Is this really good news? Or is it an argument in favour of the GPL?
We can deal with dynamic IPs easily. Several organizations already offer dynamic domain names, including dynip.com and dhs.org.
For example, I could have a domain foo.dyn.dhs.org. Every time I go online, I tell dhs.org what my current IP is. Then you can use DNS to find out my IP.
If you're building a solution based on existing standards, DNS is the obvious way to mask dynamic IPs.
Open source is good. Anyone can make it better. Open standards is alright. You improve the standards, and implement them yourself. Proprietary standards are bad. All you can do is an alternative implementation. And you may have to pay for a license or two. Secret standards are the worst. No one's supposed to implement them, except the owner. That's why people are upset that Java's not going to be an open standard.
I submitted the same story on Sunday night. Apparently, it wasn't good enough for Slashdot then.:-( But when their pal at The Sync mentions it, they post it. Is that fair? Sheesh!
It's pretty sorry how self-serving the RIAA can be. Did they sue Sony for making duel-cassette boom boxes? Did they sue Panasonic for making boom-boxes that can tape a CD when you push just three buttons?
They can't do that. Those companies are part of their industry.
The essential differences: FreeBSD is based on the original BSD source Linux was done from scratch. It's legal to distribute modified BSD without releasing the source. It's illegal (breach of the GPL contract) to release Linux without the source. Linux is developed by anyone and their dog. FreeBSD is developed by a smaller group of elite programmers.
Oh, and Solaris IS unix--it's just a particular brand.
Instead of cross-checking a client's results with others, you can just send test units at random intervals. These test units would have bogus contents that indicate extraterrestrial signals.
Any client that returns the wrong results on a test packet is untrustworthy. All the work it's done can be re-sent to other clients, and it can be ignored in the future.
Even though they conspicuously didn't mention, Quadro is a member of the GeForce / TNT family, so existing GeForce / TNT drivers should WORK, just not as well as Quadro drivers. . .
My company, Panoramic Feedback, uses C for our CGI. You can see it in action on our site's demo.
Although I've seriously flirted with PERL, C is more familliar and faster when it comes to execution speed. That's important on the web, where your CGI speed is constantly compared to static web pages.
One major downside is there's not much in the way of C CGI code floating around, so you have to do it yourself more often.
1. What advances are needed to made realtime 3d look like real life?
2. Will the accelerator wars ever slow down?
3. Do you anticipate there ever being a time when we'll use one 3d engine?
4. Do you think hardware acceleration has a dark side? For example, the hardware acceleration of the GeForce 256 assumes you're playing with polygons, not voxels. Could the availability of certain kinds of acceleration influence people to write bad tech because bad tech would work faster than good tech?
The RAGE Fury MAXX achieves a maximum "fill rate", or the number of textured pixels it can render per second, of 500 megapixels/second.
Pretty sad, really. GeForce 256 has been criticised for its "low fillrate", but it does 480 Megatexels. Meanwhile, the Savage 2000 will do "700+" Megatexels.
Anyone who thinks the MAXX is cutting-edge is fooling themselves. . .
Gotta agree with the cowards here. I just set up network printers on a LAN, and watched the clients suck down drivers from the server and install 'em.
Windows DOES have have a device-independent language that gets passed to the drivers--I think it's GDI--, but it looks like no one was bright enough to send GDI over the network before converting it for a specific printer. Or maybe it was impractical to use GDI. . .
If I am, in fact, wrong, could you explain how to set this up? I guess you could fake it if you had PS files and a PS printer, but otherwise. . .
While you're waiting for Adobe, check out PDFlib: http://www.pdflib.com/ It's a PDF file generator that works on Windows and UNIX. You can use it as a CGI. It's not open-source, but it comes with source. It's one of them free-for-individuals, costs money for businesses deals.
Our company does 360 feedback (performance appraisal by bosses, peers, and subordinates), and we use PDFlib to generate a report right on the web!
I took an excellent course in SF from Prof. Ian Lancashire, who you quote. He's not the sort to dismiss SF concepts out-of-hand.
When he says, "There's nothing human here", he's right on the money. Without human emotions or an understanding of them, no machine can connect with humans on an emotional level, except via Infinite Mokey theory.
The article does not make clear whether they reviewed many possible entries and picked a winner, but. . .
An infinite number of monkeys on typewriters (or a random number generator given infinite time) will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. But it's the people who own the monkeys who have to sift through and find it. (And that task is made harder by the millions of flawed complete works of Shakespeare in the results.)
That famous computer music composer generates a whole bunch of junk. Its creator then goes through the results to find the gems.
By restricting Brutus.1 to real words and phrases, and giving it other rules to follow, they would cause less junk to be generated, which makes it easier to find a gem. If this is the Brutus technique, it's not nearly AI.
Note that this technique is similar to the technique of Deep Blue, the computer that beat Kasperov at chess. Its technique is also to throw lots of stuff at the wall and see what sticks, except that "good chess move" is more easy to quantify than "good music" or "good story". As a result, Deep Blue can evaluate its results by itself.
Music generators usually have human editors. Brutus? We'll have to see. I bet it works on infinite monkey theory.
Not necessarily. The more we learn about humans, the more connections we find between brain and body. While it might be possible to create an AI by simulating a human brain, I suspect that, without a body, it would quickly go insane. I know I would.
Kermit hasn't been master of his own fate since Mickey bought him out. Of course, the V-chip is good news for Disney (it prevents kids from watching anything else), so it's no surprise they're promoting it.
Regarding your second point, you've got it exactly backwards, I'm afraid. Remember, application scarcity is one of the ways Microsoft plays the game. Don't imitate them without question.
If you believe that Linux is superior in the most important ways, that alone should be enough to convince people to switch. One of the barriers to entry for Linux is that there aren't a lot of familiar desktop apps available. Free Qt for Win means Free apps for Win.
One way or another, application parity between Windows and Linux means more people will switch. People don't want to learn a whole new browser, word processor, image manipulator, compiler etc. when they switch languages. If we can't get application parity by having Adobe port Photoshop to Linux, we have to get it by porting The Gimp to Windows. (Oh, look! Someone smart already has!)
I'm a Windows user. I plan on getting myself a Linux box soon. In the meantime, I'm getting familiar with The Gimp. I also use Wordperfect, Navigator and GCC. When I do get Linux, I'll still be able to use familiar programs. That makes it more likely that I WILL switch.
Do you REALLY expect Microsoft to port Office to Linux when Linux people won't port their apps to Windows?
Well, for one thing, we wouldn't need central servers to do ICQ. Just ping the IP.
And how likely is it that your sysadmin doesn't know your IP? If you're coping with a fried HD, getting your IP back will be the least of your worries.
Slashdot radio really seems to be hitting its stride (or maybe I'm delerious from sleep deprivation), but could we get a higher bitrate? 24 kbps is nice and all, but how 'bout 64 kbps or 128 kbps?
Slashdot Mirror
Congratulations, your OS got endorsed by Intel's OEM. They'll go on to make lots of cash without thanking you or giving anything back to FreeBSD. Meanwhile, Intel will go on supporting Linux.
Is this really good news? Or is it an argument in favour of the GPL?
We can deal with dynamic IPs easily. Several organizations already offer dynamic domain names, including dynip.com and dhs.org.
For example, I could have a domain foo.dyn.dhs.org. Every time I go online, I tell dhs.org what my current IP is. Then you can use DNS to find out my IP.
If you're building a solution based on existing standards, DNS is the obvious way to mask dynamic IPs.
Open source is good. Anyone can make it better.
Open standards is alright. You improve the standards, and implement them yourself.
Proprietary standards are bad. All you can do is an alternative implementation. And you may have to pay for a license or two.
Secret standards are the worst. No one's supposed to implement them, except the owner.
That's why people are upset that Java's not going to be an open standard.
I submitted the same story on Sunday night. :-(
Apparently, it wasn't good enough for Slashdot then.
But when their pal at The Sync mentions it, they post it. Is that fair?
Sheesh!
It's pretty sorry how self-serving the RIAA can be. Did they sue Sony for making duel-cassette boom boxes? Did they sue Panasonic for making boom-boxes that can tape a CD when you push just three buttons?
They can't do that. Those companies are part of their industry.
So why sue Napster, or, more stupidly, Diamond?
Because they can.
Yeah, but MP3s don't kill. . .
The essential differences:
FreeBSD is based on the original BSD source
Linux was done from scratch.
It's legal to distribute modified BSD without releasing the source.
It's illegal (breach of the GPL contract) to release Linux without the source.
Linux is developed by anyone and their dog.
FreeBSD is developed by a smaller group of elite programmers.
Oh, and Solaris IS unix--it's just a particular brand.
Instead of cross-checking a client's results with others, you can just send test units at random intervals. These test units would have bogus contents that indicate extraterrestrial signals.
Any client that returns the wrong results on a test packet is untrustworthy. All the work it's done can be re-sent to other clients, and it can be ignored in the future.
It depends how big the fine is. . .
Even though they conspicuously didn't mention, Quadro is a member of the GeForce / TNT family, so existing GeForce / TNT drivers should WORK, just not as well as Quadro drivers. . .
My company, Panoramic Feedback, uses C for our CGI. You can see it in action on our site's demo.
Although I've seriously flirted with PERL, C is more familliar and faster when it comes to execution speed. That's important on the web, where your CGI speed is constantly compared to static web pages.
One major downside is there's not much in the way of C CGI code floating around, so you have to do it yourself more often.
1. What advances are needed to made realtime 3d look like real life?
2. Will the accelerator wars ever slow down?
3. Do you anticipate there ever being a time when we'll use one 3d engine?
4. Do you think hardware acceleration has a dark side? For example, the hardware acceleration of the GeForce 256 assumes you're playing with polygons, not voxels. Could the availability of certain kinds of acceleration influence people to write bad tech because bad tech would work faster than good tech?
The RAGE Fury MAXX achieves a maximum "fill rate", or the number of textured pixels it can render per second, of 500 megapixels/second.
Pretty sad, really. GeForce 256 has been criticised for its "low fillrate", but it does 480 Megatexels. Meanwhile, the Savage 2000 will do "700+" Megatexels.
Anyone who thinks the MAXX is cutting-edge is fooling themselves. . .
Heinlein already thought of that one, back in "The Man who Sold the Moon" . . .
Gotta agree with the cowards here. I just set up network printers on a LAN, and watched the clients suck down drivers from the server and install 'em.
Windows DOES have have a device-independent language that gets passed to the drivers--I think it's GDI--, but it looks like no one was bright enough to send GDI over the network before converting it for a specific printer. Or maybe it was impractical to use GDI. . .
If I am, in fact, wrong, could you explain how to set this up? I guess you could fake it if you had PS files and a PS printer, but otherwise. . .
While you're waiting for Adobe, check out PDFlib:
http://www.pdflib.com/
It's a PDF file generator that works on Windows and UNIX. You can use it as a CGI. It's not open-source, but it comes with source. It's one of them free-for-individuals, costs money for businesses deals.
Our company does 360 feedback (performance appraisal by bosses, peers, and subordinates), and we use PDFlib to generate a report right on the web!
Since when is 512 half of 768?
I took an excellent course in SF from Prof. Ian Lancashire, who you quote. He's not the sort to dismiss SF concepts out-of-hand.
When he says, "There's nothing human here", he's right on the money. Without human emotions or an understanding of them, no machine can connect with humans on an emotional level, except via Infinite Mokey theory.
The article does not make clear whether they reviewed many possible entries and picked a winner, but. . .
An infinite number of monkeys on typewriters (or a random number generator given infinite time) will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. But it's the people who own the monkeys who have to sift through and find it. (And that task is made harder by the millions of flawed complete works of Shakespeare in the results.)
That famous computer music composer generates a whole bunch of junk. Its creator then goes through the results to find the gems.
By restricting Brutus.1 to real words and phrases, and giving it other rules to follow, they would cause less junk to be generated, which makes it easier to find a gem. If this is the Brutus technique, it's not nearly AI.
Note that this technique is similar to the technique of Deep Blue, the computer that beat Kasperov at chess. Its technique is also to throw lots of stuff at the wall and see what sticks, except that "good chess move" is more easy to quantify than "good music" or "good story". As a result, Deep Blue can evaluate its results by itself.
Music generators usually have human editors.
Brutus? We'll have to see. I bet it works on infinite monkey theory.
Not necessarily. The more we learn about humans, the more connections we find between brain and body. While it might be possible to create an AI by simulating a human brain, I suspect that, without a body, it would quickly go insane.
I know I would.
How long will it be before someone uses v-chip data to FIND sex and violence?
Kermit hasn't been master of his own fate since Mickey bought him out. Of course, the V-chip is good news for Disney (it prevents kids from watching anything else), so it's no surprise they're promoting it.
Regarding your second point, you've got it exactly backwards, I'm afraid. Remember, application scarcity is one of the ways Microsoft plays the game. Don't imitate them without question.
If you believe that Linux is superior in the most important ways, that alone should be enough to convince people to switch. One of the barriers to entry for Linux is that there aren't a lot of familiar desktop apps available. Free Qt for Win means Free apps for Win.
One way or another, application parity between Windows and Linux means more people will switch. People don't want to learn a whole new browser, word processor, image manipulator, compiler etc. when they switch languages. If we can't get application parity by having Adobe port Photoshop to Linux, we have to get it by porting The Gimp to Windows. (Oh, look! Someone smart already has!)
I'm a Windows user. I plan on getting myself a Linux box soon. In the meantime, I'm getting familiar with The Gimp. I also use Wordperfect, Navigator and GCC. When I do get Linux, I'll still be able to use familiar programs. That makes it more likely that I WILL switch.
Do you REALLY expect Microsoft to port Office to Linux when Linux people won't port their apps to Windows?
Well, for one thing, we wouldn't need central servers to do ICQ. Just ping the IP.
And how likely is it that your sysadmin doesn't know your IP? If you're coping with a fried HD, getting your IP back will be the least of your worries.
Slashdot radio really seems to be hitting its stride (or maybe I'm delerious from sleep deprivation), but could we get a higher bitrate? 24 kbps is nice and all, but how 'bout 64 kbps or 128 kbps?