My favorite speculation from this article is the "...it may be time for not only Intel's investors to worry, but also the entire stock market."
While Intel is now part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (and thus highly visible, with impact to the DJIA when INTL goes down), how can you say that even if INTL loses have it's market cap (to a measly $175 billion) that it would even make a dent in the market (according to the NYSE, 7 TRILLION dollars exchanged hands in 1998 just in the NYSE. How much is traded in a year in all of the combined markets? How many people have been dumping money into many, many stocks and mutual funds since '98?)?
While this doesn't invalidate the criticisms of Intel's methods or lack of spiffy new chips, it does not do wonders for this authors credibility to tout this sort of statement lightly.
By the way, isn't it funny that so many people on/. say that people don't need faster processors, but then Tom spins a yarn of global doom just because the Athlon will have greater clocks than Intel's processors? =) Just ironic...
No one would care because most/.ers don't use Microsoft's SQL (well, and the obvious fact that SQL Server isn't an operating system; sorta less of an impact to most users...). However, many DO use RedHat. It is news to those of us who didn't think there would even BE a 6.2; I thought they'd wait until summer to catch the 2.4.x kernel series and just go with RH7.0. So, it was news to me.
Of course, perhaps you're just trolling. Oh, well. I bit. By the way, I'm sure that when NT5.0^H^H^H^H^HWin2K is released (albeit 2 years later than was originally thought) it'll probably be posted here as "news", sort of like when the Melissa virus was running amok. Both will infect Windows PCs... Of course, you could prevent the Melissa virus; Win2K will follow the normal forced upgrade path and be manditory for most companies eventually.
Sigh. Oh, well. I guess Microsoft doesn't have enough work to keep you busy, since you're trolling/.. (Troll right back atcha.... See, isn't this fun?) =)
I'd have to say the "EVEN if that means much desirable content is lost" bit is the one I disagree with. WHY does that have to be the case? If parents can't monitor their own children, why can't the librarians? How is it that filtering software (which just DOES NOT WORK WELL ENOUGH -- that argument will win EVERY TIME and is also the right argument) is the only solution? Are there really that many children browsing for pR0n at the damned library?
I know. Let's also get rid of racy authors, like Erica Jong, Beverly Cleary, Sappho, the Marquis de Sade, etc., etc., etc. In fact, why don't we just get rid of all resources that would talk about sexuality, biology, and most of literature.
Your argument does not hold water, and is does more damage than good. Please think about the consequences of what you're talking about.
Oh, please. "Majority-rules" is not any sort of justification when the majority is ignorant about what they are doing. How can you even say that with a straight face?
This sort of response shows the complete lack of interest in solving problems. If parents do not want their children to see pR0n, then why don't you sit down with your own children and discuss sexuality with them? How about supervising your children as they use computers? I'll bet your only honest responses to these questions could possibly be: "It's too inconvenient to me." or "It makes me uncomfortable to talk to my children openly and honestly."
If I didn't want my (fictional, since I don't have any) children to see things I see offensive, like bigotry, hatred, or extremely beligerant ignorance, I have to keep them from leaving the house. But rather than that, I would think that it would be much more appropriate and constructive to actually sit down and discuss why people act that way and how to deal with the frustration and discouragement that those actions can cause.
I don't know why people can't educate and then trust/support their own children. It's one of the things that really upset and depress me about parents, and one of the reasons that I won't have children. I just don't think that you can protect your children by closing the world off from them; it's really just security through obscurity. And we all know that doesn't work.
about people when they talk about Nano is the misperception about how fast Nano will revolutionize things. This is apparent in Drexler's (IMHO optimistic) work as well as the more popular Nano accounts of a Nano-driven future such as Stephenson's _Diamond Age_.
Just because we have the ability to build things at the atomic scale (which may/may not be plausible) doesn't mean that we get nifty things like immortality (There's a quote [which I can't attribute, unfortunately] in Ian McDonald's _Terminal Cafe_ that goes something like: "The first thing that nanotechnology gives you is immortality" and a response: "No, the first thing that nanotechnology gives you is reincarnation.") and cures for various cancers. Folks, we just don't understand enough about the human body to make this possible.
I think that this is money well spent, and that Nano will give us all sorts of great things... eventually. But not within 30 years, as Drexler keeps saying. It's NOT going to be instantaneous revolution with equalization of global resources and other Wonderful Things(tm), as many people think. In fact, the societies which develop Nano first could basically hold the rest of the world hostage, as in Haldeman's _Forever Peace_. Scary thing, that thought!
Think long term benefits (and problems), instead. One of the areas that I think will be most fascinating will be in material science. But biology is much more complex at this level, and we just don't know enough to monkey around with Nano right away. Probably wont for some time AFTER we get Nano.
When I submitted this article yesterday, I gave a link to this RealAudio interview with Matthew Szulik, the President of RedHat. He talks about this partnership and general RedHat buisness goings-on. The interview requires G2 or greater; I haven't tried it on Linux, so YMMV.
What I think about when I see the combination of cheaper processor and order-of-magnitude less power consumption is: SMP laptop. That's what I want as a software developer. Sorry to all you who say that we don't need faster/stronger CPUs; I say 'until I have instant compiles, it's not fast enough' (meaning disk, bus, memory, CPU, the whole lot. I'm GREEDY!).
Anyway, think about it. 10x less power consumption. To me that doesn't mean I work on battery for 10x longer, that means I can have up to 10 CPUs with the same power draw (& heat, too? I'm not too certain if those necessarily go hand-in-hand).
Furthermore, since (as other people have pointed out here) this chip wouldn't theoretically be limited to the x86 CISC instruction set, couldn't these processors be tailored for graphics/sound/whatever processing? So what if we have a computer with 8/16/64 processors in it, and dynamically allocate them to take care of the different processing jobs you have: graphics, sound, and data processing. In graphics intensive/sound intensive, use 40% of your CPUs for data processing and 60% for DSP (video and sound). Or some more optimal mixture.
This is all just hand-waving, but MAYBE it'll come to pass. Or is this just total non-sense?
I don't know about Trillian's monetary status, but I don't think she'd appreciate having any of her money taken as the result of a law suit. So, I'll take no part of that. However, maybe a few Altairian dollars....
4. Microsoft Windows CE hand-held computers. When will Microsoft and its friends learn that building a lot of little computers around a portable OS that results in incompatibility from machine to machine for various reasons is not the road to success?
Sounds pretty anti-Microsoft to me. Hemos's take on this statement seems pretty accurate to me.
The fact is that Microsoft CE is not a good operating system for handheld devices. While the hardware also has problems (like short battery life because most WinCE machines, IMHO, try to do too much (256 Colors, MP3 playing, etc.)), the Windows GUI is just completely out of place in a handheld.
What do you mean that andover.net is a "close competitor" to LinuxOne? andover.net is a MEDIA company. LinuxOne pretends to distribute a version of Linux that "runs under Windows" (actually, it sounds like you execute it under Windows, it reboots into Linux, then if you want to "return" to Windows, you type "reboot" at the command-line prompt. Does that even SOUND like it's "running under Windows"?!?).
What the report (from what I can tell, I am not a doctor) and dacta (again, as far as I can tell) mean is that people who have mental illnesses should not face troubles when seeking treatment above and beyond those that you would face getting treatment for a physical illness. Mental and physical illnesses should be viewed exactly the same as far as access to treatment and insurance coverage are concerned. And why not? It really seems to me to be a silly thing to argue about; if people need help and can be happier/more productive/have a higher quality life, why shouldn't they get help INDEPENDANT of the source of their troubles. Yes, independant of their troubles, mental, physical, financial, social, etc. The government already provides assistance for the physically and financially "ill" in various ways. Why not bring assistance for mentally ill people up to the same level as for the physically ill?
And no, it shouldn't be left up to the companies to do themselves. Companies are generally not for the best interests of their employees; that CANNOT be their main goal. Their main goal is to turn a profit and please their owners/shareholders. That's the way it is. Employees profit and benefit when their company does well, and sometimes don't realize that and vice-versa. It's human nature.
I don't know about you, but I'd REALLY enjoy faster & cheaper CPUs. I would LOVE to be able to compile my code faster, and part (not all, by any means) of that would include faster processors (the cheaper part is just so I don't go broke). While I am developing software, my debug->change->compile cycle is dreadfully slow sometimes. I would really like to have a very fast dual CPU system w/ Super-Ultra-Fast SCSI harddrive system (one of the other huge bottlenecks when compiling large projects) in order to reduce that cycle.
Of course, if I were independantly wealthy, I could just get a Penguin computing 8-way Xeon system w/ IBM 10,000 RPM SCSI harddrives. Buy I don't happen to have $100k lying around...
Of course network speed is important, but CPU speed is, too!
If companies start incorporating this technology into their networks, will we see:
1) an end to the "slashdot effect" 2) download sites that have enough anonymous logins for everyone and 3) voice over IP and streaming video for trivial cost
or simply more "First post" and "Wow, think of a Beowulf cluster of THOSE things!" messages to Slashdot. In fact, think of a Beowulf cluster using 10 terabit switched channels... *SMACK!*
One thing that I don't understand about this and the MP3 controversy is the approach of attacking members of a large community that is cohesive. Attacking a Linux developer is just not a good idea, since it will alienate that company or industry from a large segment of the user-base that is interested in the product. I generally buy albums that I have heard music from. Since commercial radio sucks hard, I generally don't get exposed to much music any more, but I like it when friends can send me an MP3 to listen to. If I like a couple of songs, I'll go out and buy the album. However, if the industry pisses me off by trying to prevent that from happening (which will ultimately fail unless some form of hardware encryption is necessary to play the music, in which case, it's not going to be very popular anyways since the additional cost is simply passed directly to the consumer), I won't buy it; I'd rather just ask that friend to rip the whole album for me, or let me rip it.
The movie/music industry may lose some money from illegal distribution of media, but that's not new to DVD or MP3 copying. How many bootleg albums and videos are sold throughout the world?
Well, one thing, it's total vaporware. There are no downloadables yet (though it "should be ready" by Dec, '99.
Also, what PIM needs a PII/233+ and 64MB of RAM to run (with faster processor/more RAM suggested)? Is it cracking RC5 blocks in the background? It's an email reader/addressbook/to-do list! How can it possibly need that many resources? Sorry, at home I may have a system that will support that, but at work I'm on a lowly P/166 w/ 64MB RAM that is shared as a server with 3 other people. If I can't use it on a reasonable machine, then forget it! That sort of bloat I surely don't need.
How exactly would the split work? Split into major chunks of functionality (OS, compiler, applications, hardware, misc. bits)? I guess that wouldn't be so hard, but to what effect? If MS Office only runs on MS Windows, and Office is the most popular office suite (remember that the Office suite == operating system to naive users), then what does it matter? For development purposes, if the VC++ compiler only generates MS Windows binaries, and MFC is a framework for MS Windows only, then there's no difference. Does it hurt MS financially? That's not the point of the suit, in my mind; we should foster competition, not simply punish MS.
Besides, where do you split MS' applications between "core OS functionality" and "user application"? They've already tried to blur that line with IE4.0, and I wonder if naive users (and legislators) really know the difference between user-space applications and core OS applications. (Heh, what would be a non-core OS application in *nix? Anything in/usr/*/bin and/opt are "add-ons" and anything in/bin is "core"? =) )
Nah, it would hurt them worse to do something like force them to port Office and VC++ to other operating systems (Linux, Solaris, BeOS, OS/2...). And to open the source of the OS, so that people can truly see what the hell is going on in there!
What is proprietary? I thought that everything that RedHat created was GPL'd... That doesn't mean that it will work easily with another distribution (for example, try to get linuxconf to work on a non-RH distro... Good luck), but I thought that they didn't have any proprietary stuff.
I guess that I ought to break out some journals again and start reading up on this stuff. I said I've been out of it for two years cramming my head with *nix, C++, and Perl, but that's not really an excuse. Oh well.
I am not a Ph.D in this field, but I do have my Master's degree in Speech Science. While I have taken a break from Speech Science for about 2 years to learn C++ enough to start working in computer speech recognition/perception/production I'm still fairly up on Speech research. That caveat out of the way, let me tell you my thoughts.
While you say there are only a few dozen phonemes in most languages what you are missing is the fact that each phoneme is context sensitive. So if I say "See" and "Sue", the 's' sound in each morpheme is spectrally quite different. They are both the/s/ phoneme, but the one in/si/ ("See") has a spectrum much higher than (well, in speech terms, I think about ~1KHz)/su/ ("Sue"). Phonemes are not discrete things, they are gradients or classes. So you are simplifying things far too much when you suggest that morphemes are just combinations of a few dozen phonemes.
Really, if you think about it, humans do not learn to understand words by rote memorization of the acoustic properties of each word. That would be far, far too inefficient. Think about the fact that you could still understand someone's voice, even if they inhaled helium. That skews the spectral/acoustic properties of the person's voice into a very high frequency range compared to their normal voice. Also, if you tried to listen to non-native speakers who are missing phonemes or substituting phonemes, how could you possibly understand them? What you do is you figure out the missing or corrupted phonemes from the context of the morpheme. Some research supports the addition of other, extraneous acoustic information (such as the spectral shift of/s/ in/si/ vs./su/) as one thing that can cue a listener into what phoneme follows it. In that particular set of studies, people were able to identify the morphemes (/si/,/su/, etc.) by only hearing the initial/s/. That is, the vowel was cut-off from the morpheme, yet people were able to (with something like 90% accuracy) complete the morpheme.
There is an awful lot that speech research has not yet uncovered. One of the problems that I see in the field of computer speech recognition/perception/production is the lack of solid speech research and implementing the trickier research into these projects. Training neurons to recognize individual morphemes doesn't work. It's like brute force calculation of chess; the system is too complex to tackle with such a simple model. It's just too damned inefficient.
Besides, homophones will always be a problem with speech research, until language makes an appearance. How many times do you want to have to correct "their", "there" and "they're" in a document?
So, when is the 2.4 kernel cutover? I'll be curious if it is just before Comdex. Well, I guess it could mean three things: 1) It's just a coincidence 2) Transmeta's product will improve/enhance Linux significantly 3) 2.4 Kernel will improve/enhance Transmeta's product significantly
By the way, I'm impressed with the "This web page is not here yet!" simplicity of their web-page. As someone pointed out earlier, it is reminiscent of Magritte. I've also thought that Microsoft's logo floating in the cloads was reminiscent of Magritte; perhaps someone with artistic talent could paint the picture: All white background, Microsoft logo with the caption: "Ceci n'est pas un monopole". (similar to the original at this link.)
Or maybe Compaq will save the best parts of True64 and put them on Linux, which is similar to the survival strategy being embraced right now by SGI.
Heh heh heh.... This would be a great trend.
Can anyone enumerate any benefits that True64 could bring to Linux? I mean, with SGI giving a journaled file system to Linux, they are making Linux much more attractive to buisnesses who want to use Linux in enterprise servers. What benefits would True64 be able to share?
Microsoft with egg all over its collective face again. Heh heh heh. I thought, though, that hotmail was running on a *BSD box? I had heard that WinNT couldn't handle the load of hotmail, so they had to use *BSD (Don't know which varient). Can anyone clarify this? If it was NT, all the better.....
I think that this is encouraged by the lack of free/cheap C++ dev environments Huh? Ever heard of gcc/egcs/g++ and libstdc++? What about c++ development on Win32 Systems? How much does Visual C++ 6.0 cost? (Pro version, which is required to distribute applications, is $250!) How about non-MS compilers? Turbo C++? KAI? They all cost $$$ too! The ONLY free/cheap C++ compiler that I've ever seen is gcc/egcs/g++. And it, frankly, kicks butt! I do agree that (apparently) most (binary) application programming (actually, there may be more Perl scripting done than anything else...) for Linux is in C, but I doubt that lack of C++ development tools is any real contributing factor; after all, these tools come standard with any distribution of Linux I've ever seen. As do IDEs (XEmacs, SNiFF+, etc.) and debuggers (gdb, ddd, etc.). Now, you want to talk about application development in NT? What a pain in the butt! Where is a decent shell? (Well, there's bash - another GNU tool) Where are free IDEs? (there's NTEmacs - another GNU-derived tool) How do you search through code for instances of keywords/functions/variables quickly and easily across source files? (Well, there's grep - yet another gnu tool) What about a decent TEXT EDITOR, for goodness' sake? (Come on, word pad and note pad SUCK! gvim for win32 is the only decent, fast, powerful text editor I've seen for win32. WinNT is such an unfriendly development environment, it really surprises me that C++ programmers even tolerate it. I can expect that people get used to having bad tools and support, but I don't understand why you are DEFENDING M$'s development environment and saying it's cheap/free....
However, I'm confused on how Enlightentment DR0.15 worked for you. I had to upgrade the libjpeg and some other libs (I think libungif) as well. I was trying 15.5, but maybe you tried an earlier one?
Yes, WindowMaker came with 6.1, but I couldn't find any dock apps. Now, RH6.0 only came with the most common ones (wmmon, wmtime, wmitime,etc.) but at least they had the most common ones.
KDE, I don't know (or care) about. I do agree that they shouldn't be non-standard, but I haven't personally had any problems 'cause I don't use it. That was another problem with SuSE 6.1; it installed the base KDE stuff even though I unselected it from installation. Why?
I agree that RH5.2 had some buggy software (gnome-linuxconf for a big one), but some of the design issues in SuSE were just as bad. How do you set up a PPP connection with DHCP, for example? I can't find any way to do that without writing my own PAP or CHAP script. I certainly could do that, but why? I is automated in netcfg, so why bother?
Recent GNOME was distributed with 6.1, but when you install it, none of the default $PATH variables have/opt/gnome/bin in them (again, why, when it is so simple in include?) and other non-GNOME applications conflicted. In particular, another demo application called "panel" (When run, it just displayed an X Window which said "Panel test." and had to be killed) was run instead of the GNOME Panel. The paranoid in me says that an oversight that big (putting some demo application in the $PATH and not superceding it with/opt/gnome/bin) is so silly that it must be sabotage! I guess this wouldn't bug anyone who doesn't run GNOME, but then again, KDE problems are only isolated to KDE users....
Well, I didn't want this to turn into some sort of distro flame war, but I just happen to not have problems with RH6.0, while I had HUGE problems with SuSE6.1. Sounds like you had somewhat the opposite view. Oh, well. I guess we're both happy with what we have now....
Slashdot Mirror
I think that this is just Tom's bias coming
through. The biggest indication that Tom "doesn't
get" the Crusoe is the "Crusoe will not be a
player on desktops anytime soon." (Heh, it will be
when I'm using a Crusoe laptop on my desk... =) )
The whole design of the Crusoe seems to be tied
to the power savings and lower heat, and NOT on
sheer performance.
It seems to me that Tom just likes the biggest,
baddest stuff and sneers at anything less.
My favorite speculation from this article is the "...it may be time for not only Intel's investors to worry, but also the entire stock market."
/. say that people don't need faster processors, but then Tom spins a yarn of global doom just because the Athlon will have greater clocks than Intel's processors? =) Just ironic...
While Intel is now part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (and thus highly visible, with impact to the DJIA when INTL goes down), how can you say that even if INTL loses have it's market cap (to a measly $175 billion) that it would even make a dent in the market (according to the NYSE, 7 TRILLION dollars exchanged hands in 1998 just in the NYSE. How much is traded in a year in all of the combined markets? How many people have been dumping money into many, many stocks and mutual funds since '98?)?
While this doesn't invalidate the criticisms of Intel's methods or lack of spiffy new chips, it does not do wonders for this authors credibility to tout this sort of statement lightly.
By the way, isn't it funny that so many people on
Imagine someone sent this into slashdot:
/.ers don't use Microsoft's SQL (well, and the obvious fact that SQL Server isn't an operating system; sorta less of an impact to most users...). However, many DO use RedHat. It is news to those of us who didn't think there would even BE a 6.2; I thought they'd wait until summer to catch the 2.4.x kernel series and just go with RH7.0. So, it was news to me.
/.. (Troll right back atcha.... See, isn't this fun?) =)
[snip!]
No one would care because most
Of course, perhaps you're just trolling. Oh, well. I bit. By the way, I'm sure that when NT5.0^H^H^H^H^HWin2K is released (albeit 2 years later than was originally thought) it'll probably be posted here as "news", sort of like when the Melissa virus was running amok. Both will infect Windows PCs... Of course, you could prevent the Melissa virus; Win2K will follow the normal forced upgrade path and be manditory for most companies eventually.
Sigh. Oh, well. I guess Microsoft doesn't have enough work to keep you busy, since you're trolling
I'd have to say the "EVEN if that means much desirable content is lost" bit is the one I disagree with. WHY does that have to be the case? If parents can't monitor their own children, why can't the librarians? How is it that filtering software (which just DOES NOT WORK WELL ENOUGH -- that argument will win EVERY TIME and is also the right argument) is the only solution? Are there really that many children browsing for pR0n at the damned library?
I know. Let's also get rid of racy authors, like Erica Jong, Beverly Cleary, Sappho, the Marquis de Sade, etc., etc., etc. In fact, why don't we just get rid of all resources that would talk about sexuality, biology, and most of literature.
Your argument does not hold water, and is does more damage than good. Please think about the consequences of what you're talking about.
Oh, please. "Majority-rules" is not any sort of justification when the majority is ignorant about what they are doing. How can you even say that with a straight face?
This sort of response shows the complete lack of interest in solving problems. If parents do not want their children to see pR0n, then why don't you sit down with your own children and discuss sexuality with them? How about supervising your children as they use computers? I'll bet your only honest responses to these questions could possibly be: "It's too inconvenient to me." or "It makes me uncomfortable to talk to my children openly and honestly."
If I didn't want my (fictional, since I don't have any) children to see things I see offensive, like bigotry, hatred, or extremely beligerant ignorance, I have to keep them from leaving the house. But rather than that, I would think that it would be much more appropriate and constructive to actually sit down and discuss why people act that way and how to deal with the frustration and discouragement that those actions can cause.
I don't know why people can't educate and then trust/support their own children. It's one of the things that really upset and depress me about parents, and one of the reasons that I won't have children. I just don't think that you can protect your children by closing the world off from them; it's really just security through obscurity. And we all know that doesn't work.
about people when they talk about Nano is the misperception about how fast Nano will revolutionize things. This is apparent in Drexler's (IMHO optimistic) work as well as the more popular Nano accounts of a Nano-driven future such as Stephenson's _Diamond Age_.
Just because we have the ability to build things at the atomic scale (which may/may not be plausible) doesn't mean that we get nifty things like immortality (There's a quote [which I can't attribute, unfortunately] in Ian McDonald's _Terminal Cafe_ that goes something like: "The first thing that nanotechnology gives you is immortality" and a response: "No, the first thing that nanotechnology gives you is reincarnation.") and cures for various cancers. Folks, we just don't understand enough about the human body to make this possible.
I think that this is money well spent, and that Nano will give us all sorts of great things... eventually. But not within 30 years, as Drexler keeps saying. It's NOT going to be instantaneous revolution with equalization of global resources and other Wonderful Things(tm), as many people think. In fact, the societies which develop Nano first could basically hold the rest of the world hostage, as in Haldeman's _Forever Peace_. Scary thing, that thought!
Think long term benefits (and problems), instead. One of the areas that I think will be most fascinating will be in material science. But biology is much more complex at this level, and we just don't know enough to monkey around with Nano right away. Probably wont for some time AFTER we get Nano.
When I submitted this article yesterday, I gave a link to this RealAudio interview with Matthew Szulik, the President of RedHat. He talks about this partnership and general RedHat buisness goings-on. The interview requires G2 or greater; I haven't tried it on Linux, so YMMV.
What I think about when I see the combination of cheaper processor and order-of-magnitude less power consumption is: SMP laptop. That's what I want as a software developer. Sorry to all you who say that we don't need faster/stronger CPUs; I say 'until I have instant compiles, it's not fast enough' (meaning disk, bus, memory, CPU, the whole lot. I'm GREEDY!).
Anyway, think about it. 10x less power consumption. To me that doesn't mean I work on battery for 10x longer, that means I can have up to 10 CPUs with the same power draw (& heat, too? I'm not too certain if those necessarily go hand-in-hand).
Furthermore, since (as other people have pointed out here) this chip wouldn't theoretically be limited to the x86 CISC instruction set, couldn't these processors be tailored for graphics/sound/whatever processing? So what if we have a computer with 8/16/64 processors in it, and dynamically allocate them to take care of the different processing jobs you have: graphics, sound, and data processing. In graphics intensive/sound intensive, use 40% of your CPUs for data processing and 60% for DSP (video and sound). Or some more optimal mixture.
This is all just hand-waving, but MAYBE it'll come to pass. Or is this just total non-sense?
I don't know about Trillian's monetary status, but I don't think she'd appreciate having any of her money taken as the result of a law suit. So, I'll take no part of that. However, maybe a few Altairian dollars....
4. Microsoft Windows CE hand-held computers. When will Microsoft and its friends learn that building a lot of little computers around a portable OS that results in incompatibility from machine to machine for various reasons is not the road to success?
Sounds pretty anti-Microsoft to me. Hemos's take on this statement seems pretty accurate to me.
The fact is that Microsoft CE is not a good operating system for handheld devices. While the hardware also has problems (like short battery life because most WinCE machines, IMHO, try to do too much (256 Colors, MP3 playing, etc.)), the Windows GUI is just completely out of place in a handheld.
What do you mean that andover.net is a "close competitor" to LinuxOne? andover.net is a MEDIA company. LinuxOne pretends to distribute a version of Linux that "runs under Windows" (actually, it sounds like you execute it under Windows, it reboots into Linux, then if you want to "return" to Windows, you type "reboot" at the command-line prompt. Does that even SOUND like it's "running under Windows"?!?).
How, exactly, are they competing?
What the report (from what I can tell, I am not a doctor) and dacta (again, as far as I can tell) mean is that people who have mental illnesses should not face troubles when seeking treatment above and beyond those that you would face getting treatment for a physical illness. Mental and physical illnesses should be viewed exactly the same as far as access to treatment and insurance coverage are concerned. And why not? It really seems to me to be a silly thing to argue about; if people need help and can be happier/more productive/have a higher quality life, why shouldn't they get help INDEPENDANT of the source of their troubles. Yes, independant of their troubles, mental, physical, financial, social, etc. The government already provides assistance for the physically and financially "ill" in various ways. Why not bring assistance for mentally ill people up to the same level as for the physically ill?
And no, it shouldn't be left up to the companies to do themselves. Companies are generally not for the best interests of their employees; that CANNOT be their main goal. Their main goal is to turn a profit and please their owners/shareholders. That's the way it is. Employees profit and benefit when their company does well, and sometimes don't realize that and vice-versa. It's human nature.
Just my $0.02.
I don't know about you, but I'd REALLY enjoy faster & cheaper CPUs. I would LOVE to be able to compile my code faster, and part (not all, by any means) of that would include faster processors (the cheaper part is just so I don't go broke). While I am developing software, my debug->change->compile cycle is dreadfully slow sometimes. I would really like to have a very fast dual CPU system w/ Super-Ultra-Fast SCSI harddrive system (one of the other huge bottlenecks when compiling large projects) in order to reduce that cycle.
Of course, if I were independantly wealthy, I could just get a Penguin computing 8-way Xeon system w/ IBM 10,000 RPM SCSI harddrives. Buy I don't happen to have $100k lying around...
Of course network speed is important, but CPU speed is, too!
If companies start incorporating this technology into their networks, will we see:
1) an end to the "slashdot effect"
2) download sites that have enough anonymous logins for everyone
and 3) voice over IP and streaming video for trivial cost
or simply more "First post" and "Wow, think of a Beowulf cluster of THOSE things!" messages to Slashdot. In fact, think of a Beowulf cluster using 10 terabit switched channels... *SMACK!*
One thing that I don't understand about this and the MP3 controversy is the approach of attacking members of a large community that is cohesive. Attacking a Linux developer is just not a good idea, since it will alienate that company or industry from a large segment of the user-base that is interested in the product. I generally buy albums that I have heard music from. Since commercial radio sucks hard, I generally don't get exposed to much music any more, but I like it when friends can send me an MP3 to listen to. If I like a couple of songs, I'll go out and buy the album. However, if the industry pisses me off by trying to prevent that from happening (which will ultimately fail unless some form of hardware encryption is necessary to play the music, in which case, it's not going to be very popular anyways since the additional cost is simply passed directly to the consumer), I won't buy it; I'd rather just ask that friend to rip the whole album for me, or let me rip it.
The movie/music industry may lose some money from illegal distribution of media, but that's not new to DVD or MP3 copying. How many bootleg albums and videos are sold throughout the world?
Well, one thing, it's total vaporware. There are no downloadables yet (though it "should be ready" by Dec, '99.
Also, what PIM needs a PII/233+ and 64MB of RAM to run (with faster processor/more RAM suggested)? Is it cracking RC5 blocks in the background? It's an email reader/addressbook/to-do list! How can it possibly need that many resources? Sorry, at home I may have a system that will support that, but at work I'm on a lowly P/166 w/ 64MB RAM that is shared as a server with 3 other people. If I can't use it on a reasonable machine, then forget it! That sort of bloat I surely don't need.
How exactly would the split work? Split into major chunks of functionality (OS, compiler, applications, hardware, misc. bits)? I guess that wouldn't be so hard, but to what effect? If MS Office only runs on MS Windows, and Office is the most popular office suite (remember that the Office suite == operating system to naive users), then what does it matter? For development purposes, if the VC++ compiler only generates MS Windows binaries, and MFC is a framework for MS Windows only, then there's no difference. Does it hurt MS financially? That's not the point of the suit, in my mind; we should foster competition, not simply punish MS.
/usr/*/bin and /opt are "add-ons" and anything in /bin is "core"? =) )
Besides, where do you split MS' applications between "core OS functionality" and "user application"? They've already tried to blur that line with IE4.0, and I wonder if naive users (and legislators) really know the difference between user-space applications and core OS applications. (Heh, what would be a non-core OS application in *nix? Anything in
Nah, it would hurt them worse to do something like force them to port Office and VC++ to other operating systems (Linux, Solaris, BeOS, OS/2...). And to open the source of the OS, so that people can truly see what the hell is going on in there!
What is proprietary? I thought that everything that RedHat created was GPL'd... That doesn't mean that it will work easily with another distribution (for example, try to get linuxconf to work on a non-RH distro... Good luck), but I thought that they didn't have any proprietary stuff.
Please list particulars, please!
Errrr... Phones.... Of course!
I guess that I ought to break out some journals again and start reading up on this stuff. I said I've been out of it for two years cramming my head with *nix, C++, and Perl, but that's not really an excuse. Oh well.
Thanks for keeping me honest!
I am not a Ph.D in this field, but I do have my Master's degree in Speech Science. While I have taken a break from Speech Science for about 2 years to learn C++ enough to start working in computer speech recognition/perception/production I'm still fairly up on Speech research. That caveat out of the way, let me tell you my thoughts.
/s/ phoneme, but the one in /si/ ("See") has a spectrum much higher than (well, in speech terms, I think about ~1KHz) /su/ ("Sue"). Phonemes are not discrete things, they are gradients or classes. So you are simplifying things far too much when you suggest that morphemes are just combinations of a few dozen phonemes.
/s/ in /si/ vs. /su/) as one thing that can cue a listener into what phoneme follows it. In that particular set of studies, people were able to identify the morphemes (/si/, /su/, etc.) by only hearing the initial /s/. That is, the vowel was cut-off from the morpheme, yet people were able to (with something like 90% accuracy) complete the morpheme.
While you say there are only a few dozen phonemes in most languages what you are missing is the fact that each phoneme is context sensitive. So if I say "See" and "Sue", the 's' sound in each morpheme is spectrally quite different. They are both the
Really, if you think about it, humans do not learn to understand words by rote memorization of the acoustic properties of each word. That would be far, far too inefficient. Think about the fact that you could still understand someone's voice, even if they inhaled helium. That skews the spectral/acoustic properties of the person's voice into a very high frequency range compared to their normal voice. Also, if you tried to listen to non-native speakers who are missing phonemes or substituting phonemes, how could you possibly understand them? What you do is you figure out the missing or corrupted phonemes from the context of the morpheme. Some research supports the addition of other, extraneous acoustic information (such as the spectral shift of
There is an awful lot that speech research has not yet uncovered. One of the problems that I see in the field of computer speech recognition/perception/production is the lack of solid speech research and implementing the trickier research into these projects. Training neurons to recognize individual morphemes doesn't work. It's like brute force calculation of chess; the system is too complex to tackle with such a simple model. It's just too damned inefficient.
Besides, homophones will always be a problem with speech research, until language makes an appearance. How many times do you want to have to correct "their", "there" and "they're" in a document?
So, when is the 2.4 kernel cutover? I'll be curious if it is just before Comdex. Well, I guess it could mean three things:
1) It's just a coincidence
2) Transmeta's product will improve/enhance Linux significantly
3) 2.4 Kernel will improve/enhance Transmeta's product significantly
By the way, I'm impressed with the "This web page is not here yet!" simplicity of their web-page. As someone pointed out earlier, it is reminiscent of Magritte. I've also thought that Microsoft's logo floating in the cloads was reminiscent of Magritte; perhaps someone with artistic talent could paint the picture: All white background, Microsoft logo with the caption: "Ceci n'est pas un monopole". (similar to the original at this link.)
Or maybe Compaq will save the best parts of True64 and put them on Linux, which is similar to the survival strategy being embraced right now by SGI.
Heh heh heh.... This would be a great trend.
Can anyone enumerate any benefits that True64 could bring to Linux? I mean, with SGI giving a journaled file system to Linux, they are making Linux much more attractive to buisnesses who want to use Linux in enterprise servers. What benefits would True64 be able to share?
Microsoft with egg all over its collective face again. Heh heh heh. I thought, though, that hotmail was running on a *BSD box? I had heard that WinNT couldn't handle the load of hotmail, so they had to use *BSD (Don't know which varient). Can anyone clarify this? If it was NT, all the better.....
I think that this is encouraged by the lack of free/cheap C++ dev environments Huh? Ever heard of gcc/egcs/g++ and libstdc++? What about c++ development on Win32 Systems? How much does Visual C++ 6.0 cost? (Pro version, which is required to distribute applications, is $250!) How about non-MS compilers? Turbo C++? KAI? They all cost $$$ too! The ONLY free/cheap C++ compiler that I've ever seen is gcc/egcs/g++. And it, frankly, kicks butt! I do agree that (apparently) most (binary) application programming (actually, there may be more Perl scripting done than anything else...) for Linux is in C, but I doubt that lack of C++ development tools is any real contributing factor; after all, these tools come standard with any distribution of Linux I've ever seen. As do IDEs (XEmacs, SNiFF+, etc.) and debuggers (gdb, ddd, etc.). Now, you want to talk about application development in NT? What a pain in the butt! Where is a decent shell? (Well, there's bash - another GNU tool) Where are free IDEs? (there's NTEmacs - another GNU-derived tool) How do you search through code for instances of keywords/functions/variables quickly and easily across source files? (Well, there's grep - yet another gnu tool) What about a decent TEXT EDITOR, for goodness' sake? (Come on, word pad and note pad SUCK! gvim for win32 is the only decent, fast, powerful text editor I've seen for win32. WinNT is such an unfriendly development environment, it really surprises me that C++ programmers even tolerate it. I can expect that people get used to having bad tools and support, but I don't understand why you are DEFENDING M$'s development environment and saying it's cheap/free....
Didn't know about SO5 and glibc2.1.
/opt/gnome/bin in them (again, why, when it is so simple in include?) and other non-GNOME applications conflicted. In particular, another demo application called "panel" (When run, it just displayed an X Window which said "Panel test." and had to be killed) was run instead of the GNOME Panel. The paranoid in me says that an oversight that big (putting some demo application in the $PATH and not superceding it with /opt/gnome/bin) is so silly that it must be sabotage! I guess this wouldn't bug anyone who doesn't run GNOME, but then again, KDE problems are only isolated to KDE users....
However, I'm confused on how Enlightentment DR0.15 worked for you. I had to upgrade the libjpeg and some other libs (I think libungif) as well. I was trying 15.5, but maybe you tried an earlier one?
Yes, WindowMaker came with 6.1, but I couldn't find any dock apps. Now, RH6.0 only came with the most common ones (wmmon, wmtime, wmitime,etc.) but at least they had the most common ones.
KDE, I don't know (or care) about. I do agree that they shouldn't be non-standard, but I haven't personally had any problems 'cause I don't use it. That was another problem with SuSE 6.1; it installed the base KDE stuff even though I unselected it from installation. Why?
I agree that RH5.2 had some buggy software (gnome-linuxconf for a big one), but some of the design issues in SuSE were just as bad. How do you set up a PPP connection with DHCP, for example? I can't find any way to do that without writing my own PAP or CHAP script. I certainly could do that, but why? I is automated in netcfg, so why bother?
Recent GNOME was distributed with 6.1, but when you install it, none of the default $PATH variables have
Well, I didn't want this to turn into some sort of distro flame war, but I just happen to not have problems with RH6.0, while I had HUGE problems with SuSE6.1. Sounds like you had somewhat the opposite view. Oh, well. I guess we're both happy with what we have now....