I think you are seeing and missing my point at the same time.
Some law is used to advantage a few and harm the majority while others serve to help everyone work together and get along. Identifying the differences is key to establishing and maintaining a good working rule of law and of civilization.
Religious pacification is another approach to combating human nature but it doesn't effectively address the notion that one or more people may disagree with the practice. Religion is essentially and always will be 'voluntary' practice if it is more than a series of ceremonial words and motions.
But with various advances and lessons learned in chip and PC architecture, it makes sense that an 800MHz processor could take on a 3GHz processor and kick its butt.
No, it doesn't actually. Not when the 3GHz processor is one of the world's most efficient (in terms of realized computational power per clock cycle) designs in existence. Not when the effort required to reach that pinnacle of complexity and performance is... astonishing. (Think: 5 year long design projects.)
But if a processor can do the same amount of work using less power and an 800MHz clock, then it is NOT the world's most efficient. That's kind of the point of efficiency. What's more, it's a requirement for progress. We can't make an artificial brain when we are saddled with huge power consumption. Speed alone is not the only factor.
Each discrete processor instruction in x86 land still takes several clock cycles to execute. (I know, pipelining and multiple instructions are being processed at all times assembly line style so the effective instructions per cycle is different.)
You don't have any clue anyways. Throughput on common x86 instructions often exceeds 1 per cycle on modern advanced x86 core designs. It hardly matters that the start-to-finish latency for individual instructions is many cycles due to pipelining; without pipelines no design could operate even as fast as 800 MHz.
I think it is you who doesn't have a clue. I went to school on much of this. What you are missing is that much of the processing in these pipelines is wasted as the execution is speculative. So long as every series of instructions are a single stream, uninterrupted and involve no conditional branches, then yes, you can realize multiple instructions per clock cycle. But really you can't. That's not how processors work... especially not x86 processors....naivite...
If improvements are to be made, there much be a discard of things which are legacy whenever and wherever possible. We are in the midst of big changes in the way [inter]networking and data are made accessible to people. The "PC" is becoming less significant. We are using new OSes and new hardware platforms. It is only a matter of time before those OSes and platforms invade business space just as the PC invaded the business mainframe space.
PowerPC
The PowerPC was a great thing. Unfortunately, it lacked something... a few somethings. One, it lacked the backing of Microsoft which was the dominant and growing force behind the move to PCs in the work place. Another thing lacking was that it didn't address any "needs" which weren't answerable by current and available technology. A solution without a problem is less likely to be adopted. Lots of ideas are good on paper. Computer history is cluttered with "better things" which never caught on because there was not enough need behind it.
problems with x86 are not fatal.
I beg to differ. We are now entering a time in which x86 cannot be the answer to the problem. The problem is that people want more mobility. x86 can't deliver.
We want to save money, for example. In business, we want to lose less money so, in food production, they add preservatives or use ingredients with longer shelf lives. The consequence of this falls to the consumer and back to society as a whole as it deals with increases in health problems such as diabetes. The "blame" is on the individual but also on society but also on the suppliers who make these decisions... because they want to save money.
We want to earn a living, as another example. When the establishment doesn't wish to allow outsiders to participate in the market, markets of other colors are born and developed.... you know, like grey and black markets. ALL markets of all colors and tones require defense and enforcement. The white markets are supported, defended and enforced by the established government. The other markets use other means and most often, by gangs and the like.
The development of organized crime which I described above also has other negative impacts on society. Among these are the glorification of the lifestyle in art. We see it every day through our comical portrayal of pirates [the high seas, wooden ship variety] and we see it in more modern ways as well. But the crimes against people afftected by unregulated (and even regulated) killing and other violence takes its toll on the hearts and minds of the people who live among these events. As death and killing becomes more frequent and more expected, the notion of defending one's self with deadly force becomes increasingly more acceptable. And the very definition of "defense" also twists itself into convenient shapes to suit the motivations and interests of those doing the killing and violence.
We have all sorts of behaviors which require regulation. The restriction or limitation of market participation, for example, leads to crime. We saw it in alcohol prohibition. We saw it in religious freedom restrictions. We see it today with more contemporary drugs. But we are also seeing it in other markets as well. The content publication industry finds itself incredibly threatened by digital technologies in that there is no medium to hold the content and therefore they aren't exactly a publication in the classical sense of the word. But nevertheless, we see the same patterns... government support, defense and enforcement. And it most certainly stems from the few trying to hold onto their territory and to prevent others from participating in the markets they have controlled.
To say murder is "like a disease" is to fail to see the over-all pattern of human behaviors... the causes which lead to effects which lead to more causes and more effects. Of course that comparison begins to break down somewhat when you determine which disease(s) murder is most similar to and which it is not though the generalities tend to hold true. But the root cause of both disease and of murder is human behavior and human nature.
Human nature is best overcome by law and regulation. It is really as simple as that. If someone says "what about God?!" Then you are simply saying "religious law" instead of just law.
That's another thing. I can't remember the last time we ever used Microsoft or Cisco or any support from a vendor... well, Dell would be an exception and that's usually your typical laptop covered under accidental damage and I had a battery on a RAID card go out.
I get the perceptions all too well. As to the "untrustworthiness" someone above said? Heh... could be right, but they always come to me when they have exhausted other measures and I have never failed to deliver.
Product select is a religion. There was a time when Novell ruled the house and being a CNE or whatever Novell certified something or other meant you got a lot of money. On the other hand, the company hired on a Cisco guy... knnows his stuff pretty well, but even the company is beginning to see "oh shit, everything he recommends is Cisco and it's god damned expensive!!" We've been dealing with serious budget cutbacks lately and while I have no doubts about this guy's general network knowledge, he doesn't display much in the way of adaptability where product selection or implementation are concerned.
I see a task. I see the functions which need to addressed. I see what is required for implementation and also what is required for keeping it up. I accept the fact that we never use the support of the brands we buy. We just don't. I don't think it has ever occurred to management that we don't. And has anyone looked at what is being offered as "support"? It's really quite limited. In the end, regardless of which name brands you buy into, it's guys like me who will make it work, not Microsoft, Cisco or the rest. Turns out they only support "within the box." People like to think they live within the box but upon closer inspection, they live outside of those boxes a lot more than they care to realize.
They don't think "Linux" they think "Falconstor" and "Cisco" and "VMware" as brand names they trust. So what I learned from that is to make sure I say "Redhat" instead of CentOS because we have some servers based on that as well here and there.
Oh gawd... "what happens when you leave?" Nice argument. You sound like them.
It's beyond time to dump the x86. It was a bad processor from the beginning. I learned Motorola 6809 as my first assembly language processor and then when I went to learn Intel's x86, I was like WTF?! The inconsistent way the instructions and registers were used blew me away and made me appreciate the Motorola way a lot more. But the popularity of the PC kept the processor going and growing. I know things in x86 world have improved some, but it all still maintains that backward compatibility and the CISC legacy.
So it is just about time we introduce new processors and instruction sets. We are in a transitional state right now where computer/data handing is concerned. We are amidst a mobile revolution and all new processors (relatively speaking) are being used... no longer tied to compatibility and stuff like that. Perhaps it is even a little late as ARM is kind of the thing now.
But with various advances and lessons learned in chip and PC architecture, it makes sense that an 800MHz processor could take on a 3GHz processor and kick its butt. Each discrete processor instruction in x86 land still takes several clock cycles to execute. (I know, pipelining and multiple instructions are being processed at all times assembly line style so the effective instructions per cycle is different.) But if you combine current technology and design it from the ground up to do the kinds of things we do today, it would make sense that it would use less power and fewer cycles per instruction. The reason we aren't doing all that well today is that x86 things are crippled into doing things the x86 way because they are still needed to run x86 software.
So, while all other things are changing, why not take the opportunity and update the processor, OS and software along with the style of computing? I know Microsoft's answer is to adapt x86 Wintel into other forms. No one wants this other than Microsoft...
I have no direct knowledge and I, like most of everyone else, simply have to trust in my medical professionals.
But I have a concern. We know that mercury is poison. Why is it needed for vaccine? Perhaps someone here actually knows the answer and would share? Surely there are other elements or chemicals which could be used in place of mercury?
That said, I recognize that we get more mercury from fish than we get from vaccinations. After all, most people eat more fish than they take vaccines. Also, there is the occasional broken flourescent bulb... especially popular now are the CFLs right? We have ample sources of mercury so refusing vaccinations on that basis is kind of ridiculous in a sense... you're getting your USRDA of mercury in other forms.
Half or more of our infrastructure is already Linux. They just don't know it. Our storage network, our phone system, our voicemail, virtualization hosting... all of the most important and core things are running on Linux.
Wake the hell up... (I say to the bosses out there)
At work a problem once ensued when a person wanted to set up an MSSQL server for a project. My boss said "too expensive." I asked what language, he said VB.net. I said great! Have you considered mysql? He said it would violate license agreements. I said mysql, he heard SQLExpress. Idiot. Another person my boss reports to believes mysql is not a professional database server. It is used by hobbyists. But also used by professionals. It's free. It can't be good right? Forget that commercial licenses can be had and that Oracle now owns it.
People, and especially decision makers, simply can't wrap their heads around not using Microsoft for everything. The mental impairment is very visible to me. It's one thing to prefer one thing over another, but another to not even learn what the truth may be.
Similar discussion about iPhone/iPad in the business while excluding Android. The reason? Android is unix based and can't be trusted.
I consider myself to be lucky to have survived childhood. I had no support while growing up.
AS/ASD is something the public doesn't initially understand. We have an evolution that society must undertake, but it can't be undertaken without awareness first. I'm grateful that in my lifetime there is actually a name for the problem. There is a name and a flood of people out there who share the problem. It's more than "shyness" or "awkwardness." It's a lot more. Think of it in terms of how society has evolved to accept homosexuality. At first it was denial. Then some people decided society needed to face it and millions came out of the closet to confront society. And when they did, laws and other things supporting them came about. Now society fully accepts homosexuality and employers and the general public aren't inclined to discriminate against them.
Even now, I have a six year old who has what I had coupled with growing up in a bi-lingual home. This has made language development far more complicated, but he has a father who knows very well what he's going through even if his mother still doesn't quite get it. In the end, he'll be far better than I ever was. But for now, school is having serious concerns and don't quite know what to do with him. He is extremely capable and surpasses other children in certain areas, but he can't easily demonstrate comprehension due to the lack of effective communication. While his teacher thinks he is absolutely brilliant in some of the things he does and has a keen sense of humor, (a coping method he has undoubtedly picked up from me as well) without communications, their hands are tied in some ways.
I never went to "special" classes as a child. Perhaps I should have, but my academics were off the charts and they didn't have special classes where I grew up that went the other direction. The problem was the time... people just didn't know.., they weren't aware. There was no name for it. And having a name for it is the most important beginning.
I feel bad that the name Asperger's is officially going away. It's an important distinction. We're very functional people... beyond functional -- we routinely excel in our fields beyond the average capacity of others. We don't need "special treatment." We just need to be judged less... but so does pretty much EVERYONE else. It's not a problem for people to be a bit "OCD" or to have a bit of "ADHD" and AS/ASD exists within the same level as far as I'm concerned. It's just that society has to know about it and get comfortable with it.
Asperger's people can be "rude" and self-interested, or they can attempt to cope by being too weak. Another commenter described how adapting through being "a pleaser" resulted in his being walked on by just about everyone. And that's the thing. Even though we don't usually "get it" we can make efforts most conveniently by being uber-beta which is a trap we often find ourselves falling into. And for those of us who never seem to take an objective look at ourselves and our lives, we remain stuck in that mode. [Think George McFly]
I tend to think of being "too nice" as entry-level coping for people with this condition. The next levels are harder to achieve without coaching or self-realization.
We live in a society of people and we depend on our ability to interact with others. This is true even if you seek to collect a pay check and stay at home alone day in and day out. Advancement and other things depend heavily on being able to form and maintain relationships. It is great if others can understand and even appreciate the differences, but most people simply don't have that level of acceptance and are inclined to take a strong dislike to the point of causing social and even financial harm.
It is not as simple a patch as all that. Quite a few people such as myself find the effects of alcohol undesirable. While it is not an absolute, it is very common for people like me to dislike drinking and we only engage in the activity to be social.
A fair perspective from a non-Aperger's point of view. Unfortunately, "expectations" are extremely similar in nature to "beliefs." And as we find in other examples across all of humanity, belief is far more powerful than reality.
This all reminds me, sadly, of a co-worker who reads FAR too much into "body language." Consider that people with Asperger's aren't particularly fluent in that lanugage and what troubles might arise from situations with people who actually favor gestures and cues far more than the words being spoken. Normal communication is hard enough for "normal" people. Add this and Asperger's to the mix and you've got an interesting thing.
"It doesn't matter what you tell me. What I believe is far more important."
Because you have a disconnect between natural and programmed responses. Even if some of your responses are genuine, you have disassembled that 'clockwork' and remanufactured it. It is no longer the thing you disassembled. It is now the thing you assembled whether or not it existed previously. We've all heard that by observing a thing, we are changing a thing.
You coded into RAM what others have in ROM quite naturally. There is the difference. I read what you wrote confused... I thought for a moment that I had written it.
Also, you were faced with the requirement to trade one part of yourself for another. This is not a requirement for others. You're still not "normal" and so you had to make compromises in order to appear more "normal." It's tragic, but I completely get what you're saying -- I live the same life.
I realized long ago that I was facing that sort of compromise. I have all but halted my study and pursuit of "normalcy." As I'm older, I find that certain social things just aren't worth the effort. Call me arrogant (others do anyway) but I still fail to see the value in certain types of social details. Sure, it means I am excluded from things here and there... missed opportunities and all that. But it would mean giving up more of what I like about me than I want. I have already given up more of myself than I wanted to.
Speaking as a person who exhibits most of the classical symptoms of Asperger's, I have to agree that it is an affliction, a disorder or disease.
I am not saying this to garner pity or priviledge... a parking spot would be nice though. I say this because if it is found to be preventable or curable, I would push for it It makes life needlessly difficult. There are simply things I cannot do. Among these include "going with the flow" which might seem like an easy, brainless thing to do, but it's not. The whole notion of merely "fitting it" is an amazingly complex thing which includes self delusion along with the ability to convince others of the same. I have spent more than enough time working it all through.
In PC terms, Asperger's is a bug in a person's social BIOS. The social BIOS cannot be flashed. It is the bootstrap for all social interactions. Things other people natually seem to understand are completely alien to the Asperger's person. But once we fully understand and appreciate the differences, effective changes can be made. It isn't a fix by any means. But learning to compensate is helpful, but also placing one's self in an environment where it exposes the afflicted to fewer people is also quite helpful.
I think most of us here on both sides of the general issue are failing to see the objective matters at hand. Asperger's is a disadvantage in most all cases except for when the other side-effects might appeat to be an advantage. We often associate specific mental abilities/capacities as "gifts" associated with the condition. This is not always the case and especially as the generally accepted autistics out there are not all idiot-savants.
Instead of identifying things, we tend to want to label things with words which do not have as universal a meaning as we think. This problem is identified by the arguments collapsing into a discussion about definitions of words. It is a problem of language and of social politics.
Asperger's is an advantage to me sometimes. I can disregard my emotional components to see the facts of the matters I observe. I don't always see all of the facts available at all times -- I have a limited capacity just like everyone else. But I have less propensity to fill in the gaps with belief and unsupported ideas.(Consider when you were a very young child... did you understand why girls and boys should dislike each other? I never did. I never saw cause. Go back in time and see which side of such questions you fell on... do you even remember?)
Yes. It is true. UI elements should be scaleable with the intent that they should be scaleable. But failing that functionality, the best alternative hack would be...? Yeah, playing with the DPI settings.
I do understand what it's supposed to be used for. Do you understand that if you have a means of getting the results you want regardless of the label used to identify its function that in the absense of better options, you should use it?
There's ideal and then there's practical. One [your] option says "do it right and proper or not at all" and other people just care about results. In other news, I have been known to put data on recordable "audio" storage devices such as cassette tape and CDs. I have also been known to put audio on data CDs. I'm... just... that... twisted!
But but but... he wrote a program that generated these "complex mazes!" He's entitled to any copyrights associated with the output of this program! AMIRIGHT?
Yeah, I get that math generated output is not particularly worthy of consideration beyond identifying what it actually is.
But then again we see this all the time. People representing simple things as great things. Apple under Steve Jobs made a life long career of it.
All true. Which is why the juries are screened and their honesty is required as a qualification. This guy was not honest which taints the jury trial. A mistrial and a retrial is certainly warranted just as much as if the Judge happened to own Apple stock and failed to recuse himself.
It's not about Apple hate. It's about a guy who hated Seagate, and by extension, Samsung who found himself invited to being on a jury where Samsung was being sued over an issue very close to his heart.
If this guy were a judge in this case, he would have had to recuse himself. In fact, he was asked about information to determine if he should be on the jury at all and he omitted information which unquestionably would have prevented him from being on the jury, let alone foreman. Given the extremely troubled past he had with Seagate and the legal battles, it is not reasonable to assume it just slipped his mind. And his various interviews where he stated he wanted to "send a message" indicates his vigilante nature.
This isn't about Apple hate. If it was Samsung vs Google, the real situational issue would be the same.
It was no fishing expedition. It was the foreman's own ego that is doing him and his trial in. No question he has a mission and intent in all of this. He stated as much in his many interviews. Things he said like "wanting to send a message" demonstrates he wanted to be judge, jury and executioner.
As far as knowing more about patent law? Either this guy doesn't know what he thinks he knows about the applicability of patents (he said something didn't infringe because of the processor it ran on was different? Really? By that standard, nothing infringes on Apple devices because Apple uses "special processors.") or he blew ample amounts of false information out to the rest of the jury to get the results he wanted. Either way, it's misbehavior on the part of this jurist. This is definitely one for the books and if this guy doesn't get some sort of action taken against him, it will be a little surprising. (Though I can see the argument for letting him slide on this... we don't want to discourage jurists from participating or we will NEVER have juries if they have risk of being prosecuted themselves... they will have to be careful about that.)
Apple's cases are becoming crap. The more data that comes out, the easier it becomes to win against Apple. And the more people win against Apple, the harder it will be for Apple to squeeze settlements out of people. I think we're already seeing an end of this debacle of Apple going thermonuclear. If Jobs were alive, I think he would have halted all of this long before it tarnished Apple's image as it has. Apple just looks like a spoiled rich kid now.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you are seeing and missing my point at the same time.
Some law is used to advantage a few and harm the majority while others serve to help everyone work together and get along. Identifying the differences is key to establishing and maintaining a good working rule of law and of civilization.
Religious pacification is another approach to combating human nature but it doesn't effectively address the notion that one or more people may disagree with the practice. Religion is essentially and always will be 'voluntary' practice if it is more than a series of ceremonial words and motions.
But with various advances and lessons learned in chip and PC architecture, it makes sense that an 800MHz processor could take on a 3GHz processor and kick its butt.
No, it doesn't actually. Not when the 3GHz processor is one of the world's most efficient (in terms of realized computational power per clock cycle) designs in existence. Not when the effort required to reach that pinnacle of complexity and performance is... astonishing. (Think: 5 year long design projects.)
But if a processor can do the same amount of work using less power and an 800MHz clock, then it is NOT the world's most efficient. That's kind of the point of efficiency. What's more, it's a requirement for progress. We can't make an artificial brain when we are saddled with huge power consumption. Speed alone is not the only factor.
Each discrete processor instruction in x86 land still takes several clock cycles to execute. (I know, pipelining and multiple instructions are being processed at all times assembly line style so the effective instructions per cycle is different.)
You don't have any clue anyways. Throughput on common x86 instructions often exceeds 1 per cycle on modern advanced x86 core designs. It hardly matters that the start-to-finish latency for individual instructions is many cycles due to pipelining; without pipelines no design could operate even as fast as 800 MHz.
I think it is you who doesn't have a clue. I went to school on much of this. What you are missing is that much of the processing in these pipelines is wasted as the execution is speculative. So long as every series of instructions are a single stream, uninterrupted and involve no conditional branches, then yes, you can realize multiple instructions per clock cycle. But really you can't. That's not how processors work... especially not x86 processors. ...naivite ...
If improvements are to be made, there much be a discard of things which are legacy whenever and wherever possible. We are in the midst of big changes in the way [inter]networking and data are made accessible to people. The "PC" is becoming less significant. We are using new OSes and new hardware platforms. It is only a matter of time before those OSes and platforms invade business space just as the PC invaded the business mainframe space.
PowerPC
The PowerPC was a great thing. Unfortunately, it lacked something... a few somethings. One, it lacked the backing of Microsoft which was the dominant and growing force behind the move to PCs in the work place. Another thing lacking was that it didn't address any "needs" which weren't answerable by current and available technology. A solution without a problem is less likely to be adopted. Lots of ideas are good on paper. Computer history is cluttered with "better things" which never caught on because there was not enough need behind it.
problems with x86 are not fatal.
I beg to differ. We are now entering a time in which x86 cannot be the answer to the problem. The problem is that people want more mobility. x86 can't deliver.
I never really thought that was not understood.
We want to save money, for example. In business, we want to lose less money so, in food production, they add preservatives or use ingredients with longer shelf lives. The consequence of this falls to the consumer and back to society as a whole as it deals with increases in health problems such as diabetes. The "blame" is on the individual but also on society but also on the suppliers who make these decisions... because they want to save money.
We want to earn a living, as another example. When the establishment doesn't wish to allow outsiders to participate in the market, markets of other colors are born and developed.... you know, like grey and black markets. ALL markets of all colors and tones require defense and enforcement. The white markets are supported, defended and enforced by the established government. The other markets use other means and most often, by gangs and the like.
The development of organized crime which I described above also has other negative impacts on society. Among these are the glorification of the lifestyle in art. We see it every day through our comical portrayal of pirates [the high seas, wooden ship variety] and we see it in more modern ways as well. But the crimes against people afftected by unregulated (and even regulated) killing and other violence takes its toll on the hearts and minds of the people who live among these events. As death and killing becomes more frequent and more expected, the notion of defending one's self with deadly force becomes increasingly more acceptable. And the very definition of "defense" also twists itself into convenient shapes to suit the motivations and interests of those doing the killing and violence.
We have all sorts of behaviors which require regulation. The restriction or limitation of market participation, for example, leads to crime. We saw it in alcohol prohibition. We saw it in religious freedom restrictions. We see it today with more contemporary drugs. But we are also seeing it in other markets as well. The content publication industry finds itself incredibly threatened by digital technologies in that there is no medium to hold the content and therefore they aren't exactly a publication in the classical sense of the word. But nevertheless, we see the same patterns... government support, defense and enforcement. And it most certainly stems from the few trying to hold onto their territory and to prevent others from participating in the markets they have controlled.
To say murder is "like a disease" is to fail to see the over-all pattern of human behaviors... the causes which lead to effects which lead to more causes and more effects. Of course that comparison begins to break down somewhat when you determine which disease(s) murder is most similar to and which it is not though the generalities tend to hold true. But the root cause of both disease and of murder is human behavior and human nature.
Human nature is best overcome by law and regulation. It is really as simple as that. If someone says "what about God?!" Then you are simply saying "religious law" instead of just law.
You don't understand. This is management training. It's part of the process.
That's another thing. I can't remember the last time we ever used Microsoft or Cisco or any support from a vendor... well, Dell would be an exception and that's usually your typical laptop covered under accidental damage and I had a battery on a RAID card go out.
I get the perceptions all too well. As to the "untrustworthiness" someone above said? Heh... could be right, but they always come to me when they have exhausted other measures and I have never failed to deliver.
Product select is a religion. There was a time when Novell ruled the house and being a CNE or whatever Novell certified something or other meant you got a lot of money. On the other hand, the company hired on a Cisco guy... knnows his stuff pretty well, but even the company is beginning to see "oh shit, everything he recommends is Cisco and it's god damned expensive!!" We've been dealing with serious budget cutbacks lately and while I have no doubts about this guy's general network knowledge, he doesn't display much in the way of adaptability where product selection or implementation are concerned.
I see a task. I see the functions which need to addressed. I see what is required for implementation and also what is required for keeping it up. I accept the fact that we never use the support of the brands we buy. We just don't. I don't think it has ever occurred to management that we don't. And has anyone looked at what is being offered as "support"? It's really quite limited. In the end, regardless of which name brands you buy into, it's guys like me who will make it work, not Microsoft, Cisco or the rest. Turns out they only support "within the box." People like to think they live within the box but upon closer inspection, they live outside of those boxes a lot more than they care to realize.
They don't think "Linux" they think "Falconstor" and "Cisco" and "VMware" as brand names they trust. So what I learned from that is to make sure I say "Redhat" instead of CentOS because we have some servers based on that as well here and there.
Oh gawd... "what happens when you leave?" Nice argument. You sound like them.
It's beyond time to dump the x86. It was a bad processor from the beginning. I learned Motorola 6809 as my first assembly language processor and then when I went to learn Intel's x86, I was like WTF?! The inconsistent way the instructions and registers were used blew me away and made me appreciate the Motorola way a lot more. But the popularity of the PC kept the processor going and growing. I know things in x86 world have improved some, but it all still maintains that backward compatibility and the CISC legacy.
So it is just about time we introduce new processors and instruction sets. We are in a transitional state right now where computer/data handing is concerned. We are amidst a mobile revolution and all new processors (relatively speaking) are being used... no longer tied to compatibility and stuff like that. Perhaps it is even a little late as ARM is kind of the thing now.
But with various advances and lessons learned in chip and PC architecture, it makes sense that an 800MHz processor could take on a 3GHz processor and kick its butt. Each discrete processor instruction in x86 land still takes several clock cycles to execute. (I know, pipelining and multiple instructions are being processed at all times assembly line style so the effective instructions per cycle is different.) But if you combine current technology and design it from the ground up to do the kinds of things we do today, it would make sense that it would use less power and fewer cycles per instruction. The reason we aren't doing all that well today is that x86 things are crippled into doing things the x86 way because they are still needed to run x86 software.
So, while all other things are changing, why not take the opportunity and update the processor, OS and software along with the style of computing? I know Microsoft's answer is to adapt x86 Wintel into other forms. No one wants this other than Microsoft...
It also rhymes with "fax" which is short for facsimile.
Merry Xmas.
I have no direct knowledge and I, like most of everyone else, simply have to trust in my medical professionals.
But I have a concern. We know that mercury is poison. Why is it needed for vaccine? Perhaps someone here actually knows the answer and would share? Surely there are other elements or chemicals which could be used in place of mercury?
That said, I recognize that we get more mercury from fish than we get from vaccinations. After all, most people eat more fish than they take vaccines. Also, there is the occasional broken flourescent bulb... especially popular now are the CFLs right? We have ample sources of mercury so refusing vaccinations on that basis is kind of ridiculous in a sense... you're getting your USRDA of mercury in other forms.
Half or more of our infrastructure is already Linux. They just don't know it. Our storage network, our phone system, our voicemail, virtualization hosting... all of the most important and core things are running on Linux.
Wake the hell up... (I say to the bosses out there)
Some people can't put their brains in that place.
At work a problem once ensued when a person wanted to set up an MSSQL server for a project. My boss said "too expensive." I asked what language, he said VB.net. I said great! Have you considered mysql? He said it would violate license agreements. I said mysql, he heard SQLExpress. Idiot. Another person my boss reports to believes mysql is not a professional database server. It is used by hobbyists. But also used by professionals. It's free. It can't be good right? Forget that commercial licenses can be had and that Oracle now owns it.
People, and especially decision makers, simply can't wrap their heads around not using Microsoft for everything. The mental impairment is very visible to me. It's one thing to prefer one thing over another, but another to not even learn what the truth may be.
Similar discussion about iPhone/iPad in the business while excluding Android. The reason? Android is unix based and can't be trusted.
Seriously. It's what they believe!!!
I consider myself to be lucky to have survived childhood. I had no support while growing up.
AS/ASD is something the public doesn't initially understand. We have an evolution that society must undertake, but it can't be undertaken without awareness first. I'm grateful that in my lifetime there is actually a name for the problem. There is a name and a flood of people out there who share the problem. It's more than "shyness" or "awkwardness." It's a lot more. Think of it in terms of how society has evolved to accept homosexuality. At first it was denial. Then some people decided society needed to face it and millions came out of the closet to confront society. And when they did, laws and other things supporting them came about. Now society fully accepts homosexuality and employers and the general public aren't inclined to discriminate against them.
Even now, I have a six year old who has what I had coupled with growing up in a bi-lingual home. This has made language development far more complicated, but he has a father who knows very well what he's going through even if his mother still doesn't quite get it. In the end, he'll be far better than I ever was. But for now, school is having serious concerns and don't quite know what to do with him. He is extremely capable and surpasses other children in certain areas, but he can't easily demonstrate comprehension due to the lack of effective communication. While his teacher thinks he is absolutely brilliant in some of the things he does and has a keen sense of humor, (a coping method he has undoubtedly picked up from me as well) without communications, their hands are tied in some ways.
I never went to "special" classes as a child. Perhaps I should have, but my academics were off the charts and they didn't have special classes where I grew up that went the other direction. The problem was the time... people just didn't know.., they weren't aware. There was no name for it. And having a name for it is the most important beginning.
I feel bad that the name Asperger's is officially going away. It's an important distinction. We're very functional people... beyond functional -- we routinely excel in our fields beyond the average capacity of others. We don't need "special treatment." We just need to be judged less... but so does pretty much EVERYONE else. It's not a problem for people to be a bit "OCD" or to have a bit of "ADHD" and AS/ASD exists within the same level as far as I'm concerned. It's just that society has to know about it and get comfortable with it.
Asperger's people can be "rude" and self-interested, or they can attempt to cope by being too weak. Another commenter described how adapting through being "a pleaser" resulted in his being walked on by just about everyone. And that's the thing. Even though we don't usually "get it" we can make efforts most conveniently by being uber-beta which is a trap we often find ourselves falling into. And for those of us who never seem to take an objective look at ourselves and our lives, we remain stuck in that mode. [Think George McFly]
I tend to think of being "too nice" as entry-level coping for people with this condition. The next levels are harder to achieve without coaching or self-realization.
We live in a society of people and we depend on our ability to interact with others. This is true even if you seek to collect a pay check and stay at home alone day in and day out. Advancement and other things depend heavily on being able to form and maintain relationships. It is great if others can understand and even appreciate the differences, but most people simply don't have that level of acceptance and are inclined to take a strong dislike to the point of causing social and even financial harm.
It is not as simple a patch as all that. Quite a few people such as myself find the effects of alcohol undesirable. While it is not an absolute, it is very common for people like me to dislike drinking and we only engage in the activity to be social.
A fair perspective from a non-Aperger's point of view. Unfortunately, "expectations" are extremely similar in nature to "beliefs." And as we find in other examples across all of humanity, belief is far more powerful than reality.
This all reminds me, sadly, of a co-worker who reads FAR too much into "body language." Consider that people with Asperger's aren't particularly fluent in that lanugage and what troubles might arise from situations with people who actually favor gestures and cues far more than the words being spoken. Normal communication is hard enough for "normal" people. Add this and Asperger's to the mix and you've got an interesting thing.
"It doesn't matter what you tell me. What I believe is far more important."
Because you have a disconnect between natural and programmed responses. Even if some of your responses are genuine, you have disassembled that 'clockwork' and remanufactured it. It is no longer the thing you disassembled. It is now the thing you assembled whether or not it existed previously. We've all heard that by observing a thing, we are changing a thing.
You coded into RAM what others have in ROM quite naturally. There is the difference. I read what you wrote confused... I thought for a moment that I had written it.
Also, you were faced with the requirement to trade one part of yourself for another. This is not a requirement for others. You're still not "normal" and so you had to make compromises in order to appear more "normal." It's tragic, but I completely get what you're saying -- I live the same life.
I realized long ago that I was facing that sort of compromise. I have all but halted my study and pursuit of "normalcy." As I'm older, I find that certain social things just aren't worth the effort. Call me arrogant (others do anyway) but I still fail to see the value in certain types of social details. Sure, it means I am excluded from things here and there... missed opportunities and all that. But it would mean giving up more of what I like about me than I want. I have already given up more of myself than I wanted to.
Speaking as a person who exhibits most of the classical symptoms of Asperger's, I have to agree that it is an affliction, a disorder or disease.
I am not saying this to garner pity or priviledge... a parking spot would be nice though. I say this because if it is found to be preventable or curable, I would push for it It makes life needlessly difficult. There are simply things I cannot do. Among these include "going with the flow" which might seem like an easy, brainless thing to do, but it's not. The whole notion of merely "fitting it" is an amazingly complex thing which includes self delusion along with the ability to convince others of the same. I have spent more than enough time working it all through.
In PC terms, Asperger's is a bug in a person's social BIOS. The social BIOS cannot be flashed. It is the bootstrap for all social interactions. Things other people natually seem to understand are completely alien to the Asperger's person. But once we fully understand and appreciate the differences, effective changes can be made. It isn't a fix by any means. But learning to compensate is helpful, but also placing one's self in an environment where it exposes the afflicted to fewer people is also quite helpful.
I think most of us here on both sides of the general issue are failing to see the objective matters at hand. Asperger's is a disadvantage in most all cases except for when the other side-effects might appeat to be an advantage. We often associate specific mental abilities/capacities as "gifts" associated with the condition. This is not always the case and especially as the generally accepted autistics out there are not all idiot-savants.
Instead of identifying things, we tend to want to label things with words which do not have as universal a meaning as we think. This problem is identified by the arguments collapsing into a discussion about definitions of words. It is a problem of language and of social politics.
Asperger's is an advantage to me sometimes. I can disregard my emotional components to see the facts of the matters I observe. I don't always see all of the facts available at all times -- I have a limited capacity just like everyone else. But I have less propensity to fill in the gaps with belief and unsupported ideas.(Consider when you were a very young child... did you understand why girls and boys should dislike each other? I never did. I never saw cause. Go back in time and see which side of such questions you fell on... do you even remember?)
Yes. It is true. UI elements should be scaleable with the intent that they should be scaleable. But failing that functionality, the best alternative hack would be...? Yeah, playing with the DPI settings.
I do understand what it's supposed to be used for. Do you understand that if you have a means of getting the results you want regardless of the label used to identify its function that in the absense of better options, you should use it?
There's ideal and then there's practical. One [your] option says "do it right and proper or not at all" and other people just care about results. In other news, I have been known to put data on recordable "audio" storage devices such as cassette tape and CDs. I have also been known to put audio on data CDs. I'm ... just... that ... twisted!
But but but... he wrote a program that generated these "complex mazes!" He's entitled to any copyrights associated with the output of this program! AMIRIGHT?
Yeah, I get that math generated output is not particularly worthy of consideration beyond identifying what it actually is.
But then again we see this all the time. People representing simple things as great things. Apple under Steve Jobs made a life long career of it.
Hehe.... this guy needs to be modded funny.
All true. Which is why the juries are screened and their honesty is required as a qualification. This guy was not honest which taints the jury trial. A mistrial and a retrial is certainly warranted just as much as if the Judge happened to own Apple stock and failed to recuse himself.
It's not about Apple hate. It's about a guy who hated Seagate, and by extension, Samsung who found himself invited to being on a jury where Samsung was being sued over an issue very close to his heart.
If this guy were a judge in this case, he would have had to recuse himself. In fact, he was asked about information to determine if he should be on the jury at all and he omitted information which unquestionably would have prevented him from being on the jury, let alone foreman. Given the extremely troubled past he had with Seagate and the legal battles, it is not reasonable to assume it just slipped his mind. And his various interviews where he stated he wanted to "send a message" indicates his vigilante nature.
This isn't about Apple hate. If it was Samsung vs Google, the real situational issue would be the same.
It was no fishing expedition. It was the foreman's own ego that is doing him and his trial in. No question he has a mission and intent in all of this. He stated as much in his many interviews. Things he said like "wanting to send a message" demonstrates he wanted to be judge, jury and executioner.
As far as knowing more about patent law? Either this guy doesn't know what he thinks he knows about the applicability of patents (he said something didn't infringe because of the processor it ran on was different? Really? By that standard, nothing infringes on Apple devices because Apple uses "special processors.") or he blew ample amounts of false information out to the rest of the jury to get the results he wanted. Either way, it's misbehavior on the part of this jurist. This is definitely one for the books and if this guy doesn't get some sort of action taken against him, it will be a little surprising. (Though I can see the argument for letting him slide on this... we don't want to discourage jurists from participating or we will NEVER have juries if they have risk of being prosecuted themselves... they will have to be careful about that.)
Apple's cases are becoming crap. The more data that comes out, the easier it becomes to win against Apple. And the more people win against Apple, the harder it will be for Apple to squeeze settlements out of people. I think we're already seeing an end of this debacle of Apple going thermonuclear. If Jobs were alive, I think he would have halted all of this long before it tarnished Apple's image as it has. Apple just looks like a spoiled rich kid now.