I looked at fsf.org. The name they have thought up, 'free software', is dreadful! I now have no confidence in Gnu software's variable naming conventions.;o)
It is basically confusing.
Now, to any man on the street. Internet Explorer is free software. You don't have to pay for it. Acrobat reader is free software you don't have to pay for it. (OK, leave arguments about no such thing as a free lunch aside - this is a syntax debate not a philosophical debate).
I now understand that the fsf are using free in the libertarian sense, but this meaning is immediately lost when we leave the inner circles of the fsf and its supporters. Ironic really when they are trying to push the software onto a global market.
Open source is a much better name and is being taken to mean fsf-style free software really anyhow.
It's a good idea to try and talk the same language, otherwise we will all get very confused.
What occurs is that hiring of decent digital cameras might well become commonplace as well. Let's face it how often do you use your camera? Why not just hire one while you go on holiday? You pay a deposit, the hire fee includes insurance, and everybody's happy.
It would be interesting if that wasn't a good business model.
As a student I have my disk space regulated, am I soon to have my CPU time regulated (this used to happen). I don't know whether I would end up with more CPU time available to me for a project or less?
A basic invention i just came up with is not dissimilar to a train - you get into a box that has rollers/wheels on the bottom. Internal friction in the wheels/rollers will accelerate the box on the conveyor belt and the box can then be accelerated to whatever speed wanted (extremely fast if in a vacuum). The same effect will slow the box down when it comes off the other end.
Boxes can then be sent back using a travellator that goes the other way, or another idea is to make them collapsible so they can go back under the conveyor belt.
The next question is how to design slip roads and junctions so we can build a whole network of the things.
A sliproad is pretty easy - you just have another conveyor belt going the same speed next to the one you already have and you cross over (either in the box, or in the pedestrian version).
Junctions could be nasty due to the concept of traffic jams. The whole thing would have to be computer controlled with each box knowing its route through the traffic so that traffic jams couldn't happen.
All the people on the belt should pull enough air along with them so air pumps wont be that necessary.
A basic invention is not dissimilar to a train - you get into a box that has rollers/wheels on the bottom. Internal friction in the wheels/rollers will accelerate the box on the conveyor belt and the box can then be accelerated to whatever speed wanted (extremely fast if in a vacuum). The same effect will slow the box down when it comes off the other end.
Boxes can then be sent back using a travellator that goes the other way, or another idea is to make them collapsible so they can go back under the conveyorbelt.
Is it fair that a bunch of scientists who don't actually really know what they're doing, they think they know, but they don't really, are going to potentially start a big bang and destroy the whole universe? OR open up a portal for the anti christ etc.
I do feel that the human race should really make that decision. Just as it should make the decision whether we should be going to Mars or not.
Just my tuppence. Any expert physicists out there going to tell me how stoopid i am??
All I can respond is by looking back at my own childhood and at what happened before I was concious and then suddenly one day noticing that I was concious. I have no way of telling if anyone else has gone through this.
I never said that evolution is necessarily a progressive process. More likely the human mind happened `by accident', as human (and other primate) brains developed this ability to make abstractions which gave them an advantage.
What is important that we (some of us) do actually understand the processes by which this came to pass and have been able to harness these processes - through breeding food, animals, using genetic algorithms in computer science etc.
In that sense we have transcended nature. Since we now understand it, its processes, while they should be _respected_, can now be seen as something we can and should manipulate to our own advantage. (And before you attack me for saying this, farming is manipulating nature to our own advantage, GM foods is just an extension to what we've always done.)
Nonsense, the human brain is at the pinical of evolution. Not only that, it has transcended evolution - we can now alter evolution and use it as a computer algorithm.
It's about time the human race realised it is in _charge_ of its own destiny, and while nature is a powerful force, the concious mind is the greatest known thing on the planet. It should be developed and nurtured.
I have visions of micro payments and kazaa style networks of spam being sent out. If enough people are generating spam then there's little people can do. It won't even look like spam if it's like 20 emails a day per computer.
It could become like a mafia protection racket, either send out spam and not get any on your email - or you will get loads.
OK, I'm not an american, I only know what the case is in Britain. I'm sure the white heterosexual male is treated as a norm far more on tv than any other. It certainly is by the hollywood films, sitcoms and soap operas we get to watch made by your
I believe whites are almost in a minority in the states now anyway?
There is a field of 'masculinity studies' which does study male issues. Maybe there should be more programmes discussing the white male role in society, because they are clearly too dominant!
I meant represent the population as a whole and its cultural / ethnic makeup.
Mechanical engineering *ability* (not opportunities!!!) has little correlation to cultural or ethnic background. (Saying anything other to that would be flamebait.) So, while a tv show portraying qualified engineers as having a white majority in the us might have some factual content, it would not represent the engineering potential and it would not represent the population.
Having shown that it is not actual propaganda (i.e. a distortion of the truth), even if it was it would still be a good thing. There is nothing wrong with showing that non-whites can be engineers.
Furthermore, if you want evidence about inequities then that is the job for race watchdogs to publish. By portraying the world as a happy multicultural place it surely makes it more likely to become a reality.
It's not just that they want to appeal to a more diverse audience, more that they want to demonstrate that ability (and mechanical ability) is not determined by race. Also, TV rightly so feels it has a duty to properly represent the population. Maybe there are a disproportionate number of white engineers in the states, but I don't think it's right that it should be portrayed that way to the nation's youth.
Also it would make the show more interesting if it was more multicultural. Sorry for the stereotyping, but it would be really funny to watch a crackpot team of vietnamese engineers build a wacky contraption that defeats all US attempts.
Fair enough about Roddenberry, he had sadly reached the end of the road. It seems that so also has Berman. Nemesis is dreadful, the plot is that of a weak star trek episode. OK, the SFX were good, the production values were good, some of the acting was reasonable. But, and Patrick Stewart had this written all over his face, it's just not got anything special about it. It's all been done before. I had enough time between watching TTT before Nemesis to have a break, but no - I was actually angry while watching it. It just misses a certain zip or life that other science fiction (notably B5) seems to have.
Anyway, there's a definite shift towards magic and strange creatures in the FSF world. Space ships just ain't got it anymore (scuse the pun).
And there's nothing to stop you editing the vector file (it's called 'vector') and putting a #if statement in for yourself to do some bounds checking on debug compiles.
A bit of a cludge, but you can fix it so if the vector file is updated your code will notice...
in vector put a #define (say MY_VECTOR_BOUNDS_CHECKING 1) at the top. and put a #if in your source file which will create an error (#error isn't it?) if MY_VECTOR_BOUNDS_CHECKING isn't 1.
Hopefully the next time vector is overwritten, the new compiler release will have optional bounds checking:o)
I looked into this and you're right! I always assumed it just did anyway. Or you could turn it on and off with compile options. I believe with some implementations you can do this.
If you use the 'at' function then it bounds checks.
How tedious! I'm just going to have to write my own template library.
I had a quick peruse at the web site. I must admit the vector class in the C++ STL is well worth learning. It's not as quick as the usual error checking you get with arrays, but it is very secure. And once you know that you can move onto lists and maps.
But hey, it's not C. Ohhhh for a program that is so power hungry I have to write it in pure C.;o)
I don't think LOTR is maliciously racist, however it is very sad that the only peoples from our planet clearly represented in the action in the book are white germanic analogues (I think of the elves, dwarfs, hobbits and men as white germanic types personally).
If people can't see the, 'christian brits take on the world' themes in it then sorry, but I can. Are you aware that ex pat brits (who are now ancestors of the current inhabitants) used to murder indigenous americans, africans and australians on the grounds that they felt they weren't human?
While the book may not be explicitly allegorical, it may be viewed as being metaphorical when applied to current politics. All literature and art, by its very nature, has to stand this test.
If this riles Tolkien, or his ancestors then I'm sorry, but... Isn't it a little bit disrespectful for this kind of book, where - and i repeat it again if you haven't noticed yet! - germanic analogues kick the evil asses of the nasty non-germanic, but STILL SENTIENT, beasts in the name of their religion, when the english / americans / australians have been doing the same thing for the past 4-500 years.
If Britain wants its own myths, there are probably some - but they were forgotten 1000s of years ago when the marauding Celts destroyed the indigenous people. Now all we have is shame for what we have done to the world.
Personally i found the games industry very enjoyable at first. Then, once the novelty of having the latest gaming hardware and software in the office (Rebellion where we worked on AvP) wore off, I realised what the (western) industry really is like.
It's a macho male dominated industry where predominantly male ideas such as 'cars and guns are cool' and 'hit your competitor (colleague) before he hits you' dominate. The executives sell products to children which are antisocial, addictive and are rarely educational.
The people who work in the industry can be genuinely nice, and it is interesting work - but I didn't see the point meself. My particular company seemed to prefer to pay its staff as little as it possibly could get away with and the whole process of having to threaten to leave to get a pay rise left me with a sore taste in my mouth. I left before AvP was realised and hence didn't get a penny (not that i'd have got any money anyhow), or my name on the credits of the game.
Slashdot Mirror
I looked at fsf.org. The name they have thought up, 'free software', is dreadful! I now have no confidence in Gnu software's variable naming conventions. ;o)
It is basically confusing.
Now, to any man on the street. Internet Explorer is free software. You don't have to pay for it. Acrobat reader is free software you don't have to pay for it. (OK, leave arguments about no such thing as a free lunch aside - this is a syntax debate not a philosophical debate).
I now understand that the fsf are using free in the libertarian sense, but this meaning is immediately lost when we leave the inner circles of the fsf and its supporters. Ironic really when they are trying to push the software onto a global market.
Open source is a much better name and is being taken to mean fsf-style free software really anyhow.
It's a good idea to try and talk the same language, otherwise we will all get very confused.
Actually the main reason they are doing it is because the software is open source - better than free.
The European Union don't want to be dependant on proprietary software (least of all M$ software). Hence they want an open source solution.
Anyone can release free software and then hold you over a barrel for updates!
I object to your assumption that I'm a voyeurist heterosexual male.
Also, just because you use your camera lots certainly does not imply others do. My mother bought a digital video camera and has hardly used it.
Generally self centred males try to bring others down to their own level.
What occurs is that hiring of decent digital cameras might well become commonplace as well. Let's face it how often do you use your camera? Why not just hire one while you go on holiday? You pay a deposit, the hire fee includes insurance, and everybody's happy.
It would be interesting if that wasn't a good business model.
As a student I have my disk space regulated, am I soon to have my CPU time regulated (this used to happen). I don't know whether I would end up with more CPU time available to me for a project or less?
A basic invention i just came up with is not dissimilar to a train - you get into a box that has rollers/wheels on the bottom. Internal friction in the wheels/rollers will accelerate the box on the conveyor belt and the box can then be accelerated to whatever speed wanted (extremely fast if in a vacuum). The same effect will slow the box down when it comes off the other end.
Boxes can then be sent back using a travellator that goes the other way, or another idea is to make them collapsible so they can go back under the conveyor belt.
The next question is how to design slip roads and junctions so we can build a whole network of the things.
A sliproad is pretty easy - you just have another conveyor belt going the same speed next to the one you already have and you cross over (either in the box, or in the pedestrian version).
Junctions could be nasty due to the concept of traffic jams. The whole thing would have to be computer controlled with each box knowing its route through the traffic so that traffic jams couldn't happen.
All the people on the belt should pull enough air along with them so air pumps wont be that necessary.
A basic invention is not dissimilar to a train - you get into a box that has rollers/wheels on the bottom. Internal friction in the wheels/rollers will accelerate the box on the conveyor belt and the box can then be accelerated to whatever speed wanted (extremely fast if in a vacuum). The same effect will slow the box down when it comes off the other end.
Boxes can then be sent back using a travellator that goes the other way, or another idea is to make them collapsible so they can go back under the conveyorbelt.
Well...
Is it fair that a bunch of scientists who don't actually really know what they're doing, they think they know, but they don't really, are going to potentially start a big bang and destroy the whole universe? OR open up a portal for the anti christ etc.
I do feel that the human race should really make that decision. Just as it should make the decision whether we should be going to Mars or not.
Just my tuppence. Any expert physicists out there going to tell me how stoopid i am??
Yeh great, I get ya.
All I can respond is by looking back at my own childhood and at what happened before I was concious and then suddenly one day noticing that I was concious. I have no way of telling if anyone else has gone through this.
I never said that evolution is necessarily a progressive process. More likely the human mind happened `by accident', as human (and other primate) brains developed this ability to make abstractions which gave them an advantage.
What is important that we (some of us) do actually understand the processes by which this came to pass and have been able to harness these processes - through breeding food, animals, using genetic algorithms in computer science etc.
In that sense we have transcended nature. Since we now understand it, its processes, while they should be _respected_, can now be seen as something we can and should manipulate to our own advantage. (And before you attack me for saying this, farming is manipulating nature to our own advantage, GM foods is just an extension to what we've always done.)
After that kind of comment I'm going to revise my opinion. Some people are just dumb. I think it's through lack of education though (I'm an optimist).
Nonsense, the human brain is at the pinical of evolution. Not only that, it has transcended evolution - we can now alter evolution and use it as a computer algorithm.
It's about time the human race realised it is in _charge_ of its own destiny, and while nature is a powerful force, the concious mind is the greatest known thing on the planet. It should be developed and nurtured.
I have visions of micro payments and kazaa style networks of spam being sent out. If enough people are generating spam then there's little people can do. It won't even look like spam if it's like 20 emails a day per computer.
It could become like a mafia protection racket, either send out spam and not get any on your email - or you will get loads.
OK, I'm not an american, I only know what the case is in Britain. I'm sure the white heterosexual male is treated as a norm far more on tv than any other. It certainly is by the hollywood films, sitcoms and soap operas we get to watch made by your
I believe whites are almost in a minority in the states now anyway?
There is a field of 'masculinity studies' which does study male issues. Maybe there should be more programmes discussing the white male role in society, because they are clearly too dominant!
I meant represent the population as a whole and its cultural / ethnic makeup.
Mechanical engineering *ability* (not opportunities!!!) has little correlation to cultural or ethnic background. (Saying anything other to that would be flamebait.) So, while a tv show portraying qualified engineers as having a white majority in the us might have some factual content, it would not represent the engineering potential and it would not represent the population.
Having shown that it is not actual propaganda (i.e. a distortion of the truth), even if it was it would still be a good thing. There is nothing wrong with showing that non-whites can be engineers.
Furthermore, if you want evidence about inequities then that is the job for race watchdogs to publish. By portraying the world as a happy multicultural place it surely makes it more likely to become a reality.
It's not just that they want to appeal to a more diverse audience, more that they want to demonstrate that ability (and mechanical ability) is not determined by race. Also, TV rightly so feels it has a duty to properly represent the population. Maybe there are a disproportionate number of white engineers in the states, but I don't think it's right that it should be portrayed that way to the nation's youth.
Also it would make the show more interesting if it was more multicultural. Sorry for the stereotyping, but it would be really funny to watch a crackpot team of vietnamese engineers build a wacky contraption that defeats all US attempts.
Fair enough about Roddenberry, he had sadly reached the end of the road. It seems that so also has Berman. Nemesis is dreadful, the plot is that of a weak star trek episode. OK, the SFX were good, the production values were good, some of the acting was reasonable. But, and Patrick Stewart had this written all over his face, it's just not got anything special about it. It's all been done before. I had enough time between watching TTT before Nemesis to have a break, but no - I was actually angry while watching it. It just misses a certain zip or life that other science fiction (notably B5) seems to have.
Anyway, there's a definite shift towards magic and strange creatures in the FSF world. Space ships just ain't got it anymore (scuse the pun).
The article says that it was cancelled because the technology was too immature.
;o)
How long has concorde been around??? Almost 30 years now isn't it?
I thought the current 'immature' technology was the Australian SCRAM jets which are supposed to go to Mach 4 or somit. Not Mach 0.9!!!!
Come on Boeing, get with it. Us Europeans are giving you a trouncing
Hmmm, is this bad news for Symbian then? Surely in the long run Linux will start running on our mobile phones and everything else...
Here's hoping for linux toaster for chrimbo.
It sounds a bit like James Dyson's vacuum cleaner.
;o)
http://www.dyson.co.uk/.
One shudders to think what teenage boys might get up to with it
And there's nothing to stop you editing the vector file (it's called 'vector') and putting a #if statement in for yourself to do some bounds checking on debug compiles.
:o)
A bit of a cludge, but you can fix it so if the vector file is updated your code will notice...
in vector put a #define (say MY_VECTOR_BOUNDS_CHECKING 1) at the top.
and put a #if in your source file which will create an error (#error isn't it?) if MY_VECTOR_BOUNDS_CHECKING isn't 1.
Hopefully the next time vector is overwritten, the new compiler release will have optional bounds checking
I looked into this and you're right! I always assumed it just did anyway. Or you could turn it on and off with compile options. I believe with some implementations you can do this.
If you use the 'at' function then it bounds checks.
How tedious! I'm just going to have to write my own template library.
Or are there any really good ones out there?
I had a quick peruse at the web site. I must admit the vector class in the C++ STL is well worth learning. It's not as quick as the usual error checking you get with arrays, but it is very secure. And once you know that you can move onto lists and maps.
;o)
But hey, it's not C. Ohhhh for a program that is so power hungry I have to write it in pure C.
OK, not much time to reply to all this...
I don't think LOTR is maliciously racist, however it is very sad that the only peoples from our planet clearly represented in the action in the book are white germanic analogues (I think of the elves, dwarfs, hobbits and men as white germanic types personally).
If people can't see the, 'christian brits take on the world' themes in it then sorry, but I can. Are you aware that ex pat brits (who are now ancestors of the current inhabitants) used to murder indigenous americans, africans and australians on the grounds that they felt they weren't human?
While the book may not be explicitly allegorical, it may be viewed as being metaphorical when applied to current politics. All literature and art, by its very nature, has to stand this test.
If this riles Tolkien, or his ancestors then I'm sorry, but... Isn't it a little bit disrespectful for this kind of book, where - and i repeat it again if you haven't noticed yet! - germanic analogues kick the evil asses of the nasty non-germanic, but STILL SENTIENT, beasts in the name of their religion, when the english / americans / australians have been doing the same thing for the past 4-500 years.
If Britain wants its own myths, there are probably some - but they were forgotten 1000s of years ago when the marauding Celts destroyed the indigenous people. Now all we have is shame for what we have done to the world.
Personally i found the games industry very enjoyable at first. Then, once the novelty of having the latest gaming hardware and software in the office (Rebellion where we worked on AvP) wore off, I realised what the (western) industry really is like.
It's a macho male dominated industry where predominantly male ideas such as 'cars and guns are cool' and 'hit your competitor (colleague) before he hits you' dominate. The executives sell products to children which are antisocial, addictive and are rarely educational.
The people who work in the industry can be genuinely nice, and it is interesting work - but I didn't see the point meself. My particular company seemed to prefer to pay its staff as little as it possibly could get away with and the whole process of having to threaten to leave to get a pay rise left me with a sore taste in my mouth. I left before AvP was realised and hence didn't get a penny (not that i'd have got any money anyhow), or my name on the credits of the game.