"Now tell me: why are the likes of NVidia and ATI keeping their products undocumented and their drivers closed?"
From someone who works in the "real" world...money. It's all about money. The items you mentioned, about decompiling the source and electron microsopes, well that takes time and money, and lots of it. It's the same reason that you don't do it yourself. While some specific patented technologies can be looked into and "reverse engineered" if it is felt that the outcome of doing so will be more viable, it just doesn't make any sense to do it on a large scale, it will just cost too much.
Very few/.'ers seem to understand the concepts of time or money. The understanding of those concepts seem to come with age. Guess what? We don't live forever, and we don't have all the time in the world to sit down and reverse engineer a system.
"There's always AFS, but that's so bloody complicated that I'd take a lot of convincing before I seriously considered it."
AFS is NOT complicated. There are some people who for better or worse have made it seem complicated. There are some simple principles you need to understand before you use AFS, and after that it's generally a great ride.
Historically, there are three databases that must be managed. One of the databases manages the user accounts, and groups. The next database handles the volumes, what servers the volumes are on, how big the volumes are, and how the volumes are mapped into the AFS tree. And the last database is KAS, which is now defunct since Kerberos is used instead. These databases are managed as a group called a CELL. An AFS cell is simply a designation similar to a domain name, that groups all the volumes and security principles under one umbrella. You can build multiple cells if you want.
Some AFS features...
* Global namespace
One mount path gets you everywhere.
Continuously mountable. * Read-only replications with failover. * Volume level user quota. * Directory level ACLs. * Administrative and user creatable groups. * User managable groups. * Unix style symbolic links. * Kerberos authenticated security. * Integration for heterogeneous environments
of Windows, Unix, and Mac OS X. * Encrypted network transfers. * Internet wide file sharing with other
AFS institutions and businesses via the
standard "/afs" mount.
The people who have made AFS overly complex should be shot. There are people who try to preserve their lives in the industry by building complex systems, then they make themselves out to be authorities (gurus). Many people involved in AFS are of that nature, but I assure you, if you think AFS is complicated, then you might as well be using Windows wizards. Real sysadmins learn the tools of their trade, and AFS is a very good tool to use.
I find it ironic, paradoxical(?), one of the features so darling and network centric is text messaging.
Text messaging is the equivalent of someone coming to you and telling you to give them money for something you've already paid for. What people don't understand about this technology is that they are getting nothing for something. In the time it takes for you to utter "Hello World!" with your voice, you could send hundreds of text messages in the same data stream. So text messages are essentially "free" from the cell providers point of view, yet they are charging us extra for it.
It seems these days that people understand less and less about how technology works and companies are able to take advantage of that fact. In fact there is a fair amount of downright "confusion marketing" going on so that the consumer can never be knowledgeable about what they are actually getting for their money. If I can charge you $40 for the basic service and $10 more for an added service that doesn't require any more technology than the basic service (or less in the case of text messaging), then consumers are getting ripped off.
I'm actually dumbfounded as to why no one seems to care about things that are going on in the world these days. Oh sure, gas is above $3.00 a gallon, but that is a highly visible and tangible substance. What about the price of bottled water, or sugar water for that matter? No one seems to care. In fact, the business of selling so called "energy drinks" is escalating out of control.
If you actually care about the price of gas, then you should be downright "ticked off" that you are being charged extra for text messaging.
In fact, why in the world don't prices drop further for established services? Why do all your typical monthly bills seem to bottom out at around $20 to $30 (a single person, living alone). Why are they all about the same, even for completely differing services. Ever notice that you will never get an electric bill for less than $30 dollars? Why doesn't a land line phone only cost $5.00 a month in 2006? If I get a bill for $30 dollars a month, and so do 100 million other people, then that's 3 billion dollars a month going somewhere? So where?
Over the past 20 years we've seen technology prices tumble. A PC that once cost $5000 now costs $400, and it can process 10,000 times more information. Fiber can now support millions of connections at data rates hundreds of times greater than 20 years ago. Yet, our bills seem to keep going up. Why?
Why don't MMORPGs cost only $1.00 a month? Why do most subscriptions to almost any service all range from $10 to $40? Why do we pay around $1.00 for 3 Meg of compressed audio file (just bits) when we don't get anything at all material?
Companies are making more these days, and squeezing more out of consumers than ever before and few seem to care. So in this respect I'm quite happy to see the price of gas rise. Serves us right.
I also don't like dark matter/energy theories very much (although I do like the idea that there is more out there that we don't know about). Nor do I like string theories. I think the whole of physics is somehow run amok. A few things do appeal to me however, probably because of my feeling that ultimately it all boils down to a computational algorithm. I think that some aspects of quantum theory fit like the "Bekenstein bound", and that this relates to gravity over the large scale.
For example, when it comes to gravity, we might think of space itself as a substance, not a material substance, but a substance of which all "material" things are made. A volume of this "space" substance then has various "densities" within it, giving cause to gravity, and causing light to bend, in much the same way as light bending through glass of varying density.
Now, when it comes to the galaxy problem mentioned in the article, we might see a galaxy as a "condensation" of hydrogen at the boundary of the region of high and low pressure of the space substance "density". In this model we are viewing a galaxy much like a hurricane forms. A hurricane is a self sustaining structure within a volume of air giving rise to the formation of clouds, and rain. A galaxy is a formation of condensing hydrogen at the boundary of a high and low density of space (seem to be repeating myself). Due to this model, gravity does not vary directly from the center of the volume of the galaxy, but follows the general structure of the galaxy itself.
So what is this space substance of which all things are made? Does it matter (pun intended)? If we see this space substance as a mathematically "continuous" substrate that can manifest all objects, then what is it that gives rise to "size"? If quantum mechanics and the Bekenstein bound are correct, then the "continuous" substrate of space is actually punctuated with perfect sinusoidal waves. These waves, through self interaction and superposition give rise to location, eg. points in space where some things are, and some things aren't. The chaos of this wavy interaction ends up dividing space into a "resolution", much like your computer screen has a resolution. All material objects are then constructed of these wavy interactions that are happening at the Plank resolution. However, the Plank resolution should vary directly as the "density" of space, eg, the resolution of space should be high near a massive object, and low where there is no mass.
Do I believe any of this? No, not neccessarily, as Mony Python says, "it's just a model." But I really like theories that are simpler, instead of more complex.
In your mind, if you see a relationship of black people to monkeys then that automatically makes you a racist, probably the worst kind. Showing empathy would be like putting gasoline on fire because you are basically admitting openly that there is some kind of connection.
Racism is bad, and you've just componded the problem sir.
You are correct. The problem we have here is that these "volumes of density" are abstract. But your reasoning is exactly the problem we encounter with the Michelson-Morley Experiment right? We seem to find that light is the same speed in all directions, proving that the "ether" doesn't exist. The basic problem with the "old ether" is that ether was some kind of substance. I find this view of ether silly since space-time itself isn't a "substance" it is the opposite of substance, of matter itself...it is "space". As in, what is the volume that surrounds matter? SPACE. In my original analogy, imagine again that nothing exists except for "air". Matter then would be "configurations" of "air". Matter would be some kind of "vortices" or foldings of "air". Light then would be seen as a "vibration" in the "air". And since we, being made of "air" in this analogy, could never move faster than, vibrations in air.
So how could we "prove" this model...this analogy? Well take our original glass sphere the size of a basket ball. I said you can't put a house in a basket ball right? Well what would happen if we placed a marble sized black hole inside that basket balls volume? Assuming for the moment that the glass sphere would not be crushed by the black holes high density of space-time around it (gravity), then we should be able to put very large things in there right? The problem with this analogy is that the "glass spheres" volume would neccessarily cause it to shrink, or become more dense. If space-time actually works the way we're suggesting, then you cannot have a "rigid frame of reference" made of matter, since matter itself is made of space-time. But isn't this actually the state of affairs encountered with these experiments?
From this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether of the Wikipedia..."Another, completely different, attempt to save "absolute" aether was made in the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction hypothesis, which posited that everything was affected by travel through the aether. In this theory the reason the Michelson-Morley experiment "failed" was that it contracted in length in the direction of travel. That is, the light was being affected in the "natural" manner by its travel though the aether as predicted, but so was the experiment itself, cancelling out any difference when measured. Even Lorentz was not very happy with this suggestion, although it did neatly solve the problem. Later this idea received additional support from the Kennedy-Thorndike experiment in 1932, as Kennedy and Thorndike concluded that both a Lorentz contraction as well as time dilation occur, thus "confiming special relativity".
In order for these analogies to work, you'd have to have a "four dimensionally" rigid volume for which to measure the "density" of the 3 dimensional space-time. At least, I think. So that might mean that indeed, there is something "outside" of our own "space-time" way of measuring things.
That's my take on modern cosmology. That there exists this one substance, the vacum substance, the stubstance of space-time itself. It can be imagined as a drop of water, or equally as a cloud of moisture. It contains volumes within it that are "denser" than other volumes. We say that there is "more space" (or less?) within those volumes. All "material" goods are then just some kind of configuration of this "space-time" stuff. I think also that based on quantum mechanics, and the "Beckenstein bound", material within a given volume can be realized in much the same way pictures are made up of "pixels" on a computer screen. Think of it. Your computer screen resolution determines all objects that are "realizable" within its resolution. The Beckenstein bound then formulates a given volume for space-time in which objects of a given size can fit. The relationship of the "density" of space-time then should directly influence the Beckenstein bound such that, if there is "more space", then there should be the possibility of a larger number of possible quantum states within the abstract volume of space-time.
If you had a glass sphere the size of a basketball, what are all the material objects that are realizable within that space? Well, we can put car keys, pens, small animals/insects, etc. But we cannot put a house inside a basketball right? Well maybe a doll house. But how would we go about putting a real house in a volume the size of a basketball? Simple, just increase the density of space-time within that abstract volume. That will increase the number of quantum states possible just like increasing the resolution of your computer screen. But what do we mean when we say "space is dense"? Since the vacum is matters "opposite", we would probably conclude that space would be "denser" where matter is not. So we might say that within a "black-hole" there is theoretically "no space". A black hole would then indeed be a hold within space-time, a tear in the fabric of reality for example. But this may not be the case. It could be that a black hole is a place were the density of space is so high as to be exactly "solid" space-time. In this respect matter flows into a black hole and then becomes converted to "space-time", which then slowly and inexorably flows outward. Space-time is being generated by a black-hole by the conversion of matter to space-time.
If space-time is a substance of some kind, and all matter is just some configuration of it, then that would explain why we cannot move faster than light. This would be the case if we were somehow made of configurations and vortices of "air". Since we being made of "air", we could not move faster than sound right? Of course doesn't the speed of sound vary with the density of air? Would not the speed of light vary with the density of space-time? Of course it does, this was Einsteins great find, that light travels along a space-time geodesic. The geodesic caused by the "density" of space-time.
Based on all these analogies, I don't see why we have to think about the fourth dimension at all. We just need to imagine space-time as a volume with varying densities. Within a high density of space-time, you can have more matter, and more quantum states. It is abstract I know, but for my mind it works. Is there a reason that these analogies can be viewed as "wrong"? I'm willing to take an alternate view.
Re:Sensationalist Journalism?
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 1
Viruses != Organisms
Yes, of course your are quite right. I mean I remember the chapter in the bible that explains that. It's right here...hmmm...lemme... see... just a sec... wait, that over on page... Hold your horses! Neither of those words are in the bible!
Of course your whole statment relies on the fact that both "Sin" and "God" make some rational sense, which they don't. In reality, neither "Sin", nor "God" have justified meaning because the words themselves can't be explained in any manner that will allow __________ (fill in the blank). I might fill the blank with "verification", but others generally accept that "connection" would be a better term. You cannot describe what the word god means without having notions of physical things or emotional experiences. A word "god" does not exist independently of the words used to describe it. Therefore what is "it"? About the only thing close that makes any sentence at all is the simple utterance "I am", which simply recognizes being itself. So, in being, since we are, therefore, we are it, or everything is it. But it is very likely that "it" has no intentions whatsoever, that are at all, in any way, described by most modern religions. There are simply too many possiblities for what the word "god" stands for that we are unlikely to be correct about any of them as they relate to the way things really are.
There is also no such thing as sin. As a child you are "taught" to believe that if you do a bad thing, then you have "sinned". Ok, so what's a bad thing? No one really knows. As for the concept of god, it is also equally tenuous. What are the properties of this thing that is described by such a word? People spout off such things as "infinite" this, or "unlimited" that, as if those remarks make any sense whatsoever.
Life is utterly simpler than any religous teachings. Just be constructive in your day, stay away from "destructive" tendencies, and you might be happy. Of course there are a lot of random elements to everday living that get in the way. Just continue to work "against" the tide and things "should" shape up. In the end, everyone has a different life to live. The final word is that...
"You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need." The Rolling Stones
The real kicker here is to remember that you are getting a degradation from the real thing. What we all really wanted is to have music CDs to be lowered in price so we can try/buy more of a variety in full quality 2x16bit PCM audio. Instead now we seem to have let our values slide so that we are comfortable with compressed music and so it seems the industry is now taking advantage of this comfort level. In the end, we'll now probably start paying more for the real thing. This whole process is ignored partially because this is what the new generation of listeners gets used to.
Music...is simply too expensive for what it is worth. Think about it. When you download compressed music the only cost to the company providing it to you is the electricity (recurring cost), data networking equipment (long term recurring cost), and location/space (investment cost). There are no actual material goods being transfered over the wire. It is almost insane to think about what profits are being generated by this kind of setup. I suppose the only thing worse are ring tones, and wireless text messaging. In the end, all you are paying for is for somebody to arrange 30 million bits (an approximately three minute compressed song) into the correct pattern. To arrange these bits only needs to occur once. Why do so many people need to pay so much money for that to happen?
I don't know about everyone else here, but as an artist I don't create a work based on what other people want. Art is a personal expression and a desire to bring your dreams to life. If others like your art then so be it, otherwise art is being used as a drug to only make the viewer feel good. This has the effect of developing a habit, which is exactly what the music companies want.
Privacy is no longer an issue in this country because "the people" no longer demand it. What the people appear to demand these days is convenience. People regularly use supermarket savings cards, PVRs that record usage information, used Web services like iTunes and GMail that data mine your email and web usage, use rebates to get lower prices, etc. I mean really, what is private anymore since nobody cares (sarcasm)? As more and more marketing is done we find that the lowest common denominator thinkers are beginning to change the way society works. I can no longer deal with this problem. It's the same problem as trying to be a good recycler when your neighbor doesn't care. I mean really, what's the point? Cynical.
I consider the two button mouse to be the minimum because of "objectifying" on screen objects. This I consider the left button to be used for the objects public methods and the right mouse button to be used to edit the object's properties. Scroll wheels and such go even further to allow interaction with the objects.
I also don't like being considered a "less than capable" person. This means that if you think people are capable, for example, of only ever playing a "one string guitar", then that is what you will get. I consider myself to be ambidextrous and will be able to learn to take advantage of multi-input devices like a virtuoso of an instrument.
In pedaling a single button mouse to the common user, Apple has done a disservice to users of Apple software because developers are less likely to adopt the on screen "objectifying" model. I for example have used Apple's "iTunes" software only to find out that right clicking on the song title does nothing.
With IM, you give up your desires, needs, wants, ambitions, politics, loves, hates, hobbies, friends, and families to the corporate machine. All text is there to be consumed by a data mining engine created for the sole purpose of knowing about you. Beware of using IM at a company. Beware of using IM if you work for the government, or state. Beware of using IM at home. Unless you are running your own messaging service, you won't be free from scrutiny. Of course the same is true for free email services too. Use anything free at your own risk. It is astounding how young people don't give a second thought about personal privacy issues. Just offer something for free, and it is taken like candy.
"However, some companies that manage online banner advertising are, in essence, cookie sharing rings. They can track which pages you load, which ads you click on, etc., and share this information with all of their client Web sites (who may number in the hundreds, even thousands.) Some examples of these cookie sharing rings are DoubleClick, AdCast and LinkExchange. For a demonstration of how they work, see: http://privacy.net/track/"
Except of course that you are both right and wrong. If I store it then I organize it. There is no way for me to know how you stored your information, unless you tell me. Most people who are smart, organize their information in a way that makes sense to them. People who don't organize their information need a desktop search tool. We all need to search the net because we have absolutely no idea of how it is organized. I will very rarely ever need to search for my own information. It actually seems counter intuitive that I would need to. I personally don't like associating with people who misplace their car keys, or lose their socks in the wash. It is quite peculiar for "those" people to just be pre-occupied with themselves, instead of what is going on external to their own psyche.
I downloaded and tested Keyhole's http://www.keyhole.com/ Personal 2 LT software and am considering purchasing a subscription for $30 a year. The software is great, it's 3D and you can zoom, pan, rotate, tilt, see superimposed road maps, measure distances, create videos, etc. I've already journeyed virtually to many exotic places like Patagonia South America, the Amazon, New Zealand, northern places like Canada and Russia. Google now owns this company and it also provides for Google Maps. I think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread!
I've only found a couple of problems with Keyhole. First, due to their crazy licensing, you can only run Keyhole on two machines. What this means is...
1. You can install the software on as many machines as you want. 2. Your account name will be your email address. 3. You will recieve a license key when you register. 4. If you try to use that license key to logon to more than two machines (not even at the same time) you will not be allowed to run it.
If you were trying to use the software on two machines or more at the same time, then not being allowed to run it would make sense. But I was testing several machines with different graphics and CPU capabilities and found that when I tried to logon to the third machine (at a different time) it would fail. Keyhole user support confirmed this dilemma. This just doesn't make sense to me.
Second, Keyhole isn't available for Linux, or OSX yet. But it does use OpenGl, so I don't see too much of a porting problem.
Finally, they want a different user account for each piece of their software they sell. I find that to be annoying.
You would think that a list of sites you "block" and another list that you "allow" is a good thing. I beg to differ. Whenever I close my browser, I delete ALL lists of any kind, also cookies, temporary internet cache, web history, etc. When I start my browser, it is as if it had never been run before. I also delete any information the OS "stores" about me, like my recent opened documents, programs I use most often, etc.
I don't believe that any software should store any information in a form that would be easily digestable by spyware, viruses, etc. You should store your own lists in a protected (possibly encrypted) document of a name you created yourself. I find it quite amazing that people use and "trust", Media Player, iTunes, WinAmp, etc, to store their song lists. All it takes is one dormant, one-shot, then-it-deletes-itself, information sniffer to glean pages about your likes, dislikes, habits, etc.
Just like a C++ or JAVA object, there are things that I will share publicly, and things that I deem to be private about myself. Being here on slashdot is something that I can reveal publicly. My tastes in consumer products, and hobbies is not. Some people could care less if they give out everything about themselves. Good for them. I hope they get as much snail mail and email SPAM as they can take.
I absolutely cannot stand being marketed to. Web pop-ups, flashy advertisements, videos, moving windows. It is all ridiculous. News papers made money in the past without ever having all that flash, and there was no way to "probe" for your tastes. Companies simply followed their sales figures. Now we've got an entire industry devoted to "knowing about you" now.
How will this trip end? In a bad train wreck I suppose. I just hope I survive it before having to give up my kids DNA at birth for an entertainment industry tracking system. We saw only the tip of the iceberg in "Minority Report". Gee, lets see if we can build a statistically guassian determinable system to find out what you like to 5 9's accuracy! That way we can save 2 pennies of profit for each person!
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Note: This message brought to you buy a person who has withdrawn from society and just wishes to be left alone. I have become comfortably numb.
As a long time system programmer/administrator there are two things that have always bugged me about Novell. One, the network file system they use is antique. It has no global namespace, no kerberos authorization, doesn't use an ACL model, doesn't support symlinks, etc. Second, while the directory service might be cool, it isn't useful for anything beyond Novell's own products. There are very few client applications that are written for NDS. You can see NDS as an LDAP server, but if you do that then what is the point of using NDS at all? And, an extended third problem is Novell's architecture has always been to close the administrator out, and put him/her behind a set of pre-written GUI tools that prevent any flexability to the system. You can script, but you've got to use Novells own scripting language.
...it is simpler just believe that a supreme being does it all. Knowing things is just too much work...especially these days. So hypothesizing... As the age of actually contemplating complex concepts rises, the more likely it will be for the layman to misunderstand how things work. Will this cause a shift back to superstition again?
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clark
"It is not possible to understand why a rose is beautiful through any materialistic philosophy."
There are a few things wrong with this line of reasoning. First, the thinking is absolute. As if one way of knowing is any more important than another. Second, a rose only exists for you to ponder its beauty because of material processes. Its DNA design has no inherent beauty code. Beauty is a judgement made by the viewer. Third, is the assumption that the experience of feeling beauty isn't something that could be given to a machine. The experience of beauty is very likely to be simple reaction. The "qualia" of an observed thing definitely depends on many factors inherent in the design of the brain. And the design of the brain has been evolved through millions of years of evolution. A fly probably doesn't have the same qualia from a flower as it does road kill.
Now, I have a real problem with anyone who tries to discount "materialism" as being outright wrong. Most of the people who do have a very hard time understanding the interconnectedness of physical and electrical systems. Many people who talk about the mind being some kind of spiritual energy have no idea of what they are talking about. Spiritual energy of what? What is that energy measured in, and what are the opposites which bring about this manifested energy? And how does this energy interact with physical systems? I say BS. Most of the people you've mentioned and the books you've stated are all from armchair philosophers who have very little knowledge of the world. Their understanding of the world is from a fairytale perspective that predicts nothing, and doesn't change our state of existance one iota.
We humans are animals. We have arms, legs, hair, ears, eyes, a nose, and a mouth. We belch, have sex, and eat. There is nothing that makes us any more special than a baboon except some skills with our vocal cords and hands. It is completely disingenuous to create some kind of fluffy comfy chair world where we can fly around in our heads and withdraw into a state of self denial.
Get real. Wake up and smell the coffee. Learn how to perform some integral calculus or Laplace transforms. Definitely learn some engineering and computer programming. Then and only then will I give my time for debate with overzealous flunkies like Casey and Silva.
If I'm looking to the real future of computing, I'd rather know what a bunch of geeks in high school think about technology than some random group of CIOs. They'll have the greatest degree of influence over it in the long haul.
Adolecents are very bad at determining anything that is going to last a long time. There's a lot of quick, off the cuff, rebel without a cause, I just want to be different attitude. High schoolers may determine fads, but not long term statistics. As for the other group, the over the hill stuffy antiques that occupy the highest ranks in companies, they too have problems. They are most likely to stick with what they know too stongly and never change. Many of them did go down with the mainframe. No, I'll take the middle ground on this one, as the guassian curve of change requires. Many of the people now working in the trenches know most what's going on.
I agree with you about technology becoming a commodity, but the problem is I don't see how there is an equivalent between something actually new, and Linux/FOSS. An OS is an OS, and Microsoft's OS isn't technologically different from Linux as say PCs were to mainframes. Even so, I'm still unsure about whether another "revolution" is going to take place in our industry. It would be nice to have a free and open OS, as well as applications to run on it, but development does have a cost in terms of time, as well as money. I'm assuming Microsoft will "eventually" lower their prices enough that makes it pointless to actually check Linux out. The problem is, do we still want them to "control" us?
I would love to see a technologically new, free, and open OS, that is actually different from the OSs we are familliar with, but somehow I don't see this happening. And since it may not happen, I don't know how any CIO (or app vendor) is going to choose between two OSs that basically have the same function, except on price, especially since one of them has 90 percent of the market.
Working in the trenches as I have however has given me good perspective on how a company like Microsoft exercises control over its customer. Microsoft doesn't seem to (or hasn't up to now) actually wanted a stable core that can be built upon as time progresses. They know that if they can get you to "whole hog upgrade" every few years then they can be on the gravy train for life. They know that selling the whole hog is more profitable than selling the pieces "componentized". This kind of thinking yanks my chain, and you can bet our CIO will eventually hear about such problems from the trenches.
To prevent being expelled just send the SSNs to the IT administration through anonymous snail mail. Explain how you broke in, and hopefully they will fix the problem.
Well, of course you are right. Species do "adapt" when death occurs. My problem is that the word "adapt" implies some cognitive ability to make a decision, as if the species has some intent. This is certainly not the case, and you can bet that the common man doesn't understand this in those terms. The word "adapt" should never be used where the word "evolve" should be. In fact, we should probably remove the word "adapt" from all evolution literature. It doesn't make sense to talk about "adaptation", that term has more of a Lamarkian' inhertitance feeling anyway.
Just how dense are you? I just said that unless you are born with the cognitive or bodily ability to deal with your environment you would die. That neccessarily includes "learning". You can't learn unless you are predisposed to learning by already being "adapted" (past tense) at birth.
You obviously need to dwell on this a little more.
Slashdot Mirror
"Now tell me: why are the likes of NVidia and ATI keeping their products undocumented and their drivers closed?"
/.'ers seem to understand the concepts of time or money. The understanding of those concepts seem to come with age. Guess what? We don't live forever, and we don't have all the time in the world to sit down and reverse engineer a system.
From someone who works in the "real" world...money. It's all about money. The items you mentioned, about decompiling the source and electron microsopes, well that takes time and money, and lots of it. It's the same reason that you don't do it yourself. While some specific patented technologies can be looked into and "reverse engineered" if it is felt that the outcome of doing so will be more viable, it just doesn't make any sense to do it on a large scale, it will just cost too much.
Very few
"There's always AFS, but that's so bloody complicated that I'd take a lot of convincing before I seriously considered it."
AFS is NOT complicated. There are some people who for better or worse have made it seem complicated. There are some simple principles you need to understand before you use AFS, and after that it's generally a great ride.
Historically, there are three databases that must be managed. One of the databases manages the user accounts, and groups. The next database handles the volumes, what servers the volumes are on, how big the volumes are, and how the volumes are mapped into the AFS tree. And the last database is KAS, which is now defunct since Kerberos is used instead. These databases are managed as a group called a CELL. An AFS cell is simply a designation similar to a domain name, that groups all the volumes and security principles under one umbrella. You can build multiple cells if you want.
Some AFS features...
* Global namespace
One mount path gets you everywhere.
Continuously mountable.
* Read-only replications with failover.
* Volume level user quota.
* Directory level ACLs.
* Administrative and user creatable groups.
* User managable groups.
* Unix style symbolic links.
* Kerberos authenticated security.
* Integration for heterogeneous environments
of Windows, Unix, and Mac OS X.
* Encrypted network transfers.
* Internet wide file sharing with other
AFS institutions and businesses via the
standard "/afs" mount.
The people who have made AFS overly complex should be shot. There are people who try to preserve their lives in the industry by building complex systems, then they make themselves out to be authorities (gurus). Many people involved in AFS are of that nature, but I assure you, if you think AFS is complicated, then you might as well be using Windows wizards. Real sysadmins learn the tools of their trade, and AFS is a very good tool to use.
Just my 2 cents.
I find it ironic, paradoxical(?), one of the features so darling and network centric is text messaging.
Text messaging is the equivalent of someone coming to you and telling you to give them money for something you've already paid for. What people don't understand about this technology is that they are getting nothing for something. In the time it takes for you to utter "Hello World!" with your voice, you could send hundreds of text messages in the same data stream. So text messages are essentially "free" from the cell providers point of view, yet they are charging us extra for it.
It seems these days that people understand less and less about how technology works and companies are able to take advantage of that fact. In fact there is a fair amount of downright "confusion marketing" going on so that the consumer can never be knowledgeable about what they are actually getting for their money. If I can charge you $40 for the basic service and $10 more for an added service that doesn't require any more technology than the basic service (or less in the case of text messaging), then consumers are getting ripped off.
I'm actually dumbfounded as to why no one seems to care about things that are going on in the world these days. Oh sure, gas is above $3.00 a gallon, but that is a highly visible and tangible substance. What about the price of bottled water, or sugar water for that matter? No one seems to care. In fact, the business of selling so called "energy drinks" is escalating out of control.
If you actually care about the price of gas, then you should be downright "ticked off" that you are being charged extra for text messaging.
In fact, why in the world don't prices drop further for established services? Why do all your typical monthly bills seem to bottom out at around $20 to $30 (a single person, living alone). Why are they all about the same, even for completely differing services. Ever notice that you will never get an electric bill for less than $30 dollars? Why doesn't a land line phone only cost $5.00 a month in 2006? If I get a bill for $30 dollars a month, and so do 100 million other people, then that's 3 billion dollars a month going somewhere? So where?
Over the past 20 years we've seen technology prices tumble. A PC that once cost $5000 now costs $400, and it can process 10,000 times more information. Fiber can now support millions of connections at data rates hundreds of times greater than 20 years ago. Yet, our bills seem to keep going up. Why?
Why don't MMORPGs cost only $1.00 a month? Why do most subscriptions to almost any service all range from $10 to $40? Why do we pay around $1.00 for 3 Meg of compressed audio file (just bits) when we don't get anything at all material?
Companies are making more these days, and squeezing more out of consumers than ever before and few seem to care. So in this respect I'm quite happy to see the price of gas rise. Serves us right.
Just my 2 cents.
I also don't like dark matter/energy theories very much (although I do like the idea that there is more out there that we don't know about). Nor do I like string theories. I think the whole of physics is somehow run amok. A few things do appeal to me however, probably because of my feeling that ultimately it all boils down to a computational algorithm. I think that some aspects of quantum theory fit like the "Bekenstein bound", and that this relates to gravity over the large scale.
For example, when it comes to gravity, we might think of space itself as a substance, not a material substance, but a substance of which all "material" things are made. A volume of this "space" substance then has various "densities" within it, giving cause to gravity, and causing light to bend, in much the same way as light bending through glass of varying density.
Now, when it comes to the galaxy problem mentioned in the article, we might see a galaxy as a "condensation" of hydrogen at the boundary of the region of high and low pressure of the space substance "density". In this model we are viewing a galaxy much like a hurricane forms. A hurricane is a self sustaining structure within a volume of air giving rise to the formation of clouds, and rain. A galaxy is a formation of condensing hydrogen at the boundary of a high and low density of space (seem to be repeating myself). Due to this model, gravity does not vary directly from the center of the volume of the galaxy, but follows the general structure of the galaxy itself.
So what is this space substance of which all things are made? Does it matter (pun intended)? If we see this space substance as a mathematically "continuous" substrate that can manifest all objects, then what is it that gives rise to "size"? If quantum mechanics and the Bekenstein bound are correct, then the "continuous" substrate of space is actually punctuated with perfect sinusoidal waves. These waves, through self interaction and superposition give rise to location, eg. points in space where some things are, and some things aren't. The chaos of this wavy interaction ends up dividing space into a "resolution", much like your computer screen has a resolution. All material objects are then constructed of these wavy interactions that are happening at the Plank resolution. However, the Plank resolution should vary directly as the "density" of space, eg, the resolution of space should be high near a massive object, and low where there is no mass.
Do I believe any of this? No, not neccessarily, as Mony Python says, "it's just a model." But I really like theories that are simpler, instead of more complex.
In your mind, if you see a relationship of black people to monkeys then that automatically makes you a racist, probably the worst kind. Showing empathy would be like putting gasoline on fire because you are basically admitting openly that there is some kind of connection.
Racism is bad, and you've just componded the problem sir.
You are correct. The problem we have here is that these "volumes of density" are abstract. But your reasoning is exactly the problem we encounter with the Michelson-Morley Experiment right? We seem to find that light is the same speed in all directions, proving that the "ether" doesn't exist. The basic problem with the "old ether" is that ether was some kind of substance. I find this view of ether silly since space-time itself isn't a "substance" it is the opposite of substance, of matter itself...it is "space". As in, what is the volume that surrounds matter? SPACE. In my original analogy, imagine again that nothing exists except for "air". Matter then would be "configurations" of "air". Matter would be some kind of "vortices" or foldings of "air". Light then would be seen as a "vibration" in the "air". And since we, being made of "air" in this analogy, could never move faster than, vibrations in air.
v /mmhist.html
So how could we "prove" this model...this analogy? Well take our original glass sphere the size of a basket ball. I said you can't put a house in a basket ball right? Well what would happen if we placed a marble sized black hole inside that basket balls volume? Assuming for the moment that the glass sphere would not be crushed by the black holes high density of space-time around it (gravity), then we should be able to put very large things in there right? The problem with this analogy is that the "glass spheres" volume would neccessarily cause it to shrink, or become more dense. If space-time actually works the way we're suggesting, then you cannot have a "rigid frame of reference" made of matter, since matter itself is made of space-time. But isn't this actually the state of affairs encountered with these experiments?
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/relati
From this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether of the Wikipedia..."Another, completely different, attempt to save "absolute" aether was made in the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction hypothesis, which posited that everything was affected by travel through the aether. In this theory the reason the Michelson-Morley experiment "failed" was that it contracted in length in the direction of travel. That is, the light was being affected in the "natural" manner by its travel though the aether as predicted, but so was the experiment itself, cancelling out any difference when measured. Even Lorentz was not very happy with this suggestion, although it did neatly solve the problem. Later this idea received additional support from the Kennedy-Thorndike experiment in 1932, as Kennedy and Thorndike concluded that both a Lorentz contraction as well as time dilation occur, thus "confiming special relativity".
In order for these analogies to work, you'd have to have a "four dimensionally" rigid volume for which to measure the "density" of the 3 dimensional space-time. At least, I think. So that might mean that indeed, there is something "outside" of our own "space-time" way of measuring things.
That's my take on modern cosmology. That there exists this one substance, the vacum substance, the stubstance of space-time itself. It can be imagined as a drop of water, or equally as a cloud of moisture. It contains volumes within it that are "denser" than other volumes. We say that there is "more space" (or less?) within those volumes. All "material" goods are then just some kind of configuration of this "space-time" stuff. I think also that based on quantum mechanics, and the "Beckenstein bound", material within a given volume can be realized in much the same way pictures are made up of "pixels" on a computer screen. Think of it. Your computer screen resolution determines all objects that are "realizable" within its resolution. The Beckenstein bound then formulates a given volume for space-time in which objects of a given size can fit. The relationship of the "density" of space-time then should directly influence the Beckenstein bound such that, if there is "more space", then there should be the possibility of a larger number of possible quantum states within the abstract volume of space-time.
If you had a glass sphere the size of a basketball, what are all the material objects that are realizable within that space? Well, we can put car keys, pens, small animals/insects, etc. But we cannot put a house inside a basketball right? Well maybe a doll house. But how would we go about putting a real house in a volume the size of a basketball? Simple, just increase the density of space-time within that abstract volume. That will increase the number of quantum states possible just like increasing the resolution of your computer screen. But what do we mean when we say "space is dense"? Since the vacum is matters "opposite", we would probably conclude that space would be "denser" where matter is not. So we might say that within a "black-hole" there is theoretically "no space". A black hole would then indeed be a hold within space-time, a tear in the fabric of reality for example. But this may not be the case. It could be that a black hole is a place were the density of space is so high as to be exactly "solid" space-time. In this respect matter flows into a black hole and then becomes converted to "space-time", which then slowly and inexorably flows outward. Space-time is being generated by a black-hole by the conversion of matter to space-time.
If space-time is a substance of some kind, and all matter is just some configuration of it, then that would explain why we cannot move faster than light. This would be the case if we were somehow made of configurations and vortices of "air". Since we being made of "air", we could not move faster than sound right? Of course doesn't the speed of sound vary with the density of air? Would not the speed of light vary with the density of space-time? Of course it does, this was Einsteins great find, that light travels along a space-time geodesic. The geodesic caused by the "density" of space-time.
Based on all these analogies, I don't see why we have to think about the fourth dimension at all. We just need to imagine space-time as a volume with varying densities. Within a high density of space-time, you can have more matter, and more quantum states. It is abstract I know, but for my mind it works. Is there a reason that these analogies can be viewed as "wrong"? I'm willing to take an alternate view.
Viruses != Organisms
Yes, of course your are quite right. I mean I remember the chapter in the bible that explains that. It's right here...hmmm...lemme... see... just a sec... wait, that over on page... Hold your horses! Neither of those words are in the bible!
Of course your whole statment relies on the fact that both "Sin" and "God" make some rational sense, which they don't. In reality, neither "Sin", nor "God" have justified meaning because the words themselves can't be explained in any manner that will allow __________ (fill in the blank). I might fill the blank with "verification", but others generally accept that "connection" would be a better term. You cannot describe what the word god means without having notions of physical things or emotional experiences. A word "god" does not exist independently of the words used to describe it. Therefore what is "it"? About the only thing close that makes any sentence at all is the simple utterance "I am", which simply recognizes being itself. So, in being, since we are, therefore, we are it, or everything is it. But it is very likely that "it" has no intentions whatsoever, that are at all, in any way, described by most modern religions. There are simply too many possiblities for what the word "god" stands for that we are unlikely to be correct about any of them as they relate to the way things really are.
There is also no such thing as sin. As a child you are "taught" to believe that if you do a bad thing, then you have "sinned". Ok, so what's a bad thing? No one really knows. As for the concept of god, it is also equally tenuous. What are the properties of this thing that is described by such a word? People spout off such things as "infinite" this, or "unlimited" that, as if those remarks make any sense whatsoever.
Life is utterly simpler than any religous teachings. Just be constructive in your day, stay away from "destructive" tendencies, and you might be happy. Of course there are a lot of random elements to everday living that get in the way. Just continue to work "against" the tide and things "should" shape up. In the end, everyone has a different life to live. The final word is that...
"You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need." The Rolling Stones
The real kicker here is to remember that you are getting a degradation from the real thing. What we all really wanted is to have music CDs to be lowered in price so we can try/buy more of a variety in full quality 2x16bit PCM audio. Instead now we seem to have let our values slide so that we are comfortable with compressed music and so it seems the industry is now taking advantage of this comfort level. In the end, we'll now probably start paying more for the real thing. This whole process is ignored partially because this is what the new generation of listeners gets used to.
Music...is simply too expensive for what it is worth. Think about it. When you download compressed music the only cost to the company providing it to you is the electricity (recurring cost), data networking equipment (long term recurring cost), and location/space (investment cost). There are no actual material goods being transfered over the wire. It is almost insane to think about what profits are being generated by this kind of setup. I suppose the only thing worse are ring tones, and wireless text messaging. In the end, all you are paying for is for somebody to arrange 30 million bits (an approximately three minute compressed song) into the correct pattern. To arrange these bits only needs to occur once. Why do so many people need to pay so much money for that to happen?
I don't know about everyone else here, but as an artist I don't create a work based on what other people want. Art is a personal expression and a desire to bring your dreams to life. If others like your art then so be it, otherwise art is being used as a drug to only make the viewer feel good. This has the effect of developing a habit, which is exactly what the music companies want.
"Especially when my privacy is an issue."
Privacy is no longer an issue in this country because "the people" no longer demand it. What the people appear to demand these days is convenience. People regularly use supermarket savings cards, PVRs that record usage information, used Web services like iTunes and GMail that data mine your email and web usage, use rebates to get lower prices, etc. I mean really, what is private anymore since nobody cares (sarcasm)? As more and more marketing is done we find that the lowest common denominator thinkers are beginning to change the way society works. I can no longer deal with this problem. It's the same problem as trying to be a good recycler when your neighbor doesn't care. I mean really, what's the point? Cynical.
I consider the two button mouse to be the minimum because of "objectifying" on screen objects. This I consider the left button to be used for the objects public methods and the right mouse button to be used to edit the object's properties. Scroll wheels and such go even further to allow interaction with the objects.
I also don't like being considered a "less than capable" person. This means that if you think people are capable, for example, of only ever playing a "one string guitar", then that is what you will get. I consider myself to be ambidextrous and will be able to learn to take advantage of multi-input devices like a virtuoso of an instrument.
In pedaling a single button mouse to the common user, Apple has done a disservice to users of Apple software because developers are less likely to adopt the on screen "objectifying" model. I for example have used Apple's "iTunes" software only to find out that right clicking on the song title does nothing.
With IM, you give up your desires, needs, wants, ambitions, politics, loves, hates, hobbies, friends, and families to the corporate machine. All text is there to be consumed by a data mining engine created for the sole purpose of knowing about you. Beware of using IM at a company. Beware of using IM if you work for the government, or state. Beware of using IM at home. Unless you are running your own messaging service, you won't be free from scrutiny. Of course the same is true for free email services too. Use anything free at your own risk. It is astounding how young people don't give a second thought about personal privacy issues. Just offer something for free, and it is taken like candy.
Off soapbox.
Cookies don't track which sites you go to.
l
What world are you living in? Did you read...
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/eff_privacy_top_12.htm
"However, some companies that manage online banner advertising are, in essence, cookie sharing rings. They can track which pages you load, which ads you click on, etc., and share this information with all of their client Web sites (who may number in the hundreds, even thousands.) Some examples of these cookie sharing rings are DoubleClick, AdCast and LinkExchange. For a demonstration of how they work, see: http://privacy.net/track/"
Except of course that you are both right and wrong. If I store it then I organize it. There is no way for me to know how you stored your information, unless you tell me. Most people who are smart, organize their information in a way that makes sense to them. People who don't organize their information need a desktop search tool. We all need to search the net because we have absolutely no idea of how it is organized. I will very rarely ever need to search for my own information. It actually seems counter intuitive that I would need to. I personally don't like associating with people who misplace their car keys, or lose their socks in the wash. It is quite peculiar for "those" people to just be pre-occupied with themselves, instead of what is going on external to their own psyche.
I downloaded and tested Keyhole's http://www.keyhole.com/ Personal 2 LT software and am considering purchasing a subscription for $30 a year. The software is great, it's 3D and you can zoom, pan, rotate, tilt, see superimposed road maps, measure distances, create videos, etc. I've already journeyed virtually to many exotic places like Patagonia South America, the Amazon, New Zealand, northern places like Canada and Russia. Google now owns this company and it also provides for Google Maps. I think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread!
I've only found a couple of problems with Keyhole. First, due to their crazy licensing, you can only run Keyhole on two machines. What this means is...
1. You can install the software on as many machines as you want.
2. Your account name will be your email address.
3. You will recieve a license key when you register.
4. If you try to use that license key to logon to more than two machines (not even at the same time) you will not be allowed to run it.
If you were trying to use the software on two machines or more at the same time, then not being allowed to run it would make sense. But I was testing several machines with different graphics and CPU capabilities and found that when I tried to logon to the third machine (at a different time) it would fail. Keyhole user support confirmed this dilemma. This just doesn't make sense to me.
Second, Keyhole isn't available for Linux, or OSX yet. But it does use OpenGl, so I don't see too much of a porting problem.
Finally, they want a different user account for each piece of their software they sell. I find that to be annoying.
You would think that a list of sites you "block" and another list that you "allow" is a good thing. I beg to differ. Whenever I close my browser, I delete ALL lists of any kind, also cookies, temporary internet cache, web history, etc. When I start my browser, it is as if it had never been run before. I also delete any information the OS "stores" about me, like my recent opened documents, programs I use most often, etc.
I don't believe that any software should store any information in a form that would be easily digestable by spyware, viruses, etc. You should store your own lists in a protected (possibly encrypted) document of a name you created yourself. I find it quite amazing that people use and "trust", Media Player, iTunes, WinAmp, etc, to store their song lists. All it takes is one dormant, one-shot, then-it-deletes-itself, information sniffer to glean pages about your likes, dislikes, habits, etc.
Just like a C++ or JAVA object, there are things that I will share publicly, and things that I deem to be private about myself. Being here on slashdot is something that I can reveal publicly. My tastes in consumer products, and hobbies is not. Some people could care less if they give out everything about themselves. Good for them. I hope they get as much snail mail and email SPAM as they can take.
I absolutely cannot stand being marketed to. Web pop-ups, flashy advertisements, videos, moving windows. It is all ridiculous. News papers made money in the past without ever having all that flash, and there was no way to "probe" for your tastes. Companies simply followed their sales figures. Now we've got an entire industry devoted to "knowing about you" now.
How will this trip end? In a bad train wreck I suppose. I just hope I survive it before having to give up my kids DNA at birth for an entertainment industry tracking system. We saw only the tip of the iceberg in "Minority Report". Gee, lets see if we can build a statistically guassian determinable system to find out what you like to 5 9's accuracy! That way we can save 2 pennies of profit for each person!
Please support boycotting, ad blocking, the deletion of browser history, cache files, and cookies!
(As soon as this message is sent, the slashdot cookie will be deleted.)
Note: This message brought to you buy a person who has withdrawn from society and just wishes to be left alone. I have become comfortably numb.
Have a nice day! Off soapbox.
As a long time system programmer/administrator there are two things that have always bugged me about Novell. One, the network file system they use is antique. It has no global namespace, no kerberos authorization, doesn't use an ACL model, doesn't support symlinks, etc. Second, while the directory service might be cool, it isn't useful for anything beyond Novell's own products. There are very few client applications that are written for NDS. You can see NDS as an LDAP server, but if you do that then what is the point of using NDS at all? And, an extended third problem is Novell's architecture has always been to close the administrator out, and put him/her behind a set of pre-written GUI tools that prevent any flexability to the system. You can script, but you've got to use Novells own scripting language.
Off soap box.
...it is simpler just believe that a supreme being does it all. Knowing things is just too much work...especially these days. So hypothesizing... As the age of actually contemplating complex concepts rises, the more likely it will be for the layman to misunderstand how things work. Will this cause a shift back to superstition again?
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clark
Consider the following sentence...
"It is not possible to understand why a rose is beautiful through any materialistic philosophy."
There are a few things wrong with this line of reasoning. First, the thinking is absolute. As if one way of knowing is any more important than another. Second, a rose only exists for you to ponder its beauty because of material processes. Its DNA design has no inherent beauty code. Beauty is a judgement made by the viewer. Third, is the assumption that the experience of feeling beauty isn't something that could be given to a machine. The experience of beauty is very likely to be simple reaction. The "qualia" of an observed thing definitely depends on many factors inherent in the design of the brain. And the design of the brain has been evolved through millions of years of evolution. A fly probably doesn't have the same qualia from a flower as it does road kill.
Now, I have a real problem with anyone who tries to discount "materialism" as being outright wrong. Most of the people who do have a very hard time understanding the interconnectedness of physical and electrical systems. Many people who talk about the mind being some kind of spiritual energy have no idea of what they are talking about. Spiritual energy of what? What is that energy measured in, and what are the opposites which bring about this manifested energy? And how does this energy interact with physical systems? I say BS. Most of the people you've mentioned and the books you've stated are all from armchair philosophers who have very little knowledge of the world. Their understanding of the world is from a fairytale perspective that predicts nothing, and doesn't change our state of existance one iota.
We humans are animals. We have arms, legs, hair, ears, eyes, a nose, and a mouth. We belch, have sex, and eat. There is nothing that makes us any more special than a baboon except some skills with our vocal cords and hands. It is completely disingenuous to create some kind of fluffy comfy chair world where we can fly around in our heads and withdraw into a state of self denial.
Get real. Wake up and smell the coffee. Learn how to perform some integral calculus or Laplace transforms. Definitely learn some engineering and computer programming. Then and only then will I give my time for debate with overzealous flunkies like Casey and Silva.
If I'm looking to the real future of computing, I'd rather know what a bunch of geeks in high school think about technology than some random group of CIOs. They'll have the greatest degree of influence over it in the long haul.
Adolecents are very bad at determining anything that is going to last a long time. There's a lot of quick, off the cuff, rebel without a cause, I just want to be different attitude. High schoolers may determine fads, but not long term statistics. As for the other group, the over the hill stuffy antiques that occupy the highest ranks in companies, they too have problems. They are most likely to stick with what they know too stongly and never change. Many of them did go down with the mainframe. No, I'll take the middle ground on this one, as the guassian curve of change requires. Many of the people now working in the trenches know most what's going on.
I agree with you about technology becoming a commodity, but the problem is I don't see how there is an equivalent between something actually new, and Linux/FOSS. An OS is an OS, and Microsoft's OS isn't technologically different from Linux as say PCs were to mainframes. Even so, I'm still unsure about whether another "revolution" is going to take place in our industry. It would be nice to have a free and open OS, as well as applications to run on it, but development does have a cost in terms of time, as well as money. I'm assuming Microsoft will "eventually" lower their prices enough that makes it pointless to actually check Linux out. The problem is, do we still want them to "control" us?
I would love to see a technologically new, free, and open OS, that is actually different from the OSs we are familliar with, but somehow I don't see this happening. And since it may not happen, I don't know how any CIO (or app vendor) is going to choose between two OSs that basically have the same function, except on price, especially since one of them has 90 percent of the market.
Working in the trenches as I have however has given me good perspective on how a company like Microsoft exercises control over its customer. Microsoft doesn't seem to (or hasn't up to now) actually wanted a stable core that can be built upon as time progresses. They know that if they can get you to "whole hog upgrade" every few years then they can be on the gravy train for life. They know that selling the whole hog is more profitable than selling the pieces "componentized". This kind of thinking yanks my chain, and you can bet our CIO will eventually hear about such problems from the trenches.
To prevent being expelled just send the SSNs to the IT administration through anonymous snail mail. Explain how you broke in, and hopefully they will fix the problem.
Well, of course you are right. Species do "adapt" when death occurs. My problem is that the word "adapt" implies some cognitive ability to make a decision, as if the species has some intent. This is certainly not the case, and you can bet that the common man doesn't understand this in those terms. The word "adapt" should never be used where the word "evolve" should be. In fact, we should probably remove the word "adapt" from all evolution literature. It doesn't make sense to talk about "adaptation", that term has more of a Lamarkian' inhertitance feeling anyway.
Just how dense are you? I just said that unless you are born with the cognitive or bodily ability to deal with your environment you would die. That neccessarily includes "learning". You can't learn unless you are predisposed to learning by already being "adapted" (past tense) at birth.
You obviously need to dwell on this a little more.