The first FORTRAN compiler was written in 1954-57.
The first Lisp interpreter was written in 1958-59.
COBOL was started in 1959; the first specification was issued April, 1960 and it takes me more than 2 minutes to find whether a working implementation existed at the time, so you can do it yourself.
The privacy threat is in that Barnes and Noble might decide to do this themselves without you knowing. Or Yahoo/Hotmail. Or AOL might decide to use it on their proxy.
I can't agree more. When I first played Civilization, the DOS game, I was struck by the accuracy of all the historical data mentioned there - clearly, this game has been made by a bunch of people who actually care about history, and don't merely want to use it as a scenery for a good game.
But after a while, it also dawned on me that the analogy doesn't stop there: the game as a process is actually a fairly accurate model of historical reality. Balancing issues within the game, such as the balance between diplomacy and aggression, or war and economic development, are pretty accurate reflections of the balancing issues that nations face in the real world. Many historical events and processes can readily be explained in Civ terms.
Civilization is first and foremost an addictive game, but at the same time, it is very instructive as a simulation of history.
The truth is, the American product comes out on top.
That is, exposure is worth more than quality.
Which doesn't mean that quality is unimportant. But in my experience, the difference between Redhat and SuSE is less significant than the difference between two SuSE or Redhat releases.
More and more software doesn't compile on FreeBSD on Solaris because the developers didn't take care to write portable code. Especially for text-based applications, it's worthwhile to write portable code.
Publically avaliable prior art: the [Harvest] distributed Internet search system, programmed in 1994, and still freely available for download, compilation and use today, includes exactly what is claimed here. (Related to Zeinfeld's work?)
modifying/bin/install is a bad idea. install is a well-known standard Unix utility, practically all 'make install' procedures rely on it; it's bad enough that there are BSD and SysV versions, don't add to the confusion. calling something besides install is a better idea. not all of the Unix world uses RPM. take the blinders off. thanks
My name is fairly meaningless to me, it's on all kinds of stuff I'm not remotely interested in, I don't particularly like it, and I don't identify with it at all.
Nicknames are personal, whether given or chosen, and they represent me more precisely, in a certain context.
One of the nice things about the Internet is that it allows us to omit some of the aspects of our daily lives that other people get confronted with in an eye to eye meeting: how I look, how I behave, some of the boring routine of daily life. The net allows me to leave that behind to some extent.
And choosing to identify myself by a handle rather than my real name only serves to stress this. My 'handle' identity is a limited me, partly through the medium, but also, through my own choice: I can reveal as much as I want to. My 'real name' is a reminder of the illusion of the one me, a single identity that I didn't choose, that I can't escape from, that I can only hope to justify.
Actually, Solaris is Unix, it conforms to the X/Open standards and it pays the money and effort to be certified. I think HP/UX is Unix, too. Linux, *BSD, and many other Unix variants are very similar to official Unix, but not identical.
If documents are identified by their digital signatures, the indexing space (of possible signatures) can be divided up among a whole network of redirectors, each responsible for a small subsace of signatures. Each rdirector would have to be replicated, of course.
All of the required technology is present in Harvest, it just never became popular. My guess is that cool ideas have to be reinvented in Berkeley before the world gets to see them applied at large, see Yahoo! for another example.
Please take the trouble to read the first paragraph of their article before making such comments. What they want to do is append a signature, something like an MD5 hash that depends only on the document content.
With Harvest, indexing software that is several years old, an indexing engine that identifies documents by their MD5 signature is easy to build, I've done this. So what these people are proposing isn't exactly rocket science
Doctors are bound to confidentiality with their patients, not by local laws, but by their professional code of honour.
I think system administrators must consider it part of their own code of honour not to read their customers' personal messages and files, regardless of what local laws or their company/institution's policies say about it. Many of us sysadmins feel this way, I think we have to be serious about it.
This problem is as much about fostering the right kind of attitude as it is about formal law and jurisdiction.
Applause. I think you hit the nail on the head there.
I spend 10 hrs per day with computers. Why?
Starting and maintaining a social life is difficult. Tt requires me to get off my chair, go out to places I hate, to meet people I'm not interested in seeing, when I could be at home doing things I actually enjoy.
The hardest part, though, is the emotional side. Friends and family are great to have, but sexual attraction and intimacy are mostly sources of distress and insecurity, in my experience. Practice makes perfect, I suppose, but it's easier just to avoid them. Whether I want it or not, this makes me respond very differently to men and women.
To exaggerate: male heterosexual geeks, such as I, spend their time with computers so they can avoid having to come to terms with intimacy, ie. relationships with women. Hardly surprising, then, that in an environment full of male geeks, women are treated differently than men.
" The software, introduced in 1997, is called Aureka. The "Au" in Aurigin and Aureka stands for the periodic symbol for gold. (And, yes, the company name and product name are puns for origin and eureka. Who said lawyers don't have senses of humor?)"
The periodic symbol for gold. That sums it up nicely.
(This is what I learnt in college many years ago and it may not be entirely accurate.)
In the 50s, American linguists tried to determine the grammar of language by statistical methods. Their hope was to 'discover' grammatical structures simply by examining large samples of spoken or written language and counting the distribution of words.
In principle, this allows word categories, sentence structures, etc., to be discovered. In practice, it took too long, especially for the impatient Noam Chomsky, why simply postulated that grammatical structure is the result of a sentence generating capacity within humans, an innate part of the human intellect, and attracted so many followers (statistics is boring) that the 50s method was soon considered ineffective and obsolete by a majority of linguists.
It is interesting to see that mechanical translation and mechanical language recognition based on this 'generative' notion of grammar have largely failed, while statistical methods are much more successful. It is much more practical to apply the methods of the 50s today, an I wonder to what extent the statistical methods used today are actually using the same principle of trying to 'discover' grammar as they go.
(This is what I learnt in college many years ago and it may not be entirely accurate.)
In the 50s, American linguists tried to determine the grammar of language by statistical methods. Their hope was to 'discover' grammatical structures simply by examining large samples of spoken or written language and counting the distribution of words.
In principle, this allows word categories, sentence structures, etc., to be discovered. In practice, it took too long, espcially for the impatient Noam Chomsky, why simply postulated that grammatical structure is the result of a sentence generating capacity within humans, an innate part of the human intellect.
It is interesting to see that mechanical translation and mechanical language recognition based on this 'generative' notion of grammar have largely failed, while statistical methods are much more successful. It is much more practical to apply the methods of the 50s today, an I wonder to what extent the statistical methods used today are actually using the same principle of trying to 'discover' grammar as they go.
Slashdot Mirror
The first FORTRAN compiler was written in 1954-57.
The first Lisp interpreter was written in 1958-59.
COBOL was started in 1959; the first specification was issued April, 1960 and it takes me more than 2 minutes to find whether a working implementation existed at the time, so you can do it yourself.
The privacy threat is in that Barnes and Noble might decide to do this themselves without you knowing. Or Yahoo/Hotmail. Or AOL might decide to use it on their proxy.
But after a while, it also dawned on me that the analogy doesn't stop there: the game as a process is actually a fairly accurate model of historical reality. Balancing issues within the game, such as the balance between diplomacy and aggression, or war and economic development, are pretty accurate reflections of the balancing issues that nations face in the real world. Many historical events and processes can readily be explained in Civ terms.
Civilization is first and foremost an addictive game, but at the same time, it is very instructive as a simulation of history.
(See www.freeciv.org for a free, multiplatform, multiplayer Civilization.)
You do (at startup time).
It runs out of memory.
I've always preferred Freeciv's interface to Civ II's. What's wrong with it?
AI players still pollute, but at least they try to clean it up now.
Freeciv's AI players are much smarter than Civ II's. But diplomacy with AI players isn't implemented yet.
xconq features a hexagonal grid and a Civ-like mode. I have never played it, though.
The truth is, the American product comes out on top.
That is, exposure is worth more than quality.
Which doesn't mean that quality is unimportant. But in my experience, the difference between Redhat and SuSE is less significant than the difference between two SuSE or Redhat releases.
More and more software doesn't compile on FreeBSD on Solaris because the developers didn't take care to write portable code. Especially for text-based applications, it's worthwhile to write portable code.
Publically avaliable prior art: the [Harvest] distributed Internet search system, programmed in 1994, and still freely available for download, compilation and use today, includes exactly what is claimed here. (Related to Zeinfeld's work?)
We weren't exactly the first site on the Web. Try http://www.w3.org/History/.
modifying /bin/install is a bad idea. install is a well-known standard Unix utility, practically all 'make install' procedures rely on it; it's bad enough that there are BSD and SysV versions, don't add to the confusion. calling something besides install is a better idea. not all of the Unix world uses RPM. take the blinders off. thanks
My name is fairly meaningless to me, it's on all kinds of stuff I'm not remotely interested in, I don't particularly like it, and I don't identify with it at all.
Nicknames are personal, whether given or chosen, and they represent me more precisely, in a certain context.
One of the nice things about the Internet is that it allows us to omit some of the aspects of our daily lives that other people get confronted with in an eye to eye meeting: how I look, how I behave, some of the boring routine of daily life. The net allows me to leave that behind to some extent.
And choosing to identify myself by a handle rather than my real name only serves to stress this. My 'handle' identity is a limited me, partly through the medium, but also, through my own choice: I can reveal as much as I want to. My 'real name' is a reminder of the illusion of the one me, a single identity that I didn't choose, that I can't escape from, that I can only hope to justify.
Actually, Solaris is Unix, it conforms to the X/Open standards and it pays the money and effort to be certified. I think HP/UX is Unix, too. Linux, *BSD, and many other Unix variants are very similar to official Unix, but not identical.
will require your variables to be declared before use
All of the required technology is present in Harvest, it just never became popular. My guess is that cool ideas have to be reinvented in Berkeley before the world gets to see them applied at large, see Yahoo! for another example.
With Harvest, indexing software that is several years old, an indexing engine that identifies documents by their MD5 signature is easy to build, I've done this. So what these people are proposing isn't exactly rocket science
I think system administrators must consider it part of their own code of honour not to read their customers' personal messages and files, regardless of what local laws or their company/institution's policies say about it. Many of us sysadmins feel this way, I think we have to be serious about it.
This problem is as much about fostering the right kind of attitude as it is about formal law and jurisdiction.
I spend 10 hrs per day with computers. Why?
Starting and maintaining a social life is difficult. Tt requires me to get off my chair, go out to places I hate, to meet people I'm not interested in seeing, when I could be at home doing things I actually enjoy.
The hardest part, though, is the emotional side. Friends and family are great to have, but sexual attraction and intimacy are mostly sources of distress and insecurity, in my experience. Practice makes perfect, I suppose, but it's easier just to avoid them. Whether I want it or not, this makes me respond very differently to men and women.
To exaggerate: male heterosexual geeks, such as I, spend their time with computers so they can avoid having to come to terms with intimacy, ie. relationships with women. Hardly surprising, then, that in an environment full of male geeks, women are treated differently than men.
" The software, introduced in 1997, is called Aureka. The "Au" in Aurigin and Aureka stands for the periodic symbol for gold. (And, yes, the company name and product name are puns for origin and eureka. Who said lawyers don't have senses of humor?)"
The periodic symbol for gold. That sums it up nicely.
In the 50s, American linguists tried to determine the grammar of language by statistical methods. Their hope was to 'discover' grammatical structures simply by examining large samples of spoken or written language and counting the distribution of words.
In principle, this allows word categories, sentence structures, etc., to be discovered. In practice, it took too long, especially for the impatient Noam Chomsky, why simply postulated that grammatical structure is the result of a sentence generating capacity within humans, an innate part of the human intellect, and attracted so many followers (statistics is boring) that the 50s method was soon considered ineffective and obsolete by a majority of linguists.
It is interesting to see that mechanical translation and mechanical language recognition based on this 'generative' notion of grammar have largely failed, while statistical methods are much more successful. It is much more practical to apply the methods of the 50s today, an I wonder to what extent the statistical methods used today are actually using the same principle of trying to 'discover' grammar as they go.
In the 50s, American linguists tried to determine the grammar of language by statistical methods. Their hope was to 'discover' grammatical structures simply by examining large samples of spoken or written language and counting the distribution of words.
In principle, this allows word categories, sentence structures, etc., to be discovered. In practice, it took too long, espcially for the impatient Noam Chomsky, why simply postulated that grammatical structure is the result of a sentence generating capacity within humans, an innate part of the human intellect.
It is interesting to see that mechanical translation and mechanical language recognition based on this 'generative' notion of grammar have largely failed, while statistical methods are much more successful. It is much more practical to apply the methods of the 50s today, an I wonder to what extent the statistical methods used today are actually using the same principle of trying to 'discover' grammar as they go.