You have NO IDEA how good our banking system is until you move to the States like I did.
Take those service fees, double them and then remove every service that is normally provided by the bank and you're almost there. Maybe add in a little lost deposit or expired bank card action and you've pretty much got it.
As I understood it weather models are a fairly hard thing to paralleliz (how the hell do you spell that?) because of the interdependence of pieces of the model. This would seem to me to make a Beowulf cluster a tough choice as it's inter-CPU bandwidth is pretty low right? And that's why I thought most weather prediction places chose high end super-computers because of their custom and expensive inter-CPU I/O?
Second part: Is weather prediction getting any better? Everything I've read about dynamic systems says that prediction past a certain level of detail or timeframe is impossible. Is that true?
For some reason I've managed to get an advance copy of Microsoft's responses to the questions:
To Mark D. Robins,
Thank you for your interest in our proprietary protocols products. The answers to your inquiries are as follows:
1. We claimed protections mostly because we didn't think you'd notice. It pains us to realize that you were one of the few people who actually took the time to read the license agreement before clicking.
2. If you notice, our product is in fact entitled Kerberoos, which is almost completely different from the product you refer to as Kerberos. Our product is in reality a tasty, but proprietary children's cereal. Maybe you've seen our mascot Kangy the Kerberoo?
3. We deny the existence of the internet.
4. Microsoft has taken measures such as writing you this letter and threatening other people. One time on the street a guy from our marketing department made fun of a kid whom he suspected of distributing our Kerberoos brand cereal, the child began crying.
5. We have a "rewards" program that pays any person who turns in a friend for unauthorized use of Kerberoos. So far, we have paid out over $73 in rewards.
6. Most of the detrimental impact is to our already fragile emotions. The justice department has been very mean to us and we're in a pretty rough place right now. You guys showing up and just spilling all our secrets isn't helping.
7. We've found the prospective purchasers of Microsoft products like to know as little as possible before making a purchase. Did you know that we're friends with Jay Leno? Yup, now here's your copy of Office.
8. You guys suck and we hate you. Stop bringing up the damn lawsuit 'cause it sucks to. You guys are just the suckiest sucks ever.
I hope this clarifies the situation and are position. Don't hesitate to contact us by telegram or pigeon if you have any more questions.
As has been mentioned before, Corel has roughly 5 months of operating capital in the bank, and needed the merge most immediately to acquire Borland's cash reserves.
So here's the situation: Little money left, a ways to go before their Linux investment pays off (even longer without the merger), declining market share in core products like Draw, stagnant sales in Word Perfect office.
Did I miss anything? Maybe this will destroy the part of Corel's brain that contiually wants to compete with Microsoft in their core areas, and get them to focus on something that might make some money.
This type of work is definately interesting and has produced some good results. If you are interested, definately check out the references at the bottom of the page, they are some of the defining work in this area. For your convenience I've linked up a few here (for some reason they're not linked from the actual site):
My take is that certain administrative OS things should be standardized just to make our lives easier. I mean who really cares whether files go in/usr or/local, just pick one! Let's leave the room for innovation in things that really matter and make sure that simple things like deploying applications are as easy as possible.
Man, I hope Be keeps enough resource on BeOS. They're almost at the point of being a solid alternative for music and multimedia applications, something which Windows ain't. I would hate to see them stick it out this far and then not put enough muscle behind the last 10ft of the race.
By the way, has any company that has decided to focus on embedded applications or OSes ever been successful? I saw so many of those "thin client" type focus announcements, and then usually the company just implodes.
Not sure about that plan. From the article: "But HDTV has been slow to take off. Reception is spotty..." Does that sound like the kinda thing you'd want to trust your data to?
It's bad enough to go out and see "28 Days" by accident and then regret you ever went. It'll be even worse to spend 10 hours downloading it, watch it in a 1" x 2" window, regret ever seeing it, then accidentally click on it again when you're trying to shut down, have to pay for it again and then watch it again cause you feel guilty about wasting money.
So in short, it sounds like a good system that will become viable sometime in the future, perhaps as far away as the "Year 2000."
Coming from Canada (Toronto) and now living and working in NYC, I can say that there is not alot of Java going on in Canada right now. Not only that, but Canadian companies continue to hold on to their outdated human resources type hiring policies which slows everything down.
If you get a good headhunter in NY or most places in Cali, if you're at all good with Java you should have a job in few days.
To what extent is the spread of OSS compatible with capitalism? Most of OSS is made possible by companies that pay us to write other stuff, thereby keeping us alive to write the free variety.
Could you envision an extreme situation where OSS becomes too successful and it is difficult to make a living in the software business?
There's always so much griping on these threads I thought I'd just say that I think this piece is Slashdot at its best. A well thought out, well linked article by someone who actually knows something about what he's talking about, and someone I wouldn't normally be able to hear from.
Worth another month of Trolls and MicroSux posts for sure.
Women on the internet can only be a good thing. There is nothing worse than a ton of guys hanging around and creating the equivalent of the nasty bachelor pad with 7 roommates type of environment.
It is because women and men are different that I value their viewpoint and contributions. I have a feeling that even the average open source mailing list would have an entirely different feel if the gender ratio were closer to 50/50.
It is up to us long time male denizens to make everyone feel welcome in our little communities. I think it would make everything that much more interesting.
Then again, if you browse this thread at -1 I bet you'd find a different feeling entirely.
Or turn on frustration mode so that the kiddies have to search through 15 minutes of menus just to find the last damn bendy piece, then they find out its stuck to a little black flat piece and they have to wiggle the mouse, then bite one of the buttons for 7 minutes to get it off.
Lego should be covering my medical expenses, I estimate I lost 70% of my tooth enamel as a child trying to free that last damn bendy piece, and there's no way my kids are going to have it any other way.
I think there is a knee-jerk tendency among some OSS proponents to immediately not trust a companies motives if they don't immediatly give up all control over their most prized possessions.
While I might not agree with many of the things Sun has done, most notably their initial handling of the Blackdown porting team, I do see merit in some of their arguments regarding Java. There are very few languages, and even fewer successful ones, that have a truly open standards process. More importantly, it doesn't matter to most developers anyways. A developer only cares that he has ready access to a C(++) compiler, and that some percentage of the rest of the world is using that language along with him/her. About the only time that developer would notice that the language's spec was open was if it fragmented and became difficult to use.
A benevolent dictator is a very useful thing, Linus has shown that with the kernel. Whether or not Sun is benevolent is really what the argument is about.
Although this is not an annoucement with the kind of importance like Java being opened, it is an important testing of the waters for Sun and should be encouraged rather than flamed.
To expect a company that has spent 20 odd years in fierce competition to suddenly drop all that and "get" the idea of giving stuff away is asking too much. It'll be done in steps, and we should support and offer useful criticism rather than just dismissal.
The only thing left to see is if they actually do it, being as the actual release is still two months away. Sun has changed it's course before, hopefully they don't do it here.
I was just wondering this the other day - are there any commercial quality open source 3D animation packages in development at this time? I haven't really ever heard anyone talking about this.
I'd also be interested in hearing about just any free alternatives too.
I've tried all sorts of ways to justify what seems to be an unrepentantly bad movie, but it just makes me angry to think about it. There are lots of things that reeked in the movie (dialogue, realism, music...) but let me sum it up with this:
A computer generated alien who sheds a single tear for his race.
There still remains the chance that these "water canals" could be nothing more than an underground subway system for a race of super-intelligent beings.
Let's not fly off the handle and start talking water before we're sure it's not just something simple.
I find it ridiculous the number of people on here that are simultaneously deriding this MS X-Box thing as a closed product, while pumping up sony and its playstation line.
Sony is the king of closed and proprietary standards (or at least non-standard) that it refuses to open, and refuses to let drop. Memory sticks, mini-discs and all manner of crazy ports for their machines.
I like Sony's products myself, but only because they allow fun games on their platforms and generally have a good design sense.
In some way a more moral company than Microsoft? Unlikely.
Doesn't that hippocratic oath that doctors take when they become licensed to practice say something about doing everything in their power to help patients?
How do Doctors employed by companies reconcile this fundamental aspect of being a doctor, with withholding information to protect their company's bottom line?
Slashdot Mirror
You have NO IDEA how good our banking system is until you move to the States like I did.
Take those service fees, double them and then remove every service that is normally provided by the bank and you're almost there. Maybe add in a little lost deposit or expired bank card action and you've pretty much got it.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Ok, a two parter:
As I understood it weather models are a fairly hard thing to paralleliz (how the hell do you spell that?) because of the interdependence of pieces of the model. This would seem to me to make a Beowulf cluster a tough choice as it's inter-CPU bandwidth is pretty low right? And that's why I thought most weather prediction places chose high end super-computers because of their custom and expensive inter-CPU I/O?
Second part: Is weather prediction getting any better? Everything I've read about dynamic systems says that prediction past a certain level of detail or timeframe is impossible. Is that true?
Disclaimer: I might be dumb.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
For some reason I've managed to get an advance copy of Microsoft's responses to the questions:
To Mark D. Robins,
Thank you for your interest in our proprietary protocols products. The answers to your inquiries are as follows:
1. We claimed protections mostly because we didn't think you'd notice. It pains us to realize that you were one of the few people who actually took the time to read the license agreement before clicking.
2. If you notice, our product is in fact entitled Kerberoos, which is almost completely different from the product you refer to as Kerberos. Our product is in reality a tasty, but proprietary children's cereal. Maybe you've seen our mascot Kangy the Kerberoo?
3. We deny the existence of the internet.
4. Microsoft has taken measures such as writing you this letter and threatening other people. One time on the street a guy from our marketing department made fun of a kid whom he suspected of distributing our Kerberoos brand cereal, the child began crying.
5. We have a "rewards" program that pays any person who turns in a friend for unauthorized use of Kerberoos. So far, we have paid out over $73 in rewards.
6. Most of the detrimental impact is to our already fragile emotions. The justice department has been very mean to us and we're in a pretty rough place right now. You guys showing up and just spilling all our secrets isn't helping.
7. We've found the prospective purchasers of Microsoft products like to know as little as possible before making a purchase. Did you know that we're friends with Jay Leno? Yup, now here's your copy of Office.
8. You guys suck and we hate you. Stop bringing up the damn lawsuit 'cause it sucks to. You guys are just the suckiest sucks ever.
I hope this clarifies the situation and are position. Don't hesitate to contact us by telegram or pigeon if you have any more questions.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
As has been mentioned before, Corel has roughly 5 months of operating capital in the bank, and needed the merge most immediately to acquire Borland's cash reserves.
So here's the situation: Little money left, a ways to go before their Linux investment pays off (even longer without the merger), declining market share in core products like Draw, stagnant sales in Word Perfect office.
Did I miss anything? Maybe this will destroy the part of Corel's brain that contiually wants to compete with Microsoft in their core areas, and get them to focus on something that might make some money.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
This type of work is definately interesting and has produced some good results. If you are interested, definately check out the references at the bottom of the page, they are some of the defining work in this area. For your convenience I've linked up a few here (for some reason they're not linked from the actual site):
Karl Sims stuff
His Original Paper
Some cool pictures and more links
That should get you started.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
There's alot of debate for and against standards in the Linux community and in the open source community in general.
/usr or /local, just pick one! Let's leave the room for innovation in things that really matter and make sure that simple things like deploying applications are as easy as possible.
Arguments against: Stifles innovation.
Arguments for: Prevents fragmentation.
My take is that certain administrative OS things should be standardized just to make our lives easier. I mean who really cares whether files go in
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Man, I hope Be keeps enough resource on BeOS. They're almost at the point of being a solid alternative for music and multimedia applications, something which Windows ain't. I would hate to see them stick it out this far and then not put enough muscle behind the last 10ft of the race.
By the way, has any company that has decided to focus on embedded applications or OSes ever been successful? I saw so many of those "thin client" type focus announcements, and then usually the company just implodes.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Not sure about that plan. From the article: "But HDTV has been slow to take off. Reception is spotty..." Does that sound like the kinda thing you'd want to trust your data to?
"Sorry dear, no email during the thunderstorm."
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Looks like after that they've decided to change to the "doh" in
[drum hit]
Hotnutz.com - Funny
It's bad enough to go out and see "28 Days" by accident and then regret you ever went. It'll be even worse to spend 10 hours downloading it, watch it in a 1" x 2" window, regret ever seeing it, then accidentally click on it again when you're trying to shut down, have to pay for it again and then watch it again cause you feel guilty about wasting money.
So in short, it sounds like a good system that will become viable sometime in the future, perhaps as far away as the "Year 2000."
Hotnutz.com - Funny
I've been trying to talk to my fax machine for weeks, but it keeps giving me the cold shoulder.
I think its my accent.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Coming from Canada (Toronto) and now living and working in NYC, I can say that there is not alot of Java going on in Canada right now. Not only that, but Canadian companies continue to hold on to their outdated human resources type hiring policies which slows everything down.
If you get a good headhunter in NY or most places in Cali, if you're at all good with Java you should have a job in few days.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
IANAL, but the other day I was phoning a lady and making a modem noise with my nose to achieve manual DoS, I thought - "hey, is this legal?"
Hotnutz.com - Funny
To what extent is the spread of OSS compatible with capitalism? Most of OSS is made possible by companies that pay us to write other stuff, thereby keeping us alive to write the free variety.
Could you envision an extreme situation where OSS becomes too successful and it is difficult to make a living in the software business?
Hotnutz.com - Funny
There's always so much griping on these threads I thought I'd just say that I think this piece is Slashdot at its best. A well thought out, well linked article by someone who actually knows something about what he's talking about, and someone I wouldn't normally be able to hear from.
Worth another month of Trolls and MicroSux posts for sure.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Women on the internet can only be a good thing. There is nothing worse than a ton of guys hanging around and creating the equivalent of the nasty bachelor pad with 7 roommates type of environment.
It is because women and men are different that I value their viewpoint and contributions. I have a feeling that even the average open source mailing list would have an entirely different feel if the gender ratio were closer to 50/50.
It is up to us long time male denizens to make everyone feel welcome in our little communities. I think it would make everything that much more interesting.
Then again, if you browse this thread at -1 I bet you'd find a different feeling entirely.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
...Thinking Machines Corp would still be around, and Danny Hillis wouldn't be wasting his time dicking around with a huge dumb clock.
If Mr. Hillis is the genius you say he is, then perhaps he has a better idea of what might be important in the future than you or I.
Personally I think he realized that there might be more important problems facing Humans than the speed of database queries.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Or turn on frustration mode so that the kiddies have to search through 15 minutes of menus just to find the last damn bendy piece, then they find out its stuck to a little black flat piece and they have to wiggle the mouse, then bite one of the buttons for 7 minutes to get it off.
Lego should be covering my medical expenses, I estimate I lost 70% of my tooth enamel as a child trying to free that last damn bendy piece, and there's no way my kids are going to have it any other way.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
I think there is a knee-jerk tendency among some OSS proponents to immediately not trust a companies motives if they don't immediatly give up all control over their most prized possessions.
While I might not agree with many of the things Sun has done, most notably their initial handling of the Blackdown porting team, I do see merit in some of their arguments regarding Java. There are very few languages, and even fewer successful ones, that have a truly open standards process. More importantly, it doesn't matter to most developers anyways. A developer only cares that he has ready access to a C(++) compiler, and that some percentage of the rest of the world is using that language along with him/her. About the only time that developer would notice that the language's spec was open was if it fragmented and became difficult to use.
A benevolent dictator is a very useful thing, Linus has shown that with the kernel. Whether or not Sun is benevolent is really what the argument is about.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Although this is not an annoucement with the kind of importance like Java being opened, it is an important testing of the waters for Sun and should be encouraged rather than flamed.
To expect a company that has spent 20 odd years in fierce competition to suddenly drop all that and "get" the idea of giving stuff away is asking too much. It'll be done in steps, and we should support and offer useful criticism rather than just dismissal.
The only thing left to see is if they actually do it, being as the actual release is still two months away. Sun has changed it's course before, hopefully they don't do it here.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
I was just wondering this the other day - are there any commercial quality open source 3D animation packages in development at this time? I haven't really ever heard anyone talking about this.
I'd also be interested in hearing about just any free alternatives too.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
The rumours are true, this movie is brutal.
I've tried all sorts of ways to justify what seems to be an unrepentantly bad movie, but it just makes me angry to think about it. There are lots of things that reeked in the movie (dialogue, realism, music...) but let me sum it up with this:
A computer generated alien who sheds a single tear for his race.
Doesn't get much worse than that.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Ok everyone calm down.
There still remains the chance that these "water canals" could be nothing more than an underground subway system for a race of super-intelligent beings.
Let's not fly off the handle and start talking water before we're sure it's not just something simple.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
I find it ridiculous the number of people on here that are simultaneously deriding this MS X-Box thing as a closed product, while pumping up sony and its playstation line.
Sony is the king of closed and proprietary standards (or at least non-standard) that it refuses to open, and refuses to let drop. Memory sticks, mini-discs and all manner of crazy ports for their machines.
I like Sony's products myself, but only because they allow fun games on their platforms and generally have a good design sense.
In some way a more moral company than Microsoft? Unlikely.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Doesn't that hippocratic oath that doctors take when they become licensed to practice say something about doing everything in their power to help patients?
How do Doctors employed by companies reconcile this fundamental aspect of being a doctor, with withholding information to protect their company's bottom line?
Hotnutz.com - Funny