I don't need to spend 9 hours watching a video to determine that labview sucks. If it's really that good, its benefits should be apparent right away. Other reasons: (1) It's in no way "open" (2) It's very klunky for doing many things that are a cakewalk in other languages (3) If it's so good, why hasn't it caught on by inspiring (free/open) imitators (4) It's not a good starting point for the budding robotics enthusiast who will later transition into programming PICs (5) "real" languages really aren't too hard for kids.
It's a good thing they are opening the firmware, because one thing about LEGO NXT that bothered me was the incorporation of Labview as the programming interface.
It's bad enough that Labview turns electrical engineers into flesh-eating zombies...now they are unleashing it on children!
At least, by opening the firmware and driver details, there should be C-like or BASIC-like alternatives appearing relatively quickly.
If you think that's funny, check out the BSD logo story, at http://www.softpanorama.org/Bulletin/Humor/bsd_log o_story.shtml
That one had me rolling in my seats. The jist is that some rednecks approach a lady wearing a T-shirt with the BSD devil-in-sneakers logo. Hilarity ensues.
Scientology reminds me of another ruthless cult that robs its users (re, followers) blind, engages in dirty tricks and astro turf campaigns, has questionable accounting practices and reduces the its followers to mindless point-n-click drones.
And, rumor has it, Bill Gates has actually been dead since 1986.
You are quite wrong in your assessment of the rebuttals. Do you want them to spoon-feed you the results? That's not how a rebuttal works. In this context, it *IS* sufficient to explain why Lombord is wrong and refer to other work as supporting information. Remember, these are magazine articles, not a 500+ page book. And besides, many of the assertions in Lombord's book are so obviously false it's hard to know where to begin when fashioning a rebuttal.
I think E.O. Wilson's piece provides quite a bit of evidence that Lombord's view on extinction illustrates a profound lack of understanding of current progress in the field and a blatant disregard for what are generally recognized as facts in the field.
I highly skeptical about the conclusions of the book and agree with many points of the reviewer. For further information and rebuttals from a surprisingly large number of world-renowned scientists, check out the article in www.gristmagazine.com aptly titled "Something Is Rotten in the State of Denmark: a skeptical look at the skeptical environmentalist." Here is a URL: http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/lomborg12 1201.asp?source=daily For some reason the slash post engine is inserting extra spaces into the URL but I think you can figure it out.
Quite an impressive author list, except for Somorjai. I think his work is highly overrated, much of it is sloppy, and he defines surface science too narrowly.
Bob Young doesn't say Linux won't be on the desktop, he just says that it won't directly displace Windows. I believe the jist of his argument is that Linux will become more important and Windows will become less relevant as users move away from the traditional desktop and towards the internet... Providing that.NET doesn't win. If.NET wins, then the battle is over, and user choice and value will be the losers.
Despite the early antagonism between the league for programming freedom and Apple, Macs and Unix went together pretty well. Long before samba, 680X0 Macs were sharing files quite nicely with unix servers. In many disciplines at universities, unix was used for heavy lifting, and macs were used for light word processing and making drawings.
Linuxppc has benefited from the generally better hardware on the PowerPC (higher quality and reliability, and less diversity). Also, for much of the '90s, the PPC chip was faster for many things than ix86. Recently, I had a 90 MHz powermac running KDE, xemacs, and Netscape without a hitch for months without any hiccups (a little slow but definitely useable). Under MacOS the thing would lock up several times a day. OS X is not an option for these older macs.
My old Mac died but I hope to get an ibook soon and put Linux on it. By the way, I wish there was something like fips for shrinking Mac partitions for people that want to dual boot.
What if you want to read email on a PDA or web appliance? Also, I've often received word attachments that don't display correctly and have parts missing because I don't have the same set of fonts as the sender.
You can always get people to reexamine the issue of sending.doc files by using little white lies and telling them either (a) your antivirus software raised flags on the attachment (b) oops, the server seems to be stripping attachments (c) the document was illegible because of a font or version problem
I think the current success of Indian programming companies and the future success of Chinese programmers is good for everyone in the long run. Why should Indians and Chinese have to give up their way of life and become virtual indentured servants in the U.S. just to get a programming job?
Right now, the difference in salaries may seem huge, but remember, in the U.S. a lot of a typical programmer's salary is eaten up by exhorbitant rent and mortgage payments. I imagine an Indian programmer lives comfortably, though the dollar amounts are much smaller. Also, I expect the salaries will rise over time as more employers enter the market.
I don't think this is a zero sum game, it's more of a rising tide lifting all boats. More people in the middle class in India and China means more consumers of US and European exports.
I think you fail to understand how the GPL works in this case. The GPL'd code is free for use in non-proprietary software. If a company wants to use the code in a proprietary product, they can license it from the university. The university makes money, the private company gets the code it wants, and the public gets the benefit of free code. Everybody's happy!
If you don't think GPL works this way, just read the GPL. Lots of proprietary products contain GPL code, but you can be sure they paid for the privilege (or they'll get in trouble).
One thing the dotcom crash may show is that it's getting harder and harder to build a business based on hoarding software (unless you're Microsoft, and maybe even then).
The dotcom slump has been hard on shrinkwrapped software producers, from educational software to media players (Realnetworks). The venture capital that used to back companies hoping to produce another software blockbuster has all but dried up. Up until now, free software has faced an onslaught of marketing and development dollars from the proprietary software producers. But the market is starting to learn that the proprietary software market is saturated. We're past the speculative boom phase, and free software will increasingly fill the needs of users.
A coworker once observed that, while some people spend their break time looking at sports stats and reading sports drivel on the web, the Linux geeks among us wasted break time reading netcraft stats and reading pro- and anti- linux drivel on the web.
To paraphrase Umberto Eco (paraphrasing Marx): Slashdot has replaced spectator sports which previously replaced religion as the opiate of the masses.
Hear hear. You shouldn't be surprised there are so many slashdotters who think global warming isn't real. The "Slashdot Personality" tends to think he knows more than all the "so-called experts" and is very susceptible to odd contrarian viewpoints and philosophies that have become popular in the geek culture. Also, excessive use of Perl has clouded their critical thinking skills, and their attention span is too short to actually read an article in Scientific American.
OK, enough harshing on the dotters. I've seen some of the current climate research. It really seems to point to global warming. It's not a hoax. I've seen enough hoaxes, you can usually spot one if it's been around a year or two. There is often a pattern: (1) wild claim met with skepticism from much of the scientific community (2) a few early independent confirmations (there is a bell curve and given enough scientists, any result can be confirmed a few times) (3) many more negative results that place the initial claim in doubt (4) evidence surfaces that the authors of the initial claim were sloppy or deceitful.
This is not what's happening with global warming. The evidence continues to mount. There are relatively few dissenting scientists, and most of them just complain we don't have enough proof yet, they provide little contrary evidence except potshots at the incompleteness of the data set (kind of like how creationists like to point out "holes" in the fossil record as proof that Darwin is wrong).
One key indicator that helps support the veracity of a theory (and its general acceptance) is its usefulness. Germ theory really caught on when it started saving lives. Evolution and genetics are supremely useful to the study of biology. Relativity and quantum mechanics are useful for explaining many natural phenomena.
Similarly, theory and data regarding CO2 buildup and global warming are at the point where they are useful. You have to include them if you want to model climatic observations such as seasonal changes in CO2 concentration. Otherwise the data don't make any sense.
Scientists often employ semi-empirical formulas and approximations without much regard for the underlying assumptions or physical or mathematical bases for the formulas. Something like this could help improve the rigor of work in the physical sciences, and help prevent costly mistakes (such as, showing that such-and-such experiment can't work because it's based on ideas which form an incompatible set of assumptions).
Batlogg's group is amazing. A few months ago they demonstrated the first crystalline organic laser and first crystalline (not plastic) organic superconductor. As it says in the article, people have been trying to do this stuff for 20-30 years.
They've also made efficient solar cells, very good (comparable to Si) field-effect transistors. They've achieved more in this field (organic conductors) in the last year or so than all other researchers in the field have done in the last five (and there's been a lot of very good work in the last few years).
If God were a Good Programmer, he would realize that "making sustainable advanced life" is an NP-complex problem. Finding the optimal solution given the large number of input parameters and the extreme sensitivity to initial conditions is, to mortals, impossible, and to supreme beings, a large bore. But a useful (but perhaps not optimal) solution may be obtained by employing a genetic algorithm, as any student of numerical methods or budding deity should be well aware.
It seems to me that the principal bad assumption of gnutella was that forwarding search requests costs less than forwarding file lists. The second problem is the network topology, though that can be fixed relatively easily, and some of the newer client/servers seem to be tackling that problem.
If you switch to a more napster-like model where each user submits a file list, then freeloaders don't consume as much bandwidth. You develop a database over time as you stock up on file lists. The downside is that you can't just join and search (though maybe asking nearest neighbors to search could be part of the protocol). Since users might update only a few times per day or less, the overall bandwidth use isn't that high.
For the topology problem, I would suggest more of a ring-chain topology, with some redundancy (backup connections in case a link breaks, and multiple rings that are sparsely interconnected).
This is fun stuff to think about. Similar problems are present (self-organized networks) in "bottom-up" nanotechnology. Maybe I should ask for a DARPA or NSF grant for nanotech research and spend my time and money working on a p2p network...
I'm still trying to figure out what the name of the website, "ass-palliance" means. The closest my dictionary gets to "palliance" is "parlance", or "talking out one's ass".
Slashdot Mirror
I don't need to spend 9 hours watching a video to determine that labview sucks. If it's really that good, its benefits should be apparent right away. Other reasons: (1) It's in no way "open" (2) It's very klunky for doing many things that are a cakewalk in other languages (3) If it's so good, why hasn't it caught on by inspiring (free/open) imitators (4) It's not a good starting point for the budding robotics enthusiast who will later transition into programming PICs (5) "real" languages really aren't too hard for kids.
It's a good thing they are opening the firmware, because one thing about LEGO NXT that bothered me was the incorporation of Labview as the programming interface.
It's bad enough that Labview turns electrical engineers into flesh-eating zombies...now they are unleashing it on children!
At least, by opening the firmware and driver details, there should be C-like or BASIC-like alternatives appearing relatively quickly.
If you think that's funny, check out the BSD logo story, at http://www.softpanorama.org/Bulletin/Humor/bsd_log o_story.shtml
That one had me rolling in my seats. The jist is that some rednecks approach a lady wearing a T-shirt with the BSD devil-in-sneakers logo. Hilarity ensues.
You're right, this isn't anything new. As you all must have guessed by now, 90% of slashdot posts are generated by an overgrown Perl script.
Scientology reminds me of another ruthless cult that robs its users (re, followers) blind, engages in dirty tricks and astro turf campaigns, has questionable accounting practices and reduces the its followers to mindless point-n-click drones.
And, rumor has it, Bill Gates has actually been dead since 1986.
You are quite wrong in your assessment of the rebuttals. Do you want them to spoon-feed you the results? That's not how a rebuttal works. In this context, it *IS* sufficient to explain why Lombord is wrong and refer to other work as supporting information. Remember, these are magazine articles, not a 500+ page book. And besides, many of the assertions in Lombord's book are so obviously false it's hard to know where to begin when fashioning a rebuttal.
I think E.O. Wilson's piece provides quite a bit of evidence that Lombord's view on extinction illustrates a profound lack of understanding of current progress in the field and a blatant disregard for what are generally recognized as facts in the field.
I highly skeptical about the conclusions of the book and agree with many points of the reviewer. For further information and rebuttals from a surprisingly large number of world-renowned scientists, check out the article in www.gristmagazine.com aptly titled "Something Is Rotten in the State of Denmark: a skeptical look at the skeptical environmentalist." Here is a URL: http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/lomborg12 1201.asp?source=daily
For some reason the slash post engine is inserting extra spaces into the URL but I think you can figure it out.
Quite an impressive author list, except for Somorjai. I think his work is highly overrated, much of it is sloppy, and he defines surface science too narrowly.
Bob Young doesn't say Linux won't be on the desktop, he just says that it won't directly displace Windows. I believe the jist of his argument is that Linux will become more important and Windows will become less relevant as users move away from the traditional desktop and towards the internet... Providing that .NET doesn't win. If .NET wins, then the battle is over, and user choice and value will be the losers.
Despite the early antagonism between the league for programming freedom and Apple, Macs and Unix went together pretty well. Long before samba, 680X0 Macs were sharing files quite nicely with unix servers. In many disciplines at universities, unix was used for heavy lifting, and macs were used for light word processing and making drawings.
Linuxppc has benefited from the generally better hardware on the PowerPC (higher quality and reliability, and less diversity). Also, for much of the '90s, the PPC chip was faster for many things than ix86. Recently, I had a 90 MHz powermac running KDE, xemacs, and Netscape without a hitch for months without any hiccups (a little slow but definitely useable). Under MacOS the thing would lock up several times a day. OS X is not an option for these older macs.
My old Mac died but I hope to get an ibook soon and put Linux on it. By the way, I wish there was something like fips for shrinking Mac partitions for people that want to dual boot.
What if you want to read email on a PDA or web appliance? Also, I've often received word attachments that don't display correctly and have parts missing because I don't have the same set of fonts as the sender.
.doc files by using little white lies and telling them either (a) your antivirus software raised flags on the attachment (b) oops, the server seems to be stripping attachments (c) the document was illegible because of a font or version problem
You can always get people to reexamine the issue of sending
I think the current success of Indian programming companies and the future success of Chinese programmers is good for everyone in the long run. Why should Indians and Chinese have to give up their way of life and become virtual indentured servants in the U.S. just to get a programming job?
Right now, the difference in salaries may seem huge, but remember, in the U.S. a lot of a typical programmer's salary is eaten up by exhorbitant rent and mortgage payments. I imagine an Indian programmer lives comfortably, though the dollar amounts are much smaller. Also, I expect the salaries will rise over time as more employers enter the market.
I don't think this is a zero sum game, it's more of a rising tide lifting all boats. More people in the middle class in India and China means more consumers of US and European exports.
I think you fail to understand how the GPL works in this case. The GPL'd code is free for use in non-proprietary software. If a company wants to use the code in a proprietary product, they can license it from the university. The university makes money, the private company gets the code it wants, and the public gets the benefit of free code. Everybody's happy!
If you don't think GPL works this way, just read the GPL. Lots of proprietary products contain GPL code, but you can be sure they paid for the privilege (or they'll get in trouble).
One thing the dotcom crash may show is that it's getting harder and harder to build a business based on hoarding software (unless you're Microsoft, and maybe even then).
The dotcom slump has been hard on shrinkwrapped software producers, from educational software to media players (Realnetworks). The venture capital that used to back companies hoping to produce another software blockbuster has all but dried up. Up until now, free software has faced an onslaught of marketing and development dollars from the proprietary software producers. But the market is starting to learn that the proprietary software market is saturated. We're past the speculative boom phase, and free software will increasingly fill the needs of users.
A coworker once observed that, while some people spend their break time looking at sports stats and reading sports drivel on the web, the Linux geeks among us wasted break time reading netcraft stats and reading pro- and anti- linux drivel on the web.
To paraphrase Umberto Eco (paraphrasing Marx): Slashdot has replaced spectator sports which previously replaced religion as the opiate of the masses.
Hear hear. You shouldn't be surprised there are so many slashdotters who think global warming isn't real. The "Slashdot Personality" tends to think he knows more than all the "so-called experts" and is very susceptible to odd contrarian viewpoints and philosophies that have become popular in the geek culture. Also, excessive use of Perl has clouded their critical thinking skills, and their attention span is too short to actually read an article in Scientific American.
OK, enough harshing on the dotters. I've seen some of the current climate research. It really seems to point to global warming. It's not a hoax. I've seen enough hoaxes, you can usually spot one if it's been around a year or two. There is often a pattern: (1) wild claim met with skepticism from much of the scientific community (2) a few early independent confirmations (there is a bell curve and given enough scientists, any result can be confirmed a few times) (3) many more negative results that place the initial claim in doubt (4) evidence surfaces that the authors of the initial claim were sloppy or deceitful.
This is not what's happening with global warming. The evidence continues to mount. There are relatively few dissenting scientists, and most of them just complain we don't have enough proof yet, they provide little contrary evidence except potshots at the incompleteness of the data set (kind of like how creationists like to point out "holes" in the fossil record as proof that Darwin is wrong).
One key indicator that helps support the veracity of a theory (and its general acceptance) is its usefulness. Germ theory really caught on when it started saving lives. Evolution and genetics are supremely useful to the study of biology. Relativity and quantum mechanics are useful for explaining many natural phenomena.
Similarly, theory and data regarding CO2 buildup and global warming are at the point where they are useful. You have to include them if you want to model climatic observations such as seasonal changes in CO2 concentration. Otherwise the data don't make any sense.
Scientists often employ semi-empirical formulas and approximations without much regard for the underlying assumptions or physical or mathematical bases for the formulas. Something like this could help improve the rigor of work in the physical sciences, and help prevent costly mistakes (such as, showing that such-and-such experiment can't work because it's based on ideas which form an incompatible set of assumptions).
Batlogg's group is amazing. A few months ago they demonstrated the first crystalline organic laser and first crystalline (not plastic) organic superconductor. As it says in the article, people have been trying to do this stuff for 20-30 years.
They've also made efficient solar cells, very good (comparable to Si) field-effect transistors. They've achieved more in this field (organic conductors) in the last year or so than all other researchers in the field have done in the last five (and there's been a lot of very good work in the last few years).
Bell Labs is part of Lucent
If God were a Good Programmer, he would realize that "making sustainable advanced life" is an NP-complex problem. Finding the optimal solution given the large number of input parameters and the extreme sensitivity to initial conditions is, to mortals, impossible, and to supreme beings, a large bore. But a useful (but perhaps not optimal) solution may be obtained by employing a genetic algorithm, as any student of numerical methods or budding deity should be well aware.
It seems to me that the principal bad assumption of gnutella was that forwarding search requests costs less than forwarding file lists. The second problem is the network topology, though that can be fixed relatively easily, and some of the newer client/servers seem to be tackling that problem.
If you switch to a more napster-like model where each user submits a file list, then freeloaders don't consume as much bandwidth. You develop a database over time as you stock up on file lists. The downside is that you can't just join and search (though maybe asking nearest neighbors to search could be part of the protocol). Since users might update only a few times per day or less, the overall bandwidth use isn't that high.
For the topology problem, I would suggest more of a ring-chain topology, with some redundancy (backup connections in case a link breaks, and multiple rings that are sparsely interconnected).
This is fun stuff to think about. Similar problems are present (self-organized networks) in "bottom-up" nanotechnology. Maybe I should ask for a DARPA or NSF grant for nanotech research and spend my time and money working on a p2p network...
I hear that if the battle heats up and Canadian crackers gain the upper hand, Hughes will resort to poisoning the backbacon supply.
Can you say "use conducting (as opposed to semiconducting) plastics for the interconnects"?
I'm still trying to figure out what the name of the website, "ass-palliance" means. The closest my dictionary gets to "palliance" is "parlance", or "talking out one's ass".
Sorry, 7200. I think LinuxPPC will boot on older NuBus Macs now, though.