You mention targeting a Wearable computer design -- have you spoken with anyone from any of the university
Wearable Computing groups, or Professor Steve Mann?
The extreme performance and low cost of the X18-architecture systems would
make them excellent affordable general-purpose computers -- but I am concerned about the technology
being relegated to a niche like the previous FORTH processors... Do you think it would it be a worthy
goal to target the full functionality offered by
Larry Ellison's
"N|C" ("New Internet Computer") ? (X Terminal, Winframe terminal, SSH client, Web Browser, Java, Javascript, etc.)
Wow -- I'm amazed to see this on Slashot! I've been following Colorforth a bit since the videos / talks were posted on UltraTechnology.COM -- and since the ColorForth site went up, I've been following up for more info a few times a week. NEAT! The MOSIS facility where the prototypes would be built is amazing in itself too...
I was thinking about the benefits and problems of cooperative multitasking and no processor memory protection, in favor of speed. (I haven't read Phil Koopman's "
Stack Machines" yet to see if this is addressed.) Do you think that a "validation process" similar to what Java runs on applet bytecodes to ensure they behave, before execution, would be effective in building a general purpose computer built on colorforth / x18 ?
> I believe it was IBM that first figured out that bugs in a large project asymptotically approach a constant number.
Mr Crawford --
Does it
have to be a requirement that there will always be bugs? I would like to believe that given strong specifications, proper coding practice, accounting for situations, and no unreasonable time constraints, it's possible to produce a bug-free piece of software that performs its task correctly on a given system... I've read Worse is Better
How are his wife and kids?
on
Sklyarov Update
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Does anyone know how his wife and kids are holding up during this ordeal?
Is there a way that we can contribute monetarily to helping them through the hardship of not having Dmitry around?
Flabdabb -> Follow the links to the "everything2" nodes in the story for definitions.
(In short -- Berke Breathed is a cartoonist who did two comics strips, Bloom County and Outland, that ran from 1980-1995 in US newspapers. It was originally picked up as a replacement for Doonesbury when it was on hiatus. Extremely funny stuff, the origin of "Bill the Cat", "Opus the Penguin", etc... )
Hmm, just called them and it's USD$92,000.00... Money that will most likely be much-better spent both on Dmitry's defense, and in helping the EFF battle the DMCA.
I remember that to make a public statement Terry Gilliam took out a full-page ad in Variety... looks like that's an expensive luxury.:-(
I'm submitting the story and writing letters to the local papers here though.
You know, I wonder how much full-page ads are in these papers... maybe someone can organize a paypal-chip-in campaign to take out some full page ads letting people know about this?
AnchorDesk writer David Coursey probably also advocates that Ralph Nader shouldn't have gone after Ford about the Pinto, and instead should have written an article called "Death to Bad Drivers who Rear End People!"
Give me a break. It's not the virus writers that are the problem -- it's a shortcoming of the infrastructure in place that allows them to happen. We've got to focus on working to fix that, and it'll take time to do.
If the new Ford Focus has a remote keyless auto-starter that can crash and leave the car unstartable by any kid with an RC car controller, who's at fault then?
(For that matter, if someone started a chain letter telling people to first mail copies to 10 of their friends and then to pour a bag of sugar into their gas tank to reduce emissions, who's to blame then?)
"The first fact to face is that UNIX was not developed with security, in any realistic sense, in mind; this fact alone guarantees a vast number of holes. (Actually the same statement can be made with respect to most systems.)" -- Dennis Ritchie, 1979
(Well, if they're going to get that bent out of shape over a fork... heh)
What follows is the Press Release the Free Software Foundation has released attacking Xemacs.org (and Lucid). It was submitted to us by Richard Stallman from the FSF
EMACS COMMUNITY THREATENED BY OBSCURE.ORG WEBSITE
Boston, MA, 1 April 2001 - The Free Software Foundation today announced that an unauthorised party has set up a website on www.xemacs.ORG in direct violation of the trademark rights of the Free Software Foundation and with the apparent goal to confuse the huge worldwide community of Emacs users.
Richard "rms" Stallman founder of the Free Software Foundation and the creator of this world-leading Free text editing / programming software commented "We normally welcome new sites that focus on EMACS, but this one violates our trademark and may lead users to wrongfully believe it represents the people behind the EMACS software. We were not contacted about this website and it operates without our authorisation. We cannot recommend anybody to visit that site."
The obscure.ORG site claims to offer free software, but sends users derivatives of the software that apparently has been copied from the official GNU ftp site. The.ORG site fails to display information of the people or organisations behind it. The domain was registered in the name of XEmacs Advocacy Group, on 28 April 1996. Both companies make non-proprietary, free software.
The original and official EMACS ftp site of the FSF is immensely popular and serves millions of users with free software, free information, and an opportunity for visitors to contribute comments and other things, such as additional tools and utilities. No registration is required for accessing ftp.fsf.org. In addition, the EMACS package is a popular topic on several other free software websites such as Slashdot.
Yahoo! has been using EMACS in mission-critical applications for several years. Mr. J.Z., a member of the EMACS user community and an engineer at Yahoo! commented "I really don't see the need for the xemacs.org Web site. The FSF site already contains a wealth of information and software from the EMACS developers and members of the community. I worry that the introduction of this Web site will confuse new users and potentially fracture or otherwise harm the EMACS user community."
Richard Stallman, not-so-newly appointed leader of the FSF, commented "We consider operating the xemacs.ORG site illegal activity and we are taking steps to enforce our trademark and other rights." In respect to how the EMACS community is served, he said "We will continue to serve existing and new EMACS users with software under GPL and free information without requiring registration. Our new 'portals' present an even wider array of useful information and services, and users are free to comment on the items there. At the same time, we have the best contract programming / customizations services for the EMACS package and as the owners of the software we are the only ones who can sell commercial licences. Not that we would." The Free Software Foundation develops, supports and markets the EMACS package worldwide. The Free Software Foundation, the sole owner of the EMACS trademark, is fully committed to the Free Software philosophy and to making EMACS available and affordable for all. The Free Softare Foundation is an American privately held not-for-profit company co-founded by some benevolent folk on the east coast. EMACS is a trademark of The Free Software Foundation in the US, Sweden, and other countries, and is registered in Sweden and 13 other countries. Other names are trademarks of their respective owners. For more information, please visit www.fsf.org or write to press@gnu.org."
(Note: If you do not recognize the above as parody, Go Away.)
The main complaint Sun had against Microsoft is that they encouraged the Java developers to call native APIs from their Java code to get work done. This made the Java code run better (and much faster, as Java's graphics toolkit, at one time, when displaying large complex graphics, would have to update everything onscreen to update any one graphical element change.). Yes, it's fair to grouse that this defeated the "cross-platform intent" of Java. But I deal with Java code every day at my employer that runs under Solaris, and invokes Unix 'sh' scripts to get stuff done. Bang -- won't be cross-platform either. It was hypocritical of Sun.
My personal opinion (that's OPINION folks;) is that Sun was quite pissed to see how hard Microsoft grabbed the Java torch and was running with it, producing the fastest x86 virtual machine and all -- potentially making it just another addition to the M$ arsenal. Yes, I can see them being sad about it. But it was hypocritical to take Java away from them and ruin things for more people, crying "Cross platform!" all the while, while still allowing native method calls themselves.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Java withdrawn by Sun from standardization efforts so Sun could retain exclusive control? (Microsoft is Evil and Nasty and attempting to Embrace/Extend/Extinguish for allowing programmers to access the Microsoft API's from Java code, but we can add Native Methods calls ourselves!)
Hopefully now they will give more consideration to implementing some of the measures outlined here ( http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/microsoft-antitrust. html ) -- more similar to IBM's punishment for unfair practices than to the Bell System's (breakup).
Unfortunately the essential.org article (which was *VERY* good, as good as the Stallman article itself) is no longer there, the staff is working on tracking it down again.
VALENTI: It is Jack VALENTI, and these are the Knights of the Motion Picture Association of America. Who's castle is this?
GUARD: This is the castle of Our Master Ruiz' de lu la Ramper
VALENTI: Go and tell your master that we have been charged by God with a sacred quest. If he will give us food and shelter for the night he may have software that plays DVD discs!
GUARD: Well, I'll ask him, but I don't think he'll be very keen... Uh, he's already got one, you see?
VALENTI: What?
GALAHAD: He says they've already got one!
VALENTI: Are you sure he's got one?
GUARD: Oh, yes, it's very nice-a [To Other Guards] I told him we already got one.
OTHER GUARDS: [Laughing]
VALENTI: Well, um, can we come up and have a look?
GUARD: Of course not! You are American types-a!
VALENTI: Well, what are you then?
GUARD: I'm French! Why do think I have this outrageous accent, you silly Jack Valenti person!
GALAHAD: Where is your license to the CSS code?
GUARD: Mind your own business!
VALENTI: If you will not show us your license, we shall take your castle by litigation!
GUARD: You don't frighten us, MPAA pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottoms, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called VALENTI-Jack, you and all your silly MPAA kaniggets. Thppppt!
GALAHAD: What a strange person.
VALENTI: Now look here, my good man!
GUARD: I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough water! I fart in your general direction! You mother was a hamster and your father smelt of eldeberries.
GALAHAD: Is there someone else up there we could talk to?
GUARD: No, now go away or I shall taunt you a second time-a!
Slashdot Mirror
Mr Crawford --
Does anyone know how his wife and kids are holding up during this ordeal?
Is there a way that we can contribute monetarily to helping them through the hardship of not having Dmitry around?
Flabdabb -> Follow the links to the "everything2" nodes in the story for definitions.
... )
(In short -- Berke Breathed is a cartoonist who did two comics strips, Bloom County and Outland, that ran from 1980-1995 in US newspapers. It was originally picked up as a replacement for Doonesbury when it was on hiatus. Extremely funny stuff, the origin of "Bill the Cat", "Opus the Penguin", etc
0.4sec/Frame rendering is more powerful than Excel has EVER had. This is the first time I've a convincing argument in favor of Quattro based systems.
Perhaps a better name for the project would be Icarus ?
(On second thought, best not to jinx it
Hmm, just called them and it's USD$92,000.00 ... Money that will most likely be much-better spent both on Dmitry's defense, and in helping the EFF battle the DMCA.
... looks like that's an expensive luxury. :-(
I remember that to make a public statement Terry Gilliam took out a full-page ad in Variety
I'm submitting the story and writing letters to the local papers here though.
AnchorDesk writer David Coursey probably also advocates that Ralph Nader shouldn't have gone after Ford about the Pinto, and instead should have written an article called "Death to Bad Drivers who Rear End People!"
Give me a break. It's not the virus writers that are the problem -- it's a shortcoming of the infrastructure in place that allows them to happen. We've got to focus on working to fix that, and it'll take time to do.
If the new Ford Focus has a remote keyless auto-starter that can crash and leave the car unstartable by any kid with an RC car controller, who's at fault then?
(For that matter, if someone started a chain letter telling people to first mail copies to 10 of their friends and then to pour a bag of sugar into their gas tank to reduce emissions, who's to blame then?)
"The first fact to face is that UNIX was not developed with security, in any realistic sense, in mind; this fact alone guarantees a vast number of holes. (Actually the same statement can be made with respect to most systems.)"
-- Dennis Ritchie, 1979
> There is no point in creating a standard (e.g. ECMA standard) if that standard can only be implemented by (or with the consent of) one corporation.
...
If I'm not mistaken, following that logic, ECMA's specs for CD-ROM (Yellow Book[?]) are pointless becaues the CD Book Standards can't be implemented without the consent of Philips / Sony
(Well, if they're going to get that bent out of shape over a fork ... heh)
.ORG WEBSITE
.ORG site claims to offer free software, but sends users derivatives of the software that apparently has been copied from the official GNU ftp site. The .ORG site fails to display information of the people or organisations behind it. The domain was registered in the name of XEmacs Advocacy Group, on 28 April 1996. Both companies make non-proprietary, free software.
What follows is the Press Release the Free Software Foundation has released attacking Xemacs.org (and Lucid). It was submitted to us by Richard Stallman from the FSF
EMACS COMMUNITY THREATENED BY OBSCURE
Boston, MA, 1 April 2001 -
The Free Software Foundation today announced that an unauthorised party has set up a website on www.xemacs.ORG in direct violation of the trademark rights of the Free Software Foundation and with the apparent goal to confuse the huge worldwide community of Emacs users.
Richard "rms" Stallman founder of the Free Software Foundation and the creator of this world-leading Free text editing / programming software commented "We normally welcome new sites that focus on EMACS, but this one violates our trademark and may lead users to wrongfully believe it represents the people behind the EMACS software. We were not contacted about this website and it operates without our authorisation. We cannot recommend anybody to visit that site."
The obscure
The original and official EMACS ftp site of the FSF is immensely popular and serves millions of users with free software, free information, and an opportunity for visitors to contribute comments and other things, such as additional tools and utilities. No registration is required for accessing ftp.fsf.org. In addition, the EMACS package is a popular topic on several other free software websites such as Slashdot.
Yahoo! has been using EMACS in mission-critical applications for several years. Mr. J.Z., a member of the EMACS user community and an engineer at Yahoo! commented "I really don't see the need for the xemacs.org Web site. The FSF site already contains a wealth of information and software from the EMACS developers and members of the community. I worry that the introduction of this Web site will confuse new users and potentially fracture or otherwise harm the EMACS user community."
Richard Stallman, not-so-newly appointed leader of the FSF, commented "We consider operating the xemacs.ORG site illegal activity and we are taking steps to enforce our trademark and other rights." In respect to how the EMACS community is served, he said "We will continue to serve existing and new EMACS users with software under GPL and free information without requiring registration. Our new 'portals' present an even wider array of useful information and services, and users are free to comment on the items there. At the same time, we have the best contract programming / customizations services for the EMACS package and as the owners of the software we are the only ones who can sell commercial licences. Not that we would." The Free Software Foundation develops, supports and markets the EMACS package worldwide. The Free Software Foundation, the sole owner of the EMACS trademark, is fully committed to the Free Software philosophy and to making EMACS available and affordable for all. The Free Softare Foundation is an American privately held not-for-profit company co-founded by some benevolent folk on the east coast. EMACS is a trademark of The Free Software Foundation in the US, Sweden, and other countries, and is registered in Sweden and 13 other countries. Other names are trademarks of their respective owners. For more information, please visit www.fsf.org or write to press@gnu.org."
(Note: If you do not recognize the above as parody, Go Away.)
A solid flat surface keyboard -- it's Dillinger's keyboard from Tron! w00T!
"You shouldn't have come back, Flynn"
READY
("Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted." ?! Slashdot is probably run by C64 bigots!)
Trith --
;) is that Sun was quite pissed to see how hard Microsoft grabbed the Java torch and was running with it, producing the fastest x86 virtual machine and all -- potentially making it just another addition to the M$ arsenal. Yes, I can see them being sad about it. But it was hypocritical to take Java away from them and ruin things for more people, crying "Cross platform!" all the while, while still allowing native method calls themselves.
Apple and Blackdown use Sun's Java.
The main complaint Sun had against Microsoft is that they encouraged the Java developers to call native APIs from their Java code to get work done. This made the Java code run better (and much faster, as Java's graphics toolkit, at one time, when displaying large complex graphics, would have to update everything onscreen to update any one graphical element change.). Yes, it's fair to grouse that this defeated the "cross-platform intent" of Java. But I deal with Java code every day at my employer that runs under Solaris, and invokes Unix 'sh' scripts to get stuff done. Bang -- won't be cross-platform either. It was hypocritical of Sun.
My personal opinion (that's OPINION folks
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Java withdrawn by Sun from standardization efforts so Sun could retain exclusive control? (Microsoft is Evil and Nasty and attempting to Embrace/Extend/Extinguish for allowing programmers to access the Microsoft API's from Java code, but we can add Native Methods calls ourselves!)
... Java's great, but unless I'm seriously misinformed it needs Sun to loosen its grip quite a bit...
Even implementing your own version and using the name "Java" anywhere near it will have fifteen Sun lawyers jumping down your throats? (Witness java enthusiasts writing "Java Spacegame" demo applets and getting cease-and-desist's)
Hopefully now they will give more consideration to implementing some of the measures outlined here ( http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/microsoft-antitrust. html ) -- more similar to IBM's punishment for unfair practices than to the Bell System's (breakup).
Unfortunately the essential.org article (which was *VERY* good, as good as the Stallman article itself) is no longer there, the staff is working on tracking it down again.
Unfortunately it looks like OpenBIOS hasn't updated in 14 months, and it's hard to tell if they ever actually achieved anything ...
...
The LinuxBIOS project (http://www.acl.lanl.gov/linuxbios/) looks more promising (originally covered in this slashdot article
(Yes, I'm running out to buy this one when it comes out too, despite Jar Jar :P)
...
Consider donating an identical amount (or more?) of the cost of your DVD purchase to the EFF here: https://www.eff.org/support/