So they have 300% (3.6 vs 1.2) as many children, and 16% of those die.. that still leaves them MASSIVELY ahead. Evolution only needs the tiniest of advantages to work on over time. This breeding rate difference isn't tiny - it's STAGGERING!!!
Sure we're still evolving - the only way we'd STOP evolving would be is every group of humans on the planet we're reproducing at the same rate, which is untrue now, and surely will be untrue for ever.
Remember that evolution doesn't mean advance or get better, but simply change, and that the evolutionary winners are simply those that leave behind more offspring.
Currently the segements of the global population that are outbreeding the others are the poorer ones like India (or even the welfare segment in more developed countries), so it seems that at an evolutionary level the ability to accumulate wealth is a bad thing, and that the genetics of poorer countries and maybe even lower IQ welfare segment are the current evolutionary direction.
All this bug fixing is only going to benefit anyone if Microsoft makes the fixed versions freely available rather than trying to sell them as "service paks" or upgrades "New and improved - now works as intended!".
It was only very close to the end of the WinNT development that Microsoft was fixing more bugs per day than they were creating (both numbers were HUGE - in the hundreds or thousands from what I remember reading).
So.. if they're going to fix 60,000 bugs in a month, then wanna take bets on whether they introduce more or less than 60,000 new ones?!
Re:on the subject of the ps2 linux kit...
on
LinuxWorld Summary
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· Score: 2
The most obvious reason why any add-on is unlikely to be widely supported is simply because it is an add-on rather than standard equipment. A game that wants a large market is going to write to the common denominator (which is the whole point of games consoles).
Re:on the subject of the ps2 linux kit...
on
LinuxWorld Summary
·
· Score: 2
You could always use an external USB drive or connect to an NFS server (I assume you already have a PC), if you want to keep the internal hard drive for games.
The killer is MS is systematically making it effectively illegal to sell your old copies of software eliminating the one obstactle to monopoly pricing for their old applications.
That's an interesting point - it would certainly establish the true value of their software... In practice it would allow more of a two tiered model where companies presumably would buy new but consumers woudl have more chance to buy used at the market price.
Free software like KOffice will also keep prices down as long as their ability to import/export MS documnet formats is good... It forces microsoft to provide more relative value one way or the other (better features and/or lower prices). The one thing I'd liek to see come out of the MS antitrust case is forcing them to open their documnet format standards - declare them part of the national infrastructure (maybe by way of making certain classes of software regulated utilities?!).
It also shows a profound ignorance about the manufacturing cost of tangiable goods, and the mark-ups that are necessary along the supply chain to make selling something economically viable.
The value of something is the value it provides to you. If you use MS Office once every two years to update your resume, then it has next to no value for you because you could always do it at work or the library instead. If you use Office everyday then it has VERY high value to you.
A $20 piece of shareware is certainly worth $20 if the only thing stpping you from paying the $20 is the fact that you can instead choose to continue using it without paying. The shareware model assumed that people were much more honest and fair then they are - the attitudes on slashdot are presumably somewhat typical - people not only usualy steal "bits" if they can, but feel justified in doing so!:-( The only solution to this from the manufacturers point of view is to stop using these naieve types of sales methods.
That argument is totally bogus. Just because what you stole didn't cost them anything to manufacture doesn't mean you havn't taken value from them. NO software costs anything to manufacture if you download it, regardless of how many man years went into creating it.
IMO it's one thing if you copy something from a friend to try it (even if the manufacturer doesn't approve of try-before-you-buy), but if you are actually USING something that you stole, then you have indeed deprived the author of the sale., and are just one more person that is destroying the software industry as a place where someone with a better product can make a living.
Well people who want to use them as engineering kits do so - if you search the net you'll find some amazing LEGO creations!
There's another construction kit sold in Germany (but you can buy it here too) called Fischertechnik that's a bit more MEANT for more technical projects, but it's more expensive and harder to get hold of. It uses more beams than bricks.
It's an interesting point since I doubt many people using the GPL want to disallow use of their code in other non-commercial projects.
I'm not so familair with the BSD licence (I know that people used to complain about the potentially infinitely growing attribution comments that it required)... What are the key differences between the current BSD licence and GPL? Can BSD code be used in commercial projects?
OK, tell you what, why not take your $199 go buy your own hard disk, ethernet card, USB keyboard, USB mouse and VGA adaptor, then with all your spare change maybe you can hire someone to port XFree86 to the PS2 graphics chip, and someone else to assemble a GNU/linux distribution for you and burn it onto DVD. You did remember to add USB support to the 2.2 kernel didn't you?
If I were a Sony marketing executive reading all this whining, I'd say next time let's just offer them the hardware for $199 and tell them to port Linux themselves.
My sole reason for spotlighting the situation is simply that people release their code under the GPL thinking that they are somehow ensuring that Microsoft and other companies will have to turn into software hippies if they every use that GPLed code.
I don't get that impression. There's a big difference between the comments you'll find here on slashdot from people who have never released any GPL'd software in their lives, and those who have done, and have made informed choices about what licence - GPL, LGPL, BSD, etc reflects the rights and restrictions they want to enforce.
If one had to guess at the most common motivation for people releasing code under the GPL (those that actually do it), then I'd guess it's simply because they used GPL tools to develop it and want to play nice and give back and get some peer recognition (I've released code free of ANY licencing for these reasons), and in many cases (but with some very major notable exceptions) because they'd have a hard time making money from it anyway.
So you find it a problem that the GPL allows people to write commercial software such as TiVo for Linux?
Note that Redhat etc allowing free downloads of their software, even of ready to burn ISOs(!), is not a requirement of the GPL, which only requires that they provide source when you *BUY* their product. Free downloads are just part of their business model, and frankly are probably a bad idea since they have convinced so many people such as yourself that anything Linux related should be free and that Linux software has no value.
Sure it does - the GPL means that if you choose to buy the product you will also have complete source code for the GPL'd portions of it - complete with Sony extensions.
Also note that your $199 buys you a hard drive and ethernet adaptor as well as the Sony extended PS2 supported versions of gcc and XFree86...
How come you find $199 for this a rip off, yet don't complain about RedHat or SuSE selling Linux without hard drives and network adaptors thrown in?
It's Linux whiners and cheapskates like you that put Loki out of business.
They should really make them run on any hydrocarbon - kinda like diesel engines that in a pinch will run on about any crap you care to put in there.
If you want top MHz for game playing then top your fuel cell up with funny car fuel. If you're just doing word processing, then drink a couple of beers and pee in it instead.
I havn't seen it available for free (it's $495 if memory serves correctly) - maybe you're talking about a free Beta version?
It's certainly worth the money given it's performance (I've paid more for compilers in the past, such as $995 for WATCOM's 32 bit DOS C compiler!), but compared to gcc's price it's hard to justify for hobby use.
I don't think having multiple back ends is really a hindrence to implementing code optimization - many/most optimizations are abstract, and then you have architecture specific peep hole optimizations after that, that can be considered part of the particular back end.
I agree about the amount of gcc specific code out there - given that most free software uses gcc, "GNU C" has become more portable than ANSI C. As someone else pointed out the Linux kernel's impressive portability comes from the portability of the gcc compiler.
The same is true of PCs too. gcc doesn't come close to Intel's C++ compiler in terms of optimization or features (e.g. SSE/MMX code generation and vectorization). Unfortunately Intel's compiler is pretty expensive, but maybe Borland's will be more reasonable.
The only thing (not a bad thing, mind you) that gcc has going for it is that it's free... it's hardly the compiler of choice if you really want to optimize your code.
How is KDE any more like Windows that GNOME is? You can theme either one of them to look however you like, and run whatever windows manager etc you choose.
Granted BOTH of them stick to the tried and true WIMP (Windows-Icons-Mouse-Pointer) and desktop paradigms, but that's not a bad thing - it's a proven and tried user interface.
Slashdot Mirror
So they have 300% (3.6 vs 1.2) as many children, and 16% of those die.. that still leaves them MASSIVELY ahead. Evolution only needs the tiniest of advantages to work on over time. This breeding rate difference isn't tiny - it's STAGGERING!!!
Sure we're still evolving - the only way we'd STOP evolving would be is every group of humans on the planet we're reproducing at the same rate, which is untrue now, and surely will be untrue for ever.
Remember that evolution doesn't mean advance or get better, but simply change, and that the evolutionary winners are simply those that leave behind more offspring.
Currently the segements of the global population that are outbreeding the others are the poorer ones like India (or even the welfare segment in more developed countries), so it seems that at an evolutionary level the ability to accumulate wealth is a bad thing, and that the genetics of poorer countries and maybe even lower IQ welfare segment are the current evolutionary direction.
Um.. they do.
AND is by default
OR is OR
NOT is -
I don't think parenthesis for grouping works though (they don't mention it), so you can't do more complex queries, but you can certainly do:
A AND (B OR C) AND !D
Which would be: A B OR C -D
All this bug fixing is only going to benefit anyone if Microsoft makes the fixed versions freely available rather than trying to sell them as "service paks" or upgrades "New and improved - now works as intended!".
Any thoughts?
:-)
Sure...
It was only very close to the end of the WinNT development that Microsoft was fixing more bugs per day than they were creating (both numbers were HUGE - in the hundreds or thousands from what I remember reading).
So.. if they're going to fix 60,000 bugs in a month, then wanna take bets on whether they introduce more or less than 60,000 new ones?!
The most obvious reason why any add-on is unlikely to be widely supported is simply because it is an add-on rather than standard equipment. A game that wants a large market is going to write to the common denominator (which is the whole point of games consoles).
You could always use an external USB drive or connect to an NFS server (I assume you already have a PC), if you want to keep the internal hard drive for games.
The killer is MS is systematically making it effectively illegal to sell your old copies of software eliminating the one obstactle to monopoly pricing for their old applications.
That's an interesting point - it would certainly establish the true value of their software... In practice it would allow more of a two tiered model where companies presumably would buy new but consumers woudl have more chance to buy used at the market price.
Free software like KOffice will also keep prices down as long as their ability to import/export MS documnet formats is good... It forces microsoft to provide more relative value one way or the other (better features and/or lower prices). The one thing I'd liek to see come out of the MS antitrust case is forcing them to open their documnet format standards - declare them part of the national infrastructure (maybe by way of making certain classes of software regulated utilities?!).
It also shows a profound ignorance about the manufacturing cost of tangiable goods, and the mark-ups that are necessary along the supply chain to make selling something economically viable.
:-( The only solution to this from the manufacturers point of view is to stop using these naieve types of sales methods.
The value of something is the value it provides to you. If you use MS Office once every two years to update your resume, then it has next to no value for you because you could always do it at work or the library instead. If you use Office everyday then it has VERY high value to you.
A $20 piece of shareware is certainly worth $20 if the only thing stpping you from paying the $20 is the fact that you can instead choose to continue using it without paying. The shareware model assumed that people were much more honest and fair then they are - the attitudes on slashdot are presumably somewhat typical - people not only usualy steal "bits" if they can, but feel justified in doing so!
That argument is totally bogus. Just because what you stole didn't cost them anything to manufacture doesn't mean you havn't taken value from them. NO software costs anything to manufacture if you download it, regardless of how many man years went into creating it.
IMO it's one thing if you copy something from a friend to try it (even if the manufacturer doesn't approve of try-before-you-buy), but if you are actually USING something that you stole, then you have indeed deprived the author of the sale., and are just one more person that is destroying the software industry as a place where someone with a better product can make a living.
Well people who want to use them as engineering kits do so - if you search the net you'll find some amazing LEGO creations!
There's another construction kit sold in Germany (but you can buy it here too) called Fischertechnik that's a bit more MEANT for more technical projects, but it's more expensive and harder to get hold of. It uses more beams than bricks.
I'll second that.
/. to get published.
I've had Katz on ignore for almost a year now.
Still I don't think Cringely needs to stoop to
It's an interesting point since I doubt many people using the GPL want to disallow use of their code in other non-commercial projects.
I'm not so familair with the BSD licence (I know that people used to complain about the potentially infinitely growing attribution comments that it required)... What are the key differences between the current BSD licence and GPL? Can BSD code be used in commercial projects?
I think what you're saying is that you prefer BSD to Linux! ;-)
OK, tell you what, why not take your $199 go buy your own hard disk, ethernet card, USB keyboard, USB mouse and VGA adaptor, then with all your spare change maybe you can hire someone to port XFree86 to the PS2 graphics chip, and someone else to assemble a GNU/linux distribution for you and burn it onto DVD. You did remember to add USB support to the 2.2 kernel didn't you?
If I were a Sony marketing executive reading all this whining, I'd say next time let's just offer them the hardware for $199 and tell them to port Linux themselves.
My sole reason for spotlighting the situation is simply that people release their code under the GPL thinking that they are somehow ensuring that Microsoft and other companies will have to turn into software hippies if they every use that GPLed code.
I don't get that impression. There's a big difference between the comments you'll find here on slashdot from people who have never released any GPL'd software in their lives, and those who have done, and have made informed choices about what licence - GPL, LGPL, BSD, etc reflects the rights and restrictions they want to enforce.
If one had to guess at the most common motivation for people releasing code under the GPL (those that actually do it), then I'd guess it's simply because they used GPL tools to develop it and want to play nice and give back and get some peer recognition (I've released code free of ANY licencing for these reasons), and in many cases (but with some very major notable exceptions) because they'd have a hard time making money from it anyway.
So you find it a problem that the GPL allows people to write commercial software such as TiVo for Linux?
Note that Redhat etc allowing free downloads of their software, even of ready to burn ISOs(!), is not a requirement of the GPL, which only requires that they provide source when you *BUY* their product. Free downloads are just part of their business model, and frankly are probably a bad idea since they have convinced so many people such as yourself that anything Linux related should be free and that Linux software has no value.
Sure it does - the GPL means that if you choose to buy the product you will also have complete source code for the GPL'd portions of it - complete with Sony extensions.
Also note that your $199 buys you a hard drive and ethernet adaptor as well as the Sony extended PS2 supported versions of gcc and XFree86...
How come you find $199 for this a rip off, yet don't complain about RedHat or SuSE selling Linux without hard drives and network adaptors thrown in?
It's Linux whiners and cheapskates like you that put Loki out of business.
They should really make them run on any hydrocarbon - kinda like diesel engines that in a pinch will run on about any crap you care to put in there.
If you want top MHz for game playing then top your fuel cell up with funny car fuel. If you're just doing word processing, then drink a couple of beers and pee in it instead.
Oh my god! It's a penisaurus!
:-)
F-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-c-k (king kong falling off tower)
Or how about the "sex ray" that made everyone on the plane passing through it start having sex!
A classic movie.
I never did see "Caddy Shack-Up" since I was actually looking for the real movie at the time I came across it.
Now that you've read Nash's autobiographic blurb on the Nobel site, go read this letter on his personal web page at Princeton:
Your paper on imbedding Riemannian manifolds
Oops!
I havn't seen it available for free (it's $495 if memory serves correctly) - maybe you're talking about a free Beta version?
It's certainly worth the money given it's performance (I've paid more for compilers in the past, such as $995 for WATCOM's 32 bit DOS C compiler!), but compared to gcc's price it's hard to justify for hobby use.
I don't think having multiple back ends is really a hindrence to implementing code optimization - many/most optimizations are abstract, and then you have architecture specific peep hole optimizations after that, that can be considered part of the particular back end.
I agree about the amount of gcc specific code out there - given that most free software uses gcc, "GNU C" has become more portable than ANSI C. As someone else pointed out the Linux kernel's impressive portability comes from the portability of the gcc compiler.
The same is true of PCs too. gcc doesn't come close to Intel's C++ compiler in terms of optimization or features (e.g. SSE/MMX code generation and vectorization). Unfortunately Intel's compiler is pretty expensive, but maybe Borland's will be more reasonable.
The only thing (not a bad thing, mind you) that gcc has going for it is that it's free... it's hardly the compiler of choice if you really want to optimize your code.
How is KDE any more like Windows that GNOME is? You can theme either one of them to look however you like, and run whatever windows manager etc you choose.
Granted BOTH of them stick to the tried and true WIMP (Windows-Icons-Mouse-Pointer) and desktop paradigms, but that's not a bad thing - it's a proven and tried user interface.