Have online games started using large amounts of bandwidth (instead of trying to minimise traffic in the interests of latency) since I last played a new game?
Games are only mentioned once in any of the articles, and the context is "Network Heavy Games". Most games are very light on network traffic - and very demanding of low latency.
So I think the mention is mostly inflammatory - as is the entire article.
The exception may be hosting voice chat servers for game players - but I'm just guessing about that.
Unions themselves aren't "bad". They are just bad for all who aren't members.....
The 2 unions I've seen from the outside, but up close, are those for nursing and teachers. To my view, they have both locked employees into really crappy agreements with 'management'. They were bad for all competent members.
And they cost money to their members.
And they keep their members from negotiating anything better, individually.
I know a manager in a corp that is competing directly with the corp I work for. We even BS industry specific crap back and forth; nothing truly private, but you know how the auditors get...But I knew this guy before either of us started working our current gigs. It would be easy to argue it as related or suggestive, but in reality it's just co-incidental.
And when you're BSing, you use private email addresses on both ends, right? Because if you're using company machines, I'd say you're digging your own grave[s], career-wise.
I'm going to chime in, too. I find Taco's comments offensive...
Offensive; Insightful; whatever. They are editorials. They belong in the editorial section, separate from the story. That way they can be viewed or ignored.
This is a news site, right? We have editors and a place for them to post, right?
Good points, but which is the chicken and which is the egg? We "all" have medical insurance, who pay for the ambulance/life flight/whatever. Or in theory we should. And they should pay. In theory. So do we get the bill because we have insurance, or do we have insurance because we get the bill?
If your house is robbed, who pays the cops to find the criminal? Who should? And if you're home and injured in the process, then who pays your medical bills? If the criminal isn't found?
So the whole thing is tricky and complicated. If you bring something upon yourself (climbing a mountain), then it probably is appropriate for you to be billed. Can we say the same thing about a heart attack? If you eat a lot of cheeseburgers?
I don't think there's a clear line.
But I do think that a search for someone lost in (regular) flight seems like something the state should pick up.
If people want to take extreme risks, they can do so at their own expense. They shouldn't expect the rest of us to foot the bill if their adventure doesn't go according to plan.
Good for them for charging the estate, exactly correct. He was *flying a plane*. He was doing some surveying. He was not attempting anything exotic (to the best of our knowledge). For all we know, he was cruising steady at 10K feet, had a heart attack and died mid-air.
If it'd been some poor crop duster who had died on the way to work, should they still charge the estate? If you think so, then so be it - anyone who wants to fly will then have to get "lost" insurance to cover this kind of thing, which will make it harder to fly, which means the crop duster won't be able to afford to.
If you should not charge the poor crop duster, then who makes the decision?
I agree with others - this should be seen as a standard emergency service.
... Now if I go out and harpoon myself a deer/cow/pig/slow child, is it still okay? I guess that's up to you.
*My* perspective is that it's fine.
But
(details: it is easier for me, personally, to say "no meat" than to be picky about which meat I'm eating and where it is from, etc. It's just the easy line for me to draw)
The reason I don't eat meat is because of the way food animals are treated while they are alive - not because they are animals. There are plenty of vegetarians who take this stance.
I recommend any of the documentaries on the farming process in america.
If meat-in-a-vat became economically feasible, there are plenty of vegetarians who would eat it.
(details: it is easier for me, personally, to say "no meat" than to be picky about which meat I'm eating and where it is from, etc. It's just the easy line for me to draw)
Even the article points out that you could make & install firefox as long as it doesn't load externals The T&Cs specifically prohibit loading and running code (including scripts) that are not part of the application bundle. This means that a FireFox port would be prohibited from running JavaScript from web pages... Right. And it couldn't render the HTML, because HTML is a language and includes dangers like redirects and timers. So you have to draw the line somewhere. I expect the line to be refined and to move. Not a lot, but some.
Okay a slight stretch there but that is basically the point. I can make firefox for the iPhone but legally I can't install it. Even the article points out that you could make & install firefox as long as it doesn't load externals. Nothing is stopping anyone from putting together a kitchen sink firefox disty that includes everything.
Frankly, I should hope the language will get refined. HTML is a language (it even says so!). Is loading a webpage an external resource? We'll see.
It is a lame workaround, but you can ctrl-click (right mouse, I guess) on the name of the folder at the top of the finder window to see all it's ancestor directories.
Someone said in the thread that DOM sucks. And they're right. If I were parsing that, it'd be something like friends = bob_element.XPath('friend') I'd get an array every time, because that's what I asked for.
SQLite is a better option every year. But there are some data types that just don't map well to SQL (trees are not a natural fit, IMHO). What's more, you can't just look at an SQLite file and see the data. I also think it is easier to version XML files than SQL files.
custom binary
And then you lose the data validation, transparency, use extensibility, etc.
Then you define the format to use one endianness and write a bunch of functions to read and write the data in a CPU independent way. On the most common platform they will actually use the native format.
Sounds like XML would work.... solved all the problems with binary interchange formats across very different systems in very efficient ways 20 years ago.
But you want to re-invent a data storage format?
Re:I don't understand...
on
The Future of XML
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I don't get it. We can argue the merits of data exchange formats 'till we're blue in the face; yet I cannot see why XML is so popular. For the majority of applications that use it, it's overboard. Yes, it's easier on the eye, but ultimately how often do you have to play with the XML your CAD software uses?
Let's say you need to store data, and a database is not an option. What format shall you store it in?
Proprietary binary
Proprietary text
JSON
XML
1 & 2 are untried, untested, and it is not possible to find 3rd party tools for working with/validating/generating/etc. 3 is just insane. With XML you get a very well tested format. You get a million libraries and tools (a few of which don't suck) in any language you care to mention. Your users get all the benefits of an open spec and all the same tools. The question becomes: why would you not use XML?
Let me start by saying that I am a very strong Republican conservative, and I normally hate labor unions, especially since most of them don't do much but collect money from workers and use it to buy politicians.
I'm with ya there (except for the Republican conservative part - I'm about opposite). But I do hate unions for the same reasons.
That said, in this instance I absolutely think those workers should immediately unionize and walk off the job. IT workers are already treated as slaves just about everywhere, and it's about time they got paid for their overtime AND STILL recieved a salary commensurate with the difficulty of their jobs and the level of their education.
As near as I can tell, the purpose for unions is to raise the working conditions across employers. If the entire IT industry (in an area) is treated poorly, then they should all unionize. They should all demand their employers... do whatever is needed to improve their working conditions.
But, as you pointed out (kinda), other companies do not seem to have this problem. Which means that the IBM employees who think they're being treated unfairly should quit and find new jobs for a better employer. Eventually IBM will get the point and treat its remaining employees better.
In this case, I think that a Union would just be another way to unload responsibility onto a 3rd party. Make them responsible for your job satisfaction. But you're a Republican - you should know that!:-)
Yes, but requirements for computing power will have increased right along with them (insert joke about "Windows Vista 203X Cybernetic Edition" here). Your future paper computer will have power beyond anything available today, but it will still be a tiny fraction of the processing power of a pizza-box-sized computer mounted in a rack in a server room.
Wow. I had about a full page written about: * How inexpensive Walmart PCs are, and how they do everything Joe-6pack wants * How 100-1000x more powerful is not just "power beyond anything available today", but is just about beyond comprehension * How computers from a decade ago satisfy today's user's requirements just fine (except games) * How much more powerful today's desktops (see Mac Pro) are than most server room machines
But my damn browser crashed. So use your imagination.
The short of it is: computers are becoming free, practically speaking. Desktops are powerful enough, now, to do everything a user wants (which was true a decade ago). Desktops are becoming more powerful compared to server room machines. Computers are better able to keep up with users needs than they ever have been, and that has been the trend.
So I don't think it is likely that you'll want more computing power than you have in your home machine of the future.
The browser is barely software - not in an interesting way, anyway. It's just that: a browser. Data/information will be stored somewhere else. It's someone else's information, after all. They created it, you go to them.
If you don't like that, buy yourself some DVDs from Encyclopedia Britannica and ignore the news.
But that is the browsers purpose/choice - to be a client.
But even if they don't, OSX ships with sshd (for scp), and apache if you wanna web host it, and ichat if you wanna send it via chat, and mail if you wanna mail it, and the macbook air has a usb port - so you can sneakernet it, and afp, and and and.
So it shouldn't pose too much of a problem to just get it from one machine to another.
Slashdot Mirror
Your cut is a wealthier NASA.
Have online games started using large amounts of bandwidth (instead of trying to minimise traffic in the interests of latency) since I last played a new game?
Games are only mentioned once in any of the articles, and the context is "Network Heavy Games". Most games are very light on network traffic - and very demanding of low latency.
So I think the mention is mostly inflammatory - as is the entire article.
The exception may be hosting voice chat servers for game players - but I'm just guessing about that.
Unions themselves aren't "bad". They are just bad for all who aren't members.....
The 2 unions I've seen from the outside, but up close, are those for nursing and teachers. To my view, they have both locked employees into really crappy agreements with 'management'. They were bad for all competent members.
And they cost money to their members.
And they keep their members from negotiating anything better, individually.
That doesn't sound like it's good for anyone.
this is the AP....you expect them to get that right?
No, but I do expect Slashdot to get it right.
I'd say "you're new here", but your id is low enough that I have to resort to "you should know better."
I know a manager in a corp that is competing directly with the corp I work for. We even BS industry specific crap back and forth; nothing truly private, but you know how the auditors get...But I knew this guy before either of us started working our current gigs. It would be easy to argue it as related or suggestive, but in reality it's just co-incidental.
And when you're BSing, you use private email addresses on both ends, right? Because if you're using company machines, I'd say you're digging your own grave[s], career-wise.
I'm going to chime in, too. I find Taco's comments offensive...
Offensive; Insightful; whatever. They are editorials. They belong in the editorial section, separate from the story. That way they can be viewed or ignored.
This is a news site, right? We have editors and a place for them to post, right?
I remember liking it:
http://www.amazon.com/Revolving-Boy-Gertrude-Friedberg/dp/0345287703
+1 Sarcastic
'Cause it's not quite funny, and it is certainly flamebait (for the challenged).
Slashdot sucks.
My address is also public - but I don't seem to have the flow you do. How odd.
I wonder if pobox.com (which just forwards to google) is killing some of the incoming spam. I don't have it configured to...
Good points, but which is the chicken and which is the egg? We "all" have medical insurance, who pay for the ambulance/life flight/whatever. Or in theory we should. And they should pay. In theory.
So do we get the bill because we have insurance, or do we have insurance because we get the bill?
If your house is robbed, who pays the cops to find the criminal? Who should? And if you're home and injured in the process, then who pays your medical bills? If the criminal isn't found?
So the whole thing is tricky and complicated. If you bring something upon yourself (climbing a mountain), then it probably is appropriate for you to be billed. Can we say the same thing about a heart attack? If you eat a lot of cheeseburgers?
I don't think there's a clear line.
But I do think that a search for someone lost in (regular) flight seems like something the state should pick up.
Good for them for charging the estate, exactly correct. He was *flying a plane*. He was doing some surveying. He was not attempting anything exotic (to the best of our knowledge). For all we know, he was cruising steady at 10K feet, had a heart attack and died mid-air.
If it'd been some poor crop duster who had died on the way to work, should they still charge the estate? If you think so, then so be it - anyone who wants to fly will then have to get "lost" insurance to cover this kind of thing, which will make it harder to fly, which means the crop duster won't be able to afford to.
If you should not charge the poor crop duster, then who makes the decision?
I agree with others - this should be seen as a standard emergency service.
... Now if I go out and harpoon myself a deer/cow/pig/slow child, is it still okay? I guess that's up to you.*My* perspective is that it's fine.
But (details: it is easier for me, personally, to say "no meat" than to be picky about which meat I'm eating and where it is from, etc. It's just the easy line for me to draw)
The reason I don't eat meat is because of the way food animals are treated while they are alive - not because they are animals. There are plenty of vegetarians who take this stance.
I recommend any of the documentaries on the farming process in america.
If meat-in-a-vat became economically feasible, there are plenty of vegetarians who would eat it.
(details: it is easier for me, personally, to say "no meat" than to be picky about which meat I'm eating and where it is from, etc. It's just the easy line for me to draw)
Frankly, I should hope the language will get refined. HTML is a language (it even says so!). Is loading a webpage an external resource? We'll see.
It is a lame workaround, but you can ctrl-click (right mouse, I guess) on the name of the folder at the top of the finder window to see all it's ancestor directories.
DTD and/or smarter libraries (and/or languages).
Someone said in the thread that DOM sucks. And they're right. If I were parsing that, it'd be something like
friends = bob_element.XPath('friend')
I'd get an array every time, because that's what I asked for.
Either sqlit
SQLite is a better option every year. But there are some data types that just don't map well to SQL (trees are not a natural fit, IMHO). What's more, you can't just look at an SQLite file and see the data. I also think it is easier to version XML files than SQL files.
custom binary
And then you lose the data validation, transparency, use extensibility, etc.
Then you define the format to use one endianness and write a bunch of functions to read and write the data in a CPU independent way. On the most common platform they will actually use the native format.
... solved all the problems with binary interchange formats across very different systems in very efficient ways 20 years ago.
Sounds like XML would work.
But you want to re-invent a data storage format?
Let's say you need to store data, and a database is not an option. What format shall you store it in?
1 & 2 are untried, untested, and it is not possible to find 3rd party tools for working with/validating/generating/etc.
3 is just insane.
With XML you get a very well tested format. You get a million libraries and tools (a few of which don't suck) in any language you care to mention. Your users get all the benefits of an open spec and all the same tools. The question becomes: why would you not use XML?
Let me start by saying that I am a very strong Republican conservative, and I normally hate labor unions, especially since most of them don't do much but collect money from workers and use it to buy politicians.
... do whatever is needed to improve their working conditions.
:-)
I'm with ya there (except for the Republican conservative part - I'm about opposite). But I do hate unions for the same reasons.
That said, in this instance I absolutely think those workers should immediately unionize and walk off the job. IT workers are already treated as slaves just about everywhere, and it's about time they got paid for their overtime AND STILL recieved a salary commensurate with the difficulty of their jobs and the level of their education.
As near as I can tell, the purpose for unions is to raise the working conditions across employers. If the entire IT industry (in an area) is treated poorly, then they should all unionize. They should all demand their employers
But, as you pointed out (kinda), other companies do not seem to have this problem. Which means that the IBM employees who think they're being treated unfairly should quit and find new jobs for a better employer. Eventually IBM will get the point and treat its remaining employees better.
In this case, I think that a Union would just be another way to unload responsibility onto a 3rd party. Make them responsible for your job satisfaction. But you're a Republican - you should know that!
Yes, but requirements for computing power will have increased right along with them (insert joke about "Windows Vista 203X Cybernetic Edition" here). Your future paper computer will have power beyond anything available today, but it will still be a tiny fraction of the processing power of a pizza-box-sized computer mounted in a rack in a server room.
Wow. I had about a full page written about:
* How inexpensive Walmart PCs are, and how they do everything Joe-6pack wants
* How 100-1000x more powerful is not just "power beyond anything available today", but is just about beyond comprehension
* How computers from a decade ago satisfy today's user's requirements just fine (except games)
* How much more powerful today's desktops (see Mac Pro) are than most server room machines
But my damn browser crashed. So use your imagination.
The short of it is: computers are becoming free, practically speaking. Desktops are powerful enough, now, to do everything a user wants (which was true a decade ago). Desktops are becoming more powerful compared to server room machines. Computers are better able to keep up with users needs than they ever have been, and that has been the trend.
So I don't think it is likely that you'll want more computing power than you have in your home machine of the future.
The browser is barely software - not in an interesting way, anyway. It's just that: a browser. Data/information will be stored somewhere else. It's someone else's information, after all. They created it, you go to them.
If you don't like that, buy yourself some DVDs from Encyclopedia Britannica and ignore the news.
But that is the browsers purpose/choice - to be a client.
While I don't disagree...
Maybe they will.
But even if they don't, OSX ships with sshd (for scp), and apache if you wanna web host it, and ichat if you wanna send it via chat, and mail if you wanna mail it, and the macbook air has a usb port - so you can sneakernet it, and afp, and and and.
So it shouldn't pose too much of a problem to just get it from one machine to another.