You're forgetting quite a few of your assumptions there...
Among them:
1) better products naturally dominate the marketplace
2) the timeframe over which products "obliterate" competition is less than the current age of Linux (or more acurately, the length of time Linux has fit the definition of "better" product).
Somehow, I doubt you can support either of these assumptions...
Also, being able to pass the turing test in complete detail is of dubious value.
If a computer is to act like a human, it must be fallible, have limited knowledge, and operate at a human's speed (or at least answer as if it were operating at such a speed).
So what you've done is destroy all the features of a computer that make it superior to a human (including speed and flawless recovery of data).
A more useful AI would be clearly a computer, as it's primary function would be to assist a human in doing the tasks a human is not equipped to do well.
OS/2's claim to fame was that they could run windows apps faster than windows...
All the apps developers look at that and say "hey, if I develop native OS/2, only OS/2 users can buy my app... but if I develop for windows, everyone can buy it"
So everyone made windows apps... and the people buying the OS looked around and saw a billion windows apps and very few OS/2 apps and said "all these apps are 'for windows' so I might as well run windows just to be sure"
It's always a problem with emulation... unless you can do it much cheaper, people will go with the original.
You are correct... the primary uses for stored procedures are triggers, which is what I described, however they can be useful independent of triggers...
Either way, a big advantage of stored procedures is avoiding communication with a client...
It's nice when you can code something up to run automatically... let's say you have several different ways a purchase order gets into your table, and you need to insert a row into another table any time a purchase order is added.
Rather than having to remember to put that second insert everywhere you have a purchase order insert, it's nice to have it automatically run on the server (particularly since you don't have to communicate with the client).
Another use is if you need to delete all of someone's addressbook when they delete their account... then you just monitor a delete on the "person" table and delete all records associated with it in the "addressbook" table.
1) it's lack of a large number of packages forces you to learn how to compile your own software
2) every distro has a different directory structure, and most people don't need to learn it anyway, since they simply rely on package management anyway...
Besides, as a learning distro, I've had the fewest distro related problems setting up slackware... of course I had the typical problems learning how to compile a kernel, set up X, etc, but those transfer easily to any distro..
It really depends on what you consider necessary qualities of a "newbie" distro...
If you want something that's simple to set up and maintain (i.e. short learning curve) then mandrake is probably your best bet.
If you actually want to learn linux and its workings (which I advise) then use something which forces you to read a few faq's once in a while... like debian, or even better, slackware.
This doesn't apply to telescopes described in the article, but there's a method for removing the light of a star in order to see dimmer companions (such as planets) which is called nulling interferometry.
An interferometer is an instrument with two telescopes, which uses the wave nature of light to combine them. When you separate 2 telescopes by say 100 meters and combine their light properly, you get the apparent resolution of a 100m telescope (minus the light gathering power and the cost).
A nulling interferometer doesn't try to combine the wavelengths at the same place (think reinforcing the wave you're getting from the object). Instead it delays one of the the waves by 1/2 wavelength, so when the two are combined, they cancel each other out (at least in the center).
So the light of the star is "nullified" while you can still measure the light coming from very close by.
The technique has been demonstrated in the lab, but I don't believe it has been used in practice. It may be used in some astronomy satellites in the future.
Who decides what constitutes content suitable for kids? With schools across the country banning books such as Huckleberry Finn simply due to having language true to their era, I worry about parents delegating their responsibility in this area.
both sendmail and qmail have their security limitations imposed by what they are designed to do...
qmail has had no security holes in that it works as advertised... if I set up qmail to allow relaying from all ip addresses, that is a form of security by obscurity... it's "secure" as long as nobody tries my ip address, but otherwise the door is wide open.
If someone does find my open relay, it's not a fault of qmail, and thus (rightly!) is not considered a security hole in qmail.. it's my fault.
In order to increase security then, I have to reduce functionality... I cannot access my smtp server from any ip address... it must be validated in some way, either by using SMTP auth, or by limiting the ip's which may access the server.
But then someone could spoof the ip address of an ip I've allowed relaying from, or they could discover a password from SMTP auth...
Either way it's not a security hole in qmail, but a limitation in security imposed by the fact that qmail is supposed to be able to do something...
The only way to 100% secure qmail is not to run it at all! (of course I'm not picking on qmail, but on all programs in general).
There is a difference between security, i.e. deciding what tradeoff of access and functionality is acceptable, and security holes, software bugs which cause programs not to operate as designed.
You can plan security to reduce the impact from possible security holes, and you can code well to reduce the occurrance of security holes, but both of these are just part of an overall security policy.
Grape boards are highly specialized chips which do nothing but N^2 direct summation gravity force calculations (actually some of them do SPH (smoothed particle hydrodynamics) as well).
You take a pc/sun/beowulf cluster and link it to a set of grape boards. You then send particles to the boards and get accelerations back.
Electromagnetic forces have the potential (pun intended!) to be stronger, but they nearly always average away at any significant distance.
Gravitational force is additive... all mass simply adds to the force, and thus it is very easy to build up a large force (think of galaxy superclusters).
Electromagnetic charges cancel each other, however, and since like charges repel, it is nearly impossible to build a significant amount of charge without an opposing charge to nullify the force at some distance.
There's a classic problem in elementary physics which asks how much force would be generated by your body if you had 1% more electrons than protons. It turns out that if you could concentrate that much charge, it would have enough electromagnetic force to lift the earth. The tough part is containing that large a charge without it ripping your body apart;)
The line formatting in F77 is what always got me... starting each line 6(?) characters in, and only getting 75 characters was very frustrating...
Every time I wrote a program in it I was glad I was at least able to use a modern editor like emacs rather than typing the program onto a punch card!:)
Well of course my position is biased coming from the heavy duty side of hydrodynamic simulations of supernovae, collisions between galaxies, and large scale cosmological simulations.
And we're not talking stuff that takes days, we're talking stuff that takes months;)
These are the sorts of things where you'd rather spend the extra time in development to tweak a few extra percent, rather than use a language/platform which introduces a significant amount of overhead.
Ha! Do you realize how many scientists still use fortran? They still teach it in my computational physics class (although half the time it's taught in c).
I'll be the first to admit that it sucks to program in, but it does have its advantages. Fortran compilers for large machines tend to be very well optimized, and can generate faster code than the equivalent c compilers. Also, the restrictions the language imposes makes it easier for the compiler to optimize the resulting binary.
And don't forget, freedom comes with a price. C's pointers are fun to use and allow for many interesting solutions to problems, but they are the number one cause of bugs in C.
tapes/pictures/whatever will be deleted within 24 hours, or within a short period of time if you have a VERY good reason
That's almost worse... if you have to suffer the lack of privacy and indignity of having yourselve videotaped, then at least you should get the benefit of having a record of a crime available... 24 hours is such a small amount of time that it's unlikely the person who needs the tape will be able to request it in time.
All of the outside->inside transition shots were very obviously computer done... in fact I'm pretty confident most of the outside scenery was completely cg. Nearly every scene had pieces which were clearly removed/altered in post production (the singing scene in the elephant!).
This is impossible, I'm afraid. If I can know how much money I have (something I'm rather likely to want to do, as I'm human), then someone else can too. End of story.
The vast majority of human interactions are simply posturing to demonstrate how much wealth one has. Wealth in this case is more broadly defined to include intellectual capital and physical attributes, but the idea of having wealth, and not being able to demonstrate it to others runs completely contrary to human behavior.
Even if you tried to implement such a system, someone in the end must build it, and therefore someone in the end must maintain control.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope, they did have cameras in WWII which were able to do that from a B-17, but those were significantly lower than satellites.
Doug
You're forgetting quite a few of your assumptions there...
Among them:
1) better products naturally dominate the marketplace
2) the timeframe over which products "obliterate" competition is less than the current age of Linux (or more acurately, the length of time Linux has fit the definition of "better" product).
Somehow, I doubt you can support either of these assumptions...
Doug
Also, being able to pass the turing test in complete detail is of dubious value.
If a computer is to act like a human, it must be fallible, have limited knowledge, and operate at a human's speed (or at least answer as if it were operating at such a speed).
So what you've done is destroy all the features of a computer that make it superior to a human (including speed and flawless recovery of data).
A more useful AI would be clearly a computer, as it's primary function would be to assist a human in doing the tasks a human is not equipped to do well.
Doug
This is why windows beat out OS/2...
OS/2's claim to fame was that they could run windows apps faster than windows...
All the apps developers look at that and say "hey, if I develop native OS/2, only OS/2 users can buy my app... but if I develop for windows, everyone can buy it"
So everyone made windows apps... and the people buying the OS looked around and saw a billion windows apps and very few OS/2 apps and said "all these apps are 'for windows' so I might as well run windows just to be sure"
It's always a problem with emulation... unless you can do it much cheaper, people will go with the original.
Doug
You are correct... the primary uses for stored procedures are triggers, which is what I described, however they can be useful independent of triggers...
Either way, a big advantage of stored procedures is avoiding communication with a client...
Doug
It's nice when you can code something up to run automatically... let's say you have several different ways a purchase order gets into your table, and you need to insert a row into another table any time a purchase order is added.
Rather than having to remember to put that second insert everywhere you have a purchase order insert, it's nice to have it automatically run on the server (particularly since you don't have to communicate with the client).
Another use is if you need to delete all of someone's addressbook when they delete their account... then you just monitor a delete on the "person" table and delete all records associated with it in the "addressbook" table.
Doug
1) it's lack of a large number of packages forces you to learn how to compile your own software
2) every distro has a different directory structure, and most people don't need to learn it anyway, since they simply rely on package management anyway...
Besides, as a learning distro, I've had the fewest distro related problems setting up slackware... of course I had the typical problems learning how to compile a kernel, set up X, etc, but those transfer easily to any distro..
Doug
It really depends on what you consider necessary qualities of a "newbie" distro...
If you want something that's simple to set up and maintain (i.e. short learning curve) then mandrake is probably your best bet.
If you actually want to learn linux and its workings (which I advise) then use something which forces you to read a few faq's once in a while... like debian, or even better, slackware.
Doug
It's "Killer Klones from Outer Space!"
This doesn't apply to telescopes described in the article, but there's a method for removing the light of a star in order to see dimmer companions (such as planets) which is called nulling interferometry.
An interferometer is an instrument with two telescopes, which uses the wave nature of light to combine them. When you separate 2 telescopes by say 100 meters and combine their light properly, you get the apparent resolution of a 100m telescope (minus the light gathering power and the cost).
A nulling interferometer doesn't try to combine the wavelengths at the same place (think reinforcing the wave you're getting from the object). Instead it delays one of the the waves by 1/2 wavelength, so when the two are combined, they cancel each other out (at least in the center).
So the light of the star is "nullified" while you can still measure the light coming from very close by.
The technique has been demonstrated in the lab, but I don't believe it has been used in practice. It may be used in some astronomy satellites in the future.
Doug
Note, that 100,000 figure is just for the specific camera on Hubble, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2).
Doug
Who decides what constitutes content suitable for kids? With schools across the country banning books such as Huckleberry Finn simply due to having language true to their era, I worry about parents delegating their responsibility in this area.
Doug
The previous poster is correct...
both sendmail and qmail have their security limitations imposed by what they are designed to do...
qmail has had no security holes in that it works as advertised... if I set up qmail to allow relaying from all ip addresses, that is a form of security by obscurity... it's "secure" as long as nobody tries my ip address, but otherwise the door is wide open.
If someone does find my open relay, it's not a fault of qmail, and thus (rightly!) is not considered a security hole in qmail.. it's my fault.
In order to increase security then, I have to reduce functionality... I cannot access my smtp server from any ip address... it must be validated in some way, either by using SMTP auth, or by limiting the ip's which may access the server.
But then someone could spoof the ip address of an ip I've allowed relaying from, or they could discover a password from SMTP auth...
Either way it's not a security hole in qmail, but a limitation in security imposed by the fact that qmail is supposed to be able to do something...
The only way to 100% secure qmail is not to run it at all! (of course I'm not picking on qmail, but on all programs in general).
There is a difference between security, i.e. deciding what tradeoff of access and functionality is acceptable, and security holes, software bugs which cause programs not to operate as designed.
You can plan security to reduce the impact from possible security holes, and you can code well to reduce the occurrance of security holes, but both of these are just part of an overall security policy.
Doug
Actually many of the stars which make up the constellations have fairly large proper motions.
The constellations that the greeks saw were actually visibly different than the ones we see today.
Doug
Ahh yes, that's right... I've never been given a chance to use ours, so I was speaking from what I remembered from the little reading I've done ;)
Doug
Read the article...
Grape boards are highly specialized chips which do nothing but N^2 direct summation gravity force calculations (actually some of them do SPH (smoothed particle hydrodynamics) as well).
You take a pc/sun/beowulf cluster and link it to a set of grape boards. You then send particles to the boards and get accelerations back.
Doug
Electromagnetic forces have the potential (pun intended!) to be stronger, but they nearly always average away at any significant distance.
;)
Gravitational force is additive... all mass simply adds to the force, and thus it is very easy to build up a large force (think of galaxy superclusters).
Electromagnetic charges cancel each other, however, and since like charges repel, it is nearly impossible to build a significant amount of charge without an opposing charge to nullify the force at some distance.
There's a classic problem in elementary physics which asks how much force would be generated by your body if you had 1% more electrons than protons. It turns out that if you could concentrate that much charge, it would have enough electromagnetic force to lift the earth. The tough part is containing that large a charge without it ripping your body apart
Doug
Certainly not... an orbiting craft would take on the order of an hour to travel half-way around a planet (ignoring time for landing).
Do you think you could travel ~6000 km/h in water? You'd vaporize the water around you due to the friction alone...
Vacuum has its advantages....
Doug
Ouch... I pity you... I've been fortunate enough to have my choice of languages (C) for doing my projects...
:)
I could probably get better performance with Fortran, particularly on the university supercomputer...but would it be worth it?
Doug
The line formatting in F77 is what always got me... starting each line 6(?) characters in, and only getting 75 characters was very frustrating...
:)
Every time I wrote a program in it I was glad I was at least able to use a modern editor like emacs rather than typing the program onto a punch card!
Doug
Well of course my position is biased coming from the heavy duty side of hydrodynamic simulations of supernovae, collisions between galaxies, and large scale cosmological simulations.
;)
And we're not talking stuff that takes days, we're talking stuff that takes months
These are the sorts of things where you'd rather spend the extra time in development to tweak a few extra percent, rather than use a language/platform which introduces a significant amount of overhead.
Doug
Ha! Do you realize how many scientists still use fortran? They still teach it in my computational physics class (although half the time it's taught in c).
I'll be the first to admit that it sucks to program in, but it does have its advantages. Fortran compilers for large machines tend to be very well optimized, and can generate faster code than the equivalent c compilers. Also, the restrictions the language imposes makes it easier for the compiler to optimize the resulting binary.
And don't forget, freedom comes with a price. C's pointers are fun to use and allow for many interesting solutions to problems, but they are the number one cause of bugs in C.
Doug
tapes/pictures/whatever will be deleted within 24 hours, or within a short period of time if you have a VERY good reason
That's almost worse... if you have to suffer the lack of privacy and indignity of having yourselve videotaped, then at least you should get the benefit of having a record of a crime available... 24 hours is such a small amount of time that it's unlikely the person who needs the tape will be able to request it in time.
Doug
All of the outside->inside transition shots were very obviously computer done... in fact I'm pretty confident most of the outside scenery was completely cg. Nearly every scene had pieces which were clearly removed/altered in post production (the singing scene in the elephant!).
Doug
perfectly anonymous stored value
This is impossible, I'm afraid. If I can know how much money I have (something I'm rather likely to want to do, as I'm human), then someone else can too. End of story.
The vast majority of human interactions are simply posturing to demonstrate how much wealth one has. Wealth in this case is more broadly defined to include intellectual capital and physical attributes, but the idea of having wealth, and not being able to demonstrate it to others runs completely contrary to human behavior.
Even if you tried to implement such a system, someone in the end must build it, and therefore someone in the end must maintain control.
Doug