It doesn't necessarily have to mean that the people who started out rich will end up at a lower absolute level of standard of living. It only means that the relative standard of livings are supposed to become balanced. Trade is not a zero sum game.
That's the theory anyway. As you point out, in practise it doesn't seem to be working out quite so neatly. The rich now control a greater % of the worlds absolute wealth than in the past, and this is only increasing. I have seen several times mentioned that the average "real" income for people in the US has been in decline since the 1970s.
Well, I'm no fan of Symbian C++, but there is certainly debugger support abailable. You can use MSVC++ debugger on windows (codewarrior too?), annd gdb on the target.
The compile system is however certainly completely fucked up, though.mmp files are easier to maintain than makefiles for huge projects, the way they process them and do the whole build is so braindead as to be unbelievable.
Also I don't understand why they don't have a standard "console application" library that you link to so you could write standard C/C++ "hello world". It wouldn't be the hardest thing in the world to implement, and would greatly reduce the learning curve for developers.
and symbian c++ isn't that straightforward to pick up and the sdk isn't that hot either(grr.. i wish i had some GOOD book on it, learning it as i go at the moment), even though that's the way to do powerful applications and seems to have some logic once you 'get in it'. j2me on the other hand was very easy to pick up.
Understatement of the year. Symbian's approach to C++ has got to be one of the ugliest ever concieved. There are just so many things wrong with it, starting with the 10 or so different and slightly incompatable string/buffer imlpementations. You are guarenteed that the one you need to use in the API call doesn't have the funcitonality that you need to use yourself. Then the multitude of asynchronous calls that make debugging so difficult, etc...
One benefit to reading the others is the authors writing gets better as you go on -- not that it was bad in Red Mars.
I enjoyed "red mars" more than "green mars". I thought that the exploration of the issues that affected the people on the trip were interesting.
I gave up about halfway into "blue mars". I realised I couldn't care less what happened to anybody in the book. I found it to be just a poor enough story set in "marsworld".
There is also the opposite effect where old code is sitting around that no longer has any function. I remember one drastic case of this when rewriting a program where only about 1/2 the code was even beeing utilized.
Absolutely. I used to get great pleasure in deleting large chunks of useless code from one of the products I used to work on, and still having more functionality than before.
I found that stuff in the UI is partiularly prone to get bloated with no design put into the glue between the actual UI, and the core of the system. cut and paste abounds.
Lines of code add to the cost of maintaining a product, and while they may be fine to get a release out the door, they make the subsequent releases and adequate maintenance harder and harder.
Code should be eliminated whenever possible in my opinion. After all if the code isn't there, it will not be a source of bugs, and nobody will ever have to understand it.
What an absolutely amazing accomplishment considering that a few hundred years ago the vast majority of us still though the Earth was flat.
Sorry, but that's a myth that owes it's popularity to a piece of fiction by Washington Irving about Columbus. Whatever criticisms Columbus got of his theory were based on the fact that he was wrong in his calculations of the distance, (and continued to be wrong all his life).
This is a completely valid viewpoint. My main question is how is this an invasion of privacy? I wouldn't have a problem scanning in my hand to check in to work -- but it seems that a lot of people do. I guess letting companies having biometric information could be the beginning of a long and slippery slope, but I can't really see a worst case scenario... someone care to visualize it for me?
Would you trust the police to not misuse your fingerprint data? Why don't you go down to the station now, and volunteer it? It would make their jobs easier, and eliminate you from suspicion in crimes much more quickly.
If the answer to the above is "no", then why would you trust any corporation, whose only goal is profit, and not the police who (in theory at least) are there to protect you.
Yes, I heard of him. My wife read the prediction on yahoo.co.jp and told me, and sure enough there was an earthquake a few days later.
Actually one thing that bothered me about it was that loads of international news agencies covered the prediction itself, but then when the earthquake happened... nothing. Well lots of coverage of the quake, but nothing about the prediction. It was like he had never opened his mouth. You would think they actually pay attention to what they had reported themselves only a few days earlier.
(As an english speaker of Japanese) I would say that the problem is not so much that it's hard to read Japanese characters (I have no problems with the ones I know already), it's the fact that there are so many of them compared to 26+punctuation for western languages (even accounting for the fact that many characters can be considered words by themselves),
Secondly that as an adult you are way out of practise at learning to recognise new "letter" shapes, and have long passed the point where your brain readily adapts to it.
That said I found Hesig's approach to be much easier than any other's I've tried, especially for Kana. It doesn't scale as well to Kanji, but still helps a great deal.
Essentially I suppose that learning 1 Japanese character is no more difficult than learnign 1 western letter. The problem is the quantity.
I think the thing that is bothering people is that they knew there was a "sundial" there to help with calibration. After all there was plenty of stories about it.
Now however when the pictures are released they are not corrected. Why not? Why bother sending the sundial if you are not going to bother to use it?
And yes, I know they will presumably use it themselves sometime, but they don't seem to have released any picture with "correct" colours so far. (AFAIK)
I am sure that plenty of people would be interested in seeing the difference between the "raw image", the "image with infrared features included", the "pure white light" image, but most importantly, the "what I would see if I was standing on mars image"
But what if you are a software company that supplies document imaging software to service companies that do document imaging for hospitals?
In the software product model software developers get to work on something they are interested in (developing imaging algorithms), and for a company where they are a profit center, and so are valued for their expertise.
In the service + free software model software developers have to do a job they are not interested in (servicing hospitals), and any work they do on the software is basically viewed as a cost center and so they are unappreciated, and likely to be one of the first to be let go when things get tight, as after all their open source software work benefits the competition as much as their employer.
In short, you can't argue that open source benefits software companies by taking the example of a service company with a software cost center that for some reason happens to be in-house.
Not much anyway, but you can certainly save money. I'd have to say that any business that hasn't at least examined the free software alternatives out there is not doing their job properly.
And I say this with mixed feelings because as a SW developer (degree + 8 years experience) the costs they are cutting are impacting hugely in my job market. I have to say that I believe there is no excuse for a "Software Developer" to participate in the free software movement. To do so is to undermine your economic worth.
Of course for those of you who are not "SW Developers" like sysadmins, people in service companies, and pretty much anyone in any other business that uses IT out there should contribute what you can spare, because you obviously directly benefit from your and other's contributions.
I just don't see where other people's "careers" (for want of a better word) are being open sourced to offset the damage done to Software's economic value? Where are the Free Architecture Plans? Free Legal Documents? Free Medicine? Free Rent, Free Beer, Free Food, Free Love etc...
Luckily I still have a job, but anyway, back to looking for my ideal career away from software...
...that America and New Zealand don't refuse them use of their sunlight. Don't want to encourage these tourists after all.
Re:Let the conspiracy theories begin...
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That is the real open source business model, and it doesn't involve VCs or get-rich-quick schemes.
It just involves getting work done more cheaply than using commercial tools.
The parent's point is that this is not an open source busines model. Pretty much any commercial company uses open source tools these days. They may even base their entire development process around them, because as you say they are cheaper (and often better).
However this does nothing for the developers of those tools. Those companies are not paying one penny to the developers of the software. So if you want to have an open source business "selling software", then tough, you can't.
You can sell consulting, or other services, but you can't sell the software. This means that ultimately if you had any sense you wouldn't spend any time developing it.
What open source does is offer companies whose business is not pure software development (consulting, hw manufacturers, retail, traditional businesses, etc...) to eliminate one of their cost centres. That cost centre being the cost of software.
It used to be a cost centre cost because all those making software used to want to get paid (go figure!).
Open source is the enemy of any pure software development company. It is the friend of big corporations that can supply support infrastructure, like Oracle, IBM, or HW manufacturers who can reduce their costs, or traditional businesses who can get enterprise-esque SW for free, and so on. If your business is selling software however then you are in trouble.
Is this good or bad? Well obviously good for non SW businesses. Possibly good for the economy too, as a efficiency and cost reduction is introduced.
It sucks for SW developers however, unless as I said at the start they use the tools in their process, and let's face it, who doesn't? They had just better hope that nobody get's the idea to implement an open source version of their particular SW niche.
I think the point is that you would install your virtual "application directories" in say/usr/local/bin, and the system would be smart enough (through the use of metadata, or location conventions or whatever) that even though at the fundamental level there are just direcories in this location, it would see that/usr/local/bin/coolapp/ contains an executable/usr/local/bin/coolapp/bin/coolapp.exe, and execute that when you typed "coolapp". Similarly for the help system, and so on.
I second that. Ultimately, school is worthless if it doesn't teach people how to learn. The ability to educate one's self should be the greatest lesson of a compulsary education.
Actually though all that meta-learning is totally useless unless at some point you actually put it into practice and fill out the blanks in your head with facts. (and facts do exist dispite what many education reformers would have you believe)
One of the problems with education in recent times is that too many people finish it without actually knowing anything.
You should watch the video. It certainly looks nice, though how many features you'd actually ever use is another matter entirely. I suspect many people would turn off all the chrome, and use it much as they use window based systems today.
They have miniature versions of all the running application at about 45 degrees angle from the viewing plane in a row at the bottom of the screen, so there is no chance to lose your windows as you suggested.
Yes, I know that, but at least some of the stuff on slashdot is actually "Funny", and it would be a shame to miss it, just because most of it is currently the same so-called Funny that appeared on every other story for the past few years.
That's why I would like another category for the in-jokes so people (i.e. me;) could see them if they liked or not.
I agree with you totally about the search engine. It is very hard to find stories you absolutley know are there, even when you put in the relevant keywords.
And I, for one, would welcome an "In Joke" moderation in addition to the current "Funny" one.
TRON Web has received many requests for information about a royalty-free, open source TRON operating system. Such an operating system system does exist; it is a ITRON4.0-specification real-time kernel called "TOPPERS/JSP," which stands for "Toyohashi OPen Platform for Embedded Real-time Systems/Just Standard Profile." The source code, which runs on MS Windows-based machines among others, can be downloaded from the following link.
I ask a simple question in the hopes of stimulating some debate. You people are so closed minded. Well, you live an learn. You won't be hearing more from me on slashdot after this post. (are those cheers I hear?!)
Thank you to everyone who answered with reasonable answers either for or against. Before I go I'll answer some of the points people raised.
Land Lines & Infrastructure
I am talking about a wireless network with no central infrastructure, no land lines, just peer devices.
The initial costs of a centralised netowrk are huge. Do you think that operators are going to continue to roll out huge networks after the fiasco that was 3G? (and regular broadband/cable TV in many areas). I think we'll wait a long time before we see those kind of investment by any central organisation again.
The total costs of a distributed network are even more huge. However the cost is spread among whoever wants to pay for their devices. See that FAX story on slashdot from a while ago for an analogy.
Free as in... peer?
I don't want the infrastructure or services I need for free.
I am not a freeloader or pirate. I am quite willing to pay for my equipment. I just want it to be subscriptionless. The cost of the network is built into the the device and whatever it costs in electricity (at least until I fine tune the cold fusion process & matter replicator that I've been working on that is). If this means $50bn devices as someone mentioned, then so be it;) Technology prices come down all the time though. How much is an ethernet card today compared to when it first arrived?
Let me ask a question, do you pay a subscription for a bluetooth PAN? For WiFi in your home? Why not? Are you ripping someone off by not doing so? Why not extend the metaphor to communities, or towns, or cities, or the world? I am quite aware that there are problems of scale and many others which was why I asked the question. I wanted to see what you all thought could be potential solutions. Seems you'd mostly prefer to take cheap shots or try to look cool or whatever.
I don't expect to connect to existing networks like the internet, GSM, POTS etc. for free. They are largely owned by private operators and if you want to connect to them they are going to charge you for that privelege. However if you have a no-subscription network out there then maybe web sites, and all those other services that appear on communication networks would start to appear on it, or even migrate exclusively to it.
Spectrum saturation & interference
I don't know enough about about spectrum to answer this myself, so I'll point you at this GnuRadio: MeshNetworks and also this slashdot story The Myth of Radio Spectrum Interference which was featured on slashdot a while ago, and ask it it just BS? They seem to me to be saying that the more nodes in a wireless network, the greater the bandwidth.
Battery life:
This is a problem that is going to take a long time to solve unless there are some major breakthroughs in battery technology. I have no suggestions.
Routing:
Difficult? For sure, but impossible?
You don't have to use IP you know. It's not the internet. I think that it is going to be possible for devices to route to others. I'm not saying it's easy but surely not impossible to at least get a "good enough" algorighm?
I recall reading somewhere about a routing algorithm that was modeled on ant's behaviour to achieve good enough shortest path finding. Is there no scope within this or other areas of research to make advances? Here's a link to one similar paper I found now just to proove I'm not hallucinating: http://www.computer.org/proceedings/icppw/1680/168 00079abs.htm . Use g
Slashdot Mirror
I think that many people would say that all the EE jobs have already been outsourced. ;-)
Taiwan and Korea are the world leaders in this kind of stuff now.
It doesn't necessarily have to mean that the people who started out rich will end up at a lower absolute level of standard of living. It only means that the relative standard of livings are supposed to become balanced. Trade is not a zero sum game.
That's the theory anyway. As you point out, in practise it doesn't seem to be working out quite so neatly. The rich now control a greater % of the worlds absolute wealth than in the past, and this is only increasing. I have seen several times mentioned that the average "real" income for people in the US has been in decline since the 1970s.
Well, I'm no fan of Symbian C++, but there is certainly debugger support abailable. You can use MSVC++ debugger on windows (codewarrior too?), annd gdb on the target.
.mmp files are easier to maintain than makefiles for huge projects, the way they process them and do the whole build is so braindead as to be unbelievable.
The compile system is however certainly completely fucked up, though
Also I don't understand why they don't have a standard "console application" library that you link to so you could write standard C/C++ "hello world". It wouldn't be the hardest thing in the world to implement, and would greatly reduce the learning curve for developers.
and symbian c++ isn't that straightforward to pick up and the sdk isn't that hot either(grr.. i wish i had some GOOD book on it, learning it as i go at the moment), even though that's the way to do powerful applications and seems to have some logic once you 'get in it'. j2me on the other hand was very easy to pick up.
Understatement of the year. Symbian's approach to C++ has got to be one of the ugliest ever concieved. There are just so many things wrong with it, starting with the 10 or so different and slightly incompatable string/buffer imlpementations. You are guarenteed that the one you need to use in the API call doesn't have the funcitonality that you need to use yourself. Then the multitude of asynchronous calls that make debugging so difficult, etc...
One benefit to reading the others is the authors writing gets better as you go on -- not that it was bad in Red Mars.
I enjoyed "red mars" more than "green mars". I thought that the exploration of the issues that affected the people on the trip were interesting.
I gave up about halfway into "blue mars". I realised I couldn't care less what happened to anybody in the book. I found it to be just a poor enough story set in "marsworld".
There is also the opposite effect where old code is sitting around that no longer has any function. I remember one drastic case of this when rewriting a program where only about 1/2 the code was even beeing utilized.
Absolutely. I used to get great pleasure in deleting large chunks of useless code from one of the products I used to work on, and still having more functionality than before.
I found that stuff in the UI is partiularly prone to get bloated with no design put into the glue between the actual UI, and the core of the system. cut and paste abounds.
Lines of code add to the cost of maintaining a product, and while they may be fine to get a release out the door, they make the subsequent releases and adequate maintenance harder and harder.
Code should be eliminated whenever possible in my opinion. After all if the code isn't there, it will not be a source of bugs, and nobody will ever have to understand it.
Sorry, but that's a myth that owes it's popularity to a piece of fiction by Washington Irving about Columbus. Whatever criticisms Columbus got of his theory were based on the fact that he was wrong in his calculations of the distance, (and continued to be wrong all his life).
Would you trust the police to not misuse your fingerprint data? Why don't you go down to the station now, and volunteer it? It would make their jobs easier, and eliminate you from suspicion in crimes much more quickly.
If the answer to the above is "no", then why would you trust any corporation, whose only goal is profit, and not the police who (in theory at least) are there to protect you.
Yes, I heard of him. My wife read the prediction on yahoo.co.jp and told me, and sure enough there was an earthquake a few days later.
... nothing. Well lots of coverage of the quake, but nothing about the prediction. It was like he had never opened his mouth. You would think they actually pay attention to what they had reported themselves only a few days earlier.
Actually one thing that bothered me about it was that loads of international news agencies covered the prediction itself, but then when the earthquake happened
They can just put all their hellspawn replicators behind a NAT like everyone else!
(As an english speaker of Japanese) I would say that the problem is not so much that it's hard to read Japanese characters (I have no problems with the ones I know already), it's the fact that there are so many of them compared to 26+punctuation for western languages (even accounting for the fact that many characters can be considered words by themselves),
Secondly that as an adult you are way out of practise at learning to recognise new "letter" shapes, and have long passed the point where your brain readily adapts to it.
That said I found Hesig's approach to be much easier than any other's I've tried, especially for Kana. It doesn't scale as well to Kanji, but still helps a great deal.
Essentially I suppose that learning 1 Japanese character is no more difficult than learnign 1 western letter. The problem is the quantity.
I think the thing that is bothering people is that they knew there was a "sundial" there to help with calibration. After all there was plenty of stories about it.
Now however when the pictures are released they are not corrected. Why not? Why bother sending the sundial if you are not going to bother to use it?
And yes, I know they will presumably use it themselves sometime, but they don't seem to have released any picture with "correct" colours so far. (AFAIK)
I am sure that plenty of people would be interested in seeing the difference between the "raw image", the "image with infrared features included", the "pure white light" image, but most importantly, the "what I would see if I was standing on mars image"
Many corporations use a webmail interface for employees off site access.
Wow, slashdot used to look much nicer than it's current ugly bloated mess.
But what if you are a software company that supplies document imaging software to service companies that do document imaging for hospitals?
In the software product model software developers get to work on something they are interested in (developing imaging algorithms), and for a company where they are a profit center, and so are valued for their expertise.
In the service + free software model software developers have to do a job they are not interested in (servicing hospitals), and any work they do on the software is basically viewed as a cost center and so they are unappreciated, and likely to be one of the first to be let go when things get tight, as after all their open source software work benefits the competition as much as their employer.
In short, you can't argue that open source benefits software companies by taking the example of a service company with a software cost center that for some reason happens to be in-house.
Not much anyway, but you can certainly save money. I'd have to say that any business that hasn't at least examined the free software alternatives out there is not doing their job properly.
And I say this with mixed feelings because as a SW developer (degree + 8 years experience) the costs they are cutting are impacting hugely in my job market. I have to say that I believe there is no excuse for a "Software Developer" to participate in the free software movement. To do so is to undermine your economic worth.
Of course for those of you who are not "SW Developers" like sysadmins, people in service companies, and pretty much anyone in any other business that uses IT out there should contribute what you can spare, because you obviously directly benefit from your and other's contributions.
I just don't see where other people's "careers" (for want of a better word) are being open sourced to offset the damage done to Software's economic value? Where are the Free Architecture Plans? Free Legal Documents? Free Medicine? Free Rent, Free Beer, Free Food, Free Love etc...
Luckily I still have a job, but anyway, back to looking for my ideal career away from software...
...that America and New Zealand don't refuse them use of their sunlight. Don't want to encourage these tourists after all.
The parent's point is that this is not an open source busines model. Pretty much any commercial company uses open source tools these days. They may even base their entire development process around them, because as you say they are cheaper (and often better).
However this does nothing for the developers of those tools. Those companies are not paying one penny to the developers of the software. So if you want to have an open source business "selling software", then tough, you can't.
You can sell consulting, or other services, but you can't sell the software. This means that ultimately if you had any sense you wouldn't spend any time developing it.
What open source does is offer companies whose business is not pure software development (consulting, hw manufacturers, retail, traditional businesses, etc...) to eliminate one of their cost centres. That cost centre being the cost of software.
It used to be a cost centre cost because all those making software used to want to get paid (go figure!).
Open source is the enemy of any pure software development company. It is the friend of big corporations that can supply support infrastructure, like Oracle, IBM, or HW manufacturers who can reduce their costs, or traditional businesses who can get enterprise-esque SW for free, and so on. If your business is selling software however then you are in trouble.
Is this good or bad? Well obviously good for non SW businesses. Possibly good for the economy too, as a efficiency and cost reduction is introduced.
It sucks for SW developers however, unless as I said at the start they use the tools in their process, and let's face it, who doesn't? They had just better hope that nobody get's the idea to implement an open source version of their particular SW niche.
I think the point is that you would install your virtual "application directories" in say /usr/local/bin, and the system would be smart enough (through the use of metadata, or location conventions or whatever) that even though at the fundamental level there are just direcories in this location, it would see that /usr/local/bin/coolapp/ contains an executable /usr/local/bin/coolapp/bin/coolapp.exe, and execute that when you typed "coolapp". Similarly for the help system, and so on.
Actually though all that meta-learning is totally useless unless at some point you actually put it into practice and fill out the blanks in your head with facts. (and facts do exist dispite what many education reformers would have you believe)
One of the problems with education in recent times is that too many people finish it without actually knowing anything.
You should watch the video. It certainly looks nice, though how many features you'd actually ever use is another matter entirely. I suspect many people would turn off all the chrome, and use it much as they use window based systems today.
They have miniature versions of all the running application at about 45 degrees angle from the viewing plane in a row at the bottom of the screen, so there is no chance to lose your windows as you suggested.
Yes, I know that, but at least some of the stuff on slashdot is actually "Funny", and it would be a shame to miss it, just because most of it is currently the same so-called Funny that appeared on every other story for the past few years.
;) could see them if they liked or not.
That's why I would like another category for the in-jokes so people (i.e. me
I agree with you totally about the search engine. It is very hard to find stories you absolutley know are there, even when you put in the relevant keywords.
And I, for one, would welcome an "In Joke" moderation in addition to the current "Funny" one.
I ask a simple question in the hopes of stimulating some debate. You people are so closed minded. Well, you live an learn. You won't be hearing more from me on slashdot after this post. (are those cheers I hear?!)
Thank you to everyone who answered with reasonable answers either for or against. Before I go I'll answer some of the points people raised.
Land Lines & Infrastructure
I am talking about a wireless network with no central infrastructure, no land lines, just peer devices.
The initial costs of a centralised netowrk are huge. Do you think that operators are going to continue to roll out huge networks after the fiasco that was 3G? (and regular broadband/cable TV in many areas). I think we'll wait a long time before we see those kind of investment by any central organisation again.
The total costs of a distributed network are even more huge. However the cost is spread among whoever wants to pay for their devices. See that FAX story on slashdot from a while ago for an analogy.
Free as in ... peer?
I don't want the infrastructure or services I need for free.
I am not a freeloader or pirate. I am quite willing to pay for my equipment. I just want it to be subscriptionless. The cost of the network is built into the the device and whatever it costs in electricity (at least until I fine tune the cold fusion process & matter replicator that I've been working on that is). If this means $50bn devices as someone mentioned, then so be it ;) Technology prices come down all the time though. How much is an ethernet card today compared to when it first arrived?
Let me ask a question, do you pay a subscription for a bluetooth PAN? For WiFi in your home? Why not? Are you ripping someone off by not doing so? Why not extend the metaphor to communities, or towns, or cities, or the world? I am quite aware that there are problems of scale and many others which was why I asked the question. I wanted to see what you all thought could be potential solutions. Seems you'd mostly prefer to take cheap shots or try to look cool or whatever.
I don't expect to connect to existing networks like the internet, GSM, POTS etc. for free. They are largely owned by private operators and if you want to connect to them they are going to charge you for that privelege. However if you have a no-subscription network out there then maybe web sites, and all those other services that appear on communication networks would start to appear on it, or even migrate exclusively to it.
Spectrum saturation & interference
I don't know enough about about spectrum to answer this myself, so I'll point you at this GnuRadio: MeshNetworks and also this slashdot story The Myth of Radio Spectrum Interference which was featured on slashdot a while ago, and ask it it just BS? They seem to me to be saying that the more nodes in a wireless network, the greater the bandwidth.
Battery life:
This is a problem that is going to take a long time to solve unless there are some major breakthroughs in battery technology. I have no suggestions.
Routing:
Difficult? For sure, but impossible?
You don't have to use IP you know. It's not the internet. I think that it is going to be possible for devices to route to others. I'm not saying it's easy but surely not impossible to at least get a "good enough" algorighm?
I recall reading somewhere about a routing algorithm that was modeled on ant's behaviour to achieve good enough shortest path finding. Is there no scope within this or other areas of research to make advances? Here's a link to one similar paper I found now just to proove I'm not hallucinating: http://www.computer.org/proceedings/icppw/1680/168 00079abs.htm . Use g