Thus, the -CURRENT branch is where the experimental stuff gets done. Every so often, -CURRENT is frozen, made stable, and released as a.0 version. A -STABLE branch is then created starting with that.0 release, to which only bug/security fixes and a few enhancements from -CURRENT are added. When enough changes accumulate on a -STABLE branch, the.1,.2, etc. releases are made. So at any one time, there are several separate branches being worked on; the ones receiving the most attention right now are 5.0-CURRENT, 4.x-STABLE, and 3.x-STABLE (but there are others). This means that even as work progresses on the 4.x-STABLE branch towards release 4.1, work progresses simultaneously on the older 3.x-STABLE branch. One side-effect of this system that confuses some newcomers is that versions can be released seemingly out-of-order, like 3.5 after 4.0.
I've just released a new product called (drum roll, please) Windows (TM)! The Windows Technology (TM) allows one to see through walls! No, I'm not kidding. Just install Windows (TM) in your own home, and you will be provided with several ample-sized viewports, each made of a clear solid known as ActiveGlass (TM), allowing you an unobstructed view of the world outside your home. Look for Windows (TM) at your local home improvement center starting in summer 2008.
Why does all the cool stuff come out after potato is frozen?
Does this seem familiar to anyone (kernel 2.2)? That's the reason I moved away from Debian. Don't get me wrong, Debian is a very cool distro with many innovative and intelligent features (especially the package management system). However, they just can't seem to get on the ball with their releases; as soon as you install one, a lot of your software is instantly old. For my purposes, I can't run the latest unstable or frozen system, so I have no choice but to not use Debian.
Baloney. FreeBSD can't run on any PDA that doesn't have an MMU
So? I didn't say anything about PDAs. There are a lot of other applications besides those. For instance, the industrial security project I should be working on right now...
Lots of work by many experienced gurus has already gone into adapting FreeBSD for small applications. Currently, there is a development kit known as PicoBSD that enables one to automatically build floppy images that contain a minimal FreeBSD. Other people have created their own custom embedded versions of FreeBSD; the tight integration and cleanness of FreeBSD and its source tree make it quite easy for even an amateur to roll his/her own version. I myself am currently working on an improved development kit for building embeddded versions of FreeBSD quickly and easily. It's output is currently running off of an 8MB DiskOnChip on the desk to my right.
For more information, see Small FreeBSD Home Page. It's a bit outdated, but work is still actively going on. A maintainer is currently working on improving the site. To get at the very heart of things, subscribe to the freebsd-small mailing list (info here) or read the archive.
I've had some experience with voice recognition as a developer. We tried out several voice recognition engines during the development of my company's software. I don't remember which other ones we tried, but the one we spent the most time with was Lernout Hauspie ASR. We even demoed our voice-recognition-capable software at the 1999 ASIS show.
What became of the code? Nice, big blocks of comments! Speech recognition is now way near ready for just about any application -- that is, any application that can't cope with a 60% success rate. You can expect that figure to head downward if the speaker has an accent, if there are a lot of people in the room, and a myriad of other reasons.
Contrary to some people's beliefs, "DOS" never stood for "Disk Operating System". There was a popular PC operating system called "DOS" (now renamed "Windows"), but the name still meant "Denial Of Service", as anyone who used it knows.
Let's face it. It's highly likely that eventually, we're going to go forth and spread throughout the cosmos. Let's assume for a second that we don't discover ways to transmit data faster than the speed of light. How well will the Internet scale when it extends to distant planets or even stars?
Napster has its disclaimer, basically "We provide this as a tool for sharing music legally, and if you use it in other ways, we're not responsible.". It's just like a "use at your own risk" sign at a pool or playground. When the Big Bad Companies drag Napster into court, it seems to me that the Napster people only need to give the judge a copy of their disclaimer and walk out.
IMHO, The Internet's best quality is that it is global, and has become so before the powers that be could see what was happening and oppress it. Consequently, no one country can EVER completely limit freedom on the Internet! If my country makes some boneheaded law that makes something on the 'net illegal, then that thing can move somewhere else. Regulating the Internet is like trying to hold a gallon of water in the palm or your hand.
Chess is unsolvable. FALSE Think of it in an AI perspective; the game is just another search space. Sure, the space is infinitely deep, but a good algorithm will recognize when an infinite branch is reached and make the appropriate decision. Chess's complexity is not increasing, but computers' power is. Chess will be solved some day; it's just a search problem.
Two computers playing against each other will be interesting. FALSE Again, think of it in an AI perspective. On average, the winner will be the computer that examines the most search space and implements the best tricks to guess what lies beyond the examined search space. Once computers are powerful enough to examine the entire search space, all such computers will be equally matched.
There {is|is not} a perfect game of chess. UNNOWN We simply won't know for sure until the entire search space has been examined.
I actually submitted this article quite a while back, when the news wasn't old. The good people at Slashdot have to sift through *hundreds* of submissions like mine, so let's not bash 'em just because it took a my post a little while to make it to the BSD forum, ok?
Many of the comments here have focused on whether or not Apple will/should release OS X for Intel. However, there are other possibilities, such as this one: How possible (or desirable) would it be for someone to take Darwin for Intel and build another open-source OS around it?
I run my own mail server, soon to be a web, news, quake, etc. server off of a Roadrunner cable modem connection with a dynamic IP.
I use dynamic DNS service from tzo.com, and their service has been pretty much configure-and-forget -- in other words, great for non-super-sysadmins like me. They don't use an update program like some other services, but instead, a URL. To update your dynamic DNS redirection, you point a browser to the URL and blammo, it's done. I took their simple scripts and wrote my own that send in an update whenever my DHCP lease is refreshed. My scripts pass the proper URL to lynx in batch mode and dump the output to a log file. Not hard at all.
You can get groovyname.sillydomain.tld kind of service or myowndomain.tld service. I have the second. They claim to have five (?) servers, all in different time zones using different colocation. I haven't experienced a problem with it.
SB1337 (UCITA in Oklahoma) was referred to the senate judiciary committee for review as of Tue 8 Feb. The next committee meeting is Tue 15 Feb, but it is unknown if UCITA will be discussed. The bill is at the very beginning stages of legislation, so it is important that we not let it progress any further. If you live in Oklahoma, please contact your state senator and tell him/her your opinion of UCITA! Here is how to contact the members of that committee:
Sen. Brad Henry (D) (Chair) Represents: Cleveland, Oklahoma, Pottawatomie counties henry@lsb.state.ok.us State Capitol 2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Rm. 413 Oklahoma City, OK 73105-4808 (405) 521-5539
Sen. Jerry L. Smith (R) (Vice Chair) Represents: Tulsa county smith@lsb.state.ok.us State Capitol 2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Rm. 528-B Oklahoma City, OK 73105-4808 (405) 521-5620
Sen. Ben Brown (D) Represents: Cleveland, Oklahoma counties lawson@lsb.state.ok.us (assistant) State Capitol 2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Rm. 414 Oklahoma City, OK 73104 (405) 521-5522
Sen. Bernest Cain (D) Represents: Oklahoma county cain@lsb.state.ok.us State Capitol 2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Rm. 413-A Oklahoma City, OK 73105-4808 (405) 521-5610
Sen. Larry L. Dickerson, Jr. (D) Represents: Le Flore, Sequoyah counties dickerson@lsb.state.ok.us State Capitol 2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Rm. 522 Oklahoma City, OK 73105-4808 (405) 521-5576
Sen. Brooks Douglass (R) Represents: Oklahoma county douglass@lsb.state.ok.us State Capitol 2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Rm. 533-C Oklahoma City, OK 73105-4808 (405) 521-5543
Sen. Lewis Long (D) Represents: Creek, Tulsa county herrmann@lsb.state.ok.us (assistant) State Capitol 2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Rm. 428 Oklahoma City, OK 73105-4808 (405) 521-5600
Sen. Mike Morgan (D) Represents: Lincoln, Logan, Payne counties bard@lsb.state.ok.us (assistant) State Capitol 2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Rm. 520 Oklahoma City, OK 73105 (405) 521-5572
Sen. Trish Weedn (D) Represents: Cleveland, Garvin, McClain counties weedn@lsb.state.ok.us State Capitol 2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Rm. 417-A Oklahoma City, OK 73105 (405) 521-5535
Sen. James A. Williamson (R) Represents: Tulsa county brownb1@lsb.state.ok.us (assistant) State Capitol 2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Rm. 530 Oklahoma City, OK 73105 (405) 521-5624
I'd rather not tell the specifics of my case, but I would love to disclose my method: On your own time, do a substantial amount of development on an open source project of the kind that your company wants, or better yet, needs to survive. Then present it to your boss as "a FREE, nearly-completed solution to our problem!". Make sure your project entails continual development.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a picture:
~
|
+--3.0--3.1--3.2--3.3--3.4--3.5--x (3.x-STABLE |
|
+--4.0--x (4.x-STABLE)
|
|
x (5.x-CURRENT)
Thus, the -CURRENT branch is where the experimental stuff gets done. Every so often, -CURRENT is frozen, made stable, and released as a .0 version. A -STABLE branch is then created starting with that .0 release, to which only bug/security fixes and a few enhancements from -CURRENT are added. When enough changes accumulate on a -STABLE branch, the .1, .2, etc. releases are made. So at any one time, there are several separate branches being worked on; the ones receiving the most attention right now are 5.0-CURRENT, 4.x-STABLE, and 3.x-STABLE (but there are others). This means that even as work progresses on the 4.x-STABLE branch towards release 4.1, work progresses simultaneously on the older 3.x-STABLE branch. One side-effect of this system that confuses some newcomers is that versions can be released seemingly out-of-order, like 3.5 after 4.0.
Wow, that's nearly the same situation I was in when I upgraded from Linux to FreeBSD! I'm now much happier.
I've just released a new product called (drum roll, please) Windows (TM)! The Windows Technology (TM) allows one to see through walls! No, I'm not kidding. Just install Windows (TM) in your own home, and you will be provided with several ample-sized viewports, each made of a clear solid known as ActiveGlass (TM), allowing you an unobstructed view of the world outside your home. Look for Windows (TM) at your local home improvement center starting in summer 2008.
A great epic story of humanity stiving to attain peace! Glory to the Colonies!
It's a little more oriented towards children, but it's still IMHO the best epic SciFi story there is!
I'm actually using FreeBSD.
Why does all the cool stuff come out after potato is frozen?
Does this seem familiar to anyone (kernel 2.2)? That's the reason I moved away from Debian. Don't get me wrong, Debian is a very cool distro with many innovative and intelligent features (especially the package management system). However, they just can't seem to get on the ball with their releases; as soon as you install one, a lot of your software is instantly old. For my purposes, I can't run the latest unstable or frozen system, so I have no choice but to not use Debian.
So? I didn't say anything about PDAs. There are a lot of other applications besides those. For instance, the industrial security project I should be working on right now...
Lots of work by many experienced gurus has already gone into adapting FreeBSD for small applications. Currently, there is a development kit known as PicoBSD that enables one to automatically build floppy images that contain a minimal FreeBSD. Other people have created their own custom embedded versions of FreeBSD; the tight integration and cleanness of FreeBSD and its source tree make it quite easy for even an amateur to roll his/her own version. I myself am currently working on an improved development kit for building embeddded versions of FreeBSD quickly and easily. It's output is currently running off of an 8MB DiskOnChip on the desk to my right.
For more information, see Small FreeBSD Home Page. It's a bit outdated, but work is still actively going on. A maintainer is currently working on improving the site. To get at the very heart of things, subscribe to the freebsd-small mailing list (info here) or read the archive.
Slashdot is after all operating within a jurisdiction where the EULA is enforcable
But slashdot didn't agree the EULA, so what does that matter?!
I've had some experience with voice recognition as a developer. We tried out several voice recognition engines during the development of my company's software. I don't remember which other ones we tried, but the one we spent the most time with was Lernout Hauspie ASR. We even demoed our voice-recognition-capable software at the 1999 ASIS show.
What became of the code? Nice, big blocks of comments! Speech recognition is now way near ready for just about any application -- that is, any application that can't cope with a 60% success rate. You can expect that figure to head downward if the speaker has an accent, if there are a lot of people in the room, and a myriad of other reasons.
I wouldn't expect this game to be any different.
Contrary to some people's beliefs, "DOS" never stood for "Disk Operating System". There was a popular PC operating system called "DOS" (now renamed "Windows"), but the name still meant "Denial Of Service", as anyone who used it knows.
Let's face it. It's highly likely that eventually, we're going to go forth and spread throughout the cosmos. Let's assume for a second that we don't discover ways to transmit data faster than the speed of light. How well will the Internet scale when it extends to distant planets or even stars?
IMHO:
Napster has its disclaimer, basically "We provide this as a tool for sharing music legally, and if you use it in other ways, we're not responsible.". It's just like a "use at your own risk" sign at a pool or playground. When the Big Bad Companies drag Napster into court, it seems to me that the Napster people only need to give the judge a copy of their disclaimer and walk out.
IMHO, The Internet's best quality is that it is global, and has become so before the powers that be could see what was happening and oppress it. Consequently, no one country can EVER completely limit freedom on the Internet! If my country makes some boneheaded law that makes something on the 'net illegal, then that thing can move somewhere else. Regulating the Internet is like trying to hold a gallon of water in the palm or your hand.
Let's bust some myths about computer chess:
Think of it in an AI perspective; the game is just another search space. Sure, the space is infinitely deep, but a good algorithm will recognize when an infinite branch is reached and make the appropriate decision. Chess's complexity is not increasing, but computers' power is. Chess will be solved some day; it's just a search problem.
Again, think of it in an AI perspective. On average, the winner will be the computer that examines the most search space and implements the best tricks to guess what lies beyond the examined search space. Once computers are powerful enough to examine the entire search space, all such computers will be equally matched.
We simply won't know for sure until the entire search space has been examined.
I actually submitted this article quite a while back, when the news wasn't old. The good people at Slashdot have to sift through *hundreds* of submissions like mine, so let's not bash 'em just because it took a my post a little while to make it to the BSD forum, ok?
Many of the comments here have focused on whether or not Apple will/should release OS X for Intel. However, there are other possibilities, such as this one: How possible (or desirable) would it be for someone to take Darwin for Intel and build another open-source OS around it?
Thanks. I was singing "Secret Agent Man" one day and noticed how much it sounded like I was saying "asian". I'm not even Asian, but the name stuck.
I run my own mail server, soon to be a web, news, quake, etc. server off of a Roadrunner cable modem connection with a dynamic IP.
I use dynamic DNS service from tzo.com, and their service has been pretty much configure-and-forget -- in other words, great for non-super-sysadmins like me. They don't use an update program like some other services, but instead, a URL. To update your dynamic DNS redirection, you point a browser to the URL and blammo, it's done. I took their simple scripts and wrote my own that send in an update whenever my DHCP lease is refreshed. My scripts pass the proper URL to lynx in batch mode and dump the output to a log file. Not hard at all.
You can get groovyname.sillydomain.tld kind of service or myowndomain.tld service. I have the second. They claim to have five (?) servers, all in different time zones using different colocation. I haven't experienced a problem with it.
My friend Tim has a birthday today. Poor guy, he won't be legal for alcohol until he's 84!
Suppose you've got this whiz-bang direct neural interface. Then:
I don't know; maybe I have been playing too much Cyberpunk.
SB1337 (UCITA in Oklahoma) was referred to the senate judiciary committee for review as of Tue 8 Feb. The next committee meeting is Tue 15 Feb, but it is unknown if UCITA will be discussed. The bill is at the very beginning stages of legislation, so it is important that we not let it progress any further. If you live in Oklahoma, please contact your state senator and tell him/her your opinion of UCITA! Here is how to contact the members of that committee:
Represents: Cleveland, Oklahoma, Pottawatomie counties
henry@lsb.state.ok.us
State Capitol
2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Rm. 413
Oklahoma City, OK 73105-4808
(405) 521-5539
Represents: Tulsa county
smith@lsb.state.ok.us
State Capitol
2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Rm. 528-B
Oklahoma City, OK 73105-4808
(405) 521-5620
Represents: Cleveland, Oklahoma counties
lawson@lsb.state.ok.us (assistant)
State Capitol
2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Rm. 414
Oklahoma City, OK 73104
(405) 521-5522
Represents: Oklahoma county
cain@lsb.state.ok.us
State Capitol
2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Rm. 413-A
Oklahoma City, OK 73105-4808
(405) 521-5610
Represents: Le Flore, Sequoyah counties
dickerson@lsb.state.ok.us
State Capitol
2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Rm. 522
Oklahoma City, OK 73105-4808
(405) 521-5576
Represents: Oklahoma county
douglass@lsb.state.ok.us
State Capitol
2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Rm. 533-C
Oklahoma City, OK 73105-4808
(405) 521-5543
Represents: Creek, Tulsa county
herrmann@lsb.state.ok.us (assistant)
State Capitol
2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Rm. 428
Oklahoma City, OK 73105-4808
(405) 521-5600
Represents: Lincoln, Logan, Payne counties
bard@lsb.state.ok.us (assistant)
State Capitol
2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Rm. 520
Oklahoma City, OK 73105
(405) 521-5572
Represents: Cleveland, Garvin, McClain counties
weedn@lsb.state.ok.us
State Capitol
2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Rm. 417-A
Oklahoma City, OK 73105
(405) 521-5535
Represents: Tulsa county
brownb1@lsb.state.ok.us (assistant)
State Capitol
2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Rm. 530
Oklahoma City, OK 73105
(405) 521-5624
I get paid to write open-source software.
I'd rather not tell the specifics of my case, but I would love to disclose my method: On your own time, do a substantial amount of development on an open source project of the kind that your company wants, or better yet, needs to survive. Then present it to your boss as "a FREE, nearly-completed solution to our problem!". Make sure your project entails continual development.
Hooked on OSS worked for me!
> Daily CVS update for the *OS*?
Yes.
> And what if someone would make really
> stupid thing on CVS that will cut off
> your CVS ability after make world?
What if some person did ? Hmm... AHA! You would _fix_it_.
> especially if you accidentally hit
> the "less" part and all your other
> work stops until that part is
> corrected.
Yeah, that's a bummer. But that's RELEASE QUALITY SOFTWARE for you.
Wow. Was that a flame?