I'm not so sure about the hard-wired part or even if being an introvert/extrovert is such a well-defined, ever-stereotypical thing. Sure, psychologists have to generalize. If they acknowledged that most people are in fact special or even unique they couldn't sell books about categories of people that well.
Although I believe in the existence of The Introvert and The Extrovert, I'm not buying the bulk of stereotyped a-ha recognitions.
From the review:
Extroverts have more energy -- and recharge by being around large groups of other people, while introverts have less, and recharge by being alone or with a very small group of close friends. The very things that energize "outies" will drain "innies," leading to the "party pooper" perception.
While it *may* be a good statistical observation, I don't think that's true in general. I know many extroverts who tire after hours of partying and I've seen introverts recharging energy at social events.
introverts use different neurochemicals for memory, which is why it can take some time (and perhaps REM sleep) for information to fully settle and process.
That's one nice and very American way of putting it. But I think, he's not describing something inherent to being an introvert. It rather seems to be an observation that slow people (what an euphemism! come on people, you *know* we're talking about the "intelligence-challenged" or whatever) are often caught in a negative feedback loop that constantly lowers their self-esteem by constant negative experiences. While you could say that these people likely become introverts, that doesn't make introversion the cause of their problems!
"What about stupid Extroverts? They're well accepted!" you might counter, but you see, those people who geeks label "stupid" actually often posess quite a bit of social intelligence that provides them with positive feedback en masse.
Introverts often have self-esteem problems because they can't be what most of the world wants them to be. I think that in a way relates to the same misconception that I talked about above. In my opinion, people with self-esteem problems are likely to become introverts not the other way around. Being naturally introvert is not the same as being forced to shut up by a never-ending inflow of negative feedback.
Finally, as a 50% introvert, I find that I can't really identify with most of the statements about introvert and extrovert people that have been made here.
Am I alone thinking this? (Allright, don't answer that)
LOL, although I'm sure 75% of the population fits that description that's not generally what defines The Extrovert. Those frats are just people who are trying to make their lives better at the expense of other people!
The Extrovert - in his natural habitat - is just someone who really gets off on what we geeks call Face Time. Then there is the thin line towards the behaviour of pathological extroverts, who are just masked introverts that crave for other people's attention, probably because they don't have an internal judgement system so they need constant affirmation and judgement from external sources.
(And for that to happen they, like a baby, need to cry out every little pseudo-thought to the world so they can constantly receive feedback information whether or not they're still operating within the socially acceptable range. Though the irconical thing in our society is, the louder you are, the more likely are other people to accept your rambling as valid.
In the end that means that The Patho-Extrovert's quest to get reliable affirmation by being intrusively communicative is nothing but an illusion that provides positive feedback loops for aggressive behaviour.)
"What I'm getting a sense of now is there is an effort to counterpunch," said Gartner analyst George Weiss, who has warned clients to take SCO seriously. "What I thought the (Linux) community should be doing is shift the initiative away from SCO and throw them off balance into a defensive posture. Until Red Hat started its counterclaim, all the initiative was with SCO."
This has really suprised me. I mean, I'm not shocked at corporate opportunism of course - especially analysts and people who think of themselves as visionaries, being opportunistic is practically their job description. But the thing is: I always took for granted that Gartner is just an MS marketing branch, and now they turn around and say that they always thought the Linux community should really take countermeasures, and stuff like that! Wow...
To the paranoid conspiracist mind this can only mean that MS must have realized that there is not much substance behind SCO's claims and that their activities in the fraudulent extortion department didn't go over well at all in the industry.
Probably something like this happened: SCO: Hey, guess what, we can prove that Linux is just a pirated copy of SCO Unix! Microsoft: Wow, cool, that would make Linux illegal and discredit the whole open source community? SCO: Yeah, you bet. Only, if someone could give us credibility....and our cash kinda ran out, too! Microsoft: NP, we'll announce that we honor your Unix rights and pay for your initial lawyer fees with some Unix license, OK? Additionally we will buy some studies and news articles that lend credibility to your claims. SCO: Thanks, we feel much better now, that really helped. Initiating FUD and extortion campaign now. Microsoft: What? Uhm, your going to prove your thing in court soon, will you? You know, revealing the evil that is Open Source for what it really is? SCO: Yah, sure. Microsoft: SCO? You're making us all look bad. SCO: We know, but "the software business is binary", remember? Gotta do what keeps us alive! Microsoft: There is no proof, is there? SCO: We're still kinda working on that, sir. Microsoft: OK, that's it, we're bailing out. Steve, call Gartner and tell them they can switch modes from "MS fantasy sales pitch" to default "echo the public opinion" mode. Farewell, SCO.
who reserves the right to award a prize of equal or greater value if advertised prize is unavailable
No, that means, you probably get some MS products for free instead of the actual $1000 cash, a scheme that costs MS mere cents and provides you with MS-Warez for a "retail value" of about $1000. Nice and cheap for them. This behaviour would also be consistent with previous settlements and donations by MS, which are always quoted as their total retail value, but in reality MS just handed out a few license keys...
About wind resistance: you could construct a tube around the travelator and then blow wind through it at the speed of the trottoir. Yeah, that might work.
But think about the possibilities for gruesome injuries! Naa, this whole travelator concept only goes so far...
I think I'll wait for my magnetic/antigrav boots, undulating floors, or at least small transportation capsules that go around through pipes. Maybe we should just redesign cities to accomodate more people more elegantly, that would be a start!
if you want "No More Hiroshimas" then I say "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."
You sig is totally freaking me out! Pearl Harbor was solely a *military* target, Hiroshima was a goddamn city full of civilian people! How dare you even compare these! In every war people who have nothing to do with the war lose their lives, but Hiroshima is one of the saddest examples since the bombing's main objective was just to kill as many Japanese people as possible so Japan might be scared of further dealing with the US. Do you know what this tactic is called when civillian organizations do that? Yes, it's called terrorism. But I'm sure it can't be terrorism or mass murder if it's americans who did it, right? We are all real heroes here, right?
I don't care even if your grandmother died at Pearl because if so she was military and they knew what they signed up for. Tell those touchy little hero stories to the dead of Hiroshima, I'm sure they would be impressed. Tell your military crap to the children who died painfully of radiation sickness, clinging to the charred bodies of their parents!
(Three years at slashdot, never flamed anybody before, but I can't just ignore shit like this and I wish other people would feel the same way. Alas, I'm alone, this is the Post-9/11 world - I'm I dinosaur...)
I think MSFT is right to think that these intelligent little devices will be used increasingly in the future and that they should be data-linked. However, in my opinion a proprietary service from an external data source is not the way to go. If I wanted to buy those little gizmos for my home, I would like to distribute content from my internal network (e.g. bluetooth, 802.11). I can even imagine an optional imode-like subscription service for when you are away from home. But without open standards and without the possibility of tinkering with the content/functions those things won't make much sense to most of the geek world (which the devices are primarily targeted at).
Yes, they are. The real argument is just about *how much* faster? (That and "did Apple cheat?", which is simple to answer: yes, they all do - all the time).
While the processor may not be suitable for the title of "fastest desktop" out there, you still have to give Apple credit for redesigning the entire architecture, which is more important than raw CPU power for Mac users. Because, you see, Mac OS X with all its little gizmos is really hungry for hardware acceleration of any kind. So graphics and memory throughput are important. While the G5 may not "compute" as fast as the newest Pentium, it will finally resolve the sluggishness problems of Apple's operating system. It will feel really fast. Who's going to notice raw CPU speed anyway? *cough* OK, but that may not have been the most pressing issue with Macs.
Wait, maybe the fact that religion can be explained by rational ways is what these censors fear?
It's a nice point, although I believe you are granting those people to much thinking power. They would never grasp concepts like that!
What they can grasp, however, is that this movie has a distinct anti-authoritarian, anti-government message, plus the good guys live in "Zion" (a definite nono for arabian countries). That, and maybe the fact that there is a female main character kicking the crap out of male government types, may have really ticked them off - not to mention the sex scene... Don't get me wrong, the movie wasn't that good anyway but I really hate censorship!
an enterprise office might have special needs that they get from software houses that create apps that you don't hear about on places like download.com or freshmeat That's right and there is still a huge gap in usability of most open source apps. But, take it from someone who has had his share of "enterprise level computing" applications: there is also a large number of very inferior "professional applications" out there that should really be replaced with something good (no, I don't mean MS Office). I think open source software can provide a lot of "common functionality" or base infrastructure or whatever you want to call it. And to be honest, things like a word processor are not "enterprise computing" anymore, they're now part of base level office infrastructure. Enterprise applications need to move on, concentrate on company needs instead of selling sub-par crap that performs standard operations poorly for high prices. So, yeah, there are no real "enterprise apps" pre-installed on SuSE, and I don't see how there could be. It comes, however, with a fine selection of basic/extended office infrastructure software which is not part of a normal Windows installation.
Well, I have my doubts about the crossover plugin as well (but it's still nice to be able to run Photoshop), but for 600 $ this comes with a lot of software that you would have to buy seperately if you're using Windows. Besides, the price includes 1 year 5-client technical support, enterprise-grade, which is the main selling point.
The way I see it, the maintainance service is an integral part of the product. If you don't need this service, I would suggest downloading SuSE 8.2 for free from their FTP server and install that. This Desktop 1.0 product seems really geared for the small/medium the enterprise market where capable Linux admins are not very common, so a company wants to buy the all-in-one-everything-will-be-taken-care-of package. With this product, SuSE is offering those needed services in standardized packages. That's all.
As a german I can only agree, it's kind of a leftover IBM mentality of sorts. Profesisonal solutions are only acceptable if they're expensive and they have to come from megalomaniac companies. If it doesn't cost enough, it can't be worth very much... But SuSE is not one of those companies! Actually, the cited 600,00 price is for a package including support costs for five clients for a year, so you'll find that for an office solution it isn't that expensive. (But I would still prefer the "normal" 8.2 version.)
Hehe, this is getting increasingly off-topic, but what the fsck...:-)
Therefore the erasure of that memory is a physical process that increases entropy. While that's true on a theoretical level, you'll have to take into account that erasing data from a system almost always means that either a) a reference pointer to the data is set to 0 (=no entropy here), causing the memory block to be unused while still containing the data b) the data in the memory block is erased by setting every byte to 0 (=also no entropy) Also take into account, that the entropical effect of memory erasure in a computer is theoretically correct but maybe not that applicable on a pure (particle/molecular/whatever) physics level. Storing and reading information from a memory block is of course also a thermodynamic event, but the discussion was about the significance of memory storage and erasure in a thermodynamic context. And in that context, with current memory devices, the only relevant events would be a) system power-up => entropy in memory cells is reduced b) system power-down => electricity leaves the circuits, flip-flops revert to an unresolved, entropical state.
Hm, I don't know if I got this right. Any thoughts?
You're right, I had to read a bit on the SoftUpdates to understand it fully. The way I see it SoftUpdates cool because the system keeps an ordered metadata list that it commences to the disk sequencially after the associated data has been written. Now, if the computer crashes, the filesystem starts up again knowing nothing about uncompleted operations, thereby consistency is almost always intact. The only problem with SoftUpdates is that in the event of a crash there still remains unresolved (blocked) disk space as an ugly carcass from uncompleted operations. This is why fsck needs to be invoked to straighten that out, which wouldn't be necessary on a journaled filesystem. On the other hand, because the important parts of a SoftUpdate'd filesystem are always guaranteed to be intact, the "clean-up" fsck can be performed as a background task after a crash, there is no need to hold normal operations (but things will be a bit slower while fsck runs). Bottomline: UFS+SoftUpdates should be just as fine as a journaling fs!
Well, evolution is really a different thing, let's call it human development. It's not as if handwriting is some holy information entering method from God. It's a means to an end, we do it because we need to commit information to a transportable, transmittable, and archivable form. With the coming of the digital age, it turns out we really want information to be digital most of the times, for a large number of reasons. So it's only reasonable to gradually phase out (or down-scope) handwriting in favor of keyboard input. Also, keyboard input seems to be much more speed efficient than handwriting. So I don't think this is a bad thing or in any way unnatural if in the future keyboards/input devices replace pens completely. Some more general wise cracking: Don't be shocked by it, the world will change in some pretty significant ways in our lifetime. If we manage to remain open minded and critical at the same time, there'll be a lot of good things for us in store.
Uhm, I'm no physicist, but isn't it so that the universe doesn't give a shit about "information" stored in memory (beyond the processes in the memory banks)? When we talk about "information" in physics we mean parameters of particles, right? Storing that info in computer memory does absolutely have *nothing* to do with that and storing/deleting that info can't possibly have any influence on the measured particles. Aren't we mixing two meanings of information here? (To take that a step further, if you could mix those meanings of realword info and info in memory systems, and changing info in memory really affected the measured particles, we would be able to control the world with the information stored in our brains, I mean directly, wouldn't we?)
Repeat after me: Memory is just an abstract and entirely arbitrary representation of a measurement, nothing more.
if stemm cells would all turn to cancer, no human would ever have born
Of course - but, you see, cancer is (to use a computer analogy) when the cellular system crashes in a very bad way. A cell basically just starts replicating and replicating, killing the host organism in the process. Now, that can only happen if the growth inhibitor "sub-systems" of a cell get damaged. Because a cell has to function as part of a whole organism, and because getting out of control is potentially fatal, there are very many reduntant controlling subsystems that handle inter-cellular communication, so the collective organism can achieve the common goal (=keeping this whole bunch of cells alive long enough to reproduce). This is a very delicate, though redundantly secured, system that basically tells the cell when to reproduce, and what chemistry to perform. Inserting genes into "the running program" and switching them around, puts this delicate genetic program in severe danger. That's because when we alter or (de)activate genes in gene therapy, we basically insert new code into the cell's running program (cool, imagine that)! Part of the problem is, that our code-insertion process is so crude, it ends up inserting code not only at the desired places but all over the system. Most of the chaos resulting from that is straightened out be the cell's error correction mechanisms, but it is sufficient to largely increase the cancer risk for gene therapy patients. Those undifferentiated stem cells reproduce very actively, they are not designed to be present in a fully grown organism like that. All sorts of things could go wrong. In addition to that, considering the extensive genetic manipulation needed to revert it to stem cell mode, as well as the fact that we completely lack the knowledge about what to do with this state of extreme programmability a stem cell is in, it seems probable that a large number of those cells end up either dead or cancerous. But I'm no biologist either, just thoughts from a programmers perspective...
As an Ex Windows user I can say that, yes, journaling filesystems are great: Not only won't you *ever* spend 10 minutes staring at the screen while fschk/scandisk runs after a crash, I have the (somewhat subjective) distinct feeling that there's much less random data corruption, which of course results in a much larger interval between re-installs as well as less potential for sudden document cancer. I wouldn't want to user a PC without journaling again! On a side note, I think that ReiserFS also does a pretty good job performance-wise, compared to my perceived performance of NTFS and EXT2, for example.
...for a judge to order him to never file another civil suit again? It really angers me to see someone abuse the system like this with no real repercussions.
Sadly, I don't think so, it would probably hurt his rights to much. But maybe he could be fined for each abuse? Random fact from my memory: I'm not sure, but I think in ancient Greece sue-happy people who lost their case got automatically banned from court after a few attempts, they could never sue again...
No, but the question is interesting. I wonder if a gene therapy that activates this gene leads to incredibly increased cancer risk (beyond the risk already associated with gene therapy of course) because setting the STEM_CELL flag might also deactivate growth and replication controls? If so, would this mean that in order to repair/regrow tissue we whould probably do it offline (in a growth tank or something) and then insert the ready grown and thus stem-cell-free tissue into the body of a patient? Any biologists out there to provide some insight? (Sorry, if that was already answered in the article but there has been a slashdotting, in case you wouldn't have guessed.)
I think there is a slight problem, because the Mars surface isn't really that flat like the deserts on earth. There are lots of cracks, mountains and just bottomless pits. Not that ideal a hunting ground for a probe that essentially can't be steered in any predictable way. So I imagine they would either have to choose the landing site very precisely (even if successful the rover probably wouldn't have much room to travel until it gets stuck somewhere) or the other approach might be to deploy not one but more of those probes so you can count on the probability of at least one getting far enough to be efficient. Keep in mind, we're talking NASA here, it would be ridiculously expensive to put anything up there. So why not build probes that can really be controlled (or at least be able to control themselves) while youre at it?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not so sure about the hard-wired part or even if being an introvert/extrovert is such a well-defined, ever-stereotypical thing. Sure, psychologists have to generalize. If they acknowledged that most people are in fact special or even unique they couldn't sell books about categories of people that well.
Although I believe in the existence of The Introvert and The Extrovert, I'm not buying the bulk of stereotyped a-ha recognitions.
From the review:
Extroverts have more energy -- and recharge by being around large groups of other people, while introverts have less, and recharge by being alone or with a very small group of close friends. The very things that energize "outies" will drain "innies," leading to the "party pooper" perception.
While it *may* be a good statistical observation, I don't think that's true in general. I know many extroverts who tire after hours of partying and I've seen introverts recharging energy at social events.
introverts use different neurochemicals for memory, which is why it can take some time (and perhaps REM sleep) for information to fully settle and process.
That's one nice and very American way of putting it. But I think, he's not describing something inherent to being an introvert. It rather seems to be an observation that slow people (what an euphemism! come on people, you *know* we're talking about the "intelligence-challenged" or whatever) are often caught in a negative feedback loop that constantly lowers their self-esteem by constant negative experiences. While you could say that these people likely become introverts, that doesn't make introversion the cause of their problems!
"What about stupid Extroverts? They're well accepted!" you might counter, but you see, those people who geeks label "stupid" actually often posess quite a bit of social intelligence that provides them with positive feedback en masse.
Introverts often have self-esteem problems because they can't be what most of the world wants them to be.
I think that in a way relates to the same misconception that I talked about above. In my opinion, people with self-esteem problems are likely to become introverts not the other way around. Being naturally introvert is not the same as being forced to shut up by a never-ending inflow of negative feedback.
Finally, as a 50% introvert, I find that I can't really identify with most of the statements about introvert and extrovert people that have been made here.
Am I alone thinking this?
(Allright, don't answer that)
backslapping, guffawing, shallow frat boy yahoos
LOL, although I'm sure 75% of the population fits that description that's not generally what defines The Extrovert. Those frats are just people who are trying to make their lives better at the expense of other people!
The Extrovert - in his natural habitat - is just someone who really gets off on what we geeks call Face Time. Then there is the thin line towards the behaviour of pathological extroverts, who are just masked introverts that crave for other people's attention, probably because they don't have an internal judgement system so they need constant affirmation and judgement from external sources.
(And for that to happen they, like a baby, need to cry out every little pseudo-thought to the world so they can constantly receive feedback information whether or not they're still operating within the socially acceptable range. Though the irconical thing in our society is, the louder you are, the more likely are other people to accept your rambling as valid.
In the end that means that The Patho-Extrovert's quest to get reliable affirmation by being intrusively communicative is nothing but an illusion that provides positive feedback loops for aggressive behaviour.)
From the news.com.com article:
...and our cash kinda ran out, too!
"What I'm getting a sense of now is there is an effort to counterpunch," said Gartner analyst George Weiss, who has warned clients to take SCO seriously. "What I thought the (Linux) community should be doing is shift the initiative away from SCO and throw them off balance into a defensive posture. Until Red Hat started its counterclaim, all the initiative was with SCO."
This has really suprised me. I mean, I'm not shocked at corporate opportunism of course - especially analysts and people who think of themselves as visionaries, being opportunistic is practically their job description.
But the thing is: I always took for granted that Gartner is just an MS marketing branch, and now they turn around and say that they always thought the Linux community should really take countermeasures, and stuff like that! Wow...
To the paranoid conspiracist mind this can only mean that MS must have realized that there is not much substance behind SCO's claims and that their activities in the fraudulent extortion department didn't go over well at all in the industry.
Probably something like this happened:
SCO: Hey, guess what, we can prove that Linux is just a pirated copy of SCO Unix!
Microsoft: Wow, cool, that would make Linux illegal and discredit the whole open source community?
SCO: Yeah, you bet. Only, if someone could give us credibility.
Microsoft: NP, we'll announce that we honor your Unix rights and pay for your initial lawyer fees with some Unix license, OK? Additionally we will buy some studies and news articles that lend credibility to your claims.
SCO: Thanks, we feel much better now, that really helped. Initiating FUD and extortion campaign now.
Microsoft: What? Uhm, your going to prove your thing in court soon, will you? You know, revealing the evil that is Open Source for what it really is?
SCO: Yah, sure.
Microsoft: SCO? You're making us all look bad.
SCO: We know, but "the software business is binary", remember? Gotta do what keeps us alive!
Microsoft: There is no proof, is there?
SCO: We're still kinda working on that, sir.
Microsoft: OK, that's it, we're bailing out. Steve, call Gartner and tell them they can switch modes from "MS fantasy sales pitch" to default "echo the public opinion" mode. Farewell, SCO.
who reserves the right to award a prize of equal or greater value if advertised prize is unavailable
No, that means, you probably get some MS products for free instead of the actual $1000 cash, a scheme that costs MS mere cents and provides you with MS-Warez for a "retail value" of about $1000. Nice and cheap for them. This behaviour would also be consistent with previous settlements and donations by MS, which are always quoted as their total retail value, but in reality MS just handed out a few license keys...
About wind resistance: you could construct a tube around the travelator and then blow wind through it at the speed of the trottoir. Yeah, that might work.
But think about the possibilities for gruesome injuries! Naa, this whole travelator concept only goes so far...
I think I'll wait for my magnetic/antigrav boots, undulating floors, or at least small transportation capsules that go around through pipes. Maybe we should just redesign cities to accomodate more people more elegantly, that would be a start!
if you want "No More Hiroshimas" then I say "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."
You sig is totally freaking me out! Pearl Harbor was solely a *military* target, Hiroshima was a goddamn city full of civilian people! How dare you even compare these! In every war people who have nothing to do with the war lose their lives, but Hiroshima is one of the saddest examples since the bombing's main objective was just to kill as many Japanese people as possible so Japan might be scared of further dealing with the US. Do you know what this tactic is called when civillian organizations do that? Yes, it's called terrorism. But I'm sure it can't be terrorism or mass murder if it's americans who did it, right? We are all real heroes here, right?
I don't care even if your grandmother died at Pearl because if so she was military and they knew what they signed up for. Tell those touchy little hero stories to the dead of Hiroshima, I'm sure they would be impressed. Tell your military crap to the children who died painfully of radiation sickness, clinging to the charred bodies of their parents!
(Three years at slashdot, never flamed anybody before, but I can't just ignore shit like this and I wish other people would feel the same way. Alas, I'm alone, this is the Post-9/11 world - I'm I dinosaur...)
I think MSFT is right to think that these intelligent little devices will be used increasingly in the future and that they should be data-linked. However, in my opinion a proprietary service from an external data source is not the way to go.
If I wanted to buy those little gizmos for my home, I would like to distribute content from my internal network (e.g. bluetooth, 802.11). I can even imagine an optional imode-like subscription service for when you are away from home. But without open standards and without the possibility of tinkering with the content/functions those things won't make much sense to most of the geek world (which the devices are primarily targeted at).
Are G5 faster than the G4 machines they replaced?
Yes, they are. The real argument is just about *how much* faster? (That and "did Apple cheat?", which is simple to answer: yes, they all do - all the time).
While the processor may not be suitable for the title of "fastest desktop" out there, you still have to give Apple credit for redesigning the entire architecture, which is more important than raw CPU power for Mac users. Because, you see, Mac OS X with all its little gizmos is really hungry for hardware acceleration of any kind. So graphics and memory throughput are important. While the G5 may not "compute" as fast as the newest Pentium, it will finally resolve the sluggishness problems of Apple's operating system. It will feel really fast. Who's going to notice raw CPU speed anyway? *cough* OK, but that may not have been the most pressing issue with Macs.
Parent is not a troll, who the f*ck modded this???
Wait, maybe the fact that religion can be explained by rational ways is what these censors fear?
It's a nice point, although I believe you are granting those people to much thinking power. They would never grasp concepts like that!
What they can grasp, however, is that this movie has a distinct anti-authoritarian, anti-government message, plus the good guys live in "Zion" (a definite nono for arabian countries). That, and maybe the fact that there is a female main character kicking the crap out of male government types, may have really ticked them off - not to mention the sex scene...
Don't get me wrong, the movie wasn't that good anyway but I really hate censorship!
an enterprise office might have special needs that they get from software houses that create apps that you don't hear about on places like download.com or freshmeat
That's right and there is still a huge gap in usability of most open source apps. But, take it from someone who has had his share of "enterprise level computing" applications: there is also a large number of very inferior "professional applications" out there that should really be replaced with something good (no, I don't mean MS Office). I think open source software can provide a lot of "common functionality" or base infrastructure or whatever you want to call it. And to be honest, things like a word processor are not "enterprise computing" anymore, they're now part of base level office infrastructure. Enterprise applications need to move on, concentrate on company needs instead of selling sub-par crap that performs standard operations poorly for high prices.
So, yeah, there are no real "enterprise apps" pre-installed on SuSE, and I don't see how there could be. It comes, however, with a fine selection of basic/extended office infrastructure software which is not part of a normal Windows installation.
Well, I have my doubts about the crossover plugin as well (but it's still nice to be able to run Photoshop), but for 600 $ this comes with a lot of software that you would have to buy seperately if you're using Windows. Besides, the price includes 1 year 5-client technical support, enterprise-grade, which is the main selling point.
The way I see it, the maintainance service is an integral part of the product. If you don't need this service, I would suggest downloading SuSE 8.2 for free from their FTP server and install that. This Desktop 1.0 product seems really geared for the small/medium the enterprise market where capable Linux admins are not very common, so a company wants to buy the all-in-one-everything-will-be-taken-care-of package. With this product, SuSE is offering those needed services in standardized packages. That's all.
As a german I can only agree, it's kind of a leftover IBM mentality of sorts. Profesisonal solutions are only acceptable if they're expensive and they have to come from megalomaniac companies. If it doesn't cost enough, it can't be worth very much...
But SuSE is not one of those companies! Actually, the cited 600,00 price is for a package including support costs for five clients for a year, so you'll find that for an office solution it isn't that expensive. (But I would still prefer the "normal" 8.2 version.)
Hehe, this is getting increasingly off-topic, but what the fsck... :-)
Therefore the erasure of that memory is a physical process that increases entropy.
While that's true on a theoretical level, you'll have to take into account that erasing data from a system almost always means that either
a) a reference pointer to the data is set to 0 (=no entropy here), causing the memory block to be unused while still containing the data
b) the data in the memory block is erased by setting every byte to 0 (=also no entropy)
Also take into account, that the entropical effect of memory erasure in a computer is theoretically correct but maybe not that applicable on a pure (particle/molecular/whatever) physics level.
Storing and reading information from a memory block is of course also a thermodynamic event, but the discussion was about the significance of memory storage and erasure in a thermodynamic context. And in that context, with current memory devices, the only relevant events would be
a) system power-up => entropy in memory cells is reduced
b) system power-down => electricity leaves the circuits, flip-flops revert to an unresolved, entropical state.
Hm, I don't know if I got this right. Any thoughts?
You're right, I had to read a bit on the SoftUpdates to understand it fully. The way I see it SoftUpdates cool because the system keeps an ordered metadata list that it commences to the disk sequencially after the associated data has been written.
Now, if the computer crashes, the filesystem starts up again knowing nothing about uncompleted operations, thereby consistency is almost always intact. The only problem with SoftUpdates is that in the event of a crash there still remains unresolved (blocked) disk space as an ugly carcass from uncompleted operations. This is why fsck needs to be invoked to straighten that out, which wouldn't be necessary on a journaled filesystem.
On the other hand, because the important parts of a SoftUpdate'd filesystem are always guaranteed to be intact, the "clean-up" fsck can be performed as a background task after a crash, there is no need to hold normal operations (but things will be a bit slower while fsck runs).
Bottomline: UFS+SoftUpdates should be just as fine as a journaling fs!
Well, evolution is really a different thing, let's call it human development.
It's not as if handwriting is some holy information entering method from God. It's a means to an end, we do it because we need to commit information to a transportable, transmittable, and archivable form. With the coming of the digital age, it turns out we really want information to be digital most of the times, for a large number of reasons.
So it's only reasonable to gradually phase out (or down-scope) handwriting in favor of keyboard input. Also, keyboard input seems to be much more speed efficient than handwriting. So I don't think this is a bad thing or in any way unnatural if in the future keyboards/input devices replace pens completely.
Some more general wise cracking: Don't be shocked by it, the world will change in some pretty significant ways in our lifetime. If we manage to remain open minded and critical at the same time, there'll be a lot of good things for us in store.
Uhm, I'm no physicist, but isn't it so that the universe doesn't give a shit about "information" stored in memory (beyond the processes in the memory banks)? When we talk about "information" in physics we mean parameters of particles, right? Storing that info in computer memory does absolutely have *nothing* to do with that and storing/deleting that info can't possibly have any influence on the measured particles. Aren't we mixing two meanings of information here?
(To take that a step further, if you could mix those meanings of realword info and info in memory systems, and changing info in memory really affected the measured particles, we would be able to control the world with the information stored in our brains, I mean directly, wouldn't we?)
Repeat after me: Memory is just an abstract and entirely arbitrary representation of a measurement, nothing more.
if stemm cells would all turn to cancer, no human would ever have born
Of course - but, you see, cancer is (to use a computer analogy) when the cellular system crashes in a very bad way. A cell basically just starts replicating and replicating, killing the host organism in the process. Now, that can only happen if the growth inhibitor "sub-systems" of a cell get damaged. Because a cell has to function as part of a whole organism, and because getting out of control is potentially fatal, there are very many reduntant controlling subsystems that handle inter-cellular communication, so the collective organism can achieve the common goal (=keeping this whole bunch of cells alive long enough to reproduce). This is a very delicate, though redundantly secured, system that basically tells the cell when to reproduce, and what chemistry to perform.
Inserting genes into "the running program" and switching them around, puts this delicate genetic program in severe danger. That's because when we alter or (de)activate genes in gene therapy, we basically insert new code into the cell's running program (cool, imagine that)!
Part of the problem is, that our code-insertion process is so crude, it ends up inserting code not only at the desired places but all over the system. Most of the chaos resulting from that is straightened out be the cell's error correction mechanisms, but it is sufficient to largely increase the cancer risk for gene therapy patients.
Those undifferentiated stem cells reproduce very actively, they are not designed to be present in a fully grown organism like that. All sorts of things could go wrong. In addition to that, considering the extensive genetic manipulation needed to revert it to stem cell mode, as well as the fact that we completely lack the knowledge about what to do with this state of extreme programmability a stem cell is in, it seems probable that a large number of those cells end up either dead or cancerous.
But I'm no biologist either, just thoughts from a programmers perspective...
But do I really need a journaling filesystem?
As an Ex Windows user I can say that, yes, journaling filesystems are great: Not only won't you *ever* spend 10 minutes staring at the screen while fschk/scandisk runs after a crash, I have the (somewhat subjective) distinct feeling that there's much less random data corruption, which of course results in a much larger interval between re-installs as well as less potential for sudden document cancer. I wouldn't want to user a PC without journaling again! On a side note, I think that ReiserFS also does a pretty good job performance-wise, compared to my perceived performance of NTFS and EXT2, for example.
...for a judge to order him to never file another civil suit again? It really angers me to see someone abuse the system like this with no real repercussions.
Sadly, I don't think so, it would probably hurt his rights to much. But maybe he could be fined for each abuse?
Random fact from my memory: I'm not sure, but I think in ancient Greece sue-happy people who lost their case got automatically banned from court after a few attempts, they could never sue again...
No, but the question is interesting. I wonder if a gene therapy that activates this gene leads to incredibly increased cancer risk (beyond the risk already associated with gene therapy of course) because setting the STEM_CELL flag might also deactivate growth and replication controls?
If so, would this mean that in order to repair/regrow tissue we whould probably do it offline (in a growth tank or something) and then insert the ready grown and thus stem-cell-free tissue into the body of a patient?
Any biologists out there to provide some insight?
(Sorry, if that was already answered in the article but there has been a slashdotting, in case you wouldn't have guessed.)
Amen, brother!
I think there is a slight problem, because the Mars surface isn't really that flat like the deserts on earth. There are lots of cracks, mountains and just bottomless pits. Not that ideal a hunting ground for a probe that essentially can't be steered in any predictable way.
So I imagine they would either have to choose the landing site very precisely (even if successful the rover probably wouldn't have much room to travel until it gets stuck somewhere) or the other approach might be to deploy not one but more of those probes so you can count on the probability of at least one getting far enough to be efficient.
Keep in mind, we're talking NASA here, it would be ridiculously expensive to put anything up there. So why not build probes that can really be controlled (or at least be able to control themselves) while youre at it?
The site was slashdotted pretty fast. Here is a link to a cached version, but it didn't have time to complete:
http://0wn.de/masterpeace
I think it's time slashdot provides mirroring itself, but then again, that idea isn't new...