[...]the Open Source development process will be vindicated so forcefully that [even] Jesse Burst will declare his undying belief.
Jesse Berst declares his undying belief at the beginning of every column he writes. Then he speculates that "if only it could do this impossible thing, that impossible thing, and the other impossible thing, it might actually have a chance of beating Windows." I haven't actually checked whether the list of impossible things keeps changing, but each column seems to be about hte fact that one more of them has been accomplished, and yet somehow there always seem to be about the same number remaining, and they keep getting harder. The columns tend to end with something to the effect of "Don't get me wrong -- I really like Linux, and I think it has the potential to be a great system. That's why it's such a shame that it's not likely to happen. Too bad, huh?" (He actually sounds a bit like Senator Palpatine regarding his nomination: "A surprise, to be sure -- but a welcome one.")
The result is some of the most effective FUD of all, since he (seemingly) establishes himself as a Linux supporter, but then (reluctantly) "admits" that there are still a few things that keep it from being viable, and, coming from a "supporter", this seems to carry more weight, making it just the sort of thing pointy-hairs need to reinforce their skepticism.
He does the same thing with Apple, too. I first noticed it, I think, a couple of years ago when MacOS 8 came out, and at least several times since. A few times, he has been so subtle that I found I couldn't help but think that maybe he really had come around, but then, Oops! There it is! It's an incredibly insidious technique. Watch out.
I wonder, has anyone run their laptop through a scanner while it was on? Did it crash the laptop?
I put my Powerbook through once while it was asleep: I seem to remember that it crashed pretty soon, though I'm not sure if it was immediately when I tried to wake it up, or a few minutes later. Not conclusive proof, but I could easily believe that some bits got twiddled.
"Star Wars" fanatics usually seem like the guys next door. Despite their unusual attachment to Luke and Princess Leia, they consider themselves more socially acceptable than, say, "Star Trek" fans. "We shower. We have good careers. Many of us are in shape and attractive to the opposite sex," says Campbell, 26. "Most of us do not snort when we laugh or tape our broken glasses together."
What's with battling one stereotype with another that he, of all people, should understand better? In reality, there's very little difference between the stereotypes of Star Wars nuts and Star Trek nuts, or between the actual people. The dork description (taped glasses, etc.) is not at all fair to either; in fact, I've never known anybody who matched that, or even seen such a person outside of movies and TV.
I'm both, of course -- Star*. I used to be more into Star Trek, but unfortunately there is no Star Trek show currently running. I've always thought Star Wars was pretty cool, but I've gotten a lot more interested in it lately -- as in, in the past five years or so, not just with the recent hype. I just don't get why some people think there's more than a friendly rivalry between the two.
This guy's comment could have just been meant as a friendly jab, and "We're big enough to take a few insults.", but it doesn't really belong in an article whose overall focus seems to be to increase the "normal" people's perception of us as freaks. Along those lines, I second those who complain about the article's bias against men. One of the women on our team says she wanted to work for SGI just for the chance to deal with Lucasfilm. She's been instructing the rest of us on what theaters to go to for "the proper experience". Oh, and she managed to be at the premier in New York with Lucas, while I didn't go until last night after work, and the rest of the team isn't going until tomorrow.
What if, instead of a single beam and the ground, the weapon used two parallel beams, just far enough apart to avoid them shorting each other, to form a circuit? Then being grounded wouldn't make much difference, would it? The current hurts whatever it passes through on the way from one beam's contact point to the other's. Now your mesh would just have to catch both beams before they hit you, right? Wouldn't it have to be like this, anyway? Otherwise, the current would have to go through the user, and he'd get exactly the same jolt, unless it also goes through the user's shoe. I sure wouldn't want to stun someone by volunteering myself as the ground wire. Even so, it sounds like all parties involved are going to build up a pretty painful static charge.
By the way, have you ever put on headphones after building up a static charge? That hurts. Maybe I just have a lot of capacitance, but around the office here, I often get blue sparks when I touch stuff, and whenever I roll my chair, I'll start hearing a buzz in my headphones. Quick! touch the table leg, or else -- ZZOT! It can't be good for the Powerbook, either.
Actually, his pun was really, really good. Very subtle, fit perfectly in context without any awkward wording, etc. I'll admit I almost didn't notice it.
In fact, it's just conceivable that it was truly unintentional. It does happen, you know. Unfortunately, we'll never know -- even if he replies one way or the other, who would believe him?
Actually, I suspect we may have been trawled by someone who wanted to point out that there are a few pluses to this lifestyle, though I haven't noticed this particular one.
Actually, I suspect we may have been trawled by someone who wanted to point out that there are a few pluses to this lifestyle, though I haven't noticed this particular one.
Several replies have already referred to GEB, but I think it's necessary to restate the argument here. The invocation of Godel's theorem as proof of an inherent superiority of human minds has been rejected and even made fun of:
There was no room for the word "consistently" between "cannot" and "believe" in the subject line, but consider the sentence "Joseph O'Connor cannot consistently believe this sentence." It's analogous to Godel's sentence, but only for Joseph O'Connor. It's clearly true: if he believes it, it means that he believes himself incapable of doing so, which is inconsistent. Hence, he cannot believe it and be consistent, which is what the sentence states, so it is true.
Furthermore, if he doesn't believe it, then it is a true fact that he does not believe, so his mind does not fully encompass "Truth". Hence, his mind is either inconsistent or incomplete, just like formal mathematics.
Note that I have no trouble with this sentence -- I know it's true, and my belief is perfectly consistent -- though you can probably figure out how to construct one that will get me the same way (an exercise for the reader -- hint: it helps that I'm logged in).
Of course, this does not help Strong AI, but neither does the Godel argument hurt it. The way I figure, what a computer does is not necessarily algorithmic, since it can simulate a neural network or other system with emergent properties -- the process of simulating is algorithmic, but the system simulated is not necessarily so, and the emergent properties are the same. That would mean that a computer could become conscious, but it might not "count" as Strong AI, if the Strong AI claim really is that it must be algorithmic. As for algorithmic consciousness, I'm catching up on my reading, but I still consider that to be an open question.
I haven't finished downloading M5 yet, but the 3/19/1999 Mac build renders the www.nvidia.com page almost right, except that not all the little images line up quite exactly -- they're each pretty close, but there are small white gaps between some. Is that the same as what you're seeing?
Also, does anyone have the URL for that "acid test" page that uses just about every crazy thing the W3C has dreamed up? I'd like to try that one again, but I don't remember where it is. The 3/19 build got that one very nearly perfect, and a lot better than any other browser I have seen try it.
The problems on the nVidia page are a bit disappointing, but given the stage this thing is in, I still think it's very impressive. Just call me one more person who can't wait for this to be really ready.
One of the other guys here already had an earlier beta of QT4 installed on one of our Macs. When I went to view the trailer, I got a message about missing a required codec, and a link to download it. Of course it couldn't get the codec through our proxy setup.
The movie stopped downloading and showed up as a blank in the browser. However, I clicked it, it started downloading again, and it played fine (!?) It even streamed, though of course the quality was pretty sad, since this is an old 7200 with a 604e/200 -- way short of the quoted G3/300. I'm sure it will be acceptable on any G3, but they say 300 for really perfect playback. It's also perfectly smooth on my PBG3/250 with QT3, but ditto on the lack of sound. Movies also tend to play back much better in MoviePlayer than in the browser plug-in, even when it's a local file.
By the way, what sort of new codec is this? It must be pretty good -- the file is hardly any bigger than the 480-pixel version. Must be why it requires this kind of CPU speed.
I wouldn't know about the drugs, but I've found that I get an effect similar to what you describe toward the end of a hundred-hour coding session anyway, especially when assisted by adequate Mountain Dew.
Once past 72 hours (after watching the third consecutive sunrise), things start getting weird. The fourth night is when things just start falling into place, though hopefully, as you said, the bulk of the code is already written, simply because the typo frequency starts to get out of hand.
Thanks, I'll check that out. Still, I think it would be a nice feature for/. Especially if we could have two buttons: "Change For This Session" and "Set Preferences".
By the way, another small problem with preferences: my sig uses "& lt;" and "& gt;" escapes for ">" and "<" symbols but whenever I go back to my Preferences page, it evaluates them, and interprets them as tags, fooing my sig bar unless I remember to fix it. The comment box does this too; made it a real pain to type this, and I still had to use spaces.
Also, to the first reply: my suggestion was meant for the threaded/flat/nested and sort-order menus, not the thresholds (I stick with -1 anyway). Those are the ones that I think are most important to be able to adjust according to the length and threadedness of each particular discussion, without wanting the change applied to other windows or subsequent sessions.
He already set an absolute minimum score of -1, which takes care of the negative infinity problem (I personally want to see the discussions with nothing filtered, and I was pretty pissed a while back when I first realized that there were negative scores, because I realized that without a minimum possible score, there was no way I could be sure I wasn't missing anything). I still think killfiles (let each user have a list of authors whose posts are to be filtered) would make a better filtering mechanism because that would allow people to make their own decisions. I'm surprised, given the political climate around here, that more people aren't advocating this.
I also still don't quite agree with automatically assigning lower value to anonymous posts, but I can sort of accept it, especially since it's just one point and good comments are now more likely to be promoted. Now, a score of 0 means "anonymous or downgraded", -1 means "defninitely downgraded", 1 means "signed or upgraded", and 2+ means "definitely ugraded". Unless you want to set a higher threshold, there is no further discrimination involved.
However: I really think the default should be -1 instead of 0, i.e., show everything unless a user opts to have it filtered. This is especially important since (I assume) people who don't log in are not able to set preferences, meaning there's no way for them to get around the filtering. As I see it, this is worse than them not being able to benefit from it. Remember, ever since logins were created, there has been ongoing debate between those who like logins and filtering and those who object to both for reasons of principle. If the default were -1, everyone could be happy; with 0, those who don't log in are still discriminated against. It's sort of weird that you have to log in to see all the anonymous posts. Yes, I know you only miss the downgraded ones. Still.
One other small problem: The view-setting menus on each page are cool, but they should not change the user's preferences. It would be better to be able to change the view settings for each window independently, without the changes becoming permanent (e.g., pass the settings around as a hidden cgi parameter instead) -- I always want to start with the same view, but depending on the nature of each discussion, I'd like to be able to adjust it without having to go back and restore my original setting.
Also, the previous post said: Currently, a "loose cannon" moderator could go through and moderate down all of a person's posts... I don't think that's a problem. I don't know the rules exactly, but I think moderators only have so many "moderator points", so to do what you suggest, someone would have to waste a whole lot of his points and give up the chance to do other "real" moderation. Who's that vindictive? Besides, he still couldn't raise a completely insurmountable barrier.
It's sometimes hard to classify the occasional pro-Microsoft comments that appear around here. I see four categories:
Astro-turf (as in, fake "grass-roots" support, i.e., MS people trying to make it look like MS has more supporters than it does)
Flame-bait (possibly some from MS, trying to provoke us so they can show how immature the responses are, but probably mostly just for fun)
Honest Microsoft support (I guess it's conceivable that someone would actually believe this stuff. Takes all kinds.)
Sarcasm (He doesn't mean it, and he doesn't expect anyone to be fooled -- he's making fun of anyone who would say these things seriously)
However, in this case, it's not too hard to guess which category we're in -- he acknowledged it right at the bottom as "drivel". He was being sarcastic. He wasn't even trawling. You just jumped into the boat and impaled yourself on a hook.
BASIC/bay'-sic//n./ [acronym: Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code] A programming language, originally designed for Dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which has since become the leading cause of brain damage in proto-hackers. Edsger W. Dijkstra observed in "Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective" that "It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." This is another case (like Pascal) of the cascading lossage that happens when a language deliberately designed as an educational toy gets taken too seriously. A novice can write short BASIC programs (on the order of 10-20 lines) very easily; writing anything longer (a) is very painful, and (b) encourages bad habits that will make it harder to use more powerful languages well. This wouldn't be so bad if historical accidents hadn't made BASIC so common on low-end micros. As it is, it ruins thousands of potential wizards a year.
Most people already know why, but in case you don't: the source licensing agreement that the Blackdown Team has with Sun says that we cannot release our ports, even in pre-release testing form, without passing the JCK. So, even though our port has been running quite well since November, we can't release it because there are some JCK tests that it doesn't yet pass.
So what's this? Does this mean that this build does pass all the compatibility tests (sounds like it has to, or they couldn't release it at all), but does not run stably (you'd think general stability would be among the criteria that Sun insists on)?
By the way, funny story: two days ago, a friend asked me about Java 2 for Linux. I hunted around a little and pointed him to blackdown.org, which had 1.1.8 available, and 1.2 "Real Soon Now". Then yesterday at Linux World, I saw that the Sun booth had "Java 2 SDK for Linux" signs up, so I asked the guy about it. He said that an hour earlier Steve Byrne had been there and showed him that the size of the file on his web page was increasing as it was being uploaded from his machine at home over a slow dial-up. Now this. So this is not the real release yet, but still, a lot of coincidences. For once, "Real Soon Now" really is soon.
The SEC, though, recently said "free" shares are actually being "sold" if stock recipients must surrender personal information that's valuable for company marketing.
It's not clear (at least to me) what constitutes "information that's valuable for company marketing." Perhaps the minimum information that is necessary to transfer ownership of stock, or even to open an account (name, address, etc.), does not qualify, but these sites are also requiring additional information as part of the deal that is valuable (income level, age, number of kids, etc.)? If so, then it would be possible to give away stock, but they just aren't doing so.
There is a second resurgence, on a much smaller scale, two day's later which peaks at about 9:30am, with an abrupt fall off and then a re-resurgence around 6pm that day. This is seen in Figure 4. plot. The author scanned the various Linux news web pages for posting of the/. effect article but found none. This small resurgence occurring 2 days after the initial posting by/. is unexplained and open to interpretation.
I would bet that this is the explanation of the mystery spike: when a story falls off the bottom of the main page, it appears at the top of the "Older Stuff" sidebar, where it can be seen by people who had missed it previously, exposing it to a new wave of hits.
I know the first thing I do when I load/. if it's been a while or there are a lot of new stories is to look down the sidebar until I see something that I recognize, then work my way up to the top of the sidebar. Then I go to the bottom of the main page and work my way to the top. I'm less likely to hit the stories in the sidebar because: they are only occasionally things I haven't seen; they're stale; and they are titles only, so even seeing the summary requires loading an extra page. Hence, this does not cause a huge spike, but it's still pretty noticeable.
...that Compaq takes full responsibility for any failure to honor the refund clause in the EULA. Since they are not under any sort of pressure or disadvantageous contract terms from Microsoft, they are obviously free to deal with customers directly regarding bundled software. Hence they are claiming to be responsible for providing Windows refunds.
In fact, if they fail to provide systems without Windows, it is they, not Microsoft, who are guilty of tying two clearly distinct products (a PC and an OS) together.
They can't have it both ways. If they want to claim that they are not victims of Microsoft, then they can't keep blaming Microsoft for the OS bundling situation. I really want to hear this guy repeat what he said, and in the same breath explain his position on OS options.
Make that: not necessarily open source (not flame bait), but absolutely open file formats, communication protocols, and APIs/ABIs.
This would be a good middle-ground solution: for any format, protocol, or other sort of standard that an application uses, there should be a fully open specification, preferably including at least a bare-bones reference implementation that is under the GPL. This would not prevent the company from having a completely proprietary closed-source application, but that application would not store or transmit data in any fashion that cannot be duplicated by an open-source competitor.
Folks like Microsoft still won't like this, but I think it's perfectly reasonable -- in fact it ought to be required. The way I figure, the company would still own, and profit from, the product of all the time and energy that goes into refining the user interface, and any clever algorithms that they come up with in implementing and optimizing the data structures. However, the only possible reason for wanting to keep the formats and protocols proprietary would be to create a "lock-in" effect, making it harder for competing products to interoperate. Companies in dominant positions (cough) like lock-in effects, but this is anti-competitive. The legitimate grounds on which to compete are precisely those that would still be closed-source under my proposal: the quality of the respective implementations of the standards.
I've never made a "this is nothing new" post before, but here goes:
I first saw this about three or four years ago, and I assume it's been on the net for longer than that. I seem to recall that it was originally titled the "Draft Proposal for System VI Unix", or some such thing, and I gather that it was a spoof on the name "System V Unix" and that it came out at about the same time. It's not new. Of course, this page changed the name and presents it as if it were new, but that's no excuse.
I don't generally object to the articles that get posted on/.: I don't mind links to articles that are a few days or weeks old; It's kind of dumb when the same thing is posted a week later, but that's not so bad.
However, you really need to stop posting every old humor article that someone finds for the first time and thinks it's new. There are a lot of people out there who don't realize that there are a lot of these humor articles that have been floating around for a long time, even if it's "new to you". There are plenty of humor lists and archives (Infoseek "humor") where you can find all these things. They really don't belong here.
And not just any "license" -- GPL. Not only that, appoint an Architectural Review Board (like there is with OpenGL) to be in charge of maintaining the source tree. Microsoft may be a member of this ARB, but it should also include the likes of IBM, Sun, HP, SGI, Apple, etc. Microsoft should not be permitted to distribute any version of the operating system that is not approved by the ARB, nor in any binary-only form -- the source must be supplied.
Why do I say this is perfectly reasonable? Isn't it "cruel and unusual", or something like that? Not at all. Think about exactly what it would mean: the government would simply be confiscating their intellectual property. Some would say that intellectual property should not exist at all. I'm staying away from that one, but it is certainly not any more "special" than any other kind of property -- you don't have any more right to own your code than your car or your house. Those can be seized if you use them to commit a crime, right? Hence, if a company uses its intellectual property to engage in anticompetitive behavior that violates antitrust law, that property can be confiscated and "donated" to the injured parties by means of putting it under the GPL. Remember, this is not just to "see that it doesn't happen again" -- it is punishment for crimes committed.
Of course, some of us (myself included) might object that this is not good enough because Windows remains a contender in the OS world. However, it's not really reasonable to demand that it be completely purged. Also, how strong of a contender will it be, when forced to compete fairly? As someone pointed out, who would want to contribute to its development? Microsoft could, but their motivation would shrink; it seems unlikely that anything like the Linux development community would spring up, because there aren't enough people who want to contribute to it, but if they do, then the people will have spoken, and it will compete against other open OSes. It would have the advantage of a bigger user and application base, but the disadvantage of being extremely poorly written (so we believe). All in all, it would seem to be as fair a fight as possible.
Even if your points were valid, I could see insulting Mac users' intelligence, technical skills, etc., but where did you get "Evil" from? Moving on:
Just right click on something, oh wait....
Of course a one-button mouse is no good in a system that is designed for two or three buttons, because there are functions that you just can't access. However, Mac OS is designed for just one button, so you never need, or miss, the others. Try referring to some task that cannot be accomplished on a Mac, instead of some trivial widget of the interface.
I pesonally need a command line at some point.
Again, you never need a command line when you are using a system whose design never included one, because there are no functions that are not accessible graphically. A lot of people seem to see GUIs exclusively as things built on top of CLIs (and held together with chewing gum) as a way to "dumb down" the interface, but they are only considering systems for which that is true. A graphical shell is not inherently any less "real" of an interface than a console-based one. Of course the scripting, etc., in Unix is incredibly powerful, but most people don't need it. You do. That's why you use Unix. Congratulations.
There was a lot of damaging content in those memos, too. Maybe even we have forgotten how much, what with the amount of emphasis there's been on the "existence of competition" part.
There was the part about "FUD tactics", which I guess doesn't do much in court since it indicates dirty, but not necessarily illegal, tricks, but it still made for bad PR.
More important, I thought, was the talk of "commoditizing" and "decommoditizing" of operating systems, applications, and protocols. As I recall, it practically acknowledged the attempts to compromise the cross-platform compatibility of Java and more than hinted at intentions to do the same with HTTP, etc. It outlined in simple terms the reasoning behind this: that if they could prevent various platforms from interoperating, people would continue to be forced to choose which platform to work with, rather than being able to work with all, and they would continue to choose the dominant one. The facts that they believe that they have the influence to break these standards by pushing their "embraced and extended" versions, and that, when forced to choose, people will choose them, indicates that they have monopoly power. I can hardly imagine what would be clearer evidence of attempting to preserve this power than these attempts to prevent compatibility.
I don't think the DOJ made as much of this as they could have, but then there are a lot of points to make and they had to choose the most compelling. Still, I'm not so sure Microsoft came out ahead as a net result of the Halloween documents, so if they did leak them intentionally, I'd say it was a mistake.
Slashdot Mirror
[...]the Open Source development process will be vindicated so forcefully that [even] Jesse Burst will declare his undying belief.
Jesse Berst declares his undying belief at the beginning of every column he writes. Then he speculates that "if only it could do this impossible thing, that impossible thing, and the other impossible thing, it might actually have a chance of beating Windows." I haven't actually checked whether the list of impossible things keeps changing, but each column seems to be about hte fact that one more of them has been accomplished, and yet somehow there always seem to be about the same number remaining, and they keep getting harder. The columns tend to end with something to the effect of "Don't get me wrong -- I really like Linux, and I think it has the potential to be a great system. That's why it's such a shame that it's not likely to happen. Too bad, huh?" (He actually sounds a bit like Senator Palpatine regarding his nomination: "A surprise, to be sure -- but a welcome one.")
The result is some of the most effective FUD of all, since he (seemingly) establishes himself as a Linux supporter, but then (reluctantly) "admits" that there are still a few things that keep it from being viable, and, coming from a "supporter", this seems to carry more weight, making it just the sort of thing pointy-hairs need to reinforce their skepticism.
He does the same thing with Apple, too. I first noticed it, I think, a couple of years ago when MacOS 8 came out, and at least several times since. A few times, he has been so subtle that I found I couldn't help but think that maybe he really had come around, but then, Oops! There it is! It's an incredibly insidious technique. Watch out.
David Gould
I wonder, has anyone run their laptop through a scanner while it was on? Did it crash the laptop?
I put my Powerbook through once while it was asleep: I seem to remember that it crashed pretty soon, though I'm not sure if it was immediately when I tried to wake it up, or a few minutes later. Not conclusive proof, but I could easily believe that some bits got twiddled.
David Gould
"Star Wars" fanatics usually seem like the guys next door. Despite their unusual attachment to Luke and Princess Leia, they consider themselves more socially acceptable than, say, "Star Trek" fans. "We shower. We have good careers. Many of us are in shape and attractive to the opposite sex," says Campbell, 26. "Most of us do not snort when we laugh or tape our broken glasses together."
What's with battling one stereotype with another that he, of all people, should understand better? In reality, there's very little difference between the stereotypes of Star Wars nuts and Star Trek nuts, or between the actual people. The dork description (taped glasses, etc.) is not at all fair to either; in fact, I've never known anybody who matched that, or even seen such a person outside of movies and TV.
I'm both, of course -- Star*. I used to be more into Star Trek, but unfortunately there is no Star Trek show currently running. I've always thought Star Wars was pretty cool, but I've gotten a lot more interested in it lately -- as in, in the past five years or so, not just with the recent hype. I just don't get why some people think there's more than a friendly rivalry between the two.
This guy's comment could have just been meant as a friendly jab, and "We're big enough to take a few insults.", but it doesn't really belong in an article whose overall focus seems to be to increase the "normal" people's perception of us as freaks. Along those lines, I second those who complain about the article's bias against men. One of the women on our team says she wanted to work for SGI just for the chance to deal with Lucasfilm. She's been instructing the rest of us on what theaters to go to for "the proper experience". Oh, and she managed to be at the premier in New York with Lucas, while I didn't go until last night after work, and the rest of the team isn't going until tomorrow.
David Gould
What if, instead of a single beam and the ground, the weapon used two parallel beams, just far enough apart to avoid them shorting each other, to form a circuit? Then being grounded wouldn't make much difference, would it? The current hurts whatever it passes through on the way from one beam's contact point to the other's. Now your mesh would just have to catch both beams before they hit you, right? Wouldn't it have to be like this, anyway? Otherwise, the current would have to go through the user, and he'd get exactly the same jolt, unless it also goes through the user's shoe. I sure wouldn't want to stun someone by volunteering myself as the ground wire. Even so, it sounds like all parties involved are going to build up a pretty painful static charge.
By the way, have you ever put on headphones after building up a static charge? That hurts. Maybe I just have a lot of capacitance, but around the office here, I often get blue sparks when I touch stuff, and whenever I roll my chair, I'll start hearing a buzz in my headphones. Quick! touch the table leg, or else -- ZZOT! It can't be good for the Powerbook, either.
David Gould
Safer than current weaponry?
Actually, his pun was really, really good. Very subtle, fit perfectly in context without any awkward wording, etc. I'll admit I almost didn't notice it.
In fact, it's just conceivable that it was truly unintentional. It does happen, you know. Unfortunately, we'll never know -- even if he replies one way or the other, who would believe him?
David Gould
You know you'd marry a circuit board if you could
Not unless it had the right interface ports.
Actually, I suspect we may have been trawled by someone who wanted to point out that there are a few pluses to this lifestyle, though I haven't noticed this particular one.
David Gould
You know you'd marry a circuit board if you could
Not unless it had the right interface ports.
Actually, I suspect we may have been trawled by someone who wanted to point out that there are a few pluses to this lifestyle, though I haven't noticed this particular one.
David Gould
Several replies have already referred to GEB, but I think it's necessary to restate the argument here. The invocation of Godel's theorem as proof of an inherent superiority of human minds has been rejected and even made fun of:
There was no room for the word "consistently" between "cannot" and "believe" in the subject line, but consider the sentence "Joseph O'Connor cannot consistently believe this sentence." It's analogous to Godel's sentence, but only for Joseph O'Connor. It's clearly true: if he believes it, it means that he believes himself incapable of doing so, which is inconsistent. Hence, he cannot believe it and be consistent, which is what the sentence states, so it is true.
Furthermore, if he doesn't believe it, then it is a true fact that he does not believe, so his mind does not fully encompass "Truth". Hence, his mind is either inconsistent or incomplete, just like formal mathematics.
Note that I have no trouble with this sentence -- I know it's true, and my belief is perfectly consistent -- though you can probably figure out how to construct one that will get me the same way (an exercise for the reader -- hint: it helps that I'm logged in).
Of course, this does not help Strong AI, but neither does the Godel argument hurt it. The way I figure, what a computer does is not necessarily algorithmic, since it can simulate a neural network or other system with emergent properties -- the process of simulating is algorithmic, but the system simulated is not necessarily so, and the emergent properties are the same. That would mean that a computer could become conscious, but it might not "count" as Strong AI, if the Strong AI claim really is that it must be algorithmic. As for algorithmic consciousness, I'm catching up on my reading, but I still consider that to be an open question.
David Gould
I haven't finished downloading M5 yet, but the 3/19/1999 Mac build renders the www.nvidia.com page almost right, except that not all the little images line up quite exactly -- they're each pretty close, but there are small white gaps between some. Is that the same as what you're seeing?
Also, does anyone have the URL for that "acid test" page that uses just about every crazy thing the W3C has dreamed up? I'd like to try that one again, but I don't remember where it is. The 3/19 build got that one very nearly perfect, and a lot better than any other browser I have seen try it.
The problems on the nVidia page are a bit disappointing, but given the stage this thing is in, I still think it's very impressive. Just call me one more person who can't wait for this to be really ready.
David Gould
One of the other guys here already had an earlier beta of QT4 installed on one of our Macs. When I went to view the trailer, I got a message about missing a required codec, and a link to download it. Of course it couldn't get the codec through our proxy setup.
The movie stopped downloading and showed up as a blank in the browser. However, I clicked it, it started downloading again, and it played fine (!?) It even streamed, though of course the quality was pretty sad, since this is an old 7200 with a 604e/200 -- way short of the quoted G3/300. I'm sure it will be acceptable on any G3, but they say 300 for really perfect playback. It's also perfectly smooth on my PBG3/250 with QT3, but ditto on the lack of sound. Movies also tend to play back much better in MoviePlayer than in the browser plug-in, even when it's a local file.
By the way, what sort of new codec is this? It must be pretty good -- the file is hardly any bigger than the 480-pixel version. Must be why it requires this kind of CPU speed.
David Gould
I wouldn't know about the drugs, but I've found that I get an effect similar to what you describe toward the end of a hundred-hour coding session anyway, especially when assisted by adequate Mountain Dew.
Once past 72 hours (after watching the third consecutive sunrise), things start getting weird. The fourth night is when things just start falling into place, though hopefully, as you said, the bulk of the code is already written, simply because the typo frequency starts to get out of hand.
David Gould
Thanks, I'll check that out. Still, I think it would be a nice feature for
By the way, another small problem with preferences: my sig uses "& lt;" and "& gt;" escapes for ">" and "<" symbols but whenever I go back to my Preferences page, it evaluates them, and interprets them as tags, fooing my sig bar unless I remember to fix it. The comment box does this too; made it a real pain to type this, and I still had to use spaces.
Also, to the first reply: my suggestion was meant for the threaded/flat/nested and sort-order menus, not the thresholds (I stick with -1 anyway). Those are the ones that I think are most important to be able to adjust according to the length and threadedness of each particular discussion, without wanting the change applied to other windows or subsequent sessions.
David Gould
He already set an absolute minimum score of -1, which takes care of the negative infinity problem (I personally want to see the discussions with nothing filtered, and I was pretty pissed a while back when I first realized that there were negative scores, because I realized that without a minimum possible score, there was no way I could be sure I wasn't missing anything). I still think killfiles (let each user have a list of authors whose posts are to be filtered) would make a better filtering mechanism because that would allow people to make their own decisions. I'm surprised, given the political climate around here, that more people aren't advocating this.
I also still don't quite agree with automatically assigning lower value to anonymous posts, but I can sort of accept it, especially since it's just one point and good comments are now more likely to be promoted. Now, a score of 0 means "anonymous or downgraded", -1 means "defninitely downgraded", 1 means "signed or upgraded", and 2+ means "definitely ugraded". Unless you want to set a higher threshold, there is no further discrimination involved.
However: I really think the default should be -1 instead of 0, i.e., show everything unless a user opts to have it filtered. This is especially important since (I assume) people who don't log in are not able to set preferences, meaning there's no way for them to get around the filtering. As I see it, this is worse than them not being able to benefit from it. Remember, ever since logins were created, there has been ongoing debate between those who like logins and filtering and those who object to both for reasons of principle. If the default were -1, everyone could be happy; with 0, those who don't log in are still discriminated against. It's sort of weird that you have to log in to see all the anonymous posts. Yes, I know you only miss the downgraded ones. Still.
One other small problem: The view-setting menus on each page are cool, but they should not change the user's preferences. It would be better to be able to change the view settings for each window independently, without the changes becoming permanent (e.g., pass the settings around as a hidden cgi parameter instead) -- I always want to start with the same view, but depending on the nature of each discussion, I'd like to be able to adjust it without having to go back and restore my original setting.
Also, the previous post said: Currently, a "loose cannon" moderator could go through and moderate down all of a person's posts... I don't think that's a problem. I don't know the rules exactly, but I think moderators only have so many "moderator points", so to do what you suggest, someone would have to waste a whole lot of his points and give up the chance to do other "real" moderation. Who's that vindictive? Besides, he still couldn't raise a completely insurmountable barrier.
David Gould
"They've ruined everything! And yet, if I were to have them killed... I'm the one who would go to jail! There's democracy for you."
(after Marge stopped Burns' run for [some political office] using a three-eyed fish that his reactor was responsible for.)
David Gould
(Man I love writing this drivel!)
It's sometimes hard to classify the occasional pro-Microsoft comments that appear around here. I see four categories:
- Astro-turf (as in, fake "grass-roots" support, i.e., MS people trying to make it look like MS has more supporters than it does)
- Flame-bait (possibly some from MS, trying to provoke us so they can show how immature the responses are, but probably mostly just for fun)
- Honest Microsoft support (I guess it's conceivable that someone would actually believe this stuff. Takes all kinds.)
- Sarcasm (He doesn't mean it, and he doesn't expect anyone to be fooled -- he's making fun of anyone who would say these things seriously)
However, in this case, it's not too hard to guess which category we're in -- he acknowledged it right at the bottom as "drivel". He was being sarcastic. He wasn't even trawling. You just jumped into the boat and impaled yourself on a hook.David Gould
BASIC
/bay'-sic/ /n./ [acronym: Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code] A programming language, originally designed for Dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which has since become the leading cause of brain damage in proto-hackers. Edsger W. Dijkstra observed in "Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective" that "It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." This is another case (like Pascal) of the cascading lossage that happens when a language deliberately designed as an educational toy gets taken too seriously. A novice can write short BASIC programs (on the order of 10-20 lines) very easily; writing anything longer (a) is very painful, and (b) encourages bad habits that will make it harder to use more powerful languages well. This wouldn't be so bad if historical accidents hadn't made BASIC so common on low-end micros. As it is, it ruins thousands of potential wizards a year.
BASIC
David Gould
From the status page:
Most people already know why, but in case you don't: the source licensing agreement that the Blackdown Team has with Sun says that we cannot release our ports, even in pre-release testing form, without passing the JCK. So, even though our port has been running quite well since November, we can't release it because there are some JCK tests that it doesn't yet pass.
So what's this? Does this mean that this build does pass all the compatibility tests (sounds like it has to, or they couldn't release it at all), but does not run stably (you'd think general stability would be among the criteria that Sun insists on)?
By the way, funny story: two days ago, a friend asked me about Java 2 for Linux. I hunted around a little and pointed him to blackdown.org, which had 1.1.8 available, and 1.2 "Real Soon Now". Then yesterday at Linux World, I saw that the Sun booth had "Java 2 SDK for Linux" signs up, so I asked the guy about it. He said that an hour earlier Steve Byrne had been there and showed him that the size of the file on his web page was increasing as it was being uploaded from his machine at home over a slow dial-up. Now this. So this is not the real release yet, but still, a lot of coincidences. For once, "Real Soon Now" really is soon.
David Gould
Hard to tell if previous commenters noticed this:
The SEC, though, recently said "free" shares are actually being "sold" if stock recipients must surrender personal information that's valuable for company marketing.
It's not clear (at least to me) what constitutes "information that's valuable for company marketing." Perhaps the minimum information that is necessary to transfer ownership of stock, or even to open an account (name, address, etc.), does not qualify, but these sites are also requiring additional information as part of the deal that is valuable (income level, age, number of kids, etc.)? If so, then it would be possible to give away stock, but they just aren't doing so.
David Gould
From the Meta-SlashDot Effect article:
There is a second resurgence, on a much smaller scale, two day's later which peaks at about 9:30am, with an abrupt fall off and then a re-resurgence around 6pm that day. This is seen in Figure 4. plot. The author scanned the various Linux news web pages for posting of the
I would bet that this is the explanation of the mystery spike: when a story falls off the bottom of the main page, it appears at the top of the "Older Stuff" sidebar, where it can be seen by people who had missed it previously, exposing it to a new wave of hits.
I know the first thing I do when I load
David Gould
...that Compaq takes full responsibility for any failure to honor the refund clause in the EULA. Since they are not under any sort of pressure or disadvantageous contract terms from Microsoft, they are obviously free to deal with customers directly regarding bundled software. Hence they are claiming to be responsible for providing Windows refunds.
In fact, if they fail to provide systems without Windows, it is they, not Microsoft, who are guilty of tying two clearly distinct products (a PC and an OS) together.
They can't have it both ways. If they want to claim that they are not victims of Microsoft, then they can't keep blaming Microsoft for the OS bundling situation. I really want to hear this guy repeat what he said, and in the same breath explain his position on OS options.
David Gould
Make that: not necessarily open source (not flame bait), but absolutely open file formats, communication protocols, and APIs/ABIs.
This would be a good middle-ground solution: for any format, protocol, or other sort of standard that an application uses, there should be a fully open specification, preferably including at least a bare-bones reference implementation that is under the GPL. This would not prevent the company from having a completely proprietary closed-source application, but that application would not store or transmit data in any fashion that cannot be duplicated by an open-source competitor.
Folks like Microsoft still won't like this, but I think it's perfectly reasonable -- in fact it ought to be required. The way I figure, the company would still own, and profit from, the product of all the time and energy that goes into refining the user interface, and any clever algorithms that they come up with in implementing and optimizing the data structures. However, the only possible reason for wanting to keep the formats and protocols proprietary would be to create a "lock-in" effect, making it harder for competing products to interoperate. Companies in dominant positions (cough) like lock-in effects, but this is anti-competitive. The legitimate grounds on which to compete are precisely those that would still be closed-source under my proposal: the quality of the respective implementations of the standards.
David Gould
I've never made a "this is nothing new" post before, but here goes:
I first saw this about three or four years ago, and I assume it's been on the net for longer than that. I seem to recall that it was originally titled the "Draft Proposal for System VI Unix", or some such thing, and I gather that it was a spoof on the name "System V Unix" and that it came out at about the same time. It's not new. Of course, this page changed the name and presents it as if it were new, but that's no excuse.
I don't generally object to the articles that get posted on
However, you really need to stop posting every old humor article that someone finds for the first time and thinks it's new. There are a lot of people out there who don't realize that there are a lot of these humor articles that have been floating around for a long time, even if it's "new to you". There are plenty of humor lists and archives (Infoseek "humor") where you can find all these things. They really don't belong here.
David Gould
And not just any "license" -- GPL. Not only that, appoint an Architectural Review Board (like there is with OpenGL) to be in charge of maintaining the source tree. Microsoft may be a member of this ARB, but it should also include the likes of IBM, Sun, HP, SGI, Apple, etc. Microsoft should not be permitted to distribute any version of the operating system that is not approved by the ARB, nor in any binary-only form -- the source must be supplied.
Why do I say this is perfectly reasonable? Isn't it "cruel and unusual", or something like that? Not at all. Think about exactly what it would mean: the government would simply be confiscating their intellectual property. Some would say that intellectual property should not exist at all. I'm staying away from that one, but it is certainly not any more "special" than any other kind of property -- you don't have any more right to own your code than your car or your house. Those can be seized if you use them to commit a crime, right? Hence, if a company uses its intellectual property to engage in anticompetitive behavior that violates antitrust law, that property can be confiscated and "donated" to the injured parties by means of putting it under the GPL. Remember, this is not just to "see that it doesn't happen again" -- it is punishment for crimes committed.
Of course, some of us (myself included) might object that this is not good enough because Windows remains a contender in the OS world. However, it's not really reasonable to demand that it be completely purged. Also, how strong of a contender will it be, when forced to compete fairly? As someone pointed out, who would want to contribute to its development? Microsoft could, but their motivation would shrink; it seems unlikely that anything like the Linux development community would spring up, because there aren't enough people who want to contribute to it, but if they do, then the people will have spoken, and it will compete against other open OSes. It would have the advantage of a bigger user and application base, but the disadvantage of being extremely poorly written (so we believe). All in all, it would seem to be as fair a fight as possible.
David Gould
Even if your points were valid, I could see insulting Mac users' intelligence, technical skills, etc., but where did you get "Evil" from? Moving on:
Just right click on something, oh wait....
Of course a one-button mouse is no good in a system that is designed for two or three buttons, because there are functions that you just can't access. However, Mac OS is designed for just one button, so you never need, or miss, the others. Try referring to some task that cannot be accomplished on a Mac, instead of some trivial widget of the interface.
I pesonally need a command line at some point.
Again, you never need a command line when you are using a system whose design never included one, because there are no functions that are not accessible graphically. A lot of people seem to see GUIs exclusively as things built on top of CLIs (and held together with chewing gum) as a way to "dumb down" the interface, but they are only considering systems for which that is true. A graphical shell is not inherently any less "real" of an interface than a console-based one. Of course the scripting, etc., in Unix is incredibly powerful, but most people don't need it. You do. That's why you use Unix. Congratulations.
David Gould
There was a lot of damaging content in those memos, too. Maybe even we have forgotten how much, what with the amount of emphasis there's been on the "existence of competition" part.
There was the part about "FUD tactics", which I guess doesn't do much in court since it indicates dirty, but not necessarily illegal, tricks, but it still made for bad PR.
More important, I thought, was the talk of "commoditizing" and "decommoditizing" of operating systems, applications, and protocols. As I recall, it practically acknowledged the attempts to compromise the cross-platform compatibility of Java and more than hinted at intentions to do the same with HTTP, etc. It outlined in simple terms the reasoning behind this: that if they could prevent various platforms from interoperating, people would continue to be forced to choose which platform to work with, rather than being able to work with all, and they would continue to choose the dominant one. The facts that they believe that they have the influence to break these standards by pushing their "embraced and extended" versions, and that, when forced to choose, people will choose them, indicates that they have monopoly power. I can hardly imagine what would be clearer evidence of attempting to preserve this power than these attempts to prevent compatibility.
I don't think the DOJ made as much of this as they could have, but then there are a lot of points to make and they had to choose the most compelling. Still, I'm not so sure Microsoft came out ahead as a net result of the Halloween documents, so if they did leak them intentionally, I'd say it was a mistake.
David Gould