In order to understand the source code to your precious Linux kernel one has to know 1) C
Absolutely, and if C ever falls into disuse, there aren't going to be very many kernel hackers.
sed makes short work of those once the text has been ocr'd into a computer.
You do have a point there, although I'm not certain if the abbrevations were quite so regular as be solved by search and replace.
Hardly. The Italian language is nothing more than the modern form of Latin. Any Italian speaker could be up to speed on Latin in a matter of weeks.
Now this is absurd. A knowledge of Italian might help some in getting vocabulary, but nobody reads Latin without years of study. I've studied some Latin (although certainly not enough to read a real manuscript) and I know the real problem in learning Latin is the grammar and its many cases, quite unlike the simplified grammar of modern Romance languages.
The difference between knowledge of Latin and possession of a BBC micro is that Latin is software, whereas a BBC micro is hardware, and hardware costs much more to physically reproduce than software does.
Yes, but the problem isn't the hardware (Laserdisc readers are still around), but the BBC file formats...
You can store digital information on analog media. Cassette tapes were common for storing computer programmes in the early days of personal computers, and even just several years ago I used a hard drive backup system that used VHS tapes as media.
The article claims that the 1086 Book is still "perfectly usable". It is not. In order to understand it one has to know 1) Latin and 2) the odd medieval abbrevations common to Latin manuscripts in England at the time. Both these skills are just as obsolete as BBC microcomputers. I don't see how they are any different, really.
It's an interesting example of how a metaphor can be totally opaque to one group of people, yet very clear to another -- just like the mysterious padlock icon.
True, but I should have mentioned that although he is a UNIX-geek on big hardware, Macintoshes are what the professor has had on his desk for over ten years. So he really is a member of both target groups of OS X.
Well, I happen to know a university professor who has used UNIX since the '70s, and he was puzzled by exactly the same OS X dialog -- it really isn't obvious at first sight that it is just a graphical "sudo".
Already been done, 2 years ago actually, an Asian Gaur was cloned from the last remaining specimen after it died.
True enough, but seeing how the specimen had just recently died, it isn't quite the same as the "Jurassic Park" scenario, which will probably never come to pass, no matter how advanced cloning technology becomes because the information just isn't there. We'll never get even close to the complete genome of a dinosaur because its DNA has long since been degraded. And don't tell me about preserved DNA in amber -- first of all, almost all of the claims about preserved DNA have since been shown to be simple contamination, and secondly the were just short fragments anyway.
Why is this flamebait? Monte is pointing out the obvious fact that the Model 100 had *nothing* to do with the other TRS-80 computers -- it wasn't a portable version of them.
Sort of like how Slashdot competes with the quasi-monopolies held by the magazine industry in order to provide information to geeks who can't afford to buy magazines that check their facts, etc.:-)
Not a good analogy at all. Open journals will be peer reviewed, just like closed journals. BTW: there is *already* a series of open biological journals that seem quite promising -- Biomed Central -- check them out here
That sounds like a much better idea than digging wells, digging latrines downhill from them, developing graywater systems for irrigation, educating women
Well, if that's all it would take to solve the problems of the third world, then they wouldn't need any help from anyone else. I'm sure the farmers can dig holes in the ground perfectly well themselves. Disease, famine, and malnutrition require more complicated solutions, all of which have a technological component.
and prosecuting the corrupt government officials that divert foreign aid into their own pockets when it was intended to feed starving women and children.
Who do you want to prosecute them?
No, what we need is Big Science!!! Keeping the price of patented pharmaceuticals well above what any third world nation can afford! Developing Lifestyle Drugs that Only The Rich Need! Botox! IVF Drugs! Xenical! Viagra! That'll save the world!
Well this "big science" that you mock is probably responsible for you being alive right now, (did you or any of your ancestors ever use an antibiotic?) If that's not saving the world, what is?
Why don't they try treating the starving children already born, those without clean water to drink or wash in, those orphaned by war, drought, famine, pestilence and death FIRST?
Because to solve those problems you need scientists, and the simple fact is that a baby born in to a upper middle class/rich first world country has one heck of a higher chance of being a scientist than one born to a poor third world farmer.
About half the time either I or a friend rents a DVD it is scratched to the point of being unusable.
I have never seen this. The durability of DVDs is a major reason for wanting to rent them. VHS tapes, like cassette tapes, get worn out easily. Many, many times I've rented a nearly unusable VHS tape.
When burnable DVDs get cheap enough to be used frequently people we really start in on copying DVDs, so rental places won't have a place
Burnable DVDs, at least the present kind, don't store as much as movie DVDs (4.7 GB vs over 6 GB). Perhaps there is a technical reason for this, but I wouldn't discount the influence of the MPAA.
I agree that early Stephenson was intentionally absurd, or "comic book"-like as you say. However, Cryptonomicon isn't like those at all, nor do I expect Quicksilver to be. However, if your definition of "science fiction" must deal with the future, then perhaps you won't like it. It's science fiction in the sense of fiction about science -- Cryptonomicon had two ongoing stories one about WWII codebreakers, and one about modern dot-commers setting up a data haven. Cryptography plays a major role in the book and unlike most fiction about the subject, it is clear that Stephenson actually has done some background research.
Quicksilver is going to be about the author of a Renaissance treatise about cryptography -- a sort of fictionalized version of Johann Trithemius.
You've confused democracy and capitalism here. While they may go hand in hand nicely, they aren't the same thing.
Of course they aren't the same thing -- that's my whole point -- that democractic governments can and do regulate capitalism, and there is nothing at all wrong with that.
Sure, me, you and everyone else indirectly through regulation enacted by our elected officials. That's what democracy is all about.
Attempts to regulate businesses' profits is getting close to Socialism, which obviously doesn't work.
That isn't obvious at all. Sure, Stalinism failed, but there are plenty of partially socialist countries out there like Sweden and Canada which aren't doing so badly. In fact, they generally beat the US according to the UN's quality of life index. (BTW, although I live in Canada, I'm a US citizen by birth, so that isn't just nationalistic posturing)
Remember the rolling blackouts in California? Those were due to power companies not being able to charge what they needed to to sell power, thus, there simply wasn't enough to go around.
Yes, but that was caused by partial *deregulation*, thus demonstrating the need for regulation. Those blackouts didn't happen in the many years of full regulation, nor do they happen now in places were full regulation is in place.
Its called the profit motive - its related to something called capitalism - you may have heard of it.
Companies can make profits without making excessive profits, however. Many industries are regulated to prevent the latter. There is no divine right to ripping off the consumer.
Well, at least in the case of Pangea, that's because Larry Hunter was in charge, and he came of age in the Symbolics LISP workstation era. Most bioinformaticians tend to be a bit younger and therefore missed out on the whole LISP-as-mainstream-tool era. Whether this was to their benefit or loss is of course subjective.
Mr. Steve Oualline seems to be well in touch with reality and the industry direction, heh.
Look, face it, Java is *not* taking the world by storm as was expected circa 1997. In both in the proprietory and Open Source/Free Software worlds, C and C++ are overwhelmingly dominant and show every sign of remaining so. This isn't a slam on Java, it's just reality. Heck, Perl is probably more widely used than Java.
Law abiding citizens that don't endanger others have NOTHING to fear.
More specifically, people not *accused* of a crime have nothing to fear. Because law enforcement often makes mistakes, things like corporal and capital punishment often affects innocent people. That's why both are illegal in most developed nations, and the US is considered odd for still allowing capital punishment, and Singapore is considered odd for allowing both
The idea that programs live a life inside a computer is pretty darn clever and not "dry" at all. Besides our whole idea of what cyberspace is supposed to look like derives from Tron (neon, grids, etc). Granted, I'd dump the whole nonsense about Flynn's arcade and the love triangle if I were making the movie.
Well, it certainly is more plausible than the other stories, and actually has come true to an extent (Dimitri, anyone?) and predicting the future correctly is the ultimate test of any science fiction story.
Re:On the subject of Vinge, get the annotated AFUT
on
True Names
·
· Score: 2
Hey, I'm one of those people who bought it from you (ClariNet) originally... It is a great CD -- how come there never were ones for following years?
Haldeman doesn't get it -- minor spoiler
on
The Forever War
·
· Score: 2
"The Forever War" implies that war is caused by misunderstandings (it turns out that the war in the book was due to a lack of communication between humans and aliens). Rather more concrete economic factors were responsible for the Vietnam War, and most wars in fact, as the relative failure of both the League of Nations (and its successor the United Nations) to stop wars demonstrates
The point isn't to simulate real-world hacking (which is pretty boring and interests few people older than 15) but the sort of glamourous hacking that goes on in the novels of William Gibson and his imitators. Thus, differences from real technology are actually intentional, just like James Bond movies aren't documentries about British intelligence agencies.
Having a lower price isn't really the advantage of Internet shopping -- the point is that brick-and-mortar stores quite often don't have the products you want. I simply can't find the books, movies, or CDs I want to buy locally, so I buy on-line.
So is there any legal overlap between the Treo that is a handheld PDA/phone (which could potentially end up with an mp3 attachment) and the Treo that is a handheld mp3 player? The former has an accent over the 'e' whereas the latter's is on the 'o'.
No. As hard as it is to understand for people who only know English, accents really matter -- they aren't just there for show -- there are words in many languages that only differ by an accent.
Slashdot Mirror
In order to understand the source code to your precious Linux kernel one has to know 1) C
Absolutely, and if C ever falls into disuse, there aren't going to be very many kernel hackers.
sed makes short work of those once the text has been ocr'd into a computer.
You do have a point there, although I'm not certain if the abbrevations were quite so regular as be solved by search and replace.
Hardly. The Italian language is nothing more than the modern form of Latin. Any Italian speaker could be up to speed on Latin in a matter of weeks.
Now this is absurd. A knowledge of Italian might help some in getting vocabulary, but nobody reads Latin without years of study. I've studied some Latin (although certainly not enough to read a real manuscript) and I know the real problem in learning Latin is the grammar and its many cases, quite unlike the simplified grammar of modern Romance languages.
The difference between knowledge of Latin and possession of a BBC micro is that Latin is software, whereas a BBC micro is hardware, and hardware costs much more to physically reproduce than software does.
Yes, but the problem isn't the hardware (Laserdisc readers are still around), but the BBC file formats...
You can store digital information on analog media. Cassette tapes were common for storing computer programmes in the early days of personal computers, and even just several years ago I used a hard drive backup system that used VHS tapes as media.
The article claims that the 1086 Book is still "perfectly usable". It is not. In order to understand it one has to know 1) Latin and 2) the odd medieval abbrevations common to Latin manuscripts in England at the time. Both these skills are just as obsolete as BBC microcomputers. I don't see how they are any different, really.
It's an interesting example of how a metaphor can be totally opaque to one group of people, yet very clear to another -- just like the mysterious padlock icon.
True, but I should have mentioned that although he is a UNIX-geek on big hardware, Macintoshes are what the professor has had on his desk for over ten years. So he really is a member of both target groups of OS X.
Well, I happen to know a university professor who has used UNIX since the '70s, and he was puzzled by exactly the same OS X dialog -- it really isn't obvious at first sight that it is just a graphical "sudo".
Already been done, 2 years ago actually, an Asian Gaur was cloned from the last remaining specimen after it died.
True enough, but seeing how the specimen had just recently died, it isn't quite the same as the "Jurassic Park" scenario, which will probably never come to pass, no matter how advanced cloning technology becomes because the information just isn't there. We'll never get even close to the complete genome of a dinosaur because its DNA has long since been degraded. And don't tell me about preserved DNA in amber -- first of all, almost all of the claims about preserved DNA have since been shown to be simple contamination, and secondly the were just short fragments anyway.
Why is this flamebait? Monte is pointing out the obvious fact that the Model 100 had *nothing* to do with the other TRS-80 computers -- it wasn't a portable version of them.
Sort of like how Slashdot competes with the quasi-monopolies held by the magazine industry in order to provide information to geeks who can't afford to buy magazines that check their facts, etc. :-)
Not a good analogy at all. Open journals will be peer reviewed, just like closed journals. BTW: there is *already* a series of open biological journals that seem quite promising -- Biomed Central -- check them out here
That sounds like a much better idea than digging wells, digging latrines downhill from them, developing graywater systems for irrigation, educating women
Well, if that's all it would take to solve the problems of the third world, then they wouldn't need any help from anyone else. I'm sure the farmers can dig holes in the ground perfectly well themselves. Disease, famine, and malnutrition require more complicated solutions, all of which have a technological component.
and prosecuting the corrupt government officials that divert foreign aid into their own pockets when it was intended to feed starving women and children.
Who do you want to prosecute them?
No, what we need is Big Science!!! Keeping the price of patented pharmaceuticals well above what any third world nation can afford! Developing Lifestyle Drugs that Only The Rich Need! Botox! IVF Drugs! Xenical! Viagra! That'll save the world!
Well this "big science" that you mock is probably responsible for you being alive right now, (did you or any of your ancestors ever use an antibiotic?) If that's not saving the world, what is?
Why don't they try treating the starving children already born, those without clean water to drink or wash in, those orphaned by war, drought, famine, pestilence and death FIRST?
Because to solve those problems you need scientists, and the simple fact is that a baby born in to a upper middle class/rich first world country has one heck of a higher chance of being a scientist than one born to a poor third world farmer.
About half the time either I or a friend rents a DVD it is scratched to the point of being unusable.
I have never seen this. The durability of DVDs is a major reason for wanting to rent them. VHS tapes, like cassette tapes, get worn out easily. Many, many times I've rented a nearly unusable VHS tape.
When burnable DVDs get cheap enough to be used frequently people we really start in on copying DVDs, so rental places won't have a place
Burnable DVDs, at least the present kind, don't store as much as movie DVDs (4.7 GB vs over 6 GB). Perhaps there is a technical reason for this, but I wouldn't discount the influence of the MPAA.
I agree that early Stephenson was intentionally absurd, or "comic book"-like as you say. However, Cryptonomicon isn't like those at all, nor do I expect Quicksilver to be. However, if your definition of "science fiction" must deal with the future, then perhaps you won't like it. It's science fiction in the sense of fiction about science -- Cryptonomicon had two ongoing stories one about WWII codebreakers, and one about modern dot-commers setting up a data haven. Cryptography plays a major role in the book and unlike most fiction about the subject, it is clear that Stephenson actually has done some background research.
Quicksilver is going to be about the author of a Renaissance treatise about cryptography -- a sort of fictionalized version of Johann Trithemius.
You've confused democracy and capitalism here. While they may go hand in hand nicely, they aren't the same thing.
Of course they aren't the same thing -- that's my whole point -- that democractic governments can and do regulate capitalism, and there is nothing at all wrong with that.
Who determines what "excessive profit" is? You?
Sure, me, you and everyone else indirectly through regulation enacted by our elected officials. That's what democracy is all about.
Attempts to regulate businesses' profits is getting close to Socialism, which obviously doesn't work.
That isn't obvious at all. Sure, Stalinism failed, but there are plenty of partially socialist countries out there like Sweden and Canada which aren't doing so badly. In fact, they generally beat the US according to the UN's quality of life index. (BTW, although I live in Canada, I'm a US citizen by birth, so that isn't just nationalistic posturing)
Remember the rolling blackouts in California? Those were due to power companies not being able to charge what they needed to to sell power, thus, there simply wasn't enough to go around.
Yes, but that was caused by partial *deregulation*, thus demonstrating the need for regulation. Those blackouts didn't happen in the many years of full regulation, nor do they happen now in places were full regulation is in place.
Its called the profit motive - its related to something called capitalism - you may have heard of it.
Companies can make profits without making excessive profits, however. Many industries are regulated to prevent the latter. There is no divine right to ripping off the consumer.
Well, at least in the case of Pangea, that's because Larry Hunter was in charge, and he came of age in the Symbolics LISP workstation era. Most bioinformaticians tend to be a bit younger and therefore missed out on the whole LISP-as-mainstream-tool era. Whether this was to their benefit or loss is of course subjective.
Mr. Steve Oualline seems to be well in touch with reality and the industry direction, heh.
Look, face it, Java is *not* taking the world by storm as was expected circa 1997. In both in the proprietory and Open Source/Free Software worlds, C and C++ are overwhelmingly dominant and show every sign of remaining so. This isn't a slam on Java, it's just reality. Heck, Perl is probably more widely used than Java.
Law abiding citizens that don't endanger others have NOTHING to fear.
More specifically, people not *accused* of a crime have nothing to fear. Because law enforcement often makes mistakes, things like corporal and capital punishment often affects innocent people. That's why both are illegal in most developed nations, and the US is considered odd for still allowing capital punishment, and Singapore is considered odd for allowing both
The idea that programs live a life inside a computer is pretty darn clever and not "dry" at all. Besides our whole idea of what cyberspace is supposed to look like derives from Tron (neon, grids, etc). Granted, I'd dump the whole nonsense about Flynn's arcade and the love triangle if I were making the movie.
Well, it certainly is more plausible than the other stories, and actually has come true to an extent (Dimitri, anyone?) and predicting the future correctly is the ultimate test of any science fiction story.
Hey, I'm one of those people who bought it from you (ClariNet) originally... It is a great CD -- how come there never were ones for following years?
"The Forever War" implies that war is caused by misunderstandings (it turns out that the war in the book was due to a lack of communication between humans and aliens). Rather more concrete economic factors were responsible for the Vietnam War, and most wars in fact, as the relative failure of both the League of Nations (and its successor the United Nations) to stop wars demonstrates
The point isn't to simulate real-world hacking (which is pretty boring and interests few people older than 15) but the sort of glamourous hacking that goes on in the novels of William Gibson and his imitators. Thus, differences from real technology are actually intentional, just like James Bond movies aren't documentries about British intelligence agencies.
Having a lower price isn't really the advantage of Internet shopping -- the point is that brick-and-mortar stores quite often don't have the products you want. I simply can't find the books, movies, or CDs I want to buy locally, so I buy on-line.
So is there any legal overlap between the Treo that is a handheld PDA/phone (which could potentially end up with an mp3 attachment) and the Treo that is a handheld mp3 player? The former has an accent over the 'e' whereas the latter's is on the 'o'.
No. As hard as it is to understand for people who only know English, accents really matter -- they aren't just there for show -- there are words in many languages that only differ by an accent.