That's a pretty cool idea. Although, it would need to be slightly 'watered down' for the general public to understand what the stats are. Geeks would get it. Not sure the general public would. But overall, I think that's probably the best idea I've seen so far.
Starts off as a regular Mac ad. The camera then zooms back to reveal the two dudes standing in front of a white sheet.. zooms further out to reveal the sound guy (you know, the guy working the mic boom - i think it's called 'grip' or something), the director, the stage hands... all wearing "I'm linux" shirts.
Well, without going into the specifics, (and i'm over-simplifying it a bit) divs are the reason we're hiring right now when everyone else is looking at a bleak economy.
To expand that a bit, separating the concerns (of a programmer from that of a graphic designer) has allowed us to bring the polish to our web based app and has freed the programmer from trying to make things look pretty. we now have divs, with the graphic designers working the CSS and the programmers working the divs. it's all 'brown-boxed' so our clients love us since we can completely re-brand it as well with minimal effort.
while there are times when tables are certainly the 'easy way out', having CSS driven layout has paid off in the long term for us.
so much for "semantic markup" demagoguery. it works. for us. YMMV.
The way I look at it is that we are resigned to do only certain things with a computer since, up until now, the computers we have created are only good at a certain class of problems. They suck donkey balls on most of other interesting things that are immensely useful. Take optimization problems - there is an insane amount of applications that we currently don't think of since, like i said before, we've resigned our hopes in being able to tackle those.
For example, I would love to get parallel computations figure out my 'optimal' tax returns. Have my GPS calculate optimal routes - the routes I get now are pretty crappy etc.
My point to all this is that most of the problems that look like they are one-input-one-output aren't really that. It's just that over the last 50 or so years, we've learned to model them as such out of sheer necessity.
> "Boobies" are always reasonable. They are quite easy to find [snip]. The "Boobies" are in most every community. Hence based on the standards of the community in your area, boobies are indeed acceptable.
Today it's Delta-32. What if tomorrow bring a new disease that is stoppable with another mutation only present in this person with the state forced sterilization? I guess the solution then would be sterilize the rest of the population. We can't have the disease survive in the rest of humanity now can we?
About natural selection: We started fucking around with natural selection a long time ago. Now, I take the position that because nature gave us the (questionable) cranium capacity to do so, it's inherently part of the natural selection that we realize it as such and can't help but fuck around with it. My point is this - if you're worried about messing with natural selection, stop taking all medication and just let nature take it's course. Otherwise, stop with the "oh, we're working against natural selection" bullshit. Why is it not ok to let people to procreate (working against natural selection - as you put it) but ok to save his life - which, as I tried to argue, is against natural selection as well?
Working against natural selection isn't bad. And who's to say that using our cranium capacity traits (as opposed to physical traits) isn't part of what makes us the fittest in the natural selection? And using my logic above about future helpful mutations that might be present in Delta-32 deficient people, it'd be smart for us to preserve as much genetic diversity as we can as a species if we intend to survive.
> It was also apparently found that is was only ethnic Europeans who had this gene switched on... this led to some conspiracy theories about HIV/AIDS being created to be targeted at non whites.
I think I saw that show on Discovery. I don't think it was only the ethnic Europeans that had it. It was, as I recall, a favorable trait during the plague that allowed those with it to survive - and therefore the surviving population, naturally, were the only ones left to pass on the genes. Since the plague mostly hit Europe, the Europeans without the trait (Delta-32, I believe) parished and therefore didn't get to pass along their genes without the trait. Leaving us with this trait being in higher concentration in Europeans.
I suspect that Delta-32 will be in similar concentration in Africa after the AIDS epidemic is over.
I've always found this to be quite odd. People getting pissed at others for talking on the phone. What if I were talking to another person standing next to me? Would that piss you off? Now take that other person and put some distance between us and give us a device to allow us to not have to shout to hear each other... Let's call that device a 'cell-phone'.
Or are you pissed that you're only hearing one half of the conversation?
> OpenSSL, Entropy Pool, unsafe encryption...Are any of these ringing bells for you? Debian is free software and they still fucked up.
And prey tell, how did that issue get discovered? Are you saying that the closed source companies don't *ever* make those mistakes? How many of those do you hear about? How many of those get fixed? In full view of the public?
If anything, that issue is *exactly* why I use Debian. It was a pie-in-the-face admission. A closed source company would have never admitted. Debian did.
"The problem is that many functions people perform on computers have nothing to do with the real world."
could that be because computer hardware up till now has not been able to handle that level of parallelization that you would need to realistically model the real world? Take for example the DARPA challenge of autonomous driving vehicles. There are so many sensory input that humans process in parallel that humans can react to multiple things in real time. Computers, because of the sequential nature of the processing, have to prioritize certain input and then react to those - leading to a 'soft' realtime if it's even close to realtime. Could thousands of cores process a multitude of 'sensors' in parallel? Could that lead to self-driving cars? Who knows... But one thing I'm fairly certain of is that if todays algorithms and programs and tasks are sequential in nature, it's because there was a need for it to be. The world itself is parallel.
> It gained marketshare because it wasn't Microsoft.
Um, wordperfect, Lotus 1-2-3, Eudora, PC-DOS, BeOS, Netscape, Mozilla and a number of other software-that-wasn't-microsoft called to let you know how right you are.
In fact, it should probably read:
It gained marketshare despite the fact that it wasn't Microsoft.
Re:I'll make my own datacenter
on
Pimp My Datacenter
·
· Score: 4, Funny
only a nerd would screw the datacenter. most would probably screw the hookers.
It is infinitely more difficult to reproduce *exactly*. Even if you put MS developers (even the same ones - in the same sequence as they joined and left the company), you would not end up with exactly the same windows.
Even more so when you have to reproduce it in the middle layer. With both sides not under your control. see ReactOS, where they chose to not be the interface but just replicate. I would imagine it is easier for the ReactOS folks than for the Wine folks.
well, the argument I use against 'I have nothing to hide' is 'so when do I come to your house and install a webcam in your bedroom?' It's shut quite a few mouthes. Privacy is not just about moral or immoral behavior. Privacy just is.
Slashdot Mirror
> All you tech guys never realize...
Tell that to Bill Gates. He's selling the XBox you know. You non-tech-guys might have a thing or two to teach that tech guy.
No. Not stars. More like bickering, petty marionettes while Linux is what gets the job done and is pulling the strings behind the scenes.
That's a pretty cool idea. Although, it would need to be slightly 'watered down' for the general public to understand what the stats are. Geeks would get it. Not sure the general public would. But overall, I think that's probably the best idea I've seen so far.
I would change the punch line though.
I've always pictured it as:
Starts off as a regular Mac ad. The camera then zooms back to reveal the two dudes standing in front of a white sheet.. zooms further out to reveal the sound guy (you know, the guy working the mic boom - i think it's called 'grip' or something), the director, the stage hands... all wearing "I'm linux" shirts.
I once offered to volunteer for the local chapter of a well known charity. They wanted me to "password protect" the donations page. Think about that.
They wanted the doner to 'register' via phone to obtain a password.
I just slowly backed out and then, since I was just volunteering, I quit entirely.
Well, without going into the specifics, (and i'm over-simplifying it a bit) divs are the reason we're hiring right now when everyone else is looking at a bleak economy.
To expand that a bit, separating the concerns (of a programmer from that of a graphic designer) has allowed us to bring the polish to our web based app and has freed the programmer from trying to make things look pretty. we now have divs, with the graphic designers working the CSS and the programmers working the divs. it's all 'brown-boxed' so our clients love us since we can completely re-brand it as well with minimal effort.
while there are times when tables are certainly the 'easy way out', having CSS driven layout has paid off in the long term for us.
so much for "semantic markup" demagoguery. it works. for us. YMMV.
Pick one from here.
The way I look at it is that we are resigned to do only certain things with a computer since, up until now, the computers we have created are only good at a certain class of problems. They suck donkey balls on most of other interesting things that are immensely useful. Take optimization problems - there is an insane amount of applications that we currently don't think of since, like i said before, we've resigned our hopes in being able to tackle those.
For example, I would love to get parallel computations figure out my 'optimal' tax returns. Have my GPS calculate optimal routes - the routes I get now are pretty crappy etc.
My point to all this is that most of the problems that look like they are one-input-one-output aren't really that. It's just that over the last 50 or so years, we've learned to model them as such out of sheer necessity.
> "Boobies" are always reasonable. They are quite easy to find [snip]. The "Boobies" are in most every community. Hence based on the standards of the community in your area, boobies are indeed acceptable.
There, fixed that for ya.
And there's a database system called "Mnesia". Try telling your boss that you put all your data on a server with Mnesia.
Today it's Delta-32. What if tomorrow bring a new disease that is stoppable with another mutation only present in this person with the state forced sterilization? I guess the solution then would be sterilize the rest of the population. We can't have the disease survive in the rest of humanity now can we?
About natural selection:
We started fucking around with natural selection a long time ago. Now, I take the position that because nature gave us the (questionable) cranium capacity to do so, it's inherently part of the natural selection that we realize it as such and can't help but fuck around with it. My point is this - if you're worried about messing with natural selection, stop taking all medication and just let nature take it's course. Otherwise, stop with the "oh, we're working against natural selection" bullshit. Why is it not ok to let people to procreate (working against natural selection - as you put it) but ok to save his life - which, as I tried to argue, is against natural selection as well?
Working against natural selection isn't bad. And who's to say that using our cranium capacity traits (as opposed to physical traits) isn't part of what makes us the fittest in the natural selection? And using my logic above about future helpful mutations that might be present in Delta-32 deficient people, it'd be smart for us to preserve as much genetic diversity as we can as a species if we intend to survive.
> It was also apparently found that is was only ethnic Europeans who had this gene switched on... this led to some conspiracy theories about HIV/AIDS being created to be targeted at non whites.
I think I saw that show on Discovery. I don't think it was only the ethnic Europeans that had it. It was, as I recall, a favorable trait during the plague that allowed those with it to survive - and therefore the surviving population, naturally, were the only ones left to pass on the genes. Since the plague mostly hit Europe, the Europeans without the trait (Delta-32, I believe) parished and therefore didn't get to pass along their genes without the trait. Leaving us with this trait being in higher concentration in Europeans.
I suspect that Delta-32 will be in similar concentration in Africa after the AIDS epidemic is over.
digital movie cameras - I have a miniDV camera that uses firewire. can't imagine using USB with one of those.
no one works with complex numbers, for complex numbers don't exist: they're all imaginary.
I've always found this to be quite odd. People getting pissed at others for talking on the phone. What if I were talking to another person standing next to me? Would that piss you off? Now take that other person and put some distance between us and give us a device to allow us to not have to shout to hear each other... Let's call that device a 'cell-phone'.
Or are you pissed that you're only hearing one half of the conversation?
> You cannot simply redefine the meaning of already-existing words
Word!
> OpenSSL, Entropy Pool, unsafe encryption...Are any of these ringing bells for you? Debian is free software and they still fucked up.
And prey tell, how did that issue get discovered? Are you saying that the closed source companies don't *ever* make those mistakes? How many of those do you hear about? How many of those get fixed? In full view of the public?
If anything, that issue is *exactly* why I use Debian. It was a pie-in-the-face admission. A closed source company would have never admitted. Debian did.
Corp E has already done it. Check out Erlang sometime. The book "Programming Erlang" is an excellent intro.
"The problem is that many functions people perform on computers have nothing to do with the real world."
could that be because computer hardware up till now has not been able to handle that level of parallelization that you would need to realistically model the real world? Take for example the DARPA challenge of autonomous driving vehicles. There are so many sensory input that humans process in parallel that humans can react to multiple things in real time. Computers, because of the sequential nature of the processing, have to prioritize certain input and then react to those - leading to a 'soft' realtime if it's even close to realtime. Could thousands of cores process a multitude of 'sensors' in parallel? Could that lead to self-driving cars? Who knows... But one thing I'm fairly certain of is that if todays algorithms and programs and tasks are sequential in nature, it's because there was a need for it to be. The world itself is parallel.
well, i don't know if MTV was "cool" or not. but i did enjoy "headbangers ball" quite a bit. that was good while it lasted.
> It gained marketshare because it wasn't Microsoft.
Um, wordperfect, Lotus 1-2-3, Eudora, PC-DOS, BeOS, Netscape, Mozilla and a number of other software-that-wasn't-microsoft called to let you know how right you are.
In fact, it should probably read:
It gained marketshare despite the fact that it wasn't Microsoft.
only a nerd would screw the datacenter. most would probably screw the hookers.
> actually, the runaway project is the system it's trying to be compatible with. :P
So it is *trying* to be a runaway project - otherwise it wouldn't be replicated exactly.
It is infinitely more difficult to reproduce *exactly*. Even if you put MS developers (even the same ones - in the same sequence as they joined and left the company), you would not end up with exactly the same windows.
Even more so when you have to reproduce it in the middle layer. With both sides not under your control. see ReactOS, where they chose to not be the interface but just replicate. I would imagine it is easier for the ReactOS folks than for the Wine folks.
well, the argument I use against 'I have nothing to hide' is 'so when do I come to your house and install a webcam in your bedroom?' It's shut quite a few mouthes. Privacy is not just about moral or immoral behavior. Privacy just is.