The result of the last contest was somewhat of an upset, since a craftsmanly Russian program defeated a sophisticated genetic algorithm from NASA."
Not to troll, but do you mean you were upset last time because craftsmanly russian spacecrafts (e.g. Soyuz) ended up being cheap and safer than $2B NASA shuttles ?
Remember, how exotic, things may look, the winner will always be one which is conceptually sound, fundametally strong and is architected by experienced engineers.
General public can't understand terms like what is meant by 40GB Harddisk"
That's because we don't put up things like they should be. I think "libraries of congress" and "Voxwagon beetle" are more suitable terms... hey dude.. this HDD can store 0.69865 libraries of congress and that computer goes 1.79 times faster than your Civic:-P
So you mean that this is Gentoo for embedded systems... Hmmm I can see it now-
Me: What're you doing buddy ? Zaurus chap: Umm nothing... I "emerge"ed a calendar app yesterday... just 5 more files to compile
Cut the roots not the branches
on
Latest SCO News
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· Score: 4, Informative
If the free software has to survive, it will have to do one thing - cut off the damn software patent tree. It is the root of all problem. The companies are now going to the extent of patenting *problems*... without giving a single solution to them (see the european software patent hall of horror).
Today its linux kernel... with probably a couple of infringements (if at all)... have you thought of softwares like mplayer ? FYI, mplayer infringes on countless patents, copyrights and EULAs. Thats why it is based in hungary and not US or some other EU country. And you won't be able to do a single thing if its developers are sued. No amount of crying will help because copyright/patent/EULA vilation is a crime in the eyes of court.
If you just worry about branches, you won't succeed. If we have to get over this hell, fight the software patent regime not the companies that are using it as a tool to strangle the freedom of people!
CDAC of India already has developed 1T flops super computers based on SUN Ultrasparc-II cpus. The system has primary storage capacity of 5 TB. The communication backbone can be any of CDAC's own PARAMNet at a peak bandwidth of 50 MB/s bi-directional, Myrinet at 160 MB/s, ATM at 155/622 Mb/s, or Fast Ethernet.
Currently work is going on to make a 10T Flop grid across country linking all premiere research and educational institutes and industrial establishments.
1. Indian president is not elected directly, but indirectly by elected representatives.
2. Current president Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is an exception. While previous presidents were just symbolic heads as dictated by constitution, Dr Kalam has actually taken steps to bridge the communication gaps, meeting publically and raising his opinions on matters... to much discomfort of the dirty politicians.
3. Dr. Kalam meets hundreds of school children daily. His vision is to bring about awareness in current generation and imbibe a scientic vision in them. He encourages them to question the things around them.
4. Dr. Kalam has been very supportive of humanitarian work. His team developed an ultra-light carbon composite for heat shields of ICBM Agni missile. Working with a doctor, Dr Kalam made available that material for making artificial limbs of physically challanged children. An artifical leg for children which used to weigh 3.5 KG (7 pounds) now weights 300 grams (less than 1 pound). Dr Kalam lists this achievement in his 3 life time achievements above all nuclear and missile stuff !!
5. He has written two books which are one of its kind. You have to read them to believe them!
... about the mobile regime in India is that contrary to other countries, in India, the mobile wars are overlooked and regulated by TRAI (telecom regulatory authority of India).
TRAI makes sure that operators are competing/fighting on fair grounds and big companies are not wiping out small players by predatory pricing. Thus making it easier for small players to compete big gorillas.
Reliance issue was actually TRAI (and others) kicking it in butt for twisting (if not breaking) rules by allowing transparent roaming in its WLL service. By the set rules, WLL operators are not allowed to provide roaming facilites, but Reliance twisted the rules by providing trasparent and dynamically re-registering clients in the areas they visit and forwarding calls to that number. Thus the user dynamically gets allocated a new number BUT all calls on his original number are automatically forwarded to the new number... thus providing a roaming-kind-of facility. This is not roaming service by the book (the user gets a new number) but in spirit its twisting of rules, and TRAI kicked it in balls for this.
However, while taking decisions TRAI officials (much detested so-called beaureocrats) keep in mind public benefit... this is evident in the final settlement that they allowed Reliance to continue BUT then it has to go by the book that says charges have to be network provider agnostic... ie. calls from all WLL operators will cost the same... so now other WLL operators cal also offer similar pricing.
TRAI makes it a point to review policies often and make corrections. It forces companies to provide cost based tariffs so that big companies can't eat small ones for lunch by offering cheap service for short durations to take out small ones and then increasing prices. This also makes sure that state owned telecom providers don't subsidize their services to attract customers. Thus the state owned providers are competitive and actually make profit rather than losing money.
Right now TRAI is reconsidering the license structure and license pricing... I'm hopeful that once its done it will open doors for more players to enter at cheap costs and those savings in costs will be passed on to customers in a fair way.
YIAARI (Yes I am a resident Indian) and from what I see, CDMA networks are doing just fine!
Reliance has sorted out all the interconnect issues and everything is going on smoothly since May 1, 2003. There are more than a dozen players in mobile phones (GSM, 3G GPRS, CDMA 2000 1x WLL) so it is natural that this thing took time... two months more than they had projected.
In this cut-throat market, which is growing at >98% per annum, it is natural that one player will make things hard for other, especially if the other player is offering long distance calls at less than 1 US cent per minute (within their nation wide network and other WLL networks). If anybody thinks that it mean demise of Indian cellular market he must be smoking something damn hallucinating.
As for the per capita income bullshit, yes the PCI is low, but you are using the wrong standard. In the US, the median and average incomes are pretty close, so companies usually interchange them for their analysis... a grave mistake if they do so for countries like India and China where median and average incomes are damn far away. Apart from that Indian consumer is very selective in things he purchases... given value for money, he won't hesitate in buying and with current trands in economy where our forex reserves are on all time high and IT sector is doing quite well, people do have money to spend on credit cards, mobile phones and other luxuries. Yes, salaries are around 5-6 times lower, but you got to understand that living expenses are lower by 6-7 times (my monthly food bill is around $60-$100 and I eat pretty lavishly).
In short, this news is OLD and full of BS. Anyone who's thinking CDMA in India is sinking is on crack... and FYI Reliance is a 1000 KG gorilla and one of the biggest company over here... they have already laid over 3000 km of fiber all over country for CDMA and data connections (yes they work... equivalent to dual ISDN) and is doubling that figure in next 6-12 months... and they pretty damn know what they're doing.
""" If just one processor is of sub-standard quality, the whole system would crash and fail. Not recommended if you're intending to use the system for mission critical purposes. """
Whew, so what kind of guy takes two perfectly good CPUs, voids their warranty, solders their traces, messes with their multiplier, overclocks them, prays that they *might* work and then puts them to do DO MISSION CRITICAL TASK !!!
The basic problem with USB(1/2) is that it utilizes CPU power to do the transfers (what else would you expect from Intel).
Thus, in small devices, a huge battery power is drained when doing these transfers, not to speak, a lot of CPU power is required.
Firewire is nice to CPU. It can use DMA to do all the transfers without occupying the CPU. Thus you can play DVDs at the same time as you're streaming through your firewire LAN. With USB2, the CPU is engrossed with moving the 60 MByte/s of data to/from the device... something much cheaper DMA chips were invented for.
So while USB is good and all... I still favour 1394 for its elegance and doing things *right*.
Wow !! A bunch of fat assed self proclaimed *geeks* (actually a black spot on geek community) have absolute faith in a dick-head spreading bush'ism on CNN/MSNBC, but they can't trust when a bunch of engineers say that using Cell phone might cause problems with aircraft avionics !!
I am an engineer (no, not communications engineer, but have fair understanding of radio communications) and I know that if getting a call on my cellphone can make my speakers sitting at ~10ft. from me start crackling... then it sure won't play nice with the sensitive and high precision guidance equipments of a passenger plane.
And well, dammit... can't you just sit back, relax and enjoy the flight rather than being engrossed with chatting with your boss or reading slashdot while on airplane !! I mean don't you have a life beyond that ?
"""
Guess what happens if you hard drive crashes? You loose all your music! Even though Apple is well aware of what tracks you've purchased, you must pay to re-download any music. """
And what exactly you do when your CD Disk gets spoiled/lost ? Yeah right... you have to buy it again.
Somehow, "free" has been taken for granted for stuff that you can load for free.
"Free" (as in $ 0.00) stuff doesn't exist. Someone somewhere is paying for it with his sweat and blood.
""" But you forget that MP3 is an industry standard right now. And it will be for years to come. """
MP3 is *today's* standard. But what about tomorrow ? Just two days before, could you even think AAC would become such a big thing ? Did you even know what AAC was ?
Vorbis is 1. Better quality codec than MP3 at 128kbps or bigher bitrates. 2. Easily implementable in hardware. Especially the *royalty free* fixed point codec drastically reduces time-to-market... you can easily implement that in a $10 TI Fixed point DSP. MP3 too is easy to implement, but now you have to pay fraunhauffer royalty for each decoder you make!!
Ditto is true for WMA/RM and possibly AAC.
Face it, MP3 seems like a standard today, but tomorrows standard will be something else. MP3 lacks DRM, and has earned a VERY BAD reputation. No record company will be backing it up.
Now it has to be seen which among Vorbis, AAC, WMA and RM will win this battle of electronic music.
I feel that Vorbis desperately NEEDS a marketing/propaganda department, if it ever hopes to succeed in market.
As for who knows Vorbis, well hell... nobody needs to... How many know AAC ??
What Vorbis needs is a company like Apple, that makes a platform around it that *just works*. The user just doesn't care if he can just click the file and it plays. WinAmp is leading player on windows and everybody with at least winamp 2.7+ can easily double click a.ogg and play it... what more do you need ? AAC and Apple have proved it that for a format to be successful, you just need a strong backing and a solution that *just works*. If the end-user knows what the stuff is, then fine, but he doesn't *need* to know.
Call me devil's advocate, but for a business to succeed it has to do one thing - make money!
Without DRM, you can't restrict free trading of files on P2P networks. What will prevent all those AAC files from iTunes appear on Kazaa... the business model will fail that day.
Apple has taken a sensible approach to DRM. They allow you to burn the AAC files to CDs as data files and as audio CDs. The latter will play in ALL players.
Now Michael Robertson (of mp3.com) is bitching that users won't be able to play it in MP3 players... fine enough. MP3 SHOULD CEASE to exist. Better formats like Vorbis are not picking up just because every Joe is making MP3 players.
Apple, for one, will succeed in doing one thing - making those Joes realise that there is something *else* than MP3 too!! When the HW mfgrs will realise that, they will look for major alternatives... sure 8 out of 10 will go to AAC/WMA/RM route, but 2 will also do Vorbis, and there it will break the ice.
Today every DVD/CD player comes with MP3 support just because they are oblivious to the fact that something else exists... they just don't want to go to desk and design a decoder chip for anything else... Apple is poking them and shouting "wake up"... This is a Good Thing (TM). In the process if Apple makes some money... well good for them. Things have to start somewhere.
Finally... get over with that "mp3 is word of god" thing. Sure you don't want to give up your existing player... but some time down the line when you'd be seaching for your next player... you'd definitely want a choice besides MP3.
In an SMP environment, auditing all applications and figuring out all race conditions and resource corruption is a nightmare. You never know when a programmer overlooked the fact that a signal handler and a thread could *actually* be running in parallel and cause a race condition.
Theo wants to avoid these pitfalls for now. Thus OpenBSD has no SMP support.
Incorporating SMP support in OpenBSD shouldn't be an issue, mainly because NetBSD from which its derived has had SMP for ages and FreeBSD has it too! The friggin' thing is how to be sure that sendmail's author imagined all parallel excution scenarios and has coded accordingly.
Trust me, SMP environments are bitch to work in and you should either have professional tools to work with or a really good imagination to work out all possible race conditions.
One day you will pay one company $39.95 for flat-rate long distance.... Whenever, wherever.
You can right now:-) In India.
Right now, mobile rates in India are at rock bottom. Reliance Infocom is offering CDMA 2000 1x technnology and long distance calls within their network throughout India is at less than US$ 0.01 per minute (yep, less than 1 cent. to be precise INR 0.40, current exchange rate is US$ 1 == INR 47).
Similar trends are visible in GSM operators too, with Airtel recently announcing long distance calls from cell-to-cell @ INR 0.50 (1 cent) + airtime... total around INR 2.80 per minute. Not to speak that several operators like state owned MTNL and BSNL offer free SMS etc etc. (No, the service isn't subsidised by Govt, they function as normal operators).
Wifi phones would be cool, but as long as GSM, CDMA and 3G phones provide competitive services, it would be difficult for others to continue.
PS. Cell phone customer base in India is growing at close to 100% PA. This year's quarterly results show 98% growth. Close to 12.4M customers in a country of 1 Billion:-)
I've been using eclipse and SWT for quite sometime.
We also investigated this. SWT is a _horrendous_ API which offers very little abstraction. You end up writing your code once for the Gtk+ target, and again for the native Windows target.
Complete BS !!
SWT offers a very high level of abstraction. If you want a still higher level of abstraction, then use the jface interface.
I've written a filesystem tool for QFS (QNX file system) and it runs without a single line of modification on QNX, windows and solaris!
SWT is a very sweet API. After using the utter crap that is Swing, its refreshing to see SWT. It uses native widgets so the app doesn't feel "out-of-place" !!
Combine this with the fact that SWT is as fast as any other GUI toolkit interface in a higher level language (higher than C/C++) and that its a filesystem tool, nobody ever suspects that its written in java !!!
And no dude, eclipse codebase is not huge... its not just another IDE as you think... its a complete platform!! You can write your own whole software platform using that baby!!
The point is not that I'm a violator. The point is what powers 'they' have to screw me in case something wrong is done. In this case if you put NAT boxen or put more TVs hooked to your single cable connection, you're violating ToC ! The company has right to terminate your service and if they're want more, they can indict you in civil courts !
But NOW the thing is that for violating ToC you commit a "felony" offense (you understand what "felony offense" mean do you ? In case you do not, other "felony" offenses are rape, murder, hijacking, robbery etc, Got it ?). This is nothing but the american legislation (whole government ?) playing in the hands of corporations...
1(b) Conceal the existence or place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service.
1 (c) To receive, disrupt, decrypt, transmit, retransmit, acquire, intercept, or facilitate the receipt, disruption, decryption, transmission, retransmission, acquisition, or interception of any telecommunications service without the express authority or actual consent of the telecommunications service provider.
While 1(b) is probably the most obnoxious clause, 1(c) is not far behind... it makes it a "felony" to eg. hook two televisions on single cable connection and even make it a felony offense to put NAT boxen !! At our dorm, for World cup we put a computer with TV tuner card connected to cable connection and then used it to stream the transmission for people to watch in their rooms... HELL now we'll be criminals (and that too 'felony'!!) for that...
Fuck.
Who said "America- land of free" must now be turning in graves.
While one person may be perfectly content with an old Pentium 133 system that stores stamp club membership details in a DOS program in "real-time mode"
The correct word should be realmode.
Realtime is NOT the same as real-mode.
Realtime refers to time-critical systems where validity of result doesn't only depend on its correctness but also at the time it arrives.
Realmode, otoh, is one of the modes the x86 CPUs operate in. In real mode, system operates in 16 bit mode, only base 1024K memory is available & there is no (real) multitasking possible. The mode used by all modern multitasking operating systems is 32 bit protected mode. In this special mode, the notion of "kernel mode" and "user mode" comes up.
Whether typo or mis-information, but such big mistake should never be there at least on front-page of slashdot, which claims to be premiere geek portal
The problem is that it's only available for Windows and Linux, and since the underlying code is native, it has to be separately developed and maintained. Since more GUI apps are run on Windows, there's more pressure to make the Windows code work right, and the Linux code is always a little behind.
Are you nuts ? SWT/eclipse is available for 7 platforms (you read it right!) which include Windows, Linux (RH and Suse), QNX, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, and MacOSX.
I am using it right now for my development work and so far is has been a lovely experience. The widgets are native and SWT really rocks. In comparison, Swing looks like a tonne of lead tied to Java's foot. Once running you cannot make out whether your app was written in Java or C/C++.
Those you doubt, may download eclipse IDE for their favorite platform. It itself has been written using SWT and by and large is one of the best IDE ever. Only if there were a GUI builder for SWT, it would be perfect RAD tool.
I wonder how many guys will end up in eye clinic using this gadget with their CRT monitors.
While working with a CRT monitor at least (and TFT too!), it is *strongly* recommended to work in a suitably lighted workplace to reduce eye strain.
My eyes are already taxed with fast paced games, long coding sessions and reading tons of docs on-screen. Last thing I want is an illuminated keyboard that'd tempt me to use computer in the dark.
This guy has a point. Whenever I look at the linux 'revolution', I see a crowd of zealots running and everytime trying to cope-up with M$ runners.
Most of the new 'features' are copy of windows or Mac... WTF ? Can't you innovate something new ?
As for the people who think that they can lure more users just by giving similar look and feel, ponder-
Price isn't the only consideration for many many people out there. What you're doing here is trying to provide a cheap xerox copy of an original... would you like one ? No! If a person can shell out $99 for the original, he WILL ! A COPY is still an *imitaion*, no matter how thick a paper its printed on. You've got a good OS, invent new things... why lug around the same legacy ?
For example see BeOS, Amiga or even Mac... windows compatibility or windows look-n-feel was never their selling point (hell, not even the last point)!! Yet people loved them. By following windows, you're implicitely stating that 'Yes windows is "the rule", and we're trying to catch up'. Why don't you realise that windows/Mac don't the best UI/interface/architecture possible... there's always something better!
From this page on his website-
My own experience with fluorine has been solely with its compounds. In particular, natural calcium fluoride crystals (fluorite or fluorspar). Also hydrofluoric acid, during a highly ill-advised "experiment" conducted in the clean room of a semiconductor manufacturer unwise enough to employ me.... The glass and quartz-ware used in diffusion furnaces must be kept scrupulously clean to avoid contamination of the silicon wafers being processed. Consequently it is periodically bathed in a mixture of hydrofluoric and nitric acids. Full protection clothing was donned over normal clean room eyes-only-exposed garb, and a large silicon wafer (complete with defective 4Mb DRAMs) was "carefully" thrown into the acid bath. Nothing happened for about twenty seconds, as the HF attacked the silicon, heating up the wafer until a runaway reaction started. The acid bath then erupted into a frightening boiling maelstrom, with the violent evolution of copious amounts of red and brown fumes of nitrogen oxides. The complete destruction of high technology by the tiger of chemistry.
Splendid.
Now we know why they're shunning away geeks
Slashdot Mirror
Not to troll, but do you mean you were upset last time because craftsmanly russian spacecrafts (e.g. Soyuz) ended up being cheap and safer than $2B NASA shuttles ?
Remember, how exotic, things may look, the winner will always be one which is conceptually sound, fundametally strong and is architected by experienced engineers.
That's because we don't put up things like they should be. I think "libraries of congress" and "Voxwagon beetle" are more suitable terms... hey dude.. this HDD can store 0.69865 libraries of congress and that computer goes 1.79 times faster than your Civic :-P
So you mean that this is Gentoo for embedded systems... Hmmm I can see it now-
Me: What're you doing buddy ?
Zaurus chap: Umm nothing... I "emerge"ed a calendar app yesterday... just 5 more files to compile
If the free software has to survive, it will have to do one thing - cut off the damn software patent tree. It is the root of all problem. The companies are now going to the extent of patenting *problems*... without giving a single solution to them (see the european software patent hall of horror).
.
Today its linux kernel... with probably a couple of infringements (if at all)... have you thought of softwares like mplayer ? FYI, mplayer infringes on countless patents, copyrights and EULAs. Thats why it is based in hungary and not US or some other EU country. And you won't be able to do a single thing if its developers are sued. No amount of crying will help because copyright/patent/EULA vilation is a crime in the eyes of court
If you just worry about branches, you won't succeed. If we have to get over this hell, fight the software patent regime not the companies that are using it as a tool to strangle the freedom of people!
CDAC of India already has developed 1T flops super computers based on SUN Ultrasparc-II cpus. The system has primary storage capacity of 5 TB. The communication backbone can be any of CDAC's own PARAMNet at a peak bandwidth of 50 MB/s bi-directional, Myrinet at 160 MB/s, ATM at 155/622 Mb/s, or Fast Ethernet.
Currently work is going on to make a 10T Flop grid across country linking all premiere research and educational institutes and industrial establishments.
1. Indian president is not elected directly, but indirectly by elected representatives.
2. Current president Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is an exception. While previous presidents were just symbolic heads as dictated by constitution, Dr Kalam has actually taken steps to bridge the communication gaps, meeting publically and raising his opinions on matters... to much discomfort of the dirty politicians.
3. Dr. Kalam meets hundreds of school children daily. His vision is to bring about awareness in current generation and imbibe a scientic vision in them. He encourages them to question the things around them.
4. Dr. Kalam has been very supportive of humanitarian work. His team developed an ultra-light carbon composite for heat shields of ICBM Agni missile. Working with a doctor, Dr Kalam made available that material for making artificial limbs of physically challanged children. An artifical leg for children which used to weigh 3.5 KG (7 pounds) now weights 300 grams (less than 1 pound). Dr Kalam lists this achievement in his 3 life time achievements above all nuclear and missile stuff !!
5. He has written two books which are one of its kind. You have to read them to believe them!
... about the mobile regime in India is that contrary to other countries, in India, the mobile wars are overlooked and regulated by TRAI (telecom regulatory authority of India).
TRAI makes sure that operators are competing/fighting on fair grounds and big companies are not wiping out small players by predatory pricing. Thus making it easier for small players to compete big gorillas.
Reliance issue was actually TRAI (and others) kicking it in butt for twisting (if not breaking) rules by allowing transparent roaming in its WLL service. By the set rules, WLL operators are not allowed to provide roaming facilites, but Reliance twisted the rules by providing trasparent and dynamically re-registering clients in the areas they visit and forwarding calls to that number. Thus the user dynamically gets allocated a new number BUT all calls on his original number are automatically forwarded to the new number... thus providing a roaming-kind-of facility. This is not roaming service by the book (the user gets a new number) but in spirit its twisting of rules, and TRAI kicked it in balls for this.
However, while taking decisions TRAI officials (much detested so-called beaureocrats) keep in mind public benefit... this is evident in the final settlement that they allowed Reliance to continue BUT then it has to go by the book that says charges have to be network provider agnostic... ie. calls from all WLL operators will cost the same... so now other WLL operators cal also offer similar pricing.
TRAI makes it a point to review policies often and make corrections. It forces companies to provide cost based tariffs so that big companies can't eat small ones for lunch by offering cheap service for short durations to take out small ones and then increasing prices. This also makes sure that state owned telecom providers don't subsidize their services to attract customers. Thus the state owned providers are competitive and actually make profit rather than losing money.
Right now TRAI is reconsidering the license structure and license pricing... I'm hopeful that once its done it will open doors for more players to enter at cheap costs and those savings in costs will be passed on to customers in a fair way.
are spreading FUD!
YIAARI (Yes I am a resident Indian) and from what I see, CDMA networks are doing just fine!
Reliance has sorted out all the interconnect issues and everything is going on smoothly since May 1, 2003. There are more than a dozen players in mobile phones (GSM, 3G GPRS, CDMA 2000 1x WLL) so it is natural that this thing took time... two months more than they had projected.
In this cut-throat market, which is growing at >98% per annum, it is natural that one player will make things hard for other, especially if the other player is offering long distance calls at less than 1 US cent per minute (within their nation wide network and other WLL networks). If anybody thinks that it mean demise of Indian cellular market he must be smoking something damn hallucinating.
As for the per capita income bullshit, yes the PCI is low, but you are using the wrong standard. In the US, the median and average incomes are pretty close, so companies usually interchange them for their analysis... a grave mistake if they do so for countries like India and China where median and average incomes are damn far away. Apart from that Indian consumer is very selective in things he purchases... given value for money, he won't hesitate in buying and with current trands in economy where our forex reserves are on all time high and IT sector is doing quite well, people do have money to spend on credit cards, mobile phones and other luxuries. Yes, salaries are around 5-6 times lower, but you got to understand that living expenses are lower by 6-7 times (my monthly food bill is around $60-$100 and I eat pretty lavishly).
In short, this news is OLD and full of BS. Anyone who's thinking CDMA in India is sinking is on crack... and FYI Reliance is a 1000 KG gorilla and one of the biggest company over here... they have already laid over 3000 km of fiber all over country for CDMA and data connections (yes they work... equivalent to dual ISDN) and is doubling that figure in next 6-12 months... and they pretty damn know what they're doing.
From the article
"""
If just one processor is of sub-standard quality, the whole system would crash and fail. Not recommended if you're intending to use the system for mission critical purposes.
"""
Whew, so what kind of guy takes two perfectly good CPUs, voids their warranty, solders their traces, messes with their multiplier, overclocks them, prays that they *might* work and then puts them to do DO MISSION CRITICAL TASK !!!
The basic problem with USB(1/2) is that it utilizes CPU power to do the transfers (what else would you expect from Intel).
Thus, in small devices, a huge battery power is drained when doing these transfers, not to speak, a lot of CPU power is required.
Firewire is nice to CPU. It can use DMA to do all the transfers without occupying the CPU. Thus you can play DVDs at the same time as you're streaming through your firewire LAN. With USB2, the CPU is engrossed with moving the 60 MByte/s of data to/from the device... something much cheaper DMA chips were invented for.
So while USB is good and all... I still favour 1394 for its elegance and doing things *right*.
Shhh...
:-)
:-)
Don't tell people that you have a floppy dick... you know IBM named it "floppy" cuz it was made out of flexible disks
Tell where you'll put your Hard-disk... ofcourse assuming you have a removable one
Wow !! A bunch of fat assed self proclaimed *geeks* (actually a black spot on geek community) have absolute faith in a dick-head spreading bush'ism on CNN/MSNBC, but they can't trust when a bunch of engineers say that using Cell phone might cause problems with aircraft avionics !!
I am an engineer (no, not communications engineer, but have fair understanding of radio communications) and I know that if getting a call on my cellphone can make my speakers sitting at ~10ft. from me start crackling... then it sure won't play nice with the sensitive and high precision guidance equipments of a passenger plane.
And well, dammit... can't you just sit back, relax and enjoy the flight rather than being engrossed with chatting with your boss or reading slashdot while on airplane !! I mean don't you have a life beyond that ?
"""
Guess what happens if you hard drive crashes? You loose all your music! Even though Apple is well aware of what tracks you've purchased, you must pay to re-download any music.
"""
And what exactly you do when your CD Disk gets spoiled/lost ? Yeah right... you have to buy it again.
Somehow, "free" has been taken for granted for stuff that you can load for free.
"Free" (as in $ 0.00) stuff doesn't exist. Someone somewhere is paying for it with his sweat and blood.
"""
.ogg and play it... what more do you need ? AAC and Apple have proved it that for a format to be successful, you just need a strong backing and a solution that *just works*. If the end-user knows what the stuff is, then fine, but he doesn't *need* to know.
But you forget that MP3 is an industry standard right now. And it will be for years to come.
"""
MP3 is *today's* standard. But what about tomorrow ? Just two days before, could you even think AAC would become such a big thing ? Did you even know what AAC was ?
Vorbis is
1. Better quality codec than MP3 at 128kbps or bigher bitrates.
2. Easily implementable in hardware. Especially the *royalty free* fixed point codec drastically reduces time-to-market... you can easily implement that in a $10 TI Fixed point DSP. MP3 too is easy to implement, but now you have to pay fraunhauffer royalty for each decoder you make!!
Ditto is true for WMA/RM and possibly AAC.
Face it, MP3 seems like a standard today, but tomorrows standard will be something else. MP3 lacks DRM, and has earned a VERY BAD reputation. No record company will be backing it up.
Now it has to be seen which among Vorbis, AAC, WMA and RM will win this battle of electronic music.
I feel that Vorbis desperately NEEDS a marketing/propaganda department, if it ever hopes to succeed in market.
As for who knows Vorbis, well hell... nobody needs to... How many know AAC ??
What Vorbis needs is a company like Apple, that makes a platform around it that *just works*. The user just doesn't care if he can just click the file and it plays. WinAmp is leading player on windows and everybody with at least winamp 2.7+ can easily double click a
Call me devil's advocate, but for a business to succeed it has to do one thing - make money!
Without DRM, you can't restrict free trading of files on P2P networks. What will prevent all those AAC files from iTunes appear on Kazaa... the business model will fail that day.
Apple has taken a sensible approach to DRM. They allow you to burn the AAC files to CDs as data files and as audio CDs. The latter will play in ALL players.
Now Michael Robertson (of mp3.com) is bitching that users won't be able to play it in MP3 players... fine enough. MP3 SHOULD CEASE to exist.
Better formats like Vorbis are not picking up just because every Joe is making MP3 players.
Apple, for one, will succeed in doing one thing - making those Joes realise that there is something *else* than MP3 too!! When the HW mfgrs will realise that, they will look for major alternatives... sure 8 out of 10 will go to AAC/WMA/RM route, but 2 will also do Vorbis, and there it will break the ice.
Today every DVD/CD player comes with MP3 support just because they are oblivious to the fact that something else exists... they just don't want to go to desk and design a decoder chip for anything else... Apple is poking them and shouting "wake up"... This is a Good Thing (TM). In the process if Apple makes some money... well good for them. Things have to start somewhere.
Finally... get over with that "mp3 is word of god" thing. Sure you don't want to give up your existing player... but some time down the line when you'd be seaching for your next player... you'd definitely want a choice besides MP3.
Theo replied to this a while back
In an SMP environment, auditing all applications and figuring out all race conditions and resource corruption is a nightmare. You never know when a programmer overlooked the fact that a signal handler and a thread could *actually* be running in parallel and cause a race condition.
Theo wants to avoid these pitfalls for now. Thus OpenBSD has no SMP support.
Incorporating SMP support in OpenBSD shouldn't be an issue, mainly because NetBSD from which its derived has had SMP for ages and FreeBSD has it too! The friggin' thing is how to be sure that sendmail's author imagined all parallel excution scenarios and has coded accordingly.
Trust me, SMP environments are bitch to work in and you should either have professional tools to work with or a really good imagination to work out all possible race conditions.
You can right now :-) In India.
Right now, mobile rates in India are at rock bottom. Reliance Infocom is offering CDMA 2000 1x technnology and long distance calls within their network throughout India is at less than US$ 0.01 per minute (yep, less than 1 cent. to be precise INR 0.40, current exchange rate is US$ 1 == INR 47).
Similar trends are visible in GSM operators too, with Airtel recently announcing long distance calls from cell-to-cell @ INR 0.50 (1 cent) + airtime... total around INR 2.80 per minute. Not to speak that several operators like state owned MTNL and BSNL offer free SMS etc etc. (No, the service isn't subsidised by Govt, they function as normal operators).
Wifi phones would be cool, but as long as GSM, CDMA and 3G phones provide competitive services, it would be difficult for others to continue.
PS. Cell phone customer base in India is growing at close to 100% PA. This year's quarterly results show 98% growth. Close to 12.4M customers in a country of 1 Billion :-)
SWT offers a very high level of abstraction. If you want a still higher level of abstraction, then use the jface interface.
I've written a filesystem tool for QFS (QNX file system) and it runs without a single line of modification on QNX, windows and solaris!
SWT is a very sweet API. After using the utter crap that is Swing, its refreshing to see SWT. It uses native widgets so the app doesn't feel "out-of-place" !!
Combine this with the fact that SWT is as fast as any other GUI toolkit interface in a higher level language (higher than C/C++) and that its a filesystem tool, nobody ever suspects that its written in java !!!
And no dude, eclipse codebase is not huge... its not just another IDE as you think... its a complete platform!! You can write your own whole software platform using that baby!!
The point is not that I'm a violator. The point is what powers 'they' have to screw me in case something wrong is done. In this case if you put NAT boxen or put more TVs hooked to your single cable connection, you're violating ToC ! The company has right to terminate your service and if they're want more, they can indict you in civil courts !
But NOW the thing is that for violating ToC you commit a "felony" offense (you understand what "felony offense" mean do you ? In case you do not, other "felony" offenses are rape, murder, hijacking, robbery etc, Got it ?). This is nothing but the american legislation (whole government ?) playing in the hands of corporations...
America "used" to be free... now it plain sucks.
(Yes I did RTFA)
This law has not one but two offensive clauses-
1(b) Conceal the existence or place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service.
1 (c) To receive, disrupt, decrypt, transmit, retransmit, acquire, intercept, or facilitate the receipt, disruption, decryption, transmission, retransmission, acquisition, or interception of any telecommunications service without the express authority or actual consent of the telecommunications service provider.
While 1(b) is probably the most obnoxious clause, 1(c) is not far behind... it makes it a "felony" to eg. hook two televisions on single cable connection and even make it a felony offense to put NAT boxen !! At our dorm, for World cup we put a computer with TV tuner card connected to cable connection and then used it to stream the transmission for people to watch in their rooms... HELL now we'll be criminals (and that too 'felony'!!) for that...
Fuck.
Who said "America- land of free" must now be turning in graves.
Realtime refers to time-critical systems where validity of result doesn't only depend on its correctness but also at the time it arrives.
Realmode, otoh, is one of the modes the x86 CPUs operate in. In real mode, system operates in 16 bit mode, only base 1024K memory is available & there is no (real) multitasking possible. The mode used by all modern multitasking operating systems is 32 bit protected mode. In this special mode, the notion of "kernel mode" and "user mode" comes up.
Whether typo or mis-information, but such big mistake should never be there at least on front-page of slashdot, which claims to be premiere geek portal
Are you nuts ? SWT/eclipse is available for 7 platforms (you read it right!) which include Windows, Linux (RH and Suse), QNX, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, and MacOSX.
I am using it right now for my development work and so far is has been a lovely experience. The widgets are native and SWT really rocks. In comparison, Swing looks like a tonne of lead tied to Java's foot. Once running you cannot make out whether your app was written in Java or C/C++.
Those you doubt, may download eclipse IDE for their favorite platform. It itself has been written using SWT and by and large is one of the best IDE ever. Only if there were a GUI builder for SWT, it would be perfect RAD tool.
I wonder how many guys will end up in eye clinic using this gadget with their CRT monitors.
While working with a CRT monitor at least (and TFT too!), it is *strongly* recommended to work in a suitably lighted workplace to reduce eye strain.
My eyes are already taxed with fast paced games, long coding sessions and reading tons of docs on-screen. Last thing I want is an illuminated keyboard that'd tempt me to use computer in the dark.
This guy has a point. Whenever I look at the linux 'revolution', I see a crowd of zealots running and everytime trying to cope-up with M$ runners.
Most of the new 'features' are copy of windows or Mac... WTF ? Can't you innovate something new ?
As for the people who think that they can lure more users just by giving similar look and feel, ponder-
Price isn't the only consideration for many many people out there. What you're doing here is trying to provide a cheap xerox copy of an original... would you like one ? No! If a person can shell out $99 for the original, he WILL ! A COPY is still an *imitaion*, no matter how thick a paper its printed on. You've got a good OS, invent new things... why lug around the same legacy ?
For example see BeOS, Amiga or even Mac... windows compatibility or windows look-n-feel was never their selling point (hell, not even the last point)!! Yet people loved them. By following windows, you're implicitely stating that 'Yes windows is "the rule", and we're trying to catch up'. Why don't you realise that windows/Mac don't the best UI/interface/architecture possible... there's always something better!
From this page on his website-
My own experience with fluorine has been solely with its compounds. In particular, natural calcium fluoride crystals (fluorite or fluorspar). Also hydrofluoric acid, during a highly ill-advised "experiment" conducted in the clean room of a semiconductor manufacturer unwise enough to employ me.... The glass and quartz-ware used in diffusion furnaces must be kept scrupulously clean to avoid contamination of the silicon wafers being processed. Consequently it is periodically bathed in a mixture of hydrofluoric and nitric acids. Full protection clothing was donned over normal clean room eyes-only-exposed garb, and a large silicon wafer (complete with defective 4Mb DRAMs) was "carefully" thrown into the acid bath. Nothing happened for about twenty seconds, as the HF attacked the silicon, heating up the wafer until a runaway reaction started. The acid bath then erupted into a frightening boiling maelstrom, with the violent evolution of copious amounts of red and brown fumes of nitrogen oxides. The complete destruction of high technology by the tiger of chemistry.
Splendid.
Now we know why they're shunning away geeks