a well meant and kindhearted response, but frankly... you make the same mistakes that allow ken brown to say what he does.
The initial operating system was not the operating system that exists today.
linux is not an operating system. it is a kernel. i am sure you know this, but notice what he says about gcc. his confusion with the naming of linux as gnu/linux as about the operating system...and if what linus wrote was the OS as a whole, ken brown would actually have a point.
but, we seem to agree that he doesn't. if we as software engineers make such mistakes, how can we expect ken brown not to?
i think the whole point is that while an infected system can be fixed, someone you executed cannot be rehabilitated, so to speak, and become a wholesome citizen again. same reason why many people are against capital punishment-- unlike any other sentence, it is irreversible. perhaps i should add that i am for capital punishment...
purely biometric passwords are inherently flawed. i worked on a system which is really a combination of the two: handwriting signature verification. you can pick your password by picking what your "signature" will look like. it can be a simple shape, or your name, or whatever. furthermore, unlike a password, even if an attacker can guess what your password is (which is much harder since the space of possible passwords is much larger), he has to be able to forge it, writing it the way you write it. this is very difficult. more importantly, even poorly chosen passwords (simple shapes) cannot be cracked with brute force attacks since the password space is so large.
We need to make computer technology so familiar that by the time kids reach the 6th grade, there are no scenarios where kids are spending time trying to play with fonts in Word, just as we also hope that 6th graders can effectively use a dictionary or a thesaurus.
i disagree. my whole point was that even though i started using a computer until quite late (and didn't use windows until high school for sure) i didn't suffer from lack of "computer literacy." teach a child how to think, and he will be able to use a dictionary effectively. teach him how to use a dictionary, and that's about all he will be able to do.
why should we be teaching people how to "use" computers. why is this such an important element of education? i learned how to use a computer when i was 12, not 5 like you, and didn't really start using a computer until i was in high school, yet a CS major in college who considers himself someone who can "use computers".
handwriting essays forces students to plan ahead of time instead of just spewing ideas on paper and then copying and pasting around as they see fit to make an "essay"
you say that the US education system has a lack of funding? part of the point of the book is to say that most of the funding that is going into computers and tech can go into more effective places, like paying teachers.
and the bit about networking? are you suggesting that schools should waste their time teaching how to setup a firewall, virus scanners and filter spam? dear god, you'd end up with data entry clerks by the time you're done.
this is quite true if you expect humans to have to relearn everything every generation. however, that is not the case. education provides a way to teach kids what has been discovered by other people over that last few thousand years.
at this point in the history of human intellectual development, it is impossible for any one human to learn every discipline in detail.
so, the process is expediated by requiring self-discipline, hard work and effective human teachers." even WITH such things, education of most humans takes about 20 years to become a professional.
do you honestly think that a child could learn that amount of knowledge in less time on his own? i doubt it.
take a look at "fuzzy math" programs and also at the website "mathematically correct" which opposes fuzzy math programs. fuzz math proponents believe, just like you do, that learning should be fun and kids should explore and discover everything for themselves. the math scores for schools that utilize such programs plummets. the idea might be theoretically plausible, but it has a fundamental flaw: it assumes that kids could learn everything they need to knwo to be productive professionals on their own in virtually the same amount of time.
it might be the natural progression, but the fact that it's maximal and indeed is capable of general computation is most definitely not. there were systems of "general computation" which were discovered before turing machines (mu recursive functions, lambda calculus, unrestricted grammars). the only reason turing machines are so important is that they are easier to actually implement in hardware. lambda calculus is the basis for all of functional programming, for example, but that came a lot later.
pardon, but what is so unmathematical about neural networks? they are trying to predict a non-linear function, and ANN + backpropagation has been used for this kind of stuff for ages. plus, there are plenty of applications where ANNs are still used quite heavily.
one of my friends once made a digital pinhole camera. yes, you heard me right. it was really cool. and since there is not really any concept of depth of field (everything is in focus) you can get some pretty cool pictures. did it for a undergrad honors project in photography
funny that you mention eniac and von neumann in the same post. i know it's humor, but von neumann published what eckert and mauchly *couldn't* publish since they were under military classification at the time. so, naturally, everyone forgets about them.
although this might appeal to some users, this isn't exactly a technology that any market will jump on, especially developers. if every application requires hardware acceleration to work just to see the icons in the app, developers will be very much turned off by the idea. furthermore, linux desktops already look better than windows.
what linux needs is a technology that windows simply cannot produce without bending over backwards. and i do not mean simple UI enhancements, like tabbed browsing, or virtual desktops... because plenty of people don't like either (mostly because they're different). i mean something that makes development easier and faster. if you get the developers to switch, you'll get the users to switch in no time. problem is, developers don't see a reason to switch, when they are perfectly happy with what they have on windows (this includes incompetent develops who don't know what a compiler is, and just like to click things and write code). 3D icons won't do the trick.
another note: in many a software company, most of the money is made off of renewed run-time licenses, not sales or support. unless you are selling software that joe sixpack needs, you are going to have a few big customers who keep you alive from year to year and then a bunch of smaller fish that generate some extra revenue. valuing your IP is one of the few ways to make money in the industry. sure, there exist a few OSS companies that manage after many years to break even, but these are exception, not the rule.
i agree with parent why they are evil. if they actually *did* rightfully and morally own unix, then they should by all means protect it.
cheap is often not the issue. i was in germany and there a lot of people still have manuals. why? because the engine has to have a certain minimum amount of power to not stall with an automatic. this is around 100hp. the ford mondeo (at least when i saw it) was about 80hp.
why? as much as i would like to agree with you, i don't think i can. it *is* part of your job description (in the case of most developers, tech support people, etc) to train subordinates and/or new employees. imagine training a partner or a co-worker? how is this any different? they tell you that you are training a co-worker and then lay you off. that's it. you refused to do your job, so they fire you. you wanna quite cause you don't like "doing your job," too bad. i agree with you completely and as an employer i would probably never do such a thing, but it's not necessarily an unreasonable request.
this will sound a tad trollish, but whatever happened to just installing in one directory? why is it necessary to have a special package? why not just make a tar ball or whatever and unpack it into some directory; run from there; delete the directory when want to delete software. ofcourse it's hard to make a good installation system when the standard directories for most stuff (config scripts, startup scripts, etc) is in different places. windows is not like that.
another interesting modification to the laws occured in a book not written by asimov but sponsered by his estate. "Mirage" by Mark W. Tiedemann. basically, there were some crime assisting robots which would not go into meltdown if they saw a human being harmed, like most others. they are different from robots that worked at the morgue since those were just told the bodies were not really humans. in the case of the new robots, they could bypass the first law by basically deferring the malignant "thoughts" to a temporary buffer, allowing them, to say, see a criminal be killed by their human partner.
a lot of what asimov wrote about and started a legacy of, is to explore what happens when you fuck with the rules-- how even minor modifications can lead to disasters, as is evident in mirage.
this movie is total bullshit, as the robots go wild, and the psychological analysis and exploration present in asimov's books and subsequent ones such as mirage is not present any more. even "bicentennial man" had it to some extent, so was acceptable.
that's not true for dvds, you are thinking of vhs. i know a guy who owns a dvd rental shop, and i asked him how much he pays for it? he replied-- "same as you, maybe a bit cheaper...i was quite surprised
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a well meant and kindhearted response, but frankly... you make the same mistakes that allow ken brown to say what he does.
The initial operating system was not the operating system that exists today.
linux is not an operating system. it is a kernel. i am sure you know this, but notice what he says about gcc. his confusion with the naming of linux as gnu/linux as about the operating system...and if what linus wrote was the OS as a whole, ken brown would actually have a point.
but, we seem to agree that he doesn't. if we as software engineers make such mistakes, how can we expect ken brown not to?
i think the whole point is that while an infected system can be fixed, someone you executed cannot be rehabilitated, so to speak, and become a wholesome citizen again. same reason why many people are against capital punishment-- unlike any other sentence, it is irreversible. perhaps i should add that i am for capital punishment...
purely biometric passwords are inherently flawed. i worked on a system which is really a combination of the two: handwriting signature verification. you can pick your password by picking what your "signature" will look like. it can be a simple shape, or your name, or whatever. furthermore, unlike a password, even if an attacker can guess what your password is (which is much harder since the space of possible passwords is much larger), he has to be able to forge it, writing it the way you write it. this is very difficult. more importantly, even poorly chosen passwords (simple shapes) cannot be cracked with brute force attacks since the password space is so large.
i disagree. my whole point was that even though i started using a computer until quite late (and didn't use windows until high school for sure) i didn't suffer from lack of "computer literacy." teach a child how to think, and he will be able to use a dictionary effectively. teach him how to use a dictionary, and that's about all he will be able to do.
why should we be teaching people how to "use" computers. why is this such an important element of education? i learned how to use a computer when i was 12, not 5 like you, and didn't really start using a computer until i was in high school, yet a CS major in college who considers himself someone who can "use computers".
handwriting essays forces students to plan ahead of time instead of just spewing ideas on paper and then copying and pasting around as they see fit to make an "essay"
you say that the US education system has a lack of funding? part of the point of the book is to say that most of the funding that is going into computers and tech can go into more effective places, like paying teachers.
and the bit about networking? are you suggesting that schools should waste their time teaching how to setup a firewall, virus scanners and filter spam? dear god, you'd end up with data entry clerks by the time you're done.
this is quite true if you expect humans to have to relearn everything every generation. however, that is not the case. education provides a way to teach kids what has been discovered by other people over that last few thousand years.
at this point in the history of human intellectual development, it is impossible for any one human to learn every discipline in detail.
so, the process is expediated by requiring self-discipline, hard work and effective human teachers." even WITH such things, education of most humans takes about 20 years to become a professional.
do you honestly think that a child could learn that amount of knowledge in less time on his own? i doubt it.
take a look at "fuzzy math" programs and also at the website "mathematically correct" which opposes fuzzy math programs. fuzz math proponents believe, just like you do, that learning should be fun and kids should explore and discover everything for themselves. the math scores for schools that utilize such programs plummets. the idea might be theoretically plausible, but it has a fundamental flaw: it assumes that kids could learn everything they need to knwo to be productive professionals on their own in virtually the same amount of time.
it might be the natural progression, but the fact that it's maximal and indeed is capable of general computation is most definitely not. there were systems of "general computation" which were discovered before turing machines (mu recursive functions, lambda calculus, unrestricted grammars). the only reason turing machines are so important is that they are easier to actually implement in hardware. lambda calculus is the basis for all of functional programming, for example, but that came a lot later.
mplayer plugin plays whatever mplayer plays. and mplayer plays quicktimei have been watching apple trailers for quite some time
bill gates is already in the HoF
not there but stroustrup is? i don't get it
that was indeed an issue. he didn't really find a good way of dealing with it. his images came out kinda grainy, but not bad for an Art student :)
pardon, but what is so unmathematical about neural networks? they are trying to predict a non-linear function, and ANN + backpropagation has been used for this kind of stuff for ages. plus, there are plenty of applications where ANNs are still used quite heavily.
one of my friends once made a digital pinhole camera. yes, you heard me right. it was really cool. and since there is not really any concept of depth of field (everything is in focus) you can get some pretty cool pictures. did it for a undergrad honors project in photography
funny that you mention eniac and von neumann in the same post. i know it's humor, but von neumann published what eckert and mauchly *couldn't* publish since they were under military classification at the time. so, naturally, everyone forgets about them.
although this might appeal to some users, this isn't exactly a technology that any market will jump on, especially developers. if every application requires hardware acceleration to work just to see the icons in the app, developers will be very much turned off by the idea. furthermore, linux desktops already look better than windows.
what linux needs is a technology that windows simply cannot produce without bending over backwards. and i do not mean simple UI enhancements, like tabbed browsing, or virtual desktops... because plenty of people don't like either (mostly because they're different). i mean something that makes development easier and faster. if you get the developers to switch, you'll get the users to switch in no time. problem is, developers don't see a reason to switch, when they are perfectly happy with what they have on windows (this includes incompetent develops who don't know what a compiler is, and just like to click things and write code). 3D icons won't do the trick.
wait a minute there! there is a difference between suing other companies and selling run-time licenses for software that YOU WROTE.
another note: in many a software company, most of the money is made off of renewed run-time licenses, not sales or support. unless you are selling software that joe sixpack needs, you are going to have a few big customers who keep you alive from year to year and then a bunch of smaller fish that generate some extra revenue. valuing your IP is one of the few ways to make money in the industry. sure, there exist a few OSS companies that manage after many years to break even, but these are exception, not the rule.
i agree with parent why they are evil. if they actually *did* rightfully and morally own unix, then they should by all means protect it.
cheap is often not the issue. i was in germany and there a lot of people still have manuals. why? because the engine has to have a certain minimum amount of power to not stall with an automatic. this is around 100hp. the ford mondeo (at least when i saw it) was about 80hp.
why? as much as i would like to agree with you, i don't think i can. it *is* part of your job description (in the case of most developers, tech support people, etc) to train subordinates and/or new employees. imagine training a partner or a co-worker? how is this any different? they tell you that you are training a co-worker and then lay you off. that's it. you refused to do your job, so they fire you. you wanna quite cause you don't like "doing your job," too bad. i agree with you completely and as an employer i would probably never do such a thing, but it's not necessarily an unreasonable request.
this will sound a tad trollish, but whatever happened to just installing in one directory? why is it necessary to have a special package? why not just make a tar ball or whatever and unpack it into some directory; run from there; delete the directory when want to delete software. ofcourse it's hard to make a good installation system when the standard directories for most stuff (config scripts, startup scripts, etc) is in different places. windows is not like that.
funny you laugh, that's my college's motto :)
another interesting modification to the laws occured in a book not written by asimov but sponsered by his estate. "Mirage" by Mark W. Tiedemann. basically, there were some crime assisting robots which would not go into meltdown if they saw a human being harmed, like most others. they are different from robots that worked at the morgue since those were just told the bodies were not really humans. in the case of the new robots, they could bypass the first law by basically deferring the malignant "thoughts" to a temporary buffer, allowing them, to say, see a criminal be killed by their human partner.
a lot of what asimov wrote about and started a legacy of, is to explore what happens when you fuck with the rules-- how even minor modifications can lead to disasters, as is evident in mirage.
this movie is total bullshit, as the robots go wild, and the psychological analysis and exploration present in asimov's books and subsequent ones such as mirage is not present any more. even "bicentennial man" had it to some extent, so was acceptable.
interestingly, he has one of his characters wonder why someone should be judged by the color of his skin, making an analogy to the color of hair.
martin brest made "scent of a woman." great movie. and then he made "gigli" the worst movie ever made. plenty of good directors make bad movies
that's not true for dvds, you are thinking of vhs. i know a guy who owns a dvd rental shop, and i asked him how much he pays for it? he replied-- "same as you, maybe a bit cheaper...i was quite surprised