Well, actually lot's of algorithms exist for designing optical fiber, and they do it efficiently and very accurately. I use a number of in house proprietary programs for designing optical fibers all the time. And I can tell you we don't waste time messing around with GA's
So why don't you hear a great deal about such algorithms? Well, for one, they don't have cool names like "Genetic Algorithms". Also, they are highly prized and considered extremely valuable intellectual property for the companies that actually make optical fiber. We are not going to publicise all the details the most fundamental design tools of our business.
GA's are not the future of optical fiber. They are, however, excellent for generating academic papers, which in turn are highly useful for getting tenure.
Man, calm down and switch to decaff. The grandparent was an interesting post and clearly not a troll or offtopic. I would imagine if you delve a little deeper the mathematics of paper and DNA folding share a lot in common.
For what it is worth, as the article submitter, I wrote in the submission a simple "(reg. required)." Apparently CmdrTaco thought "(soul sucking registration required)" was far more informative, and edited it thusly. Which really annoys the crap out of me. Way to be professional.
Well, the title of the linked page in the article is "iPod your BMW". How am I supposed to make sense of that unless "iPod" is being used as a verb there?
True, either way you pay. But if you fork and pay your own developers then you have much tighter control over what is produced, whereas if you simply invest, then you can only hope that the Mozilla Foundation agrees with the direction you want to go.
Interesting comparison, but to really level the playing field, seems you should do the same thing with Firefox 0.9. It definitely seems much lighter and snappier than version 0.8 in my experience so far.
Microsoft is so proud, that they're becoming blind to the fact that their brand name is become a joke in pop culture.
Is that really true? I would imagine the brand name of Microsoft is extremely strong in popular culture. It strikes me that Microsoft's brand may have a very poor image here at Slashdot, but Slashdot doesn't exactly equate to popular culture.
I have had the same problem with Firefox at the New York Times for a long time, too, which has kept me from recommending Firefox to a lot of people I know. I know the bug is still there with Slashdot in Firefox 0.9, although I don't recall seeing it at the Times with the current release yet.
My favorite is the one written in the Cakewalk application language. It actually plays the song if you have a midi instrument. (I am assuming it is correct. I haven't bothered to run it.)
Wow that's pretty interesting! Thanks for pointing that out. Although, the speed, at least to my eye still seems about the same. But the number of rendered icons is definitely less now.
Well I love Firefox and have used it as my main browser for the last year or so. But honestly, I loaded the website both IE and Firefox 0.9 and really didn't see a difference.
You would have thought that joke would have played itself out by now in the discussion about the Firefox Release Candidate.
But man it is still heee-larious. Nothing like beating an unfunny joke into the ground to really get them rolling in the aisles (commonly known as the Saturday Night Live Syndrome).
Yeah, I was disappointed with that, too. But I was even more disappointed that not one of the several passwords I tried for the Washington Post worked. Maybe they expire quickly because the user name is the email address, but I tried seven or eight different ones and they all failed.
This is not about people who develop user-space software. This is about people who just want to cut and paste from thier word processor to their spreadsheet and want to know why Linux can't do this as efficiently or easily.
The point of the article though was when I add to Linux the "Feature-Richness" that a typical user expects (and has a right to expect) from their day to day experience in Windows XP, then suddenly Linux no longer looks good. It suffers both in terms of stability and speed.
So to the average user it suddenly looks like "Feature Richness" has become "Bloated" in Linux. And this should have people very concerned.
Linux is NOT obviously more rock solid. People have been saying this for years but it is simply no longer true. Win2k and XP effectively eliminated the stability gap, especially when compared to KDE or Gnome.
I don't know how things stand on the server side, but in my experience on the desktop, XP wins in both stability and speed. I could comfortably run it on a 400 MHz AMD k6-2 with 128 Mb of RAM. Try doing that with Fedora core 2 or Mandrake 10.
It is definitely time people let go of old saws like "Linux is obviously more rock solid" and face up to the reality of desktop users experience.
Well, my original submission had a period in it before the offensive capital "He". Timothy saw fit to remove it (and a few other links to the NYT and magazine I put in the submission). So what? It's a minor typo; they happen all the time.
Do people make a reference to who exactly Bill Gates is every time he is mentioned in a post? Similarly, on a tech site devoted to OS news, I don't think it is unreasonable to expect one of the founders of Sun and architects of Berkeley Unix to enjoy the same name recognition.
Finally, regarding the link to the New York Times requiring a registration. I personally am tired of people complaining about the NYT registration policy. They provide quality news for free with (IMO) a minimally intrusive registration. Don't like it - go out and pay for the paper then.
Your nit picks were sloppy and lame in multiple ways.
Well I for one consider an email that I send to an individual as a very different thing compared to a posting in a public forum.
I am not talking about security. I am well aware it is easy to snoop through un-encrypted email. The same could be said for snail mail in an addressed envelope. However, I expect the recipient of a personal communication to treat that communication with respect.
I am not trying to let the Mozilla guys off the hook; they behaved badly as well. But if someone were to post in a public forum a personal email that I sent to them, that would end any further communication.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, actually lot's of algorithms exist for designing optical fiber, and they do it efficiently and very accurately. I use a number of in house proprietary programs for designing optical fibers all the time. And I can tell you we don't waste time messing around with GA's
So why don't you hear a great deal about such algorithms? Well, for one, they don't have cool names like "Genetic Algorithms". Also, they are highly prized and considered extremely valuable intellectual property for the companies that actually make optical fiber. We are not going to publicise all the details the most fundamental design tools of our business.
GA's are not the future of optical fiber. They are, however, excellent for generating academic papers, which in turn are highly useful for getting tenure.
Man, calm down and switch to decaff. The grandparent was an interesting post and clearly not a troll or offtopic. I would imagine if you delve a little deeper the mathematics of paper and DNA folding share a lot in common.
For what it is worth, as the article submitter, I wrote in the submission a simple "(reg. required)." Apparently CmdrTaco thought "(soul sucking registration required)" was far more informative, and edited it thusly. Which really annoys the crap out of me. Way to be professional.
There are also some nice pictures of Huffman's origami here. The pictures also show Huffman himself doing the folding.
Well, the title of the linked page in the article is "iPod your BMW". How am I supposed to make sense of that unless "iPod" is being used as a verb there?
Thank you. That one has always bugged the crap out of me, too.
'iPod' is NOT a verb. Now go and write it on the board 100 times.
And while we are at it, 'office' is not a verb, either. Microsft, you need to stay after class with Apple.
There, I feel much better now.
It's easy to find Rio Rancho - just take that left turn at Albuquerque.
Eh, what's up doc?
True, either way you pay. But if you fork and pay your own developers then you have much tighter control over what is produced, whereas if you simply invest, then you can only hope that the Mozilla Foundation agrees with the direction you want to go.
Interesting comparison, but to really level the playing field, seems you should do the same thing with Firefox 0.9. It definitely seems much lighter and snappier than version 0.8 in my experience so far.
Victor Ninov at Lawerence Berkley National Laboratory.
Let's hope Fermilab is more certain about this discovery.
Microsoft is so proud, that they're becoming blind to the fact that their brand name is become a joke in pop culture.
Is that really true? I would imagine the brand name of Microsoft is extremely strong in popular culture. It strikes me that Microsoft's brand may have a very poor image here at Slashdot, but Slashdot doesn't exactly equate to popular culture.
I have had the same problem with Firefox at the New York Times for a long time, too, which has kept me from recommending Firefox to a lot of people I know. I know the bug is still there with Slashdot in Firefox 0.9, although I don't recall seeing it at the Times with the current release yet.
My favorite is the one written in the Cakewalk application language. It actually plays the song if you have a midi instrument. (I am assuming it is correct. I haven't bothered to run it.)
Wow that's pretty interesting! Thanks for pointing that out. Although, the speed, at least to my eye still seems about the same. But the number of rendered icons is definitely less now.
Well I love Firefox and have used it as my main browser for the last year or so. But honestly, I loaded the website both IE and Firefox 0.9 and really didn't see a difference.
You would have thought that joke would have played itself out by now in the discussion about the Firefox Release Candidate.
But man it is still heee-larious. Nothing like beating an unfunny joke into the ground to really get them rolling in the aisles (commonly known as the Saturday Night Live Syndrome).
Yeah, I was disappointed with that, too. But I was even more disappointed that not one of the several passwords I tried for the Washington Post worked. Maybe they expire quickly because the user name is the email address, but I tried seven or eight different ones and they all failed.
"It takes as long for me to perform a task (say, create and print a letter)"
Could that be because your typing speed has not scaled at the same rate as the processor speed?
This is not about people who develop user-space software. This is about people who just want to cut and paste from thier word processor to their spreadsheet and want to know why Linux can't do this as efficiently or easily.
The point of the article though was when I add to Linux the "Feature-Richness" that a typical user expects (and has a right to expect) from their day to day experience in Windows XP, then suddenly Linux no longer looks good. It suffers both in terms of stability and speed.
So to the average user it suddenly looks like "Feature Richness" has become "Bloated" in Linux. And this should have people very concerned.
Linux is NOT obviously more rock solid. People have been saying this for years but it is simply no longer true. Win2k and XP effectively eliminated the stability gap, especially when compared to KDE or Gnome.
I don't know how things stand on the server side, but in my experience on the desktop, XP wins in both stability and speed. I could comfortably run it on a 400 MHz AMD k6-2 with 128 Mb of RAM. Try doing that with Fedora core 2 or Mandrake 10.
It is definitely time people let go of old saws like "Linux is obviously more rock solid" and face up to the reality of desktop users experience.
"Thanks for bringing this to my attention on the Organization of the Slashdot, geeber! ;-)"
No problem - it was a pleasure of mine!
Well, my original submission had a period in it before the offensive capital "He". Timothy saw fit to remove it (and a few other links to the NYT and magazine I put in the submission). So what? It's a minor typo; they happen all the time.
Do people make a reference to who exactly Bill Gates is every time he is mentioned in a post? Similarly, on a tech site devoted to OS news, I don't think it is unreasonable to expect one of the founders of Sun and architects of Berkeley Unix to enjoy the same name recognition.
Finally, regarding the link to the New York Times requiring a registration. I personally am tired of people complaining about the NYT registration policy. They provide quality news for free with (IMO) a minimally intrusive registration. Don't like it - go out and pay for the paper then.
Your nit picks were sloppy and lame in multiple ways.
Well I for one consider an email that I send to an individual as a very different thing compared to a posting in a public forum.
I am not talking about security. I am well aware it is easy to snoop through un-encrypted email. The same could be said for snail mail in an addressed envelope. However, I expect the recipient of a personal communication to treat that communication with respect.
I am not trying to let the Mozilla guys off the hook; they behaved badly as well. But if someone were to post in a public forum a personal email that I sent to them, that would end any further communication.