You are absolutely right. It is mostly what happens nowadays. The way to sell more softwares is to reduce costs of the computer+softwares combination.
Comparing the cost of making hardware with the cost of making softwares, I understand why hardware should be nearly free compared to software.
Moreover, if you somehow control the hardware (like Apple does) it is easier to make an OS or softwares that will work on it, hence downing the cost of producing softwares for it (compared with M$ and the zillion drivers that cannot possibly work altogether 100% of the time)
Does he think that cheaper hardware will make copying software harder to do?"
No, your reasoning is wrong.
Reducing the cost of hardware leaves budget for buying softwares.
Give your mum a free PC and she will buy a Windows license to go with it, which she would have copied from you if she had to buy the PC too and go over budget. Do that a hundred thousand times and you get the picture.
how does one meanwhile solves the most pressing problem, that is, providing CHEAP and RELIABLE means to get into earth orbit
Actually, that is the LAST problem to solve...
At the speed those spacecraft will travel, there is a whole range of new problems that occur...First being avoiding micro-meteorits and all sorts of debris.
Even a millimeter sized meteorite can wreck havock on your spaceship if you slam into it. It is likely to pierce the hull from side to side and do all sort of damages: oxygen leaks, destruction of electric cables or electronics, etc. to accomodate this, you will need spaceship with very bulky hulls, which costs more in terms of energy to propell. Even if you have highly efficient radar systems that would detect those small thingys, you cannot change course to avoid them (too costly in energy again).
It's funny most news articles about space travel forget to mention all the other troubles you have while travelling to space. They focus on cost and speed, but that's about it.
So far, no spacecraft is able to sustain damages from anything at high speed. So really, speed is only a small concern. Not talking about re-entry in earth atmosphere. You have to make it to Mars to be able to come back anyway.
Also of note the universe is still accelrating which blows my mind.
One of the theories that is attached to the standard model claims that there is some "inverse gravity" (I'm summarizing A LOT here!) provided by some yet-to-find particles (what could make the dark matter is a good candidate) or forces.
More, there are assumptions that gravity is a strong attracting force locally (at short distance), but at the scale of the universe, it would actually be a repulsive force. Talk about mind blowing!
until I read Brian Greene's "Ellegant Universe"
As much as I liked that book, I must say it is not as easy to follow and understand as you would expect. However, I highly recommend this reading to anyone interested in the present subject. For me, it opened a new range of possibilites and more, allowed me to think differently than in our 4 dimensioned world
A small extract that striked me is the analogy of very small dimensions the strings theory bring (some are enclosed in very small loops around 10pow-34 meters, the "Plank distance", with a carpet:
Brian Greene teaches us that, from our scale, we don't see the whole picture because we...just can't...so we don't see all the dimensions of space.
Check your carpet under your feet from far above: you see a flat, 2 dimensional, very normal carpet. Now, put your nose on it...you see the threads it's made of, with all the tiny knitted loops. That would be another dimension in your carpet (a 3rd dimension) that is only visible because you got very close to it. If you do not have a carpet, check your screen or telly: from far away, you see your usual wallpaper. Stucking your nose on your screen, you see all the dots (pixels) your screen is made of, and your wallpaper looks very different: not as a whole, but a bunch of small dots...which you usually don't see at your usual scale.
I don't know about you, but I think this is amazingly good way of explaining the hidden dimensions...
Selon LCI, le conducteur avait déjà été condamné pour état d'ivresse et excès de vitesse, son permis lui avait été retiré durant 4 ans.
Translation:According to LCI [a TV Channel], the driver has already been prosecuted for drunken driving and over-speeding, and his license cancelled for 4 years
This guy sounds like a dangerous idiot who is trying to protect his but with a fake story.
It also sounds like the media picked up HIS story first without fact-checking. Same thing happened with a woman in the Paris subway who claimed she and her baby were attacked by "anti-semites". Her story went first page in most of the newspapers, people started shouting against the insecurity in France, "anti-semitisme" and all sort of non-sense. It turned out she was mythomaniac and made up the whole story.
You got the idea...Slashdot is (was) not supposedly a web site to advertise softwares.
If it's a tool that will help developers working in XML it shuold be promoted.
But apparently you did not read the article. It's not a tool for general XML. There are already many of them. It's a tool for XAML which is a very specific subset of XML.
French highways are limited to 130KPH, and this guy was doing 120MPH, which is around 192KPH, so far beyond the limit.
Obviously the car's software blew up some limits.
I can only find that funny since the guy actually managed to avoid getting jailed...Since recently in France, you risk jail if you go 150KPH or more on a highway.
When the resolution is set to 60Hz which is the lowest, the screen flickers. That is a fact. You can see it very well while displaying a document with a white background and some black text.
Most people are just not aware of it and take it for granted. I cannot count how many time I showed my fellow co-workers how confy they get by pushing the refresh right higher (75Hz is great).
Regarding eyes and such. You will more easily get headaches or eye-aches if you keep a low refresh rate. That will also cause your eyes to get tired faster, and they will have to make more efforts to adjust. Your eye muscles will take much of that effort and probably get tired after a while. After a long while, they won't be able to adjust as they used to.
That is part of the reason why I browse at -4.75 with contact lenses since I am 12...
I don't think you can replace or change those people. After a dishonest CEO will come another one...Or one that would have been honest if there would be no pressure from less honest shareholders, board members or accountants.
This story shows us again that big corporations cannot fit in a honest world. They would all disappear....
I think it's very sad.
It's on Wikipedia since a while...
on
Google's Math Puzzle
·
· Score: 2, Informative
However, I found it a nice challenge to take (not too complicated either), and if you get challenged that while working at Google, it must be a pretty interesting job to have.
So since you seem to know exactly what the differences are, tell me what a "C++ script",
I have been writing "C++ programs" for the last ten years and I am probably so stupid that I have no idea what a C++ script is (yet) and have never seen any.
Too bad there is no moderation points.
This is plain wrong. Ask the French from La Hague what they think about burying nuclear wastes.
This is one of the worse nightmare that the next generations will face.
You cannot say it is perfectly safe since it really is NOT. It leaks in the water, in the soil, and ends up spreaded all around your nuclear store.
VB is not a scripting langage, although interpreted as Java.
Scripting langages, compared to STRUCTURED langages do not go through a phase of type-checkings, compilation, linking and such. It's the contrary...libraries for scripting langages such as PERL are very loosely coupled, there aren't many that have any fixed/well defined type (a string can be an int, or a float, etc.).
Slashdot Mirror
You are absolutely right. It is mostly what happens nowadays. The way to sell more softwares is to reduce costs of the computer+softwares combination.
Comparing the cost of making hardware with the cost of making softwares, I understand why hardware should be nearly free compared to software.
Moreover, if you somehow control the hardware (like Apple does) it is easier to make an OS or softwares that will work on it, hence downing the cost of producing softwares for it (compared with M$ and the zillion drivers that cannot possibly work altogether 100% of the time)
Does he think that cheaper hardware will make copying software harder to do?"
No, your reasoning is wrong.
Reducing the cost of hardware leaves budget for buying softwares.
Give your mum a free PC and she will buy a Windows license to go with it, which she would have copied from you if she had to buy the PC too and go over budget. Do that a hundred thousand times and you get the picture.
That's the logic behind the idea.
How about having just something more secure rather than re-invent the whole SSN thing country-wide?
Well...You installed a 3rd-party can...
how does one meanwhile solves the most pressing problem, that is, providing CHEAP and RELIABLE means to get into earth orbit
Actually, that is the LAST problem to solve...
At the speed those spacecraft will travel, there is a whole range of new problems that occur...First being avoiding micro-meteorits and all sorts of debris.
Even a millimeter sized meteorite can wreck havock on your spaceship if you slam into it. It is likely to pierce the hull from side to side and do all sort of damages: oxygen leaks, destruction of electric cables or electronics, etc. to accomodate this, you will need spaceship with very bulky hulls, which costs more in terms of energy to propell. Even if you have highly efficient radar systems that would detect those small thingys, you cannot change course to avoid them (too costly in energy again).
It's funny most news articles about space travel forget to mention all the other troubles you have while travelling to space. They focus on cost and speed, but that's about it.
So far, no spacecraft is able to sustain damages from anything at high speed. So really, speed is only a small concern. Not talking about re-entry in earth atmosphere. You have to make it to Mars to be able to come back anyway.
"Too many connections in [...] President"
But..I am not working for Halliburton!
One of the theories that is attached to the standard model claims that there is some "inverse gravity" (I'm summarizing A LOT here!) provided by some yet-to-find particles (what could make the dark matter is a good candidate) or forces. More, there are assumptions that gravity is a strong attracting force locally (at short distance), but at the scale of the universe, it would actually be a repulsive force. Talk about mind blowing!
until I read Brian Greene's "Ellegant Universe"
As much as I liked that book, I must say it is not as easy to follow and understand as you would expect. However, I highly recommend this reading to anyone interested in the present subject. For me, it opened a new range of possibilites and more, allowed me to think differently than in our 4 dimensioned world
A small extract that striked me is the analogy of very small dimensions the strings theory bring (some are enclosed in very small loops around 10pow-34 meters, the "Plank distance", with a carpet:
Brian Greene teaches us that, from our scale, we don't see the whole picture because we...just can't...so we don't see all the dimensions of space.
Check your carpet under your feet from far above: you see a flat, 2 dimensional, very normal carpet. Now, put your nose on it...you see the threads it's made of, with all the tiny knitted loops. That would be another dimension in your carpet (a 3rd dimension) that is only visible because you got very close to it. If you do not have a carpet, check your screen or telly: from far away, you see your usual wallpaper. Stucking your nose on your screen, you see all the dots (pixels) your screen is made of, and your wallpaper looks very different: not as a whole, but a bunch of small dots...which you usually don't see at your usual scale.
I don't know about you, but I think this is amazingly good way of explaining the hidden dimensions...
If you had read the other story, you read that:
Selon LCI, le conducteur avait déjà été condamné pour état d'ivresse et excès de vitesse, son permis lui avait été retiré durant 4 ans.
Translation:According to LCI [a TV Channel], the driver has already been prosecuted for drunken driving and over-speeding, and his license cancelled for 4 years
This guy sounds like a dangerous idiot who is trying to protect his but with a fake story.
It also sounds like the media picked up HIS story first without fact-checking. Same thing happened with a woman in the Paris subway who claimed she and her baby were attacked by "anti-semites". Her story went first page in most of the newspapers, people started shouting against the insecurity in France, "anti-semitisme" and all sort of non-sense. It turned out she was mythomaniac and made up the whole story.
You got the idea...Slashdot is (was) not supposedly a web site to advertise softwares.
If it's a tool that will help developers working in XML it shuold be promoted.
But apparently you did not read the article. It's not a tool for general XML. There are already many of them. It's a tool for XAML which is a very specific subset of XML.You are right...Why is that allowed on Slashdot?
I have the awful idea that it's only because of the "Microsoft didn't do it before us" thing.
The post is probably yet another mean for happy ./oters to bark against Microsoft
Frankly, I do not appreciate this attitude from Slashdot. Posters should focus on technology and not who's selling what and when.
Your surprise probably comes from the fact that you suck as much as a cruise control system.
French highways are limited to 130KPH, and this guy was doing 120MPH, which is around 192KPH, so far beyond the limit.
Obviously the car's software blew up some limits.
I can only find that funny since the guy actually managed to avoid getting jailed...Since recently in France, you risk jail if you go 150KPH or more on a highway.
Have the JPEG been virus-checked recently?
Well...I can only hope there will be none. There is enough waste in orbit already
One bug (typo IS a bug...) in 3 lines of headlines. Now let's see how much slashdotter are going to grunt about the amount of M$ bugs in Vindoze again
Most people are just not aware of it and take it for granted. I cannot count how many time I showed my fellow co-workers how confy they get by pushing the refresh right higher (75Hz is great).
Regarding eyes and such. You will more easily get headaches or eye-aches if you keep a low refresh rate. That will also cause your eyes to get tired faster, and they will have to make more efforts to adjust. Your eye muscles will take much of that effort and probably get tired after a while. After a long while, they won't be able to adjust as they used to.
That is part of the reason why I browse at -4.75 with contact lenses since I am 12...
my name is Ravi.
I thought all indians on call centers where called "Mike" or "Steve"
I reckon the rest is pretty accurate...
Yeaahh..mod me offtopic, I ate my Karma anyway
I don't think you can replace or change those people. After a dishonest CEO will come another one...Or one that would have been honest if there would be no pressure from less honest shareholders, board members or accountants.
This story shows us again that big corporations cannot fit in a honest world. They would all disappear....
I think it's very sad.You can find the answer on Wikipedia - The Exponential
And it leads to:
However, I found it a nice challenge to take (not too complicated either), and if you get challenged that while working at Google, it must be a pretty interesting job to have.It's a NUMERIC solution, not an ALGEBRAIC solution.
That was time somebody clarified this for the math-challendged slashdotters.
Reading the PDF demonstration, it's pretty clear that it is simply an algorithm for computing roots numerically, not calculating them.
I'd mod you "At least somebody who makes sense" ThanksOh...I am very sorry about that. (although I knew about that EN-US thing already..)
Or would that be that English is not the native tongue for MOSt of the people?
Maybe?
So since you seem to know exactly what the differences are, tell me what a "C++ script", I have been writing "C++ programs" for the last ten years and I am probably so stupid that I have no idea what a C++ script is (yet) and have never seen any.
Too bad there is no moderation points. This is plain wrong. Ask the French from La Hague what they think about burying nuclear wastes. This is one of the worse nightmare that the next generations will face.
You cannot say it is perfectly safe since it really is NOT. It leaks in the water, in the soil, and ends up spreaded all around your nuclear store.
So does ignoranceScripting langages, compared to STRUCTURED langages do not go through a phase of type-checkings, compilation, linking and such. It's the contrary...libraries for scripting langages such as PERL are very loosely coupled, there aren't many that have any fixed/well defined type (a string can be an int, or a float, etc.).