Still there is one conclusion I'd like to draw out of this though. Over the long term (years apparently), the speed of development that is driven by money (ie. don't redo, don't start from scratch - just fix it as fast as you can) ends up being slower than development where developers set the deadlines and timelines. Arguably, we're not quite there with Windows vs. GNU/Linux, but it is plain to see that OS movement is catching up.
I resent that. My time is not free. I've got to buy groceries, pay mortgage, student loans etc. I spend a lot of years learning what I know and I do expect to be paid for my work.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing agains open source. I have contributed to several projects both on my own time and while getting paid (permission from employer). What I don't like is to be forced into giving my work away for free.
Ideas are cheap to duplicate, but expensive to invent (cost of doing research vs. buying a book). I am one of those people who believes that both models can coexist peacefully. There is a number of software packages that are worth every penny the companies are charging for them.
What I would like to see is 30 fps when I throw around 2-5 million triangles on the screen. High resolution (half a meter in rw) GIS data is a pain to render fast. Sometimes you just have no choice, LOD algorithms are not always acceptable.
Exactly - how about let it go outside to do a visual scan of the station/spacecraft and send the video back in? Of course, the propulstion would need to be different. Maybe one that can walk on shuttle skin?
Wipe the drive and sell it (at next to nothing) to your employees. Depending on your company and the number of geeks in it - there will always be someone who wants a 4-5 year old laptop for a project. Besides, no shipping charges. In the worst case, your employees get access to the data (most of them have it anyways). You do trust your employees, right?
My first choice for someone who wants to learn a programming language (but does not know any yet) would be Python. Bear in mind, that's for someone who just wants to learn a programming language for general tasks. (Afterwards I'd teach C).
For someone in your case. Don't teach a language for the sake of teaching a language. First you need a problem. Something your mom is really interested in solving. It should be something simple. One example could be a program (possibly a daemon) that will e-mail a reminder about the b-days in your family. Or perhaps just pop up a window. Another idea might be to download a lot of recipies from the web and build a front end around it. Something that allows you to grep through them. Eventually adding ability to recognize ingredients and query for those, etc. The important thing is to start small, have a visible result almost immediately and then slowly build up.
Another alternative might be to show your mom how to use photoshop or a 3d rendering package. You can download Maya educational version for free. You also have povray and a whole slew of others available. Maybe it's time to help your mom develop the more artistic side...
Add a decent amount of ram/storage and you can have voice recognition system, store your white/yellow pages for reference, store your digital photos (and edit them), store a high resolution map of your camping trip, etc....
There is no such thing as too much power. If you have enough power you don't need that much screen space. If you could use most of the functions of a PDA by actually speaking to it (like to another human), wouldn't you?
Why not shoot in film and use a film scanner? I've got a 30 year old (Minolta X-700) camera that has been with me through a lot. The thing will not die and just keeps on going. I just have to change the battery once a year or so.
I usually develop my photos at a grocery store. Ask to have it developed and cut only - no prints. It costs me 1.25 per roll and I have it in about 20 minutes. Later I scan them in myself, get 11 Megapixel images with 48 bit color, scanned 8 times to minimize noise. (They're about 62 Meg TIFF images) that I can print with up to 13x19 on my Epson 2000P printer.
The best part is, in 5 years I'll buy the newest and greatest film scanner and I have the option to re-scan the images at 20 Megapixels or whatever.
That's my solution at least. By the way, the scanner was only 500CAD;-)
I've seen two year old laptops do about 20Megs/s.
If you're running linux, use a program called hdparm. Try running this as root:
hdparm -d 1 -u 1 -c 1/dev/hda
You can test the performance with:
hdparm -t -T/dev/hda
Repeat as necessary for each HD. Also put it somewhere where it will be executed at bootup.
For reference, My Maxtor 80Gig drive does rougly 50Megs/s. My Sata drive usually does above 70.
There can be a ton of other uses.
How about a mesh network? Assuming they have sufficient range. Military, Search and Rescue, police, etc. Heck. Put one on each city bus and you'd have a fairly reliable network in a city. That's assuming you could get a km or so range inside a city.
Ok. Two problems with that statement.
1. In what professional capacity are you making the statement "unecessary" ?
2. What is the acceptable amount to spent on human life?
Most of the doctors I've ever seen did not care too much about suing, as they did about trying to help me. Than again I live in Canada. Maybe it is different in the US. If so, I feel sorry for you guys.
Although I acknowledge that there are good reasons for suing a doctor, most of them are not. Doctors are human, they're doing the best they can.
If a treatment has a 80% chance of working, and 5% chance of killing you is it a mistake to recommend it? What if you'd die anyways, just 5 years down the road? You'd have 80% chance at life. I think most of us would agree that it's not a mistake to try it. If a patient dies because of that treatment - was it a mistake? I could see only one problem - that's if/when the doctor did not explain the odds/risks. I see way too many people suing because they need to be protected from themselves.
I've seen the presentation by one of the people involved.
They basically got alpha versions of a 10Gig ether cards from intel. Got the ISP company go give them a light path directly between two points. I think they got one of the underwater cables entirely to themselves for a few hours or something like that. The cost for that was what makes it so expensive.
Yes, they did tweek the heck out of that software (by the way, they did use linux - don't remember which distro).
Here is an idea, it is borrowed from the way ISP's pay for bandwith.
Why not make networks pay for the e-mail that originates there? Subtract the e-mail that arrives. For most companies/networks - that will be just about an break even proposition. For the ones who allow spammers - well... that is going to get expensive pretty quickly. Sooo... they will either boot the spammers off, or get them to pay it. Either way, we win!
What could be better than to put a Microsoft rep on the spot? Ask him/her a few questions and listen to the answers. Why not use a few questions from an article from yesterday? It was something about the debate between Shared Source vs. Open Source. It's easy to "create" questions in your basement, it's making them "stick" what counts though.
I'd say make it a point to invite Microsoft to every Open Source conference. Let them speak and then ask questions.
That's not entirely true. There are languages that simply will not map well enough onto the.NET platform. I know of one for sure - Python. There is simply no way to make a natifve implementation of Python.NET - some things like dynamically binding functions to an object instance, multiple number of function arguments, etc will not work. There is a version of python for.NET, but it involved porting over the INTERPRETER onto.NET and running that. Basically you have a VM running a VM running your code. If you think that is not very fast - you're right;-)
How about a detailed world that is actually interesting? A story that allows you to explore that world. And massive amounts of background info for people who enjoy that stuff.
I do not see why source cannot be an integral part of the product. Yes, I am a developer. Yes I do want to be paid. Let's look at the problems described in the article:
1. Piracy. How is having the source making it easier to pirate things? People have been swapping microsoft binaries for ages. It is actually easier to just copy the installation disk (whether floppy or cd) than to recompile the program from sources.
2.Copyright laws. Wouldn't it make it actually easier to check if people conform to copyright laws? If I release all of my source code and you are required (by the marketplace perhaps, not as a law) to do the same than it is quite easy to see if you copied some stuff of of me. How many people have wandered whether Microsoft has copied some code from GPL licensed programs (I doubt it personally). How many have the opportunity to CHECK if they have?
3. National Security. I do not have a lot of confidence in a nation that bases its security on the ability to sweep them under the rug. The idea is to avoid having those problems in the first place! Maybe if this practice became accepted we would not have destroyers being run on windows.
4. Safety-critical applications. Even if there is little to gain from having this code available to the users - not having it is worse. What are you trying to hide? If this is a safety-critical application then the answer should be "nothing, have a look".
Nobody is asking to release the source code without compensation. It's just that the source becomes part of the application. IF most people will not use it - then fine. What are you worried about? Is your code really that bad that you could not write good code if forced to?
I want your source so that I can see if your code is worth the money I paid for it. A really bad code will be easily visible in most cases. Functions that are pages and pages of code for no good reason. Have you ever seen an 8 thousand lines case statement in C? I have. Bad naming conventions etc. If I see that your code is consistently bad, I'll just stop buying it. Would you buy a car that has rust all over the body? Even if it runs well (for the moment) and has great acceleration? I would not.
Slashdot Mirror
You're absolutely right.
No seriously.
Still there is one conclusion I'd like to draw out of this though. Over the long term (years apparently), the speed of development that is driven by money (ie. don't redo, don't start from scratch - just fix it as fast as you can) ends up being slower than development where developers set the deadlines and timelines. Arguably, we're not quite there with Windows vs. GNU/Linux, but it is plain to see that OS movement is catching up.
I resent that. My time is not free. I've got to buy groceries, pay mortgage, student loans etc. I spend a lot of years learning what I know and I do expect to be paid for my work.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing agains open source. I have contributed to several projects both on my own time and while getting paid (permission from employer). What I don't like is to be forced into giving my work away for free.
Ideas are cheap to duplicate, but expensive to invent (cost of doing research vs. buying a book). I am one of those people who believes that both models can coexist peacefully. There is a number of software packages that are worth every penny the companies are charging for them.
I wouldn't.
What I would like to see is 30 fps when I throw around 2-5 million triangles on the screen. High resolution (half a meter in rw) GIS data is a pain to render fast. Sometimes you just have no choice, LOD algorithms are not always acceptable.
Exactly - how about let it go outside to do a visual scan of the station/spacecraft and send the video back in? Of course, the propulstion would need to be different. Maybe one that can walk on shuttle skin?
Here is an idea.
Wipe the drive and sell it (at next to nothing) to your employees. Depending on your company and the number of geeks in it - there will always be someone who wants a 4-5 year old laptop for a project. Besides, no shipping charges. In the worst case, your employees get access to the data (most of them have it anyways). You do trust your employees, right?
My first choice for someone who wants to learn a programming language (but does not know any yet) would be Python. Bear in mind, that's for someone who just wants to learn a programming language for general tasks. (Afterwards I'd teach C).
For someone in your case. Don't teach a language for the sake of teaching a language. First you need a problem. Something your mom is really interested in solving. It should be something simple. One example could be a program (possibly a daemon) that will e-mail a reminder about the b-days in your family. Or perhaps just pop up a window. Another idea might be to download a lot of recipies from the web and build a front end around it. Something that allows you to grep through them. Eventually adding ability to recognize ingredients and query for those, etc. The important thing is to start small, have a visible result almost immediately and then slowly build up.
Another alternative might be to show your mom how to use photoshop or a 3d rendering package. You can download Maya educational version for free. You also have povray and a whole slew of others available. Maybe it's time to help your mom develop the more artistic side...
I'd love these things in PDA style devices.
Add a decent amount of ram/storage and you can have voice recognition system, store your white/yellow pages for reference, store your digital photos (and edit them), store a high resolution map of your camping trip, etc....
There is no such thing as too much power. If you have enough power you don't need that much screen space. If you could use most of the functions of a PDA by actually speaking to it (like to another human), wouldn't you?
Why not shoot in film and use a film scanner? I've got a 30 year old (Minolta X-700) camera that has been with me through a lot. The thing will not die and just keeps on going. I just have to change the battery once a year or so. I usually develop my photos at a grocery store. Ask to have it developed and cut only - no prints. It costs me 1.25 per roll and I have it in about 20 minutes. Later I scan them in myself, get 11 Megapixel images with 48 bit color, scanned 8 times to minimize noise. (They're about 62 Meg TIFF images) that I can print with up to 13x19 on my Epson 2000P printer. The best part is, in 5 years I'll buy the newest and greatest film scanner and I have the option to re-scan the images at 20 Megapixels or whatever. That's my solution at least. By the way, the scanner was only 500CAD ;-)
I've seen two year old laptops do about 20Megs/s. If you're running linux, use a program called hdparm. Try running this as root: hdparm -d 1 -u 1 -c 1 /dev/hda
You can test the performance with:
hdparm -t -T /dev/hda
Repeat as necessary for each HD. Also put it somewhere where it will be executed at bootup.
For reference, My Maxtor 80Gig drive does rougly 50Megs/s. My Sata drive usually does above 70.
Yes, but there are *RULES* to how a physical world behaves.
There can be a ton of other uses. How about a mesh network? Assuming they have sufficient range. Military, Search and Rescue, police, etc. Heck. Put one on each city bus and you'd have a fairly reliable network in a city. That's assuming you could get a km or so range inside a city.
Ok. Two problems with that statement. 1. In what professional capacity are you making the statement "unecessary" ? 2. What is the acceptable amount to spent on human life? Most of the doctors I've ever seen did not care too much about suing, as they did about trying to help me. Than again I live in Canada. Maybe it is different in the US. If so, I feel sorry for you guys.
Although I acknowledge that there are good reasons for suing a doctor, most of them are not. Doctors are human, they're doing the best they can.
If a treatment has a 80% chance of working, and 5% chance of killing you is it a mistake to recommend it? What if you'd die anyways, just 5 years down the road? You'd have 80% chance at life. I think most of us would agree that it's not a mistake to try it. If a patient dies because of that treatment - was it a mistake? I could see only one problem - that's if/when the doctor did not explain the odds/risks.
I see way too many people suing because they need to be protected from themselves.
I don't know about the pizza, but the hoverboard is right here.
I'm sure others have already mentioned this, but I have to congratulate everyone. First Google, now slashdot. When will the pain end?
I've seen the presentation by one of the people involved.
They basically got alpha versions of a 10Gig ether cards from intel. Got the ISP company go give them a light path directly between two points. I think they got one of the underwater cables entirely to themselves for a few hours or something like that. The cost for that was what makes it so expensive.
Yes, they did tweek the heck out of that software (by the way, they did use linux - don't remember which distro).
To scan windows machines (partitions) from a known, virus-free environment.
Maya is free as the educational version. If all you want to do is play with it - download it from their website.
If you are planning on going commercial - Maya is just about the only piece of software that is well worth its price tag.
Here is an idea, it is borrowed from the way ISP's pay for bandwith.
Why not make networks pay for the e-mail that originates there? Subtract the e-mail that arrives. For most companies/networks - that will be just about an break even proposition. For the ones who allow spammers - well... that is going to get expensive pretty quickly. Sooo... they will either boot the spammers off, or get them to pay it. Either way, we win!
What could be better than to put a Microsoft rep on the spot? Ask him/her a few questions and listen to the answers. Why not use a few questions from an article from yesterday? It was something about the debate between Shared Source vs. Open Source. It's easy to "create" questions in your basement, it's making them "stick" what counts though.
I'd say make it a point to invite Microsoft to every Open Source conference. Let them speak and then ask questions.
That's not entirely true. There are languages that simply will not map well enough onto the .NET platform. I know of one for sure - Python. There is simply no way to make a natifve implementation of Python.NET - some things like dynamically binding functions to an object instance, multiple number of function arguments, etc will not work. There is a version of python for .NET, but it involved porting over the INTERPRETER onto .NET and running that. Basically you have a VM running a VM running your code. If you think that is not very fast - you're right ;-)
This is either a new low, or a new high.
How about a detailed world that is actually interesting? A story that allows you to explore that world. And massive amounts of background info for people who enjoy that stuff.
I do not see why source cannot be an integral part of the product. Yes, I am a developer. Yes I do want to be paid.
Let's look at the problems described in the article:
1. Piracy.
How is having the source making it easier to pirate things? People have been swapping microsoft binaries for ages. It is actually easier to just copy the installation disk (whether floppy or cd) than to recompile the program from sources.
2.Copyright laws.
Wouldn't it make it actually easier to check if people conform to copyright laws? If I release all of my source code and you are required (by the marketplace perhaps, not as a law) to do the same than it is quite easy to see if you copied some stuff of of me. How many people have wandered whether Microsoft has copied some code from GPL licensed programs (I doubt it personally). How many have the opportunity to CHECK if they have?
3. National Security.
I do not have a lot of confidence in a nation that bases its security on the ability to sweep them under the rug. The idea is to avoid having those problems in the first place! Maybe if this practice became accepted we would not have destroyers being run on windows.
4. Safety-critical applications.
Even if there is little to gain from having this code available to the users - not having it is worse. What are you trying to hide? If this is a safety-critical application then the answer should be "nothing, have a look".
Nobody is asking to release the source code without compensation. It's just that the source becomes part of the application. IF most people will not use it - then fine. What are you worried about? Is your code really that bad that you could not write good code if forced to?
I want your source so that I can see if your code is worth the money I paid for it. A really bad code will be easily visible in most cases. Functions that are pages and pages of code for no good reason. Have you ever seen an 8 thousand lines case statement in C? I have. Bad naming conventions etc. If I see that your code is consistently bad, I'll just stop buying it.
Would you buy a car that has rust all over the body? Even if it runs well (for the moment) and has great acceleration? I would not.