Random mutations only gain you so much, and in all cases are also harmful in the same way they are helpful.
Why? Just because you give an example of where this is true (Sickle-cell anaemia), doesn't mean it is generally true. Why can't a random mutation be beneficial without bad side-effects? A random mutation can surely be harmful without good side-effects. Why not the reverse? It isn't a zero-sum game. Sure, the kind of mutation that is solely beneficial may be exceedingly rare, but that isn't proof that it can't happen.
Also, this isn't even necessary. So long as the good outweighs the bad, the mutation will be selected for. This is exactly what happens with SCA. The carriers are resistant to malaria. If this helps them (or siblings with only one copy of the gene) to survive to child-rearing age, then it will be selected for.
Their Konfabulator "clone", as you call it, is just WebKit (the core of Safari) mixed with Expose with some eyecandy thrown in. Dashboard Gadgets are actually just sophisticated web pages. This is *not* how Konfabulator worked, which used a custom XML format to describe the widgets.
There really isn't much to open source. While WebKit is mostly closed source, there's nothing really to stop an open source developer from using KHTML or Gecko instead. That just leaves Expose. No way would Apple open source that. Crown Jewels territory.
See one of developers' blogs and read the entries titled "Dashboard".
There are many countries that aren't in the G8 that have standards of living every bit as high as the G8 countries. Implying that those not in the G8 lack indoor plumbing is ludicrous. Or do you think people in Belgium, Norway, Ireland, Australia, Singapore, etc. have standards of living far below yours? (Hint: the people in a few of those countries have *higher* standards of living by some metrics.)
The (closer but still imperfect) metric you want to look at is GDP per capita.
The current system works and we don't want to break things. See, unlike the American system, where most is codified (if still subject to interpretation), much of the foundation of our system of government is tradition and "convention". No one is really sure what the powers of the governor-general (the queen's australian representative, and effectively pseudo-monarch) actually are, for example, because they have never been written down (scary, huh?). I assume that the queen's powers in England are similarly ambiguous.
If we became a republic (which nearly happened a few years ago and will likely happen in the relatively near future), we have to decided what to replace the governor-general with and what powers that position will have. Giving all the power to the PM would be a bad idea because we'd effectively lose the executive branch of our government. Most current plans have a "President" taking the place of the current governor-general, retaining all the powers of the old position. Basically, just removing the link to England and leaving the rest as is.
You *are* joking, aren't you? We can only use the rights that the Monarchy grants us?
The Queen has virtually no power over the *British* people and you think she has real power over Australians?
Look up the term "constitutional monarchy" sometime. While you're at it, look up "Charles I" for an example of what happens to monarchs who try to seize absolute power (Hint: it involved him, a chopping block and a decent sized axe).
The point is that AMD and Intel need to carry on a huge decoder circuit and handle lots of baroque complexities in hardware, that the PPC engineers never need to even think about.
Actually, the PPC970 does decoding similar to that which an x86 chip does. PPC instructions are converted to a simpler, more RISCy instruction set. Most PPC instructions are 1-1 mapped with their internal counterparts, but many are cracked into 2 internal instructions and some are microcoded.
Mac OS X 10.1 was Puma. Apple didn't start marketing Mac OS X using the internal development names until 10.2 (Jaguar) but both previous versions had cat names too. 10.0 was Cheetah (ironic given its umm... questionable performance).
Umm... denial of service is *much* better than executing malicious code. No, it won't stop buffer overflows. If the code is broken, there's no easy way to fix it in hardware. At least this thing will kill the process before you get 0wn3d.
Or, a more mainstream example: one of the main problems with W^X or NX arrangements of late has been Java JIT compilers.
After all, the entire point of a (fast) Java implementation is that it's periodically rewriting its code based on profiling data. That's awfully hard for the hardware to distinguish from a good ol' buffer overflow.
This isn't the problem it first appears. All you have to do is generate the JIT'ed code into a region of memory not marked NX. It should only be a minor addition (if needed at all) to whatever code allocates the memory for JIT'ed code, like using mmap with the PROT_EXEC flag set.
What happens if the microphone starts picking up feed back then your computer's creating more noise than it started off with?
Think about it. The speaker will always be emitting the opposite of the sound it receives. How can that feed back? Sure, it may cancel less effectively with time, but I doubt it could make things worse.
Congratulations, you've just taught a tech how to do something. You honestly can't see the difference between doing that and teaching the user? You can't see that an explanation that makes sense to you and the tech, that the user copied down faithfully but blindly, might not make as much sense to someone less technically inclined? Wow.
One can take notes without understanding what's being taught.
I was uncharacteristically harsh. To be honest, I didn't read the linked articles either. I had already read the first and that's why it was the only one I quoted. Let's face it, we have better things to do than follow every link.
Practically all plate glass made before 1959 had some degree of waviness in it. It was uneven in thickness. When the glaziers would install it in a window, they would normally do it like you build a building - with the bigger bits at the bottom and the thinner bits at the top. But, Stephen Hawkes from Oregon, who has dedicated his life to dismantling and repairing medieval glass windows, says that while most of the glass that he has seen was bottom-heavy, he has seen hundreds of pieces of old plate glass that were thicker at the top.
Ah, so the only thing of importance is what propulsion system it uses? This the first sample return mission attempted that has a target other than the moon. It is quite innovative.
"Limited choice can also be a good thing. Look a Mac OS X. You get Aqua. no questions asked. And everyone seems to love it."
Ah, but you *do* get a choice of toolkits: Carbon or Cocoa. It's just that the choice is relatively invisible to the end user. Isn't that what Linux should be aiming for?
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Why? Just because you give an example of where this is true (Sickle-cell anaemia), doesn't mean it is generally true. Why can't a random mutation be beneficial without bad side-effects? A random mutation can surely be harmful without good side-effects. Why not the reverse? It isn't a zero-sum game. Sure, the kind of mutation that is solely beneficial may be exceedingly rare, but that isn't proof that it can't happen.
Also, this isn't even necessary. So long as the good outweighs the bad, the mutation will be selected for. This is exactly what happens with SCA. The carriers are resistant to malaria. If this helps them (or siblings with only one copy of the gene) to survive to child-rearing age, then it will be selected for.
There really isn't much to open source. While WebKit is mostly closed source, there's nothing really to stop an open source developer from using KHTML or Gecko instead. That just leaves Expose. No way would Apple open source that. Crown Jewels territory.
See one of developers' blogs and read the entries titled "Dashboard".
This is exactly what Apple fixed with "Sheets": a child window slides down from the title bar of the parent and remains attached.
There are many countries that aren't in the G8 that have standards of living every bit as high as the G8 countries. Implying that those not in the G8 lack indoor plumbing is ludicrous. Or do you think people in Belgium, Norway, Ireland, Australia, Singapore, etc. have standards of living far below yours? (Hint: the people in a few of those countries have *higher* standards of living by some metrics.)
The (closer but still imperfect) metric you want to look at is GDP per capita.
Sir, I salute you. I hereby retract my previous criticism of your innovative and clearly practicable idea. Bonus points for using ogg.
If we became a republic (which nearly happened a few years ago and will likely happen in the relatively near future), we have to decided what to replace the governor-general with and what powers that position will have. Giving all the power to the PM would be a bad idea because we'd effectively lose the executive branch of our government. Most current plans have a "President" taking the place of the current governor-general, retaining all the powers of the old position. Basically, just removing the link to England and leaving the rest as is.
See this: The Reserve Powers of the Governor-General.
Uh huh... now explain to me how the "voice" part of the requirements is met, preferably in the same condescending tone.
The Queen has virtually no power over the *British* people and you think she has real power over Australians?
Look up the term "constitutional monarchy" sometime. While you're at it, look up "Charles I" for an example of what happens to monarchs who try to seize absolute power (Hint: it involved him, a chopping block and a decent sized axe).
Actually, the PPC970 does decoding similar to that which an x86 chip does. PPC instructions are converted to a simpler, more RISCy instruction set. Most PPC instructions are 1-1 mapped with their internal counterparts, but many are cracked into 2 internal instructions and some are microcoded.
Mac OS X 10.1 was Puma. Apple didn't start marketing Mac OS X using the internal development names until 10.2 (Jaguar) but both previous versions had cat names too. 10.0 was Cheetah (ironic given its umm... questionable performance).
Umm... denial of service is *much* better than executing malicious code. No, it won't stop buffer overflows. If the code is broken, there's no easy way to fix it in hardware. At least this thing will kill the process before you get 0wn3d.
After all, the entire point of a (fast) Java implementation is that it's periodically rewriting its code based on profiling data. That's awfully hard for the hardware to distinguish from a good ol' buffer overflow.
This isn't the problem it first appears. All you have to do is generate the JIT'ed code into a region of memory not marked NX. It should only be a minor addition (if needed at all) to whatever code allocates the memory for JIT'ed code, like using mmap with the PROT_EXEC flag set.
No it isn't.
You're ignoring the hugely complicated process of refining the silicon. It's not like you can just glue sand together and slap it in a chip package.
Think about it. The speaker will always be emitting the opposite of the sound it receives. How can that feed back? Sure, it may cancel less effectively with time, but I doubt it could make things worse.
One can take notes without understanding what's being taught.
The floppies were 400K. The 512 in the name referred to the amount of RAM (512K).
Supported filesystems in Mac OS X. For some reason ISO9660 and NTFS aren't on the list but they're supported too. There's probably more.
Look at when it was written: July 1997.
Maybe he lives in Rome, Spain?
I was uncharacteristically harsh. To be honest, I didn't read the linked articles either. I had already read the first and that's why it was the only one I quoted. Let's face it, we have better things to do than follow every link.
Specifically this:
Ah, so the only thing of importance is what propulsion system it uses? This the first sample return mission attempted that has a target other than the moon. It is quite innovative.
Ah, but you *do* get a choice of toolkits: Carbon or Cocoa. It's just that the choice is relatively invisible to the end user. Isn't that what Linux should be aiming for?
% ident -q /usr/bin/* | grep NetBSD | wc -l
120
% ident -q /usr/bin/* | grep FreeBSD | wc -l
191
% ident -q /usr/bin/* | grep OpenBSD | wc -l
203
% uname -a
Darwin ibook 7.0.0 Darwin Kernel Version 7.0.0: Wed Sep 24 15:48:39 PDT 2003; root:xnu/xnu-517.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc
But yes, your point that Apple used code from a variety of BSDs is still correct.