"I predict that maybe after 500 to 2000 years we will have robots that may have the intellect of a small animal. I mean it has taken us 50 years to create barely functional computers."
On the other hand, it's taken the slashdot community only a few years to achieve the collective intelligence of a small animal.
> Yes, but won't it take YEARS, if ever, for this "advantage" to actually benefit the majority of apps that will be run on a P4?
Not really, closed source applications that can always use more performance will have P4 optimizations quickly. The benefit for other apps will be imperceptable so replacing them would be a waste of effort.
Open source people can just recompile when gcc catches up 8-)
> Who is going to rush out to support SSE2 instructions for a chip that isn't likely to sell very well?
Don't underestimate the power of inertia, marketing, and a good "shrink and tweak" to sell a lot of P4s.
KDE 2.0 file browser has image preview thumbnails--it's one of those things you discover when you use it for more than say, 10 minutes for a superficial comparision. But I digress...
6502 opcodes were pretty simple, I used to do that too...and I remember when I first got an assembler how wonderful it was not to have to do that....and I seem to remember the TRS-80 being significantly cheaper than the Apple II. 'Course it was a piece of crap, but it was definitely cheaper.
KDE doesn't seem to cache very well. When I noticed that it was pretty slow in browsing and bringing up the K menu, I discovered that for some reason MD 7.2 didn't turn on 32 bit/DMA for my hard disks. Funny how 5x the I/O rate makes things go soo much faster. Heh.
Konqueror seems to crash occasionally, but at least it doesn't take X down with it, like good ol' netscape used to. I'm keeping it, and looking forward to some more stability and speed in the next release.
> Anyway, those of us outside the US rarely hear anything about the indeps. Anyone like to fill us in?
We don't hear about them either.
-- Eric
Re:Libertarianism the new Republicism bur more evi
on
Should You Vote?
·
· Score: 1
I never ceases to amaze me how many people equate freedom with getting something free off the backs of someone else.
$$$ -> Universal Healthcare, publicly funded elections, living wage, social security, government schools, government funded clinics, minimum wage, wads of regulations, etc.
It's all incremental socialism/facism/nanny statism. Turn up the heat a little at a time, and the frog won't realize he's being cooked. That Nader fellow just likes to make sure the frog isn't scratched by any burrs left over from the kettle factory.
a) it does nothing to reduce external interruptions, the number two factor in creative productivity. (the first being motivation) (IMO)
b) it has _got_ to be cheaper to throw up a few walls, run some conduits and a quiet little blower for air circulation.
c) If these started being the norm where I work, I would immediately crank up the resume circulation.
The benefits of an office (any size) with a door that you can _close_ can not be overstated.
Anyone corporate officer who buys one of these monstrosities for a creative type should be unceremoniously shot.
More interesting would be system calls to perform multiple-file transactions for any file system, but optimized for the case when the file system supports phase trees or similiar ideas.
Yes, it's good that individual files can't be corrupted, but sometimes it is important to keep multiple files in sync. This sort of corruption is just as annoying and looks the same to the average user - their app doesn't work right.
It's not a static pie y'know, wealth is created by creating economic value in all of its various forms. Do you really think that is impossible to create more wealth because a bunch of people have 90%, 99% or even 100% of it? Maybe you should reexamine the nature of wealth creation. I simply don't see how this 90/1 situation threatens anyone. You are free to make your own wealth, no one is holding you back. You just have to create some thing, process, or idea with value to someone, preferably a lot of someones.
What is the difference between the government redistributing my income to a homeless person and the same homeless person mugging me for the money? Shades of gray I say. I want to make the decision to give, or not.
Not that I like republicans. I only want enough government to protect my rights, no more, but the republicans don't even go near that ideal.
Unfortunately, most technology pundits are have no clue as to what is coming, and vague ideas about what is here. They get to where they are by:
1) painting a picture that appeals to a large set of people with synergistic agendas.
2) reading enough about technology to make up vague floating abstractions that seem concrete. Typically the scheme here is to loosely use real technology as an example, but not really explain the connection, or to simply make up a nice sounding word, without really defining it.
3) writing reasonably well.
4) not offending anyone or any group of people.
There's no question in my mind that Dyson is one of these. But enough people are sufficiently clueless about technology, or simply unable to reason, to be taken in.
Well, IMO, one of the major problems is the way that documents are organized. The hierarchial file system is not appropriate for the common document oriented user. The user should be able to arbitrarily and easily organize documents into whatever groups they want independent of how or where the documents are stored on disk. The same document should be able to go into more than one group without dealing with symlinks or shortcuts.
The grouping should also be "active" rather than passive, like a folder. You should be able to open a group up and have all of your documents exactly where you left them when you closed the group. You should be able to bookmark the view state of the group as well as any individual document. Selecting a group bookmark returns you to the bookmarked view in all of the open documents. One predefined bookmark would be the initial view of a document. For example a web document would consist of a particular URL which is its initial view. After browsing you can go back to that URL by selecting this bookmark.
Another problem is there is often obscured elements in the "desktop metaphor". Windows can obscure other windows and also icons on the "desktop". A good interface would provide some clue that something is obscured. At all times there should be some visible representation (icon?) of open documents even if the document is not itself visible. Documents that "need attention" but are otherwise obscured would flash this icon.
Hmmm, I myself am a person who doesn't care where the software comes from as long as I've got the source. What does that put me in your strained little analogy? Freedom of the source is just another value like the taste of a hamburger or the feel of a pair of shoes.
Besides, if you're really upset about such things, they are the result of lack of property rights (yep, governments own those rainforests), and the absense of capitalism (poor markets cause poor pay, not the factories providing the jobs).
I would argue that buying things because of their value to you is more moral than not buying things because of how they may have been produced.
Just the other day. Its happened twice in a few months. Never "brought down the OS" but of course all the X apps died... Started happening after a Gfx card change...dang driver must need work.
a) whatever YOU, as a parent, value more. b) Hmmm. Starting with "fire starting technology" which is superior to freezing in a cave, any technology _not_ superior to what nature provides just isn't useful. Do you walk everywhere or do you use that inferior car thing? Jeez...
The packer/mapper concepts look _a lot_ like concepts in Objectivism, only not as well developed. Ayn Rand talks about (and all of her villians in her fiction were instances of) concrete bound mentalities, these are clearly packers. The mapping concept is a primitive form of AR's theories on concept formation. Anyone who feels the mapper/packer concepts are like a flash of light in a dark room should probably go look into Objectivism for a far more developed theory.
After quitting my last job, a coworker asked me if I was going to be a "code pounder" or a "software engineer". Interesting dichonomy... I guess the term comes from "ground pounder", aka an infantryman. EOM
Slashdot Mirror
"I predict that maybe after 500 to 2000 years we will have robots that may have the intellect of a small animal. I mean it has taken us 50 years to create barely functional computers."
On the other hand, it's taken the slashdot community only a few years to achieve the collective intelligence of a small animal.
> Yes, but won't it take YEARS, if ever, for this "advantage" to actually benefit the majority of apps that will be run on a P4?
Not really, closed source applications that can always use more performance will have P4 optimizations quickly. The benefit for other apps will be imperceptable so replacing them would be a waste of effort.
Open source people can just recompile when gcc catches up 8-)
> Who is going to rush out to support SSE2 instructions for a chip that isn't likely to sell very well?
Don't underestimate the power of inertia, marketing, and a good "shrink and tweak" to sell a lot of P4s.
-- Eric
KDE 2.0 file browser has image preview thumbnails--it's one of those things you discover when you use it for more than say, 10 minutes for a superficial comparision. But I digress...
-- Eric
the nipple.
-- Eric
6502 opcodes were pretty simple, I used to do that too...and I remember when I first got an assembler how wonderful it was not to have to do that....and I seem to remember the TRS-80 being significantly cheaper than the Apple II. 'Course it was a piece of crap, but it was definitely cheaper.
-- Eric
KDE doesn't seem to cache very well. When I noticed that it was pretty slow in browsing and bringing up the K menu, I discovered that for some reason MD 7.2 didn't turn on 32 bit/DMA for my hard disks. Funny how 5x the I/O rate makes things go soo much faster. Heh.
Konqueror seems to crash occasionally, but at least it doesn't take X down with it, like good ol' netscape used to. I'm keeping it, and looking forward to some more stability and speed in the next release.
-- Eric
> Anyway, those of us outside the US rarely hear anything about the indeps. Anyone like to fill us in?
We don't hear about them either.
-- Eric
I never ceases to amaze me how many people equate freedom with getting something free off the backs of someone else.
$$$ -> Universal Healthcare, publicly funded elections, living wage, social security, government schools, government funded clinics, minimum wage, wads of regulations, etc.
It's all incremental socialism/facism/nanny statism. Turn up the heat a little at a time, and the frog won't realize he's being cooked. That Nader fellow just likes to make sure the frog isn't scratched by any burrs left over from the kettle factory.
-- Eric
a) it does nothing to reduce external interruptions, the number two factor in creative productivity. (the first being motivation) (IMO)
b) it has _got_ to be cheaper to throw up a few walls, run some conduits and a quiet little blower for air circulation.
c) If these started being the norm where I work, I would immediately crank up the resume circulation.
The benefits of an office (any size) with a door that you can _close_ can not be overstated.
Anyone corporate officer who buys one of these monstrosities for a creative type should be unceremoniously shot.
-- Eric
More interesting would be system calls to perform multiple-file transactions for any file system, but optimized for the case when the file system supports phase trees or similiar ideas.
Yes, it's good that individual files can't be corrupted, but sometimes it is important to keep multiple files in sync. This sort of corruption is just as annoying and looks the same to the average user - their app doesn't work right.
-- Eric
Examples?
It's not a static pie y'know, wealth is created by creating economic value in all of its various forms. Do you really think that is impossible to create more wealth because a bunch of people have 90%, 99% or even 100% of it? Maybe you should reexamine the nature of wealth creation. I simply don't see how this 90/1 situation threatens anyone. You are free to make your own wealth, no one is holding you back. You just have to create some thing, process, or idea with value to someone, preferably a lot of someones.
What is the difference between the government redistributing my income to a homeless person and the same homeless person mugging me for the money? Shades of gray I say. I want to make the decision to give, or not.
Not that I like republicans. I only want enough government to protect my rights, no more, but the republicans don't even go near that ideal.
-- Eric
Unfortunately, most technology pundits are have no clue as to what is coming, and vague ideas about what is here. They get to where they are by:
1) painting a picture that appeals to a large set of people with synergistic agendas.
2) reading enough about technology to make up vague floating abstractions that seem concrete. Typically the scheme here is to loosely use real technology as an example, but not really explain the connection, or to simply make up a nice sounding word, without really defining it.
3) writing reasonably well.
4) not offending anyone or any group of people.
There's no question in my mind that Dyson is one of these. But enough people are sufficiently clueless about technology, or simply unable to reason, to be taken in.
-- Eric
Well, IMO, one of the major problems is the way that documents are organized. The hierarchial file system is not appropriate for the common document oriented user. The user should be able to arbitrarily and easily organize documents into whatever groups they want independent of how or where the documents are stored on disk. The same document should be able to go into more than one group without dealing with symlinks or shortcuts.
The grouping should also be "active" rather than passive, like a folder. You should be able to open a group up and have all of your documents exactly where you left them when you closed the group. You should be able to bookmark the view state of the group as well as any individual document. Selecting a group bookmark returns you to the bookmarked view in all of the open documents. One predefined bookmark would be the initial view of a document. For example a web document would consist of a particular URL which is its initial view. After browsing you can go back to that URL by selecting this bookmark.
Another problem is there is often obscured elements in the "desktop metaphor". Windows can obscure other windows and also icons on the "desktop". A good interface would provide some clue that something is obscured.
At all times there should be some visible representation (icon?) of open documents even if the document is not itself visible. Documents that "need attention" but are otherwise obscured would flash this icon.
-- Eric
Hmmm, I myself am a person who doesn't care where the software comes from as long as I've got the source. What does that put me in your strained little analogy? Freedom of the source is just another value like the taste of a hamburger or the feel of a pair of shoes.
Besides, if you're really upset about such things, they are the result of lack of property rights (yep, governments own those rainforests), and the absense of capitalism (poor markets cause poor pay, not the factories providing the jobs).
I would argue that buying things because of their value to you is more moral than not buying things because of how they may have been produced.
-- Eric
Just the other day. Its happened twice in a few months. Never "brought down the OS" but of course all the X apps died... Started happening after a Gfx card change...dang driver must need work.
-- Eric
a) whatever YOU, as a parent, value more.
b) Hmmm. Starting with "fire starting technology" which is superior to freezing in a cave, any technology _not_ superior to what nature provides just isn't useful. Do you walk everywhere or do you use that inferior car thing? Jeez...
-- Eric
The packer/mapper concepts look _a lot_ like concepts in Objectivism, only not as well developed. Ayn Rand talks about (and all of her villians in her fiction were instances of) concrete bound mentalities, these are clearly packers. The mapping concept is a primitive form of AR's theories on concept formation. Anyone who feels the mapper/packer concepts are like a flash of light in a dark room should probably go look into Objectivism for a far more developed theory.
-- Eric
As long as we're piling on... "you're" should have been "your".
-- Eric
After quitting my last job, a coworker asked me if I was going to be a "code pounder" or a "software engineer". Interesting dichonomy... I guess the term comes from "ground pounder", aka an infantryman. EOM