The question is, what will happen if a fingerprint match is found (or also, what happens if you refuse to have your fingerprints taken when you leave the country, as it suggests will happen)? If one always have the choice to leave the US, then that argument is fair enough (although it still doesn't make this a good thing - you know, you may not, but there are some people in the US who *want* foreigners to visit, be they friends, family or tourists, and some Americans like to visit other countries too, and presumably don't want to give up all their rights to do so).
But if people are going to be detained, then you can no longer use that argument. I haven't willingly given up my rights if I'm locked in a cell against my will.
at.1% there would need to be 10,000 passengers to have 1 terrorist onboard.
Aside from it being 1,000 and not 10,000, you actually mean "innocent person who they think is a terrorist".
I don't know what proportion of people passing through will be terrorists, but it's surely going to be way smaller than 0.1%, and this is the real issue. Let's say the number of terrorists is 1 in 100,000. That means for every terrorist they catch, there's 100 innocent people. The question then is, what happens if a match is found?
If additional checks (eg, name) are done, and people are only dealt with further if additional matches are made, then that's not so bad. On the other hand, it's quite possible that a fingerprint match would be enough (on the basis that they don't have matching name and fingerprint details of many terrorists). I don't like the idea of 100 (or maybe a lot more) innocent "suspected terrorists" being detained without charge for every 1 terrorist.
"then" being a time period of 9 years, during which several million machines were sold. They also switched to selling PCs btw, and I've heard it argued that it was that which contributed towards their demise.
..when you compare it to a product with very poor value for money.
For example, $40 for an mp3 CD player works out at under 6 cents per megabyte. Sure, still worse than the iPod, but (a) unit cost generally goes down when you spend a larger amount, so at over 12 times the price, it's not surprising you get better value, and (b) if you're prepared to carry some extra CDs with you, value for money rockets (say 25 cents a CD gives 0.035 cents per megabyte for the extra storage).
More appropriately, you could compare it to other hard disk based mp3 players. All your figures really show is that the memory based ones are bad value for money (which they are, unless you want something cheap with no moving parts).
And I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that porting Mozilla is a rather complex task, especially for a single person.
a platform made in the last 10 years.
Platforms made in the last 10 years include the Amiga, and various Amiga-clones. Now consider the amount of Amiga software released in the last 10 years, and the software on other platforms that was either ported from the Amiga, or written by ex-Amiga developers..
Look, I hate flamewars as much as the next guy, but come ON! This is the amiga for cripes sake.
I'm sure everyone says that. "I hate flamewars, but this is something I hate, so I'm going to flame anyway".
I was the proud owner of a 500, 2000, and 4000(which I sold at a profit many years back). The Amiga was the hardware. It had a great API but the hardware(angus, denise, etc.) was what it was all about. If you aren't hitting the hardware, it's Amiga in name only.
But any result from this project should still run on machines like the A4000, without a graphics card.
If you're really insistent on advocating bad programming practices so that the application will only run on a smaller, lower-powered set of the machines, then feel free to set up your own fund for someone to port it to an A500.
It don't look real available to me. It looks like "maybe almost sort of available hardware that only runs Linux at the moment".
Don't you think the fact that they talk of the "Pegasos II" kind of implies there might have been a first model?
The Pegasos has been on sale since sometime 2002 I believe. To be pedantic, yes it is not being produced anymore, but there are possibly still some in stock at retailers, and that doesn't change the fact that new machines have been produced.
Unfortunately, whoever has owned the Amiga rights in the years since Commodore (Escom, Gateway, and now Amiga) have failed to produce anything other than a couple of OS updates (better than nothing, certainly, but not a huge step forward). Some new hardware, the "AmigaOne" (from Eyetech), has been produced and on sale for about a year, but so far only runs Linux.
But some of the "Amiga-like OS's" mentioned by the AmiZilla Guidelines can be considered "new", even if they aren't official Amigas. There's Amithlon (based on a modified Linux kernel and uses emulation to run AmigaOS on any standard PC - unfortunately development stopped due to disagreements between the developers and the publisher), and MorphOS (runs on the Pegasos).
I'm a BSD and Macintosh fan. And even I think the Amiga is dead.
I'm not sure why being a BSD and Macintosh fan adds weight to your assertion.. Anyhow, Amiga is dead in the same sense that MacOS dead - and it *is* dead, in that the classic OS was discontinued, and replaced by a completely different OS, that had some similarities and compatibility. The difference is that to date, any new Amiga-like OSs (MorphOS) are produced by people who don't own rights to the Amiga name.
However, as much as I think this, I don't go posting to Mac stories saying "I'm an Amiga fan, and I even I think that Mac is dead". That's the sort of behaviour I'd expect from your supposed zealots:/
Of course, this bounty requires porting to both the original Amigas, and MorphOS, but this probably isn't that harder to do due to API compatibility, and would increase the potential userbase.
It's dead. It's been ten years.
What's been 10 years? 10 years ago since you last paid any attention to Amiga history, perhaps? Pegasos/MorphOS, Amithlon and AmigaOS 3.9 are all examples of things released within the last couple of years or so.
What $10,000 could have done to advance some more meaningful Open Source project. What's next-- OpenOffice for C64?
First of all, it's Amiga not C64. I don't like Macs, but that doesn't mean I say "What next, an Apple II port?" when I see a Mac story.
Secondly, I don't know about bounties in particular, but bear in mind that platforms such as Windows have had a phenomenal amount spent on them in terms of general software development, compared to niche platforms. We're talking billions. Macs probably get a fair amount too. Linux gets plenty of both commercial and open source development.
Yet as soon as someone stumps up a few thousand to help fund a possible port of a browser (to a platform whose browsers lack all sorts of modern features), this is seemingly unfair?
Rightly or wrongly, the market is driven by those with money to spend. Most of the time, that means that Windows wins, and platforms like the Amiga lose out. This is one of those rare times when things don't go that way.
If you want to support legacy hardware, try it with something that isn't completely ancient like making X run better on old Pentium computers. At least they can run most modern operating systems.
If you RTFA, you'll see that MorphOS is listed as one of the platforms that must be supported. This is an OS that is still being developed, and runs under computers that are still being manufactured (the "Pegasos", currently a G3 based motherboard). It may not be the latest and greatest up to date thing, but it is certainly not "ancient", "legacy" or anything else.
Amiga is dead - deal with it. I don't mind if people want to waste their time and money porting apps to worthless platforms (it's their right), but I don't think they deserve a medal for it.
Why don't you stick to posting to the articles that you do care about then?;)
how cares really about porting Mozilla to Amiga while there are lots of useful Open Source projects that require more support?
And who are you to say what is more useful or requires more support? The wonderful thing about open source programming (IMO) is that developers have a lot more freedom to work on things that they think are interesting or useful, rather than what somebody else tells them.
The website says the hardware has been available since Nov 2002, which is clearly a lie.
Why is this clearly a lie?
Do you personally know anyone who has gotten a system from these guys? I kinda suspect it's only the inner circle, and the stuff is not really generally available yet.
On what is this suspicion based? I don't know anyone with one personally, but have seen plenty of people saying they own one on Amiga forums (and no, they're not part of some "inner circle"). I don't know anyone with Mac OS X, but I don't go making assumptions that that isn't generally available.
Have you seen that hardware? It's five-year-old PowerPC G3 stuff and it doesn't even sound like it's in full production yet.
The "AmigaOne" hardware is out, and includes a G4 version. The problem is AmigaOS 4, which as you say seems like a perfect example of vapourware (it's been promised since summer 2000 IIRC).
Amiga is truley the kings of old school vaporware.
Amiga Inc the company, perhaps, but not the Amiga (ie, the computer) market. For example, if you want new machines, there's MorphOS and the Pegasos (Amiga compatible computers which are as close as say OS X is to MacOS; they just don't own the Amiga trademarks).
So because a bad thing can already happen (and having to waste several hours of my day because of a system which falsely identified me most certainly *is* something that I consider to be a bad thing), it's okay for bad things to happen more often? I don't understand this logic at all.
The more that automated systems that contain some probability of false positives get installed, the more that this is going to happen.
You could look similar to a suspect and get picked up by the police, you could be a victim of a crime and have to go to the station to file a report, etc. It's really not that scary, and most police officers are pretty nice people, you know?
Yes, and if I was considered a suspect, or was a victim of a crime, I'd consider those to be bad things too. If this was a slashdot article about making more people suspects, or more people victims of crime, I'd be arguing against those too. I don't care how nice the police officer is (my brother is one, before you write me off as some anti-police person); that's irrelevant to the point.
It would be a problem for me when a police officer turns up, and I have to accompany him to the station.
The article seems rather vague on this, and just says "An officer will be dispatched to the school in the event of a possible match". If I'm free to walk out, then it's no big deal, but then the system would be somewhat useless.
The burden of proof is on NineNine. He's the one who starting roundly abusing someone who posted nothing offensive or rude.
Therefore, he stated a fact and provided a link. NineNine's reply was woefully short on facts, statistics, or links.
The burden of proof is on the one who claims we should have these lists. The only "fact" in the original post was what the poster had done, and the only links were to these lists. There were no facts relating to what good these lists will do.
NineNine's reply may have been empty of links, but contained a reasonable point. If we can disregard it due to lack of links, we can do so for your reply also.
If you like statistics, do you refute those that say that the majority of sex abuse is conducted by family or friends?
I don't have time to dig up statistics every time some anonymous buffoon on the Internet makes absurd, unsubstantiated claims.
Right. There are these buffoons who think that we should introduce these public registries for sex offenders.
Whilst the offender might reoffend, (s)he's less likely to go out and butcher the neighbours children than your recently-released pedophile is to abuse them.
Where do you get this idea that sex offenders are likely to abuse random strangers, any more than a murderer is to murder random strangers? I've heard plenty of times that sex offenders are more likely than not to be known to the victim (eg, a quick google finds this and this. In fact, this quotes only 50 out of 100,000 sex offenders are "predatory paedophiles").
So on what basis do we believe that sex offenders are more likely to go after random strangers, compared with murderers? If we really want a list on this basis, perhaps it should only be those who commit crimes (whether it's rape or murder, or whatever else) against random strangers?
You do not know the full details of the case. Did he hold her down? Did he drag her into a closet? Did he hit her? Did he molest her with a broom stick? YOU DON'T KNOW! So therefore, don't make judgements unless YOU KNOW THE FACTS.
And do you think the average, paranoid, possibly would-be-vigilante member of the public will know and understand the full facts of the case, when they go looking up this guy's details in twenty years' time?
The fact that we don't know the specific details is the very problem with this sort of public database.
I would hope that a machine calculating trillions of moves would be able to. Like a lot of articles I've read, the machine can often pick excellent moves at any given time, but it lacks an understanding of the overall flow of the game, and big-picture strategy. Those kinds of things are hard to figure out for a machine without a soul, even with near-infinite cycles to spend.
But the human brain has a vast amount of computational power, arguably a lot more than any computer has. The advantage that the computer has is that it can more efficiently use all of its computing power for the purposes of calculating Chess moves, where as a human has to learn how to do it.
Until the machine can prove the game and calculate a way to draw every time no matter what moves the other person makes, I think a human will always have a good chance at beating the machine.
Why? This is quite a high expectation - interchange "human" and "machine", and your statement makes just as much sense. Chess is far from a solved game, and both human and machine have to decide a move based on limited knowledge on how the game will progress. So it's not obvious that a computer should be able to beat a human.
I think what you really mean by "a soul" is that those things a hard to figure out when using a brute-force algorithm that only dumbly calculates all future possible moves - but note that Fritz doesn't entirely rely on this algorithm, and tries to make decisions on which moves are worth investigating futher.
Slashdot Mirror
The question is, what will happen if a fingerprint match is found (or also, what happens if you refuse to have your fingerprints taken when you leave the country, as it suggests will happen)? If one always have the choice to leave the US, then that argument is fair enough (although it still doesn't make this a good thing - you know, you may not, but there are some people in the US who *want* foreigners to visit, be they friends, family or tourists, and some Americans like to visit other countries too, and presumably don't want to give up all their rights to do so).
But if people are going to be detained, then you can no longer use that argument. I haven't willingly given up my rights if I'm locked in a cell against my will.
at .1% there would need to be 10,000 passengers to have 1 terrorist onboard.
Aside from it being 1,000 and not 10,000, you actually mean "innocent person who they think is a terrorist".
I don't know what proportion of people passing through will be terrorists, but it's surely going to be way smaller than 0.1%, and this is the real issue. Let's say the number of terrorists is 1 in 100,000. That means for every terrorist they catch, there's 100 innocent people. The question then is, what happens if a match is found?
If additional checks (eg, name) are done, and people are only dealt with further if additional matches are made, then that's not so bad. On the other hand, it's quite possible that a fingerprint match would be enough (on the basis that they don't have matching name and fingerprint details of many terrorists). I don't like the idea of 100 (or maybe a lot more) innocent "suspected terrorists" being detained without charge for every 1 terrorist.
I think it was 2002 that he said the Amiga will still be vapourware
Actually he said that for 2000, and I believe he was right. But he was wise not to make the prediction for 2002 since he'd have been wrong.
switched to the Amiga then died
"then" being a time period of 9 years, during which several million machines were sold. They also switched to selling PCs btw, and I've heard it argued that it was that which contributed towards their demise.
Ipod is actually extremely good value for money.
..when you compare it to a product with very poor value for money.
For example, $40 for an mp3 CD player works out at under 6 cents per megabyte. Sure, still worse than the iPod, but (a) unit cost generally goes down when you spend a larger amount, so at over 12 times the price, it's not surprising you get better value, and (b) if you're prepared to carry some extra CDs with you, value for money rockets (say 25 cents a CD gives 0.035 cents per megabyte for the extra storage).
More appropriately, you could compare it to other hard disk based mp3 players. All your figures really show is that the memory based ones are bad value for money (which they are, unless you want something cheap with no moving parts).
And I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that porting Mozilla is a rather complex task, especially for a single person.
a platform made in the last 10 years.
Platforms made in the last 10 years include the Amiga, and various Amiga-clones. Now consider the amount of Amiga software released in the last 10 years, and the software on other platforms that was either ported from the Amiga, or written by ex-Amiga developers..
Look, I hate flamewars as much as the next guy, but come ON! This is the amiga for cripes sake.
I'm sure everyone says that. "I hate flamewars, but this is something I hate, so I'm going to flame anyway".
I was the proud owner of a 500, 2000, and 4000(which I sold at a profit many years back). The Amiga was the hardware. It had a great API but the hardware(angus, denise, etc.) was what it was all about. If you aren't hitting the hardware, it's Amiga in name only.
But any result from this project should still run on machines like the A4000, without a graphics card.
If you're really insistent on advocating bad programming practices so that the application will only run on a smaller, lower-powered set of the machines, then feel free to set up your own fund for someone to port it to an A500.
It don't look real available to me. It looks like "maybe almost sort of available hardware that only runs Linux at the moment".
Don't you think the fact that they talk of the "Pegasos II" kind of implies there might have been a first model?
The Pegasos has been on sale since sometime 2002 I believe. To be pedantic, yes it is not being produced anymore, but there are possibly still some in stock at retailers, and that doesn't change the fact that new machines have been produced.
Yeah, but what software on the Amiga is really worth porting to a new OS?
I'd like to see YAM (open source email client), and MUI (GUI toolkit - sadly closed source, but there is an open source clone, Zune).
The only tool I would like would be Bars and Pipes Professional, but then there's no source code for that.
I believe Microsoft released the source code when they brought out the company who developed it, and discontinued it. Check out here.
Oh, and sneak peaks at "Maybe Almost Sort of Available Hardware that only runs Linux at the moment" doesn't count.
What about available hardware running a new Amiga-compatible OS?
Unfortunately, whoever has owned the Amiga rights in the years since Commodore (Escom, Gateway, and now Amiga) have failed to produce anything other than a couple of OS updates (better than nothing, certainly, but not a huge step forward). Some new hardware, the "AmigaOne" (from Eyetech), has been produced and on sale for about a year, but so far only runs Linux.
But some of the "Amiga-like OS's" mentioned by the AmiZilla Guidelines can be considered "new", even if they aren't official Amigas. There's Amithlon (based on a modified Linux kernel and uses emulation to run AmigaOS on any standard PC - unfortunately development stopped due to disagreements between the developers and the publisher), and MorphOS (runs on the Pegasos).
I'm a BSD and Macintosh fan. And even I think the Amiga is dead.
I'm not sure why being a BSD and Macintosh fan adds weight to your assertion.. Anyhow, Amiga is dead in the same sense that MacOS dead - and it *is* dead, in that the classic OS was discontinued, and replaced by a completely different OS, that had some similarities and compatibility. The difference is that to date, any new Amiga-like OSs (MorphOS) are produced by people who don't own rights to the Amiga name.
However, as much as I think this, I don't go posting to Mac stories saying "I'm an Amiga fan, and I even I think that Mac is dead". That's the sort of behaviour I'd expect from your supposed zealots :/
Of course, this bounty requires porting to both the original Amigas, and MorphOS, but this probably isn't that harder to do due to API compatibility, and would increase the potential userbase.
It's dead. It's been ten years.
What's been 10 years? 10 years ago since you last paid any attention to Amiga history, perhaps? Pegasos/MorphOS, Amithlon and AmigaOS 3.9 are all examples of things released within the last couple of years or so.
What $10,000 could have done to advance some more meaningful Open Source project. What's next-- OpenOffice for C64?
First of all, it's Amiga not C64. I don't like Macs, but that doesn't mean I say "What next, an Apple II port?" when I see a Mac story.
Secondly, I don't know about bounties in particular, but bear in mind that platforms such as Windows have had a phenomenal amount spent on them in terms of general software development, compared to niche platforms. We're talking billions. Macs probably get a fair amount too. Linux gets plenty of both commercial and open source development.
Yet as soon as someone stumps up a few thousand to help fund a possible port of a browser (to a platform whose browsers lack all sorts of modern features), this is seemingly unfair?
Rightly or wrongly, the market is driven by those with money to spend. Most of the time, that means that Windows wins, and platforms like the Amiga lose out. This is one of those rare times when things don't go that way.
If you want to support legacy hardware, try it with something that isn't completely ancient like making X run better on old Pentium computers. At least they can run most modern operating systems.
If you RTFA, you'll see that MorphOS is listed as one of the platforms that must be supported. This is an OS that is still being developed, and runs under computers that are still being manufactured (the "Pegasos", currently a G3 based motherboard). It may not be the latest and greatest up to date thing, but it is certainly not "ancient", "legacy" or anything else.
Amiga is dead - deal with it. I don't mind if people want to waste their time and money porting apps to worthless platforms (it's their right), but I don't think they deserve a medal for it.
Why don't you stick to posting to the articles that you do care about then? ;)
how cares really about porting Mozilla to Amiga while there are lots of useful Open Source projects that require more support?
And who are you to say what is more useful or requires more support? The wonderful thing about open source programming (IMO) is that developers have a lot more freedom to work on things that they think are interesting or useful, rather than what somebody else tells them.
The website says the hardware has been available since Nov 2002, which is clearly a lie.
Why is this clearly a lie?
Do you personally know anyone who has gotten a system from these guys? I kinda suspect it's only the inner circle, and the stuff is not really generally available yet.
On what is this suspicion based? I don't know anyone with one personally, but have seen plenty of people saying they own one on Amiga forums (and no, they're not part of some "inner circle"). I don't know anyone with Mac OS X, but I don't go making assumptions that that isn't generally available.
Have you seen that hardware? It's five-year-old PowerPC G3 stuff and it doesn't even sound like it's in full production yet.
The "AmigaOne" hardware is out, and includes a G4 version. The problem is AmigaOS 4, which as you say seems like a perfect example of vapourware (it's been promised since summer 2000 IIRC).
Amiga is truley the kings of old school vaporware.
Amiga Inc the company, perhaps, but not the Amiga (ie, the computer) market. For example, if you want new machines, there's MorphOS and the Pegasos (Amiga compatible computers which are as close as say OS X is to MacOS; they just don't own the Amiga trademarks).
So because a bad thing can already happen (and having to waste several hours of my day because of a system which falsely identified me most certainly *is* something that I consider to be a bad thing), it's okay for bad things to happen more often? I don't understand this logic at all.
The more that automated systems that contain some probability of false positives get installed, the more that this is going to happen.
You could look similar to a suspect and get picked up by the police, you could be a victim of a crime and have to go to the station to file a report, etc. It's really not that scary, and most police officers are pretty nice people, you know?
Yes, and if I was considered a suspect, or was a victim of a crime, I'd consider those to be bad things too. If this was a slashdot article about making more people suspects, or more people victims of crime, I'd be arguing against those too. I don't care how nice the police officer is (my brother is one, before you write me off as some anti-police person); that's irrelevant to the point.
Why would that be a problem for anyone?
It would be a problem for me when a police officer turns up, and I have to accompany him to the station.
The article seems rather vague on this, and just says "An officer will be dispatched to the school in the event of a possible match". If I'm free to walk out, then it's no big deal, but then the system would be somewhat useless.
The burden of proof is on NineNine. He's the one who starting roundly abusing someone who posted nothing offensive or rude.
Therefore, he stated a fact and provided a link. NineNine's reply was woefully short on facts, statistics, or links.
The burden of proof is on the one who claims we should have these lists. The only "fact" in the original post was what the poster had done, and the only links were to these lists. There were no facts relating to what good these lists will do.
NineNine's reply may have been empty of links, but contained a reasonable point. If we can disregard it due to lack of links, we can do so for your reply also.
If you like statistics, do you refute those that say that the majority of sex abuse is conducted by family or friends?
I don't have time to dig up statistics every time some anonymous buffoon on the Internet makes absurd, unsubstantiated claims.
Right. There are these buffoons who think that we should introduce these public registries for sex offenders.
Whilst the offender might reoffend, (s)he's less likely to go out and butcher the neighbours children than your recently-released pedophile is to abuse them.
Where do you get this idea that sex offenders are likely to abuse random strangers, any more than a murderer is to murder random strangers? I've heard plenty of times that sex offenders are more likely than not to be known to the victim (eg, a quick google finds this and this. In fact, this quotes only 50 out of 100,000 sex offenders are "predatory paedophiles").
So on what basis do we believe that sex offenders are more likely to go after random strangers, compared with murderers? If we really want a list on this basis, perhaps it should only be those who commit crimes (whether it's rape or murder, or whatever else) against random strangers?
You do not know the full details of the case. Did he hold her down? Did he drag her into a closet? Did he hit her? Did he molest her with a broom stick? YOU DON'T KNOW! So therefore, don't make judgements unless YOU KNOW THE FACTS.
And do you think the average, paranoid, possibly would-be-vigilante member of the public will know and understand the full facts of the case, when they go looking up this guy's details in twenty years' time?
The fact that we don't know the specific details is the very problem with this sort of public database.
Kind of like accepting the laws of the country you had 'no choice' of being born into? Very weak argument.
So you are saying that a University has the authority to impose rules upon people, to the same degree at which a government imposes laws upon people?
I guess you wouldn't mind if I were to force you to pay me a few hundred dollars every year. After all, it's no different to having to pay taxes.
I would hope that a machine calculating trillions of moves would be able to. Like a lot of articles I've read, the machine can often pick excellent moves at any given time, but it lacks an understanding of the overall flow of the game, and big-picture strategy. Those kinds of things are hard to figure out for a machine without a soul, even with near-infinite cycles to spend.
But the human brain has a vast amount of computational power, arguably a lot more than any computer has. The advantage that the computer has is that it can more efficiently use all of its computing power for the purposes of calculating Chess moves, where as a human has to learn how to do it.
Until the machine can prove the game and calculate a way to draw every time no matter what moves the other person makes, I think a human will always have a good chance at beating the machine.
Why? This is quite a high expectation - interchange "human" and "machine", and your statement makes just as much sense. Chess is far from a solved game, and both human and machine have to decide a move based on limited knowledge on how the game will progress. So it's not obvious that a computer should be able to beat a human.
I think what you really mean by "a soul" is that those things a hard to figure out when using a brute-force algorithm that only dumbly calculates all future possible moves - but note that Fritz doesn't entirely rely on this algorithm, and tries to make decisions on which moves are worth investigating futher.
The Amiga's still around, as are various AmigaOS clones.