The reason OpenGL has been struggling is the openGL consortium in the first place: made of giants each with own interests and unable to reach any consensus most of the time.
I wonder if it isn't possible to build cross-platform graphics standards the way internet standards are built: after-the-fact, with the benefit of hindsight, mainly developed by loosely connected hackers, and formality and consortia only when absolutely necessary.
If I may draw a parallel, X-window stagnated a lot in its early years when it was developed by the X consortium. In more recent times, development has been a lot more open, and it has got rapidly better.
I used to be in a number theory mailing list, and every week or so the list would get a mail from some amateur who thought they had proved this or that Longstanding Conjecture (TM). Everybody's favorite was the Goldbach conjecture, with the twin prime conjecture coming in a close second. Usually anyone who with a single number theory course in college could spot the error in a 10-20 line "proof". Sometimes it would be somewhat longer MS-word document that weren't so obvious. Proofs written in TeX were rare, and would need a number theorist to point out the flaw.
There must be hunderds of these "final proof of Riemann hypothesis" claims on the web. It is sad that "a Swedish newspaper is the only one to take up the story yet" doesn't inspire caution in the/. editors but urges them on to more recklessness.
Definition of the zeta function:
There is something called Riemann's zeta function: it is a function of a single complex variable. It is defined as zeta(z) = 1^(-z)+2^(-z)+3^(-z)+... (ad infinitum)
You can easily see that zeta(z), as defined, converges if and only if Re(z)>1 (real part of z). However, the function is defined for all complex z using something called the analytic continuation: basically there is a unique way to extend zeta(z) for re(z) < 1 in such a way that derivatives of all orders exist at all points.
The hypothesis states that all (nontrivial) zeroes of the zeta function occur on the line Re(z) = 1/2.
If proved, it has immense implications in many areas of pure and applied mathematics. For instance, in number theory: it would say a lot about the distribution of prime numbers.
The stature of the problem can be seen from the fact that it was one of the 23 problems which would shape the mathematical progress of the 20th century that David Hilbert drew up in his lecture at the 1900 Paris congress of mathematicians.
Google does this. They use a bank of 10000 (!) machines (linux PCs) which have the entire web in RAM (yes, all 3 billion pages). If they used disks, it would take 8 months to complete a single query. Its the only way they can provide results fast enough.
One of the major problems with using tapes for storing data seems to be dropped frames. A tiny spot of dirt or liquid may lead to several thousand consecutive bytes being missed, leading to data loss. Error correction schemes can cope with only so-many consecutive bytes getting lost. However, it is possible to cure much larger number of consecutive bytes lost using striping (as used in RAID). Basically, it ensures that logically consecutive bytes are physically spaced apart. Thus, a dust particle would now lead to a few bytes being lost in each of a number of frames, which can be corrected. A minor drawback of this is that decoding would no longer be frame-by-frame but blocks of several frames at once, amounting to several megabytes perhaps, but this I don't think this is a serious issue.
"We need to develop the technology before someone attacks the system. But until there is an attack, companies might not be willing to spend the money."
Sounds familiar? Heard the following?
People need to backup their data before there is a disk crash. But until that happens, people are unwilling to put in the extra effort, and then it is too late.
Sysads need to patch the latest SSH/IIS hole before a worm hits. But until they are 0wned, sysads are not willing to spend time securing the system.
How sad that people simply don't learn. True, in the case of the internet the change is much more costly, but you would expect companies/organizations running the major gateways to have a little more foresight. After all its for their own good.
Y'know, if you read articles written by h4X0rz and warez d00dz, they often claim they do more good than harm by forcing people to create a better security infrastructure. When you read it it looks like a miserable attempt at satisfying their own conscience, but when I read something like this article I almost see their point.
IMHO, There is one factor which is going to make it rapidly more difficult for Unix to exist, and I haven't seen mentioned anywhere.
Tomorrow's sysadmins and software chiefs are mostly today's CS students. Considering the enormous popularity of Linux with students (for obvious reasons), these new faces will enter the field with much more programming experience and familiarity on Linux than [insert properietary UNIX here]. So, except for very specialized scenarios, I don't think Unix stands a chance.
Three leading Gnultella services voice their opinions on Gnutella2 or Mike's Protocol as they refer to it as. None of the three recognize Gnutella2 as true Gnutella and worry its propritary protocol will divide the Gnutella community.
Dozens of disgusted slashdotters voice their anger at/. editors or lazy-morons-who-can't-spellcheck as they refer to them as. None of the irate posters recognize/. stories as true English and worry its brain-damagedness will make the subscribers a laughing stock.
"FCS is envisioned as a networked 'system of systems".
For such a system, linux is the obvious choice IMHO. Here's why: Consider the possibility of a malicious agent (possibly an insider) gaining unauthorized access to some of the systems. Because the whole thing is networked and remotely coordinated, the possibility for damage is immense. In that case, it is absolutely essential to detect the intrusion, track the attacker's footprints and minimize the damage as quickly as possible. And I would say linux wins hands down at this, because of its transparency. The main thing is not cost or ease of use or applications or any of the things that are usually considered, but having the innards of the system open for the administrator to see.
about the implications that this could have for other applications. As an example, consider IBM's Deep Blue chess playing program that defeated Kasparov in 1997. It used a massively parallel grid for evaluating positions using custom-built hardware costing millions. Now imagine if the same thing could be achieved over a grid on top of the internet. You have a world champion beating chessplayer right on your desktop!
Another application would be in natural language processors. They require huge databases and computing power to process them. A grid would be a perfect way to build such a system.
Mind you, these applications are equally commercially viable. You could charge say $1000 per game against the world champion chess program, or $100 for 30 minutes of conservation with the most intelligent bot ever, and so on.
Once DRM gets well established, it will be only a step away from the govt. being able examine anything on your computer, no questions asked. And that is frigteningly close to the Orwell's thought police.
If you haven't yet, go read Stallman's a right to read. On second thoughts, why bother? We'll be experiencing it in a few years anyway.
This is a serious issue. We are not talking about a single misguided politician here. This is the result of an insidious, deliberate, and concerted effort by the *AA to abuse language in order to confuse people's sense of proportion and their sense of ethics. False analogies, shock-treatment and abuse of language are very effective propaganda tools, and that is what we are seeing here.
See what RMS has to say (from http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html) :
Publishers often refer to prohibited copying as ``piracy.'' In this way, they imply that illegal copying is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnaping and murdering the people on them.
If you don't believe that illegal copying is just like kidnaping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word ``piracy'' to describe it. Neutral terms such as ``prohibited copying'' or ``unauthorized copying'' are available for use instead. Some of us might even prefer to use a positive term such as ``sharing information with your neighbor.''
Fight this language FUD! Refuse to use FUD terms. Read the above mentioned article on gnu.org and point people to it. It can go a long way in putting things in true perspective and controlling the power of the *AA.
More information
on
Thin, Flat LEDs
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Omron Corporation (Headquarters: Kyoto; CEO: Yoshio Tateisi) has announced the development of "flat light source" technology aimed to become a new form of LED illumination.
Employment of LED's in such applications as train car brake lights, signals, and displays began in recent years from the viewpoint of energy consumption and in the not-too-distant future they are expected to displace current lighting sources in the average household. The challenges of this kind of LED illumination are considered to be further improving LED brightness and realizing performance comparable with the price.
Incorporating characteristics of low-profile/large surface area/uniformity not found in lighting sources up until now (light bulbs, fluorescent lamps, present LED's), Omron has developed "flat light source" technology. Taking full advantage of its small size/long service life, features inherent to the LED, the "flat light source" will be positioned to realize future unrestricted illumination such as "wall-mounted light" and "portable light."
Using light wave control technology of the currently marketed DR-LED as a base, a precise optics design was implemented for optical beam dispersement to compartmentalize more space, and by doing so increasing the amount of surface area. The light emitting surface area is 30mm x 30mm with a thickness of 6mm, giving it about 50 times more illumination surface area than a typical bullet-type LED of the same thickness. If a bullet-type LED were to be created to match the same amount of illumination surface area, the thickness would have to be between 1/10th and 1/5th greater. Moreover, this technology mixes three colors (blue, green, red) into a single "flat light source," thus making any color possible, something that has proven to be very difficult for light bulbs and fluorescent light.
The scope of applications for the "flat light source" include those which the LED has already advanced into such as train car brake lights, signals and displays. Combining several "flat light source" units together creates enough illumination for wall-mounted light or portable light and its compact size makes it ideal for narrow locations like walls and columns. Plus, color can be freely adjusted making it a truly full color lighting source.
Hereafter, Omron will accelerate the move toward illumination by the low energy consumption contributing LED, and with this newly developed technology as a base, strive to bring the "flat light source" to commercialization.
1) How do they let you download songs but not burn them? DRM already? I thought that was somewhat into the future.
2) Only to AOL subscribers? Does burning CDs from dialup connections make much sense? Wouldn't they have much better success selling this to broadband users? AFAIK AOL also have some kind of content-provider service for non-dialup users? (I don't live in the US, correct me if I'm wrong). Do they also provide the service for these customers? It would appear that they don't: Subscribers already pay $23.90 per month for dial-up Internet connections. So they're talking about only dialup users.
If this is (partly) an effort by AOL to keep people from migrating away from dialup, it seems futile to me.
This has got to be the funniest of the stupid patents ever. Even beats the swinging sideways patent. Basically, the sort of comment system it describes is implemented here on/. and in a million other blogs all over the web. In fact, even many mainstream news sites allow readers to poat comments. You might want to check out a list of prior art implementations;^)
Turing defined the test more than 50 years ago. Considering that there were barely any machines at that time that we would call computers today, his prescience was remarkable.
Turing stipulated in the Turing test (TT) that the "interrogator" specifically has the goal of trying to determine which of the contestants is human and which is the machine. Unfortunately, the way the Loebner contest is conducted, this important requirement is completely ignored (at least in the default $2000 prize). As a result, the results of the contest are completely irrelevant from the point of view of the Turing test. Claiming otherwise is incorrect and misleading, and Loebner fully deserves all the criticism he gets.
The TT is still fully valid today. We are very far from building bots that will pass it. (though Turing predicted that by 2000 we will have machines that will pass TT). In fact, the whole direction of work on the bots participating in the current day Loebner contests is irrelevant from the TT point of view. They work mostly by building enormous databases of statement-response pairs and doing minimal reasoning. Turing would have died laughing if he had known people would take this approach to passing the TT. Let me illustrate why the database idea is insufficient by itself: for a bot to pass the real TT, it would have to answer questions like "what is the integral of e^x dx". Remember that the interrogator is actively trying to find out if it is a human or a bot. The objection "but two humans in conversation wouldn't ask such question" is invalid, and this is precisely why the Loebner contest is stupid.
The reason why today's bots are so unsuccesful is not far to seek. It has long been known in the AI community that get anywhere near passing the TT, a bot would need what is known as "world knowledge". To build world knowledge, you need memory approximately the capacity of the human brain: estimated to be the order of a petabyte. And processing power to match: the brain runs something like a billion threads in parallel, and is 10^7 times as energy efficient per computation as today's computers. Of course, we aren't there yet. Thus, contrary to what most people would feel the thing that is holding AI up is hardware.
Similar to today's bot craze, there have been crazes in the past when people thought they were close to building truly intelligent machines ("expert systems" comes to mind.) However, they inevitably came up short because the hardware power wasn't there. In about 20-30 years, assuming there continue to be breakthroughs in storage technology to keep up the doubling, computers will be matching the brain's capacity, and then we'll be talking.
Summary: to hell with people who apparently popularize science and end up giving the real researchers a bad name.
You brought up a very good point. "Open source" which you're not allowed to disclose.
Which is why RMS asks us to distinguish between Free as in freedom and open source as in buzzword compatible.
IMHO, what the license restriction probably shows is that deep down, they really believe that less eyes on the source == better. They probably want to achieve some kind of "middle ground" (shared source anyone?) with bug fixers getting to look at the code but not "hackers".
Not to be too harsh, just bitter that they follow the letter but not the spirit of open source.
... how students at the 151-year-old Tufts University were paid as little as $20/month to relay spam from computers in their dorms.
Until I read the article I was under the impression it was an article complaining that the students were not getting a fair enough price for spamming;^)
Sun supports the Linux operating system on its Intel-compatible products, but argues that customers who want less-expensive Intel-based servers will prefer to use a version of Solaris instead.
Am I the only one that fails to see the logic here? Since when has solaris been less expensive? On hardware terms too, I would have thought linux is more suited to run on the lower-end boxes. Is this desperation from Sun we're seeing?
This is a Good Thing for sure, but keep in mind that the important thing is to help the average Joe see the benefits of Ogg. Sending your mom the CD you ripped in ogg format is way more useful than preaching benefits of ogg on slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if it isn't possible to build cross-platform graphics standards the way internet standards are built: after-the-fact, with the benefit of hindsight, mainly developed by loosely connected hackers, and formality and consortia only when absolutely necessary.
If I may draw a parallel, X-window stagnated a lot in its early years when it was developed by the X consortium. In more recent times, development has been a lot more open, and it has got rapidly better.
There must be hunderds of these "final proof of Riemann hypothesis" claims on the web. It is sad that "a Swedish newspaper is the only one to take up the story yet" doesn't inspire caution in the /. editors but urges them on to more recklessness.
The hypothesis states that all (nontrivial) zeroes of the zeta function occur on the line Re(z) = 1/2.
If proved, it has immense implications in many areas of pure and applied mathematics. For instance, in number theory: it would say a lot about the distribution of prime numbers.
The stature of the problem can be seen from the fact that it was one of the 23 problems which would shape the mathematical progress of the 20th century that David Hilbert drew up in his lecture at the 1900 Paris congress of mathematicians.
More information here
One of the major problems with using tapes for storing data seems to be dropped frames. A tiny spot of dirt or liquid may lead to several thousand consecutive bytes being missed, leading to data loss. Error correction schemes can cope with only so-many consecutive bytes getting lost. However, it is possible to cure much larger number of consecutive bytes lost using striping (as used in RAID). Basically, it ensures that logically consecutive bytes are physically spaced apart. Thus, a dust particle would now lead to a few bytes being lost in each of a number of frames, which can be corrected. A minor drawback of this is that decoding would no longer be frame-by-frame but blocks of several frames at once, amounting to several megabytes perhaps, but this I don't think this is a serious issue.
Sounds familiar? Heard the following?
-
People need to backup their data before there is a disk crash. But until that happens, people are unwilling to put in the extra effort, and then it is too late.
-
Sysads need to patch the latest SSH/IIS hole before a worm hits. But until they are 0wned, sysads are not willing to spend time securing the system.
How sad that people simply don't learn. True, in the case of the internet the change is much more costly, but you would expect companies/organizations running the major gateways to have a little more foresight. After all its for their own good.Y'know, if you read articles written by h4X0rz and warez d00dz, they often claim they do more good than harm by forcing people to create a better security infrastructure. When you read it it looks like a miserable attempt at satisfying their own conscience, but when I read something like this article I almost see their point.
Tomorrow's sysadmins and software chiefs are mostly today's CS students. Considering the enormous popularity of Linux with students (for obvious reasons), these new faces will enter the field with much more programming experience and familiarity on Linux than [insert properietary UNIX here]. So, except for very specialized scenarios, I don't think Unix stands a chance.
Just my 2 cents.
-- A humble CS student.
Dozens of disgusted slashdotters voice their anger at /. editors or lazy-morons-who-can't-spellcheck as they refer to them as. None of the irate posters recognize /. stories as true English and worry its brain-damagedness will make the subscribers a laughing stock.
The 419 coalition website fights the nigerian scam
scam alert
A hilarious account of a revenge killing related to the 419 scam
slashdot.org has received a warning from regulators who have alleged that the service is a sham and amounts to wilful Denial Of Service attacks.
For such a system, linux is the obvious choice IMHO. Here's why: Consider the possibility of a malicious agent (possibly an insider) gaining unauthorized access to some of the systems. Because the whole thing is networked and remotely coordinated, the possibility for damage is immense. In that case, it is absolutely essential to detect the intrusion, track the attacker's footprints and minimize the damage as quickly as possible. And I would say linux wins hands down at this, because of its transparency. The main thing is not cost or ease of use or applications or any of the things that are usually considered, but having the innards of the system open for the administrator to see.
The IDSA wants all emulators to be banned. More on this here.
More bullying by IDSA and Cox.
I'm guessing the IDSA is a games-only version of the BSA.
Another application would be in natural language processors. They require huge databases and computing power to process them. A grid would be a perfect way to build such a system.
Mind you, these applications are equally commercially viable. You could charge say $1000 per game against the world champion chess program, or $100 for 30 minutes of conservation with the most intelligent bot ever, and so on.
This is becoming less and less of a joke, and it horrifies me.
Look what the Department of "Justice" is doing.
Once DRM gets well established, it will be only a step away from the govt. being able examine anything on your computer, no questions asked. And that is frigteningly close to the Orwell's thought police.
If you haven't yet, go read Stallman's a right to read. On second thoughts, why bother? We'll be experiencing it in a few years anyway.
This is a serious issue. We are not talking about a single misguided politician here. This is the result of an insidious, deliberate, and concerted effort by the *AA to abuse language in order to confuse people's sense of proportion and their sense of ethics. False analogies, shock-treatment and abuse of language are very effective propaganda tools, and that is what we are seeing here.
See what RMS has to say (from http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html) :
Fight this language FUD! Refuse to use FUD terms. Read the above mentioned article on gnu.org and point people to it. It can go a long way in putting things in true perspective and controlling the power of the *AA.
NE asia online
omron technics
Here's the text:
----------------
Omron Corporation (Headquarters: Kyoto; CEO: Yoshio Tateisi) has announced the development of "flat light source" technology aimed to become a new form of LED illumination.
Employment of LED's in such applications as train car brake lights, signals, and displays began in recent years from the viewpoint of energy consumption and in the not-too-distant future they are expected to displace current lighting sources in the average household. The challenges of this kind of LED illumination are considered to be further improving LED brightness and realizing performance comparable with the price.
Incorporating characteristics of low-profile/large surface area/uniformity not found in lighting sources up until now (light bulbs, fluorescent lamps, present LED's), Omron has developed "flat light source" technology. Taking full advantage of its small size/long service life, features inherent to the LED, the "flat light source" will be positioned to realize future unrestricted illumination such as "wall-mounted light" and "portable light."
Using light wave control technology of the currently marketed DR-LED as a base, a precise optics design was implemented for optical beam dispersement to compartmentalize more space, and by doing so increasing the amount of surface area. The light emitting surface area is 30mm x 30mm with a thickness of 6mm, giving it about 50 times more illumination surface area than a typical bullet-type LED of the same thickness. If a bullet-type LED were to be created to match the same amount of illumination surface area, the thickness would have to be between 1/10th and 1/5th greater. Moreover, this technology mixes three colors (blue, green, red) into a single "flat light source," thus making any color possible, something that has proven to be very difficult for light bulbs and fluorescent light.
The scope of applications for the "flat light source" include those which the LED has already advanced into such as train car brake lights, signals and displays. Combining several "flat light source" units together creates enough illumination for wall-mounted light or portable light and its compact size makes it ideal for narrow locations like walls and columns. Plus, color can be freely adjusted making it a truly full color lighting source.
Hereafter, Omron will accelerate the move toward illumination by the low energy consumption contributing LED, and with this newly developed technology as a base, strive to bring the "flat light source" to commercialization.
2) Only to AOL subscribers? Does burning CDs from dialup connections make much sense? Wouldn't they have much better success selling this to broadband users? AFAIK AOL also have some kind of content-provider service for non-dialup users? (I don't live in the US, correct me if I'm wrong). Do they also provide the service for these customers? It would appear that they don't: Subscribers already pay $23.90 per month for dial-up Internet connections. So they're talking about only dialup users.
If this is (partly) an effort by AOL to keep people from migrating away from dialup, it seems futile to me.
This has got to be the funniest of the stupid patents ever. Even beats the swinging sideways patent. Basically, the sort of comment system it describes is implemented here on /. and in a million other blogs all over the web. In fact, even many mainstream news sites allow readers to poat comments. You might want to check out a list of prior art implementations ;^)
Turing stipulated in the Turing test (TT) that the "interrogator" specifically has the goal of trying to determine which of the contestants is human and which is the machine. Unfortunately, the way the Loebner contest is conducted, this important requirement is completely ignored (at least in the default $2000 prize). As a result, the results of the contest are completely irrelevant from the point of view of the Turing test. Claiming otherwise is incorrect and misleading, and Loebner fully deserves all the criticism he gets.
The TT is still fully valid today. We are very far from building bots that will pass it. (though Turing predicted that by 2000 we will have machines that will pass TT). In fact, the whole direction of work on the bots participating in the current day Loebner contests is irrelevant from the TT point of view. They work mostly by building enormous databases of statement-response pairs and doing minimal reasoning. Turing would have died laughing if he had known people would take this approach to passing the TT. Let me illustrate why the database idea is insufficient by itself: for a bot to pass the real TT, it would have to answer questions like "what is the integral of e^x dx". Remember that the interrogator is actively trying to find out if it is a human or a bot. The objection "but two humans in conversation wouldn't ask such question" is invalid, and this is precisely why the Loebner contest is stupid.
The reason why today's bots are so unsuccesful is not far to seek. It has long been known in the AI community that get anywhere near passing the TT, a bot would need what is known as "world knowledge". To build world knowledge, you need memory approximately the capacity of the human brain: estimated to be the order of a petabyte. And processing power to match: the brain runs something like a billion threads in parallel, and is 10^7 times as energy efficient per computation as today's computers. Of course, we aren't there yet. Thus, contrary to what most people would feel the thing that is holding AI up is hardware.
Similar to today's bot craze, there have been crazes in the past when people thought they were close to building truly intelligent machines ("expert systems" comes to mind.) However, they inevitably came up short because the hardware power wasn't there. In about 20-30 years, assuming there continue to be breakthroughs in storage technology to keep up the doubling, computers will be matching the brain's capacity, and then we'll be talking.
Summary: to hell with people who apparently popularize science and end up giving the real researchers a bad name.
You brought up a very good point. "Open source" which you're not allowed to disclose.
Which is why RMS asks us to distinguish between Free as in freedom and open source as in buzzword compatible.
IMHO, what the license restriction probably shows is that deep down, they really believe that less eyes on the source == better. They probably want to achieve some kind of "middle ground" (shared source anyone?) with bug fixers getting to look at the code but not "hackers".
Not to be too harsh, just bitter that they follow the letter but not the spirit of open source.
Until I read the article I was under the impression it was an article complaining that the students were not getting a fair enough price for spamming ;^)
Er, CmdrTaco, are you quite sure this is about hardware?
Being at work, it put me into a dilemma: to click or not to click?
Am I the only one that fails to see the logic here? Since when has solaris been less expensive? On hardware terms too, I would have thought linux is more suited to run on the lower-end boxes. Is this desperation from Sun we're seeing?
This is a Good Thing for sure, but keep in mind that the important thing is to help the average Joe see the benefits of Ogg. Sending your mom the CD you ripped in ogg format is way more useful than preaching benefits of ogg on slashdot.