Assuming that scientists do answer the questions "How did the universe begin?" and "How will it end?", what are the implications for your life personally, and in your judgement for society as a whole? Final proof of such answers could have profound moral and sociological effect. For example, much of science is dedicated to these topics today- once the answers are set, what is tommorrow's "next big question"? On a personal level, how would you change if you knew for sure the answer to these questions? Would you see other people differently?
Whenever people, especially political types, say this will happen before the lawsuit occurs, they are said to be "big business". I think all the money in this class action would have been better spent coming up with a good competitor to Microsoft...
I think if you take out the word 'Humanoid' this will be more accurate. As far as human-machine interfaces go, humanoid would be ideal, but unless it's really good, it's really counter-productive. As an artist, I know if you get one bit of proportion off, the brain recognizes it and is jared. If the movement, speech, and appearence is not very convincing or else well-abstracted (that is, it doesn't need to be "realistic", as much as "believable"), it really would make more sense to have a different interface, such as a kiosk. Even if really believable humanoid UIs were possible, other UIs may be better suited. Would you rather a jerky mechanical face rattle off how much you owe, stick out a hand, and accept payment, or just read it on a screen and swipe a card?
Really, the only time a humanoid interface is beneficial is when it has to do a job in a human-oriented environment-(crash test dummy) or when the benefit of a naturally familiar interface outweighs its limitations.
Therefore, my prediction is that there will be an increase in task-specific robots then general-use robots and AI in non-humanoid formats.
Short answer: Yes, Windows IIS (which serves.NET WebServices) supports well over 100 concurrent connections.
Long answer: It completely depends on what you are doing. As one person pointed out, if you are performing very complex queries, then scalability would go down. There's plenty of room for bottlenecks.
One of our ASP.NET applications benchmarks at about 90 concurrent requests on a dual proc 1Ghz xeon. That's with several database reads per request.
Your question is if ".NET scales", but really you could break your problem into at least three questions: 1) Does.NET scale well? Yes. It scales extremely well, provided you follow best practices and design a scalable app. 2) Does SQL Server scale well? Well, but probably not the best. Again, depends greatly on the design. 3) Does IIS scale well? Well, but definitely not the best. IIS is designed for extensibility and scalability. Obviously they made trade offs in each area. Other servers are be more scalable, but less extensible.
Given that, I would recommend doing some very simple benchmarks: Write a webservice that returns a hard-coded string. Test that. Next write a service that connects to a database and returns or adds a single record. You get the idea. You can use MS Application Stress Test for this.
Another option is to use programs like RedGate ANTs and Query Analyzer to track down any bottlenecks in your code and SQL.
You may also consider options like remoting or even writing your own multithreaded server if you think you can squeeze better performance by implementing a thinner transport...
Finally, while you may not want to change the web server or development platform, you do have fairly wide range of choices as far as databases go. You could use MySQL backend, or any database you thought was better\cheaper than SQL server.
In the end, I think this question is too complex to simply blame on ".NET".
Back when I used D rockets to launch lizardnauts into sub-orbit, the FAA never gave me any hassle. Though lizards parachuting into residential areas was a hazard...
Force the linux guys to vote the old way, let the windows users vote easier. Pretty soon the linux-savy politician(s) will start loosing votes. Within ten years, Bill Gates will be president.
I like to think I can usually explain computers in lay terms, but I've never been able to convey easily the concept of "memory". People come to me and say "I don't have enough RAM to store my pictures" or "do I have enough memory to run xyz?" and are refering to disk space. Other times, they speak of their 20 Gigs of memory, and don't understand why "xyz runs so slow" on their 200Mhz with 32 megs of ram.
Any ideas on how to explain this one without getting funny looks =)
When.NET first came out, our development team took the plunge, and it has greatly improved development time and the quality of our code. Where scripts and hacks dominated our development before, it's now run off compiled, modular code..NET from a programming standpoint is a great tool.
The only problem I see is MS's marketing strategy of attaching ".NET" to everything. This just confused the term. There really was no reason to call "Windows 2003 Server" "Windows.NET Server", and they finally realized that. My guess is that their marketing geeks saw the success of the "development phase" and went overboard.
Whatever the case,.NET development is good, is here, and will stick around. Slashdotters should welcome it too- There's alot of open source momentum building behind.NET related tech. Take a look at the surge of C# projects in SourceForge, and the push to implement it in linux (Mono and Portable.NET).
From what I've read here, most of the objections fall into two categories:
I don't know what.NET is.
I don't like Microsoft as a company
On the first, if you limit the scope to.NET Framework and associated languages, it's pretty easy to grasp what it is, and see why it's good.
On the second, if this is your sole reason, you're being illogical. That would be like brushing off a good idea from a fellow developer because you didn't like his office.
are things like iTunes store the future, or is it streaming
This is comparing apples and oranges. Music downloads won't replace streaming any more that CDs replace radios! They each have obvious pros and cons. That said, once the high-speed, global, mobile, ubiquitous network is in place, there'll be no need to download. =) Until then, I'll download what I want on the road, and stream when I have access and want somebody else to pick the music.
We've just begun a project developing an app for.NET Compact Framework, and I have to say, I'm impressed. RAD for a wide range of CE & Pocket PC devices using C# and VB.NET is quite inticing. The framework is fairly light, considering, but is similar enough to the full framework that it's esentially identical to programming for a full PC. Debuging is cool too: you can debug on an emulated or real-live device.
That said: what are/.'s alternatives for rapidly developing mobile business apps?
When I was in college, we had real-life DOOM. It was called a "water gun fight". Several people had a fight going for several weeks, where the only rule was you couldn't shoot in the classroom. People would camp outside CSC101 and blast their opponents when they walked out.
IMHO, applications like this really are the next big thing. Maybe not real-life doom (then again, who knows), but applications that combine location and internet services are really the next logical step. They have the potential make mobile internet services more relavent to the user. For example, with real time traffic info, you could see automagically around slow traffic. Advertisers would eat up the targeted advertising- "Click here for the nearest Starbucks!" or "There are currently 20 people from your buddy list at the Shake Your Groove Club."
So, my question is, who should I invest in now, besides this company?
the work of art they put together, the album, will become a thing of the past
In the case of many of these artists, I kind of hope that's the case. Oh, if only boy bands were already "a thing of the past."
Seriously, though, as a visual artist, I can kind of see their point. An artist works to create a body of work, that in some ways is more than any one piece. Think "Monet's water lilies" or "Picasso's blue period". Of course visual artists have no qualms about selling individual pieces out of that body of work.
Similarly, an album is, or was, the musical equivalent of a body of work. A great example is Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon". If digital distribution had been in place back then, noone would ever have tried to play it alongside Wizard of Oz, because it may not have existed! Still, it occurs to me there are two viable solutions: 1) Get over it. Artists have always sold individual pieces. Work on developing a good, cohesive body of work, and you won't have any problems. 2) If particular songs in a particular sequence are that important, package them as a single song (Bohemian Rhapsody?), or digitally distribute the entire piece.
Hollywood just doesn't need it.
I get the point that people would want quality over speed, but I could see real-time rendering (+physics +design) being pretty useful. A director could "shoot" a CG scene just like a real shot, moving cameras and lights as needed. Of course the editor would still have a job, but "bugs" and re-takes could be done in the same timeframe as real shots.
But then, IANAHD...
OK/. How far away is a system like this from real-time photorealistic rendering? I've always wondered why somebody didn't throw enough hardware together to render film-quality CG at 30 frames/sec. What are the technical limitations preventing this?
Shouldn't be suprising
on
A Mighty Wind
·
· Score: 1
This doesn't come as a shock to those who see a big portion of the environmental movement as having little to do with true environmental concerns. There are basically three kinds of environmentalists:
The type who want increased governmental control over every aspect of life. Some go so far as to say people should be forced to be vegetarians. Others simply want the fishing industry to close its doors. Think PETA.
The type who simply want to complain about something. These simply jump on the first type's bandwagon. These are the wannabe-hippie protesters you see on CNN, and celebrities looking for free advertising.
The type who favor balance and reason in preserving natural resources. Examples here are hunters and outdoorsmen.
To say the least, that's not going to be good for business. It'll be great for business, and for consumers. Introducing competition into the market will force both NetFlix and Walmart to have lower prices and better services than if either one of them had 100% market share. Funny, you don't hear anyone whine when another OS company enters the market...
Though it may seem fair to have a tax on imported goods, it rarely is. Say Bob from Freetradia works hard to start a widget factory that produces quality widgets at decent prices. Now Joe from Bovinia starts a widget factory that produces lower quality widgets at inflated prices. Bovinia, seeing Joe isn't getting much market share, taxes imports from Freetradia so that Bob's widgets cost a way more than Joe's. Not only is it "not fair" to Bob, but Bovinia has removed much of Bob's motivation to create quality widgets at decent prices. To succeed, Bob now has to cut costs and create low-quality widgets even cheaper than Joe's. So now, the consumer suffers and you can't get a good widget anywhere!
Thus the American philosophy that government is better when it simply creates an envioronment in which people have equal oppourtunity is actually more fair and produces better goods and services. I would say that the only times it has failed is when government (local or foreign) imposed the socialist/communist version of "fairness", or when it interacts with nations that are so bad off (generally due to socialist or dictatorial politics), that the people there do not have the same opportunity to succeed and compete. The solution there is not to say "it's only fair that everybody is equally poor" or even "here's a bunch of money so that you'll be as rich as us for a few years", but rather to help those nations develop a better environment for their people to succeed.
With regards to "free" healthcare, I would counter that paying over half your income to the government for healthcare is worse, and more expensive, than paying less than 10% to a private insurance company, and then paying 10% to the government for those who genuinely can't afford their own. Both methods have issues, but generally the "American" way only fails when excessive greed (bogus lawsuits) or socialist politics (price controls)come into play.
and leaves us wondering whether God is real in the same way, say, a brick is real.
Just like you wonder if you really love your mom?
But now you're arguing against a non-Christian proposition. God is not a brick, and doesn't operate according to the same rules that govern bricks. A Christian would say, no God is not real in the same way as a brick- He's more real. (hehe, something to ponder as you watch the Matrix)
And the sun appears - to almost everyone - to go around the earth. And you appear to have posted on/. What's the point? Because people believed something false does not mean that everything people believe is false. That people (not just Christians, btw) in the past thought that the sun went around the earth does not disprove the existance of God. Scientists once thought flies spontaneousely arose from rotten meat. They were proven wrong. Does that disprove Science or just those particular, confused scientists? Scientists today, no doubt are telling us things that will be disproven 2,5, or 50 years from now. Does this mean we should dismiss all science? There's a logic term for this fallacy, but it escapes me now...
[snip good stuff]
thanks =)
> The fact is though, Christians have a vested interest in learning as much about the universe as possible, because they believe it to be created by the same Creator that created them.
Some Christians do. Others conclude that they should despise knowledge of the universe.
The others are wrong... Some Athiests conclude that the universe is absurd. I have to say I think I'd agree with them if it weren't for my pesky theism. =) But no doubt many athiests think it's important for us, as little clumps of carbon on a small rock in an average system in an average galaxy among 10^n galaxies, to understand as much as possible about the universe before we die. Point being it is illogical to dismiss a whole belief system for the errors (percieved and real) of some, even many, of its practitioners. The problem is many people, as a quick review of this thread will show, are hostile to Christians' "illogic", yet blind to their own.
Slashdot Mirror
Assuming that scientists do answer the questions "How did the universe begin?" and "How will it end?", what are the implications for your life personally, and in your judgement for society as a whole? Final proof of such answers could have profound moral and sociological effect. For example, much of science is dedicated to these topics today- once the answers are set, what is tommorrow's "next big question"? On a personal level, how would you change if you knew for sure the answer to these questions? Would you see other people differently?
Whenever people, especially political types, say this will happen before the lawsuit occurs, they are said to be "big business". I think all the money in this class action would have been better spent coming up with a good competitor to Microsoft...
I think if you take out the word 'Humanoid' this will be more accurate. As far as human-machine interfaces go, humanoid would be ideal, but unless it's really good, it's really counter-productive. As an artist, I know if you get one bit of proportion off, the brain recognizes it and is jared. If the movement, speech, and appearence is not very convincing or else well-abstracted (that is, it doesn't need to be "realistic", as much as "believable"), it really would make more sense to have a different interface, such as a kiosk. Even if really believable humanoid UIs were possible, other UIs may be better suited. Would you rather a jerky mechanical face rattle off how much you owe, stick out a hand, and accept payment, or just read it on a screen and swipe a card?
Really, the only time a humanoid interface is beneficial is when it has to do a job in a human-oriented environment-(crash test dummy) or when the benefit of a naturally familiar interface outweighs its limitations.
Therefore, my prediction is that there will be an increase in task-specific robots then general-use robots and AI in non-humanoid formats.
This is part of a larger plan to remove words from the french language altogether. Pretty soon there will be only one word...Big Brother.
Short answer: Yes, Windows IIS (which serves .NET WebServices) supports well over 100 concurrent connections.
.NET scale well?
Long answer: It completely depends on what you are doing. As one person pointed out, if you are performing very complex queries, then scalability would go down. There's plenty of room for bottlenecks.
One of our ASP.NET applications benchmarks at about 90 concurrent requests on a dual proc 1Ghz xeon. That's with several database reads per request.
Your question is if ".NET scales", but really you could break your problem into at least three questions:
1) Does
Yes. It scales extremely well, provided you follow best practices and design a scalable app.
2) Does SQL Server scale well?
Well, but probably not the best. Again, depends greatly on the design.
3) Does IIS scale well?
Well, but definitely not the best. IIS is designed for extensibility and scalability. Obviously they made trade offs in each area. Other servers are be more scalable, but less extensible.
Given that, I would recommend doing some very simple benchmarks: Write a webservice that returns a hard-coded string. Test that. Next write a service that connects to a database and returns or adds a single record. You get the idea. You can use MS Application Stress Test for this.
Another option is to use programs like RedGate ANTs and Query Analyzer to track down any bottlenecks in your code and SQL.
You may also consider options like remoting or even writing your own multithreaded server if you think you can squeeze better performance by implementing a thinner transport...
Finally, while you may not want to change the web server or development platform, you do have fairly wide range of choices as far as databases go. You could use MySQL backend, or any database you thought was better\cheaper than SQL server.
In the end, I think this question is too complex to simply blame on ".NET".
Good luck.
Back when I used D rockets to launch lizardnauts into sub-orbit, the FAA never gave me any hassle. Though lizards parachuting into residential areas was a hazard...
Force the linux guys to vote the old way, let the windows users vote easier. Pretty soon the linux-savy politician(s) will start loosing votes. Within ten years, Bill Gates will be president.
Gates in 2008!
Ok, so there's power over ethernet, and broadband over power, and voice over IP. Convergence?
Devil's advocate:
...but, my computer's at home???
=)
I like to think I can usually explain computers in lay terms, but I've never been able to convey easily the concept of "memory". People come to me and say "I don't have enough RAM to store my pictures" or "do I have enough memory to run xyz?" and are refering to disk space. Other times, they speak of their 20 Gigs of memory, and don't understand why "xyz runs so slow" on their 200Mhz with 32 megs of ram.
Any ideas on how to explain this one without getting funny looks =)
The only problem I see is MS's marketing strategy of attaching ".NET" to everything. This just confused the term. There really was no reason to call "Windows 2003 Server" "Windows
Whatever the case,
From what I've read here, most of the objections fall into two categories:
- I don't know what
.NET is.
- I don't like Microsoft as a company
On the first, if you limit the scope toOn the second, if this is your sole reason, you're being illogical. That would be like brushing off a good idea from a fellow developer because you didn't like his office.
are things like iTunes store the future, or is it streaming
This is comparing apples and oranges. Music downloads won't replace streaming any more that CDs replace radios! They each have obvious pros and cons. That said, once the high-speed, global, mobile, ubiquitous network is in place, there'll be no need to download. =) Until then, I'll download what I want on the road, and stream when I have access and want somebody else to pick the music.
How are they figuring out who to sue? Are ISPs just handing over customer records so they can link up IP addresses with actual people?
We've just begun a project developing an app for .NET Compact Framework, and I have to say, I'm impressed. RAD for a wide range of CE & Pocket PC devices using C# and VB.NET is quite inticing. The framework is fairly light, considering, but is similar enough to the full framework that it's esentially identical to programming for a full PC. Debuging is cool too: you can debug on an emulated or real-live device.
/.'s alternatives for rapidly developing mobile business apps?
That said: what are
When I was in college, we had real-life DOOM. It was called a "water gun fight". Several people had a fight going for several weeks, where the only rule was you couldn't shoot in the classroom. People would camp outside CSC101 and blast their opponents when they walked out.
IMHO, applications like this really are the next big thing. Maybe not real-life doom (then again, who knows), but applications that combine location and internet services are really the next logical step. They have the potential make mobile internet services more relavent to the user. For example, with real time traffic info, you could see automagically around slow traffic. Advertisers would eat up the targeted advertising- "Click here for the nearest Starbucks!" or "There are currently 20 people from your buddy list at the Shake Your Groove Club."
So, my question is, who should I invest in now, besides this company?
the work of art they put together, the album, will become a thing of the past
In the case of many of these artists, I kind of hope that's the case. Oh, if only boy bands were already "a thing of the past."
Seriously, though, as a visual artist, I can kind of see their point. An artist works to create a body of work, that in some ways is more than any one piece. Think "Monet's water lilies" or "Picasso's blue period". Of course visual artists have no qualms about selling individual pieces out of that body of work.
Similarly, an album is, or was, the musical equivalent of a body of work. A great example is Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon". If digital distribution had been in place back then, noone would ever have tried to play it alongside Wizard of Oz, because it may not have existed! Still, it occurs to me there are two viable solutions: 1) Get over it. Artists have always sold individual pieces. Work on developing a good, cohesive body of work, and you won't have any problems. 2) If particular songs in a particular sequence are that important, package them as a single song (Bohemian Rhapsody?), or digitally distribute the entire piece.
Hollywood just doesn't need it.
I get the point that people would want quality over speed, but I could see real-time rendering (+physics +design) being pretty useful. A director could "shoot" a CG scene just like a real shot, moving cameras and lights as needed. Of course the editor would still have a job, but "bugs" and re-takes could be done in the same timeframe as real shots.
But then, IANAHD...
OK /. How far away is a system like this from real-time photorealistic rendering? I've always wondered why somebody didn't throw enough hardware together to render film-quality CG at 30 frames/sec. What are the technical limitations preventing this?
- The type who want increased governmental control over every aspect of life. Some go so far as to say people should be forced to be vegetarians. Others simply want the fishing industry to close its doors. Think PETA.
- The type who simply want to complain about something. These simply jump on the first type's bandwagon. These are the wannabe-hippie protesters you see on CNN, and celebrities looking for free advertising.
- The type who favor balance and reason in preserving natural resources. Examples here are hunters and outdoorsmen.
These folks in Nantucket are clearly #2.To say the least, that's not going to be good for business.
It'll be great for business, and for consumers. Introducing competition into the market will force both NetFlix and Walmart to have lower prices and better services than if either one of them had 100% market share. Funny, you don't hear anyone whine when another OS company enters the market...
Though it may seem fair to have a tax on imported goods, it rarely is. Say Bob from Freetradia works hard to start a widget factory that produces quality widgets at decent prices. Now Joe from Bovinia starts a widget factory that produces lower quality widgets at inflated prices. Bovinia, seeing Joe isn't getting much market share, taxes imports from Freetradia so that Bob's widgets cost a way more than Joe's. Not only is it "not fair" to Bob, but Bovinia has removed much of Bob's motivation to create quality widgets at decent prices. To succeed, Bob now has to cut costs and create low-quality widgets even cheaper than Joe's. So now, the consumer suffers and you can't get a good widget anywhere!
Thus the American philosophy that government is better when it simply creates an envioronment in which people have equal oppourtunity is actually more fair and produces better goods and services. I would say that the only times it has failed is when government (local or foreign) imposed the socialist/communist version of "fairness", or when it interacts with nations that are so bad off (generally due to socialist or dictatorial politics), that the people there do not have the same opportunity to succeed and compete. The solution there is not to say "it's only fair that everybody is equally poor" or even "here's a bunch of money so that you'll be as rich as us for a few years", but rather to help those nations develop a better environment for their people to succeed.
With regards to "free" healthcare, I would counter that paying over half your income to the government for healthcare is worse, and more expensive, than paying less than 10% to a private insurance company, and then paying 10% to the government for those who genuinely can't afford their own. Both methods have issues, but generally the "American" way only fails when excessive greed (bogus lawsuits) or socialist politics (price controls)come into play.
While they're not strictly geek-fiction, I think the C.S. Lewis Space Trilogy is a fine, thought-provoking read somewhere near that genre.
Perhaps the reason geeks seek to learn lost arts is because they are aware of the coming Pole Shift. Is it May yet?
The revolution will not be blogged, Brother.
and leaves us wondering whether God is real in the same way, say, a brick is real.
/. What's the point? Because people believed something false does not mean that everything people believe is false. That people (not just Christians, btw) in the past thought that the sun went around the earth does not disprove the existance of God. Scientists once thought flies spontaneousely arose from rotten meat. They were proven wrong. Does that disprove Science or just those particular, confused scientists? Scientists today, no doubt are telling us things that will be disproven 2,5, or 50 years from now. Does this mean we should dismiss all science? There's a logic term for this fallacy, but it escapes me now...
Just like you wonder if you really love your mom? But now you're arguing against a non-Christian proposition. God is not a brick, and doesn't operate according to the same rules that govern bricks. A Christian would say, no God is not real in the same way as a brick- He's more real. (hehe, something to ponder as you watch the Matrix)
And the sun appears - to almost everyone - to go around the earth.
And you appear to have posted on
[snip good stuff]
thanks =)
> The fact is though, Christians have a vested interest in learning as much about the universe as possible, because they believe it to be created by the same Creator that created them.
Some Christians do. Others conclude that they should despise knowledge of the universe.
The others are wrong... Some Athiests conclude that the universe is absurd. I have to say I think I'd agree with them if it weren't for my pesky theism. =) But no doubt many athiests think it's important for us, as little clumps of carbon on a small rock in an average system in an average galaxy among 10^n galaxies, to understand as much as possible about the universe before we die. Point being it is illogical to dismiss a whole belief system for the errors (percieved and real) of some, even many, of its practitioners. The problem is many people, as a quick review of this thread will show, are hostile to Christians' "illogic", yet blind to their own.