This is the same way as Christian Fundamentalists in Kentucky et al describe Darwin's Theory of Evolution.
Quick Summary: Everyone in the world thinks that someone has to be done about pollution. Except the biggest polluter.
Basically this is the same as elements like the Chemical and Biological non-proliferation treaty (objected to by the US), the International Criminal Court (objected to by the US) and a host of other good ideas that the US President objects to because he didn't think them up.
The US Approach of "Build Bigger SUVs and let our kids sort out the mess" is a disgrace to the 21st Century on a par with any other act of wilful destruction that can be conceived. The US is deliberately increasing its pollution rates and refusing to do anything about it. This already causes increases in deaths in the US an abroad due to breathing disorders and toxic poisoning.
And if its about the economy, how about trimming that massive debt George ?
Now I'm not going to argue the numbers, but really "only" 4% ? If you are running a business then you have certain fixed costs and once they have been covered your margin on each additional sale goes up.
So the 4% represents increased profit, so it could be 50% of profit, even if it is only 4% of revenue.
Your examples don't make any sense because Ada and Eiffel have a very C-like syntax
I know its well after the fact on this and no-one will ever read this.
But you sir are a clueless muppet with about the same level of experience in Ada and Eiffel as my son, actually even HE could spot the difference between them and he is 18 months old.
Fuck me there are some ill-educated computer cretins out there. AOL has a lot to answer for.
And I'd like to spend money on an effort that adds little benefit but which sounds good on my re-election campaign.
A city covered by Wireless, paid for by the tax-payers, because of course, that is the most cost-effective way of getting anything done. Get the government to do it.
Does anyone honestly think that having city councils doing this stuff makes sense ? Would it make sense for them to provide the phones and electricity as well ? Nice vote winner, but to do the decent investment in Wi-Fi to get good coverage and cope with all the collisions requires a bit more brains than most government organisations I've seen.
Today the British Navy abandoned the gulf and turned its ships and nuclear submarines onto the Slashdot editing team. An initial force of Special Boat Service (SBS) forces was expected to take out the chain of command before a period of continual bombardment by artillery, missle and aircraft.
A spokesman from the British Navy said "right that's it, we've left the buggers alone since 1812 but that does it."
In related news Slashdot is being re-hosted from Camp Delta, along with any remaining members of the editing team.
Local Goverment decides on big-ticket infrastructure spend in market already (relatively) well served by existing commercial vendors.
I don't get it. Do we seriously think that an internet connection is something the state should provide to every home ? Is it more important than a phone line ? Water ? Gas ? Electricity ? And all the other things supplied by the commercial sector.
I'm glad I'm not in Philly, there is one goverment official there with WAY too much budget.
In every massively successful market in IT there has been a standard that has driven adoption (802.11 springs to mind).
IBM in the 1980s and early 90s tried to buck this trend with elements like TokenRing and a whole heap of proprietary technology. But the ability of companies to have a broad-choice of vendors meant that IBM were doomed to lose that battle.
Linux is a standards based product which is adopted by many vendors. Microsoft is a proprietary stack (especially.NET) which is trying to swim against the stream.
Why will Microsoft succeed in forcing a proprietary technology on the market when IBM failed ?
Apologies, I'm in the UK and I couldn't remember the brand. The other option was the uber-rubbish Pontiac Grand-Am the other car that I always get dumped with by rental companies.
I've got some Karma to burn so I'm going to say this anyway.
For all the muppets who will respond about Google being a "bad" company, and how they were "good". FIRING PEOPLE HAPPENS, and sometimes ITS THE RIGHT THING TO DO. If one person is dragging down the morale of everyone else, should that be allowed to continue ? If one person is damaging the companies reputation, should that be allowed to continue ?
Firing people is something that happens. And it doesn't make companies "bad" or "good". In fact companies ARE NEVER bad or good its the PEOPLE in them that make bad or good decisions. Reference Microsoft, it was the will of a group of people to act as a monopoly and abuse that position.
For anyone who thinks about "Good" and "Bad" in a George Bush style way when looking at any part of the world, whether business or politics. GET OUTSIDE and see the shades, subscribe to the economist, read the Wall Street Journal, become a member of Green Peace and Amnesty International, but don't wear Rose Tinted specs and moan because ONE person got fired.
Google has ALWAYS been protective, and ALWAYS done some "odd" things. There is no tipping point of bad to good, the world is not as simple as "Whitehouse Politics 101".
Ummm, my home machine has a 400MHz processor running Suse. I'm thinking of upgrading, as I have every 6 months for 5 years, but I just keep waiting for the "next" best thing rather than upgrading now.
There are mobile phones more powerful than my home PC, but it does the job.
The wonder of these future boxes is that we will STILL be able to write code that makes them run slow. Roll on Longhorn I say!
I wouldn't have finished reading a second Perl 6 book yesterday, now would I?
Err yes, because you'd have picked a script derivative language. You agree that Java and C# are rubbish, but I assume from a position where Perl is good.
That is like agreeing that a Dodge Cavalier is rubbish, while driving an Edsel.
No, the problem is that the people who know a lot about languages know little about application domains, and the people who know a lot about application domains know little about how to design languages (or at least don't spend much time on it).
I have to disagree here, the team that designed Ada for instance REALLY understood about application domains and the challenges of developing languages, and the people judging the competition to design Ada DEFINATELY understood the challenges of languages. The problem was that it wasn't "cool" like C, and they didn't focus on providing elements like DB connectivity or GUI frameworks as standard (understandable in the 1980s).
I've worked on projects with Ada, and as a language it was superb. Same with Eiffel. The biggest problem that I had managing those teams were the malcontents who complained that writing
"foreach n in X loop"
with an "end loop;" at the end. This was FAR too much work apparently and coding would be much quicker writing
"for(x = 0; x y; x++)"
In the end around 20% of the code was written in C, and 80% in Ada. 95% of our bugs were in the C code.
Keeps us in jobs though I guess, if we used better languages we wouldn't have to spend so much time fixing things.
I'd disagree that there aren't people who can design decent languages. The problem is that they can't market them, and that developers continue to go back to the brain-dead syntax of C as if looking like C was an aspiration for a language.
Languages like Ada, Eiffel etc (which yes I have used commercially) are brilliant from a language perspective, especially for large projects. The trouble is developers would prefer to write something in 5 characters than 30 characters in a mistaken belief that they are being more productive and that typing is the longest task they undertake.
When you get into more "esoteric" areas like goal driven programming or agents then the languages become better, because the people using them are more aware of the purpose of the language and aren't constrained by a belief that it has to look like C.
C# and Java are great example of languages that took on that syntax and many of the constructs as its easier to get a language accepted when it looks like C than when a developer has to learn a new syntax that will in the long run be better.
The problem isn't language designers its us developers, we don't want to spend a week learning a new syntax for a loop, we want to use what we used before. In other words we are luddites.
Smalltalk was okay, but I prefered Eiffel, Java and C# are both by comparison rubbish, but they have better GUI libraries and marketing departments.
That maybe this chap wasn't -entirely- on side with the business strategy of the company.
To me this sounds like a techy complaining that the business is subverting the idea. In many cases this is because the techy doesn't understand the business model, but here it sounds more as if the business didn't understand the market.
Re:Start with just making PHONES
on
Cell Phone On A Chip
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I don't want to take pictures with my phone.
I do, that way when I'm playing with my kids I can send pictures to the grandparents, they LOVE it.
I don't want to play MP3s with my phone. I do, I'm on the train alot, being able to play MP3s on the phone stops me having to carry an MP3 player.
I don't want to check my e-mail with my phone.
I do, I'm out of the office alot and I'd prefer to check it on my phone than trek into the office.
I don't want to browse the web with my phone.
I do, Its a quick way to get the football scores at the weekend, check the news, and a quick search before meeting a client to find out some info.
I don't want to play games with my phone
Now this is the bit that is just plain wrong. $3.5bn was spent on Java games last year, that is a major reason that phones are cheap, people can sell you the games which drives down the cost of the devices as people upgrade to the latest phones that support 3D etc. This is consumer economics ala the PC, why do you have a 256Mb graphics card, because MS Word needs it ? Nope because Games need it. Games revenue drives innovation and keeps costs down as people upgrade.
I'm the sort of person who gets the new Nokia 6630 (3G with all the trimmings) because I need all of the elements. And yup I get a contract (because I use the phone alot).
Buying a basic PC, no network, no sound, no USB ports etc... is now very expensive because popular demand wants those things as standard. Its the same with phones, and its those added extras that some people then pay more money to use that keep the cost of your handset down.
Of course if you are in the US please disregard the above as you folks get screwed on "Cell" phones, the models are crap and the networks suck.
And if you are in Japan I know you have better phones than my 6630.
I studied Useability at University in the late 80s/early 90s. One of the key elements was the on-going battle between WILI and KISS.
WILI means "Well I Like It" and is normally for those interfaces designed, built and initially used by one person or group.
KISS means "Keep It Simple Stupid"
There are many other rules, reachability etc but under-pinning them all is the concept that WILI is bad and KISS is good.
The Web was a whole bunch of WILIes ignoring 30 years of interface design. I'm not stunned at all that lessons from 20 years ago are still valid, because people are still the same and interactivity is still the same. Mainframes are very similar to the web as it tends to be a modal interaction model (click......wait......read.....click.... etc etc etc) there are some different concepts when elements are being dynamically updated and adjusting based on context and input. Most of that research is 20+ years old as well though.
WILI v KISS, its the battle of "art" v "HCI". HCI is a discipline that takes in ergonomics, psychology and computing, and produces the best engineering. "art" or "creative interfaces" are the equivalent of a chocolate teapot, it doesn't matter if you like it... its still rubbish.
The best interface is the one you don't notice, it just does its job and enables you to get on.
And this I would guess is an excuse for the US not to do anything
"Sure we might be bad, but in 20 years time we might only be the second worse"
I predict that given that China has no direct oil of its own to meet demand that it will focus on other technology elements to reduce its reliance on external countries, and also as a stimulator to technology driven growth. The fact is we don't know, but the one fact we do know is that here and now the US is the worlds worst polluter on every scale, per capita or total.
I saw the actual programme, and it was far from Pop Science. In paticular the 9/11 data was fairly stark in underlining the impact of removal of aeroplanes from the skys for just two days over the US.
But of course, we could all just bury our heads in the sand and claim it is pop science.
The programme went into a "light" amount of detail, but mainly said this was something that required more research but was on the scary side of its implications. They certainly didn't say it was cancelling out the greenhouse effect, they claimed it was MASKING its impact, a very different claim.
The real trouble is that anything that claims there is a global warming problem caused by pollution comes up against one basic problem:
The US Energy Policy.
To my mind these elements equate to the old "the odds of this thing going critical if I drop it are pretty low" school of porting nuclear materials. The odds may be low, but the cost is huge, hence the reason you don't just lob the stuff about.
So it was a lightweight programme, well yes it wasn't the Open University, but "Pop Science", not really. It definately played for some dramatic effect, but there was evidence for those who were watching.
Because there are lots of different types of eyes that have evolved due to different purposes.
It is certainly NOT an example of an even semi-intelligent designer.
I mean what sort of engineer has the cables from receptors go BACK into the system thus creating a blind spot, rather than dragging them out the back. This is how it works on the octopus.
If you think god is a smart designer, explain how he failed when working on a human, and then did a better job on the octopus.
And don't even get me started on the fact that humans can choke on food.
God's existence is a HYPOTHESIS not a theory, it has no framework underwhich the existance of god can be disproven and therefore cannot be considered a theory.
"God's existence is a hypothosis, not a theory" would be a better sticker.
Sure the rocket is impressive, the most powerful machine every created.
But standing still its just a great big tube. Having seen the one at Kennedy, its just not that impressive as a static thing. When it was running then sure, what a beast.
But what about the tech that REALLY got man to the moon. Saturn V is just a big WWII rocket, the thing that made the difference was the IBM computing "power" that directed the thing.
I'd love to see the old mission control re-built with the original style technology, and simulate the information going into it. Imagine a school trip where you had to solve the same problem as for Apollo 13, or making the error over-ride decision of Apollo 11.
It wouldn't even really matter if it was just running on one PC behind the scene as long as you got the experience of how limited the power was.
Firing a rocket is grease monkey impressive. Getting it to hit the moon is the achievement.
Slashdot Mirror
The controversial Kyoto Treaty
This is the same way as Christian Fundamentalists in Kentucky et al describe Darwin's Theory of Evolution.
Quick Summary: Everyone in the world thinks that someone has to be done about pollution. Except the biggest polluter.
Basically this is the same as elements like the Chemical and Biological non-proliferation treaty (objected to by the US), the International Criminal Court (objected to by the US) and a host of other good ideas that the US President objects to because he didn't think them up.
The US Approach of "Build Bigger SUVs and let our kids sort out the mess" is a disgrace to the 21st Century on a par with any other act of wilful destruction that can be conceived. The US is deliberately increasing its pollution rates and refusing to do anything about it. This already causes increases in deaths in the US an abroad due to breathing disorders and toxic poisoning.
And if its about the economy, how about trimming that massive debt George ?
Now I'm not going to argue the numbers, but really "only" 4% ? If you are running a business then you have certain fixed costs and once they have been covered your margin on each additional sale goes up.
So the 4% represents increased profit, so it could be 50% of profit, even if it is only 4% of revenue.
So you support the latest generics and BizTalk can run on Mono ?
Get a clue.
Microsoft has already extended
Mono is about as likely to embrace and extend as Microsoft was with Java, in fact less likely as Mono is very very small.
Your examples don't make any sense because Ada and Eiffel have a very C-like syntax
I know its well after the fact on this and no-one will ever read this.
But you sir are a clueless muppet with about the same level of experience in Ada and Eiffel as my son, actually even HE could spot the difference between them and he is 18 months old.
Fuck me there are some ill-educated computer cretins out there. AOL has a lot to answer for.
And I'd like to spend money on an effort that adds little benefit but which sounds good on my re-election campaign.
A city covered by Wireless, paid for by the tax-payers, because of course, that is the most cost-effective way of getting anything done. Get the government to do it.
Does anyone honestly think that having city councils doing this stuff makes sense ? Would it make sense for them to provide the phones and electricity as well ? Nice vote winner, but to do the decent investment in Wi-Fi to get good coverage and cope with all the collisions requires a bit more brains than most government organisations I've seen.
Today the British Navy abandoned the gulf and turned its ships and nuclear submarines onto the Slashdot editing team. An initial force of Special Boat Service (SBS) forces was expected to take out the chain of command before a period of continual bombardment by artillery, missle and aircraft.
A spokesman from the British Navy said "right that's it, we've left the buggers alone since 1812 but that does it."
In related news Slashdot is being re-hosted from Camp Delta, along with any remaining members of the editing team.
Local Goverment decides on big-ticket infrastructure spend in market already (relatively) well served by existing commercial vendors.
I don't get it. Do we seriously think that an internet connection is something the state should provide to every home ? Is it more important than a phone line ? Water ? Gas ? Electricity ? And all the other things supplied by the commercial sector.
I'm glad I'm not in Philly, there is one goverment official there with WAY too much budget.
"Expensive crap in New York" Well worth a look.
This is a flaw with Google Maps, we can't paste the URL!
In every massively successful market in IT there has been a standard that has driven adoption (802.11 springs to mind).
.NET) which is trying to swim against the stream.
IBM in the 1980s and early 90s tried to buck this trend with elements like TokenRing and a whole heap of proprietary technology. But the ability of companies to have a broad-choice of vendors meant that IBM were doomed to lose that battle.
Linux is a standards based product which is adopted by many vendors. Microsoft is a proprietary stack (especially
Why will Microsoft succeed in forcing a proprietary technology on the market when IBM failed ?
Apologies, I'm in the UK and I couldn't remember the brand. The other option was the uber-rubbish Pontiac Grand-Am the other car that I always get dumped with by rental companies.
Good point. My memory must be failing
.. 100 loop"
"for i in range 10
As opposed to
"for (i = 10; x = 100; x++)"
How the hell is C more readable ?
I've got some Karma to burn so I'm going to say this anyway.
For all the muppets who will respond about Google being a "bad" company, and how they were "good". FIRING PEOPLE HAPPENS, and sometimes ITS THE RIGHT THING TO DO. If one person is dragging down the morale of everyone else, should that be allowed to continue ? If one person is damaging the companies reputation, should that be allowed to continue ?
Firing people is something that happens. And it doesn't make companies "bad" or "good". In fact companies ARE NEVER bad or good its the PEOPLE in them that make bad or good decisions. Reference Microsoft, it was the will of a group of people to act as a monopoly and abuse that position.
For anyone who thinks about "Good" and "Bad" in a George Bush style way when looking at any part of the world, whether business or politics. GET OUTSIDE and see the shades, subscribe to the economist, read the Wall Street Journal, become a member of Green Peace and Amnesty International, but don't wear Rose Tinted specs and moan because ONE person got fired.
Google has ALWAYS been protective, and ALWAYS done some "odd" things. There is no tipping point of bad to good, the world is not as simple as "Whitehouse Politics 101".
Ummm, my home machine has a 400MHz processor running Suse. I'm thinking of upgrading, as I have every 6 months for 5 years, but I just keep waiting for the "next" best thing rather than upgrading now.
There are mobile phones more powerful than my home PC, but it does the job.
The wonder of these future boxes is that we will STILL be able to write code that makes them run slow. Roll on Longhorn I say!
I wouldn't have finished reading a second Perl 6 book yesterday, now would I?
Err yes, because you'd have picked a script derivative language. You agree that Java and C# are rubbish, but I assume from a position where Perl is good.
That is like agreeing that a Dodge Cavalier is rubbish, while driving an Edsel.
No, the problem is that the people who know a lot about languages know little about application domains, and the people who know a lot about application domains know little about how to design languages (or at least don't spend much time on it).
I have to disagree here, the team that designed Ada for instance REALLY understood about application domains and the challenges of developing languages, and the people judging the competition to design Ada DEFINATELY understood the challenges of languages. The problem was that it wasn't "cool" like C, and they didn't focus on providing elements like DB connectivity or GUI frameworks as standard (understandable in the 1980s).
I've worked on projects with Ada, and as a language it was superb. Same with Eiffel. The biggest problem that I had managing those teams were the malcontents who complained that writing
"foreach n in X loop"
with an "end loop;" at the end. This was FAR too much work apparently and coding would be much quicker writing
"for(x = 0; x y; x++)"
In the end around 20% of the code was written in C, and 80% in Ada. 95% of our bugs were in the C code.
Keeps us in jobs though I guess, if we used better languages we wouldn't have to spend so much time fixing things.
I'd disagree that there aren't people who can design decent languages. The problem is that they can't market them, and that developers continue to go back to the brain-dead syntax of C as if looking like C was an aspiration for a language.
Languages like Ada, Eiffel etc (which yes I have used commercially) are brilliant from a language perspective, especially for large projects. The trouble is developers would prefer to write something in 5 characters than 30 characters in a mistaken belief that they are being more productive and that typing is the longest task they undertake.
When you get into more "esoteric" areas like goal driven programming or agents then the languages become better, because the people using them are more aware of the purpose of the language and aren't constrained by a belief that it has to look like C.
C# and Java are great example of languages that took on that syntax and many of the constructs as its easier to get a language accepted when it looks like C than when a developer has to learn a new syntax that will in the long run be better.
The problem isn't language designers its us developers, we don't want to spend a week learning a new syntax for a loop, we want to use what we used before. In other words we are luddites.
Smalltalk was okay, but I prefered Eiffel, Java and C# are both by comparison rubbish, but they have better GUI libraries and marketing departments.
That maybe this chap wasn't -entirely- on side with the business strategy of the company.
To me this sounds like a techy complaining that the business is subverting the idea. In many cases this is because the techy doesn't understand the business model, but here it sounds more as if the business didn't understand the market.
I don't want to take pictures with my phone.
I do, that way when I'm playing with my kids I can send pictures to the grandparents, they LOVE it.
I don't want to play MP3s with my phone.
I do, I'm on the train alot, being able to play MP3s on the phone stops me having to carry an MP3 player.
I don't want to check my e-mail with my phone.
I do, I'm out of the office alot and I'd prefer to check it on my phone than trek into the office.
I don't want to browse the web with my phone.
I do, Its a quick way to get the football scores at the weekend, check the news, and a quick search before meeting a client to find out some info.
I don't want to play games with my phone
Now this is the bit that is just plain wrong. $3.5bn was spent on Java games last year, that is a major reason that phones are cheap, people can sell you the games which drives down the cost of the devices as people upgrade to the latest phones that support 3D etc. This is consumer economics ala the PC, why do you have a 256Mb graphics card, because MS Word needs it ? Nope because Games need it. Games revenue drives innovation and keeps costs down as people upgrade.
I'm the sort of person who gets the new Nokia 6630 (3G with all the trimmings) because I need all of the elements. And yup I get a contract (because I use the phone alot).
Buying a basic PC, no network, no sound, no USB ports etc... is now very expensive because popular demand wants those things as standard. Its the same with phones, and its those added extras that some people then pay more money to use that keep the cost of your handset down.
Of course if you are in the US please disregard the above as you folks get screwed on "Cell" phones, the models are crap and the networks suck.
And if you are in Japan I know you have better phones than my 6630.
I studied Useability at University in the late 80s/early 90s. One of the key elements was the on-going battle between WILI and KISS.
WILI means "Well I Like It" and is normally for those interfaces designed, built and initially used by one person or group.
KISS means "Keep It Simple Stupid"
There are many other rules, reachability etc but under-pinning them all is the concept that WILI is bad and KISS is good.
The Web was a whole bunch of WILIes ignoring 30 years of interface design. I'm not stunned at all that lessons from 20 years ago are still valid, because people are still the same and interactivity is still the same. Mainframes are very similar to the web as it tends to be a modal interaction model (click......wait......read.....click.... etc etc etc) there are some different concepts when elements are being dynamically updated and adjusting based on context and input. Most of that research is 20+ years old as well though.
WILI v KISS, its the battle of "art" v "HCI". HCI is a discipline that takes in ergonomics, psychology and computing, and produces the best engineering. "art" or "creative interfaces" are the equivalent of a chocolate teapot, it doesn't matter if you like it... its still rubbish.
The best interface is the one you don't notice, it just does its job and enables you to get on.
And this I would guess is an excuse for the US not to do anything
"Sure we might be bad, but in 20 years time we might only be the second worse"
I predict that given that China has no direct oil of its own to meet demand that it will focus on other technology elements to reduce its reliance on external countries, and also as a stimulator to technology driven growth. The fact is we don't know, but the one fact we do know is that here and now the US is the worlds worst polluter on every scale, per capita or total.
I saw the actual programme, and it was far from Pop Science. In paticular the 9/11 data was fairly stark in underlining the impact of removal of aeroplanes from the skys for just two days over the US.
But of course, we could all just bury our heads in the sand and claim it is pop science.
The programme went into a "light" amount of detail, but mainly said this was something that required more research but was on the scary side of its implications. They certainly didn't say it was cancelling out the greenhouse effect, they claimed it was MASKING its impact, a very different claim.
The real trouble is that anything that claims there is a global warming problem caused by pollution comes up against one basic problem:
The US Energy Policy.
To my mind these elements equate to the old "the odds of this thing going critical if I drop it are pretty low" school of porting nuclear materials. The odds may be low, but the cost is huge, hence the reason you don't just lob the stuff about.
So it was a lightweight programme, well yes it wasn't the Open University, but "Pop Science", not really. It definately played for some dramatic effect, but there was evidence for those who were watching.
Because there are lots of different types of eyes that have evolved due to different purposes.
It is certainly NOT an example of an even semi-intelligent designer.
I mean what sort of engineer has the cables from receptors go BACK into the system thus creating a blind spot, rather than dragging them out the back. This is how it works on the octopus.
If you think god is a smart designer, explain how he failed when working on a human, and then did a better job on the octopus.
And don't even get me started on the fact that humans can choke on food.
God's existence is a HYPOTHESIS not a theory, it has no framework underwhich the existance of god can be disproven and therefore cannot be considered a theory.
"God's existence is a hypothosis, not a theory" would be a better sticker.
Sure the rocket is impressive, the most powerful machine every created.
But standing still its just a great big tube. Having seen the one at Kennedy, its just not that impressive as a static thing. When it was running then sure, what a beast.
But what about the tech that REALLY got man to the moon. Saturn V is just a big WWII rocket, the thing that made the difference was the IBM computing "power" that directed the thing.
I'd love to see the old mission control re-built with the original style technology, and simulate the information going into it. Imagine a school trip where you had to solve the same problem as for Apollo 13, or making the error over-ride decision of Apollo 11.
It wouldn't even really matter if it was just running on one PC behind the scene as long as you got the experience of how limited the power was.
Firing a rocket is grease monkey impressive. Getting it to hit the moon is the achievement.