I know this line has been said before, but apparently it needs to be repeated. The benefit of putting a more heavy duty, non proprietary OS in your appliances is the ability of them to interact.
We've been told for awhile now that the kitchen of the future is going to adapt and mold itself to our whims in ways we can't yet imagine.
Now granted I have yet to see any of these predictions bear fruit yet, but a necessary first step is going to appliances that can communicate, and what better way then giving them a full blown OS?
The costs to this are minimal in the sense that the storage requirements for a mini-linux are small enough that they won't add to the cost of the product(apart from development time).
So I'm going to accept, for the moment, that they have something like this mind instead of wildly bashing MIT.
Hmm, if this is a troll, apparently it's slipped past the slashdot troll detectors by being modded up so quickly, so I'll respond.
You're basically saying that people will become uncreative if you give them convenient calendars? I've rarely heard such alarmist nonsense.
Certainly for some people they can serve to help regiment their life. But in my experience, a disorganized person (such as myself) will stay disorganized what utilities you provide them with. Start back in grade school with the trapper keeper, I found that no amount of effort or organizational products could keep tendencies in check.
For people like myself, a handheld's organizational capabilities will likely go completely unutilized (as I can attest with my palm pilot). Instead, they serve the role of a mnemonic enhancer, an extension of my brain that can store information far more carefully than my own frazzled bundle of neurons.
As a result, I can remember more, and potentially be more creative by cross indexing ideas I have now, with ideas I had a year ago. These ideas I would have surely lost had I not written them down somewhere. Physical notebooks don't allow one to dynamically rearrange one's notes, so a handheld helps in this enormously.
Data that is easily destroyed goes hand in hand with data that is easily copied. I think data loss will always be more prevalent with digital media than it was with more conventional ones.
At a personal level, I am currently denied access to email of my own from as little as 5 years ago. I would save it into files periodically, on whatever shell account I used at the time. But periodically there are non recoverable file system errors, or shell accounts that just disappear in the dead of night (we'll see alot more of this if the ISP burnout rate continues.)
So forget this problem of losing our digital records as a society, what about losing my personal identity?
I still go back and look at physical letters of mine from 10+ years ago, but email from as recent as 1994 is hard to find. That frightens me, frankly.
War with China means the nukes are probably coming out. Nukes are a likely end state to our civilization. That should be unacceptable to everyone who has the foresight to realize that.
It scares me that there might be a sizeable amount of people in our country who think as you do and continue to blame everything on liberals.
Or maybe it's simpler. International diplomacies often seem to have the undercurrent of grade school recess. But the truth is, if our country appears to have weakness in the eyes of China, this could be taken as a sign of weakness, which will negatively impact future dealings. The political climate in China is complicated and (as I understand it), partially under the control of military interests.
I think the US government is aware of this, and is aware of just how important it is to deal with this situation correctly.
Sure, to those of us on the outside, it seems like an idiotic impasse. Just say you're sorry and no harm done, or is there?
While I admit our government doesn't often act in global best interests, and has become increasingly self-centered in recent years, I'm not willing to judge them on this manner. The emerging political dynamic between the US and China is extremely complex and this incident is going to be very influential in shaping our relations for years to come.
Maybe it's a sad state of affairs that countries can't just apologize and be done with it, but it's the way things are, and there are legitimate reasons that things are this way.
My point was just that there is a sizeable impetus to develop these faster machines, not just for gamers and speed freaks. There is a point to these faster computers, someone is getting practical use out of them.
And businesses do too in ways they may not be aware of. For example, spell checking and grammar checking is now done on the fly in Word, it used to be a specific tool you had to activate, remember that? Because of x00 Mhz machines, they can slip something like that in and you don't even notice. Just an example, there's more.
I am sick and tired of the oft repeated adage that the only people who care about the new CPU speeds are speed freaks and game players. There are a huge amount of applications for which CPU speed is critical outside of the game market. The entire field of academics revels in CPU speed for analyzing data, as well as any kind of industrial or governmental research arena.
We're here, we buy fast computers, and we put them to good use. It's not just about games.
You've obviously got some strong feelings about the manner. I don't doubt that NASA is taking an aggressive stance in affirmative action, I saw evidence of that when I spent a summer at Langeley. But don't you think you're being a tad apocalyptic when you describe them as nearly dead?
I give NASA all kinds of credit. I have nothing but respect for the things they have done. You've misread me apparently.
It was just an idea to bounce off you guys, I didn't expect a kind of Spanish...
The last vestiges of irrational exuburance
on
Mars Odyssey begins
·
· Score: 2
When looking back at the recent phase of NASA's better cheaper faster program that has now ended with this much more carefully managed expedition, I can't help but wonder if the cultural ramifications of the "new economy" were far more widespread than just the dot.com hysteria.
Perhaps NASA also got caught up in the mindset that great things were possible by abandoning the careful ways of the previous space program. At the time this new methodology seemed to make sense to me as well. Perhaps all of the care and planning that had previously made our space program so successful was overly redundant, and we could do better by cutting corners and launching more missions, particularly when no human lives were at stake.
But now that we are on the downside of the bubble, we're all shaking our heads and asking what we were thinking? Haste apparently still makes waste. What gave us the idea that we could abandon our ways of old and expect things to just work better?
Note, I'm not criticizing NASA. Variety is the spice of life, and the failure of the quick and dirty approach will be a valuable lesson in the history books. And of course, noone was killed in the process.
It just strikes me as too much of a coincidence that this new economy fad and NASA's revolution in thought occurred at about the same time. So perhaps the ramifications of our recent economic mania were much deeper than we had thought, extending into our culture in a way that affected the space program as well.
I didn't notice much of a drop in 1.0. But more significantly, I didn't notice much of a change in gameplay. It still plays much the same way, and teamwork is crucial.
In Tribes, while I understand that teamwork helps alot, alot of people still don't do it. Also, there's an enormous rambo factor, a single player can be very hard to stop if he's skilled. Therefore, I'm not sure that teamwork is the primary appeal of the game. At least, not anymore, maybe it was.
T2 is a different animal so far, let's hope it keeps going.
As for Diablo 2, I don't know if you played it much, but the same class can have completely different spell sets. There are at least 2 paths of advancement for most of the classes.
Actually the gameplay of Diablo is one of the best things about it. Their interface is decent and intuitive. It's much less dull than many games because you often have to judge when to use this power or that power, and often do so creatively. Two characters of the same class could have completely different styles.
CS is not dead. It has not died, it is not dieing. I have no idea where you got that bit of info. Maybe it's wishful thinking on your part. I still played after 1.0 (on hiatus now because of T2) and it was still the same basic game and still very fun.
About Tribes... funny that very few of the people online actually use teamwork. No, T1 did well because it was nicely positioned and an excellent break from the standard FPS games. T2 is selling out because it is a sequel. Never underestimate the selling power of a sequel. Do you think B&W would be doing this well without Peter's name being dropped?
Just not in the way that the authors predicted. Sure we don't have manned spacecraft out in the depths of the solar system, but we've got things Clarke probably wouldn't have expected, most notably a 1 gigahertz computer for the price of $1000 (the price is important).
That's what makes the future so devilishly difficult to predict, there's even more variance in the "what" as the "when".
Depending on the ratio of cpu cycles spent on cancer vs their bank account, I could care very much. Let's say they use 99.9% for themselves and the rest for the research. That qualifies as a scam in my book.
Organizations that trick people into giving to "charities" are one of the world's greater evils in my book, because they eventually turn most people into cynics who look warily upon anyone asking for help.
If nothing else, at least it may provide some measure of hope to patients. If my uncle (brain cancer, no surgery possible) came to me and asked about this, I don't think I could tell him that it's probably a scam job. And what good would it do if I did? Hope is the best medicine some of these patients have.
As opposed as I am to companies preying on the generous for their own good, there is at least a thin silver lining here.
Would you have objected to the decision if the website were one that listed pictures and addresses of anti-abortion activists in order to "watch out" for them?
My initial reaction to this website was also one of disgust, but now I have to admit I'm torn between thinking a line should be drawn here or not. Are we or are we not in favor of free speech?
And if so, why not in this particular case?
Here's another one... what if a site listed doctors that provide abortion for those seeking one and provided exactly the same information. It could still be used as a hit list. Would you want to see that gone also?
It's a very slippery slope, and I'm not sure there's a ledge to grab onto.
Frankly, this article doesn't depress me as much as the quality of google results impresses me. Whether it's 1% or 100% of the available space, I can very often find exactly what I'm looking for.
Now maybe there are vast areas of the web unavailable to google searches because of language quirks or protective admins, but so what.
They have as much a right to exist uncataloged as I do to have an unlisted phone number. If sites want to be indexed, they can register with a search engine. If they don't, and are unreachable, so be it. I don't see what the problem is.
This guy was mentioned here on/. a few days back. Apparently he first created pong on an oscilloscope.
Given that this guy didn't even try to patent his invention, nor earn money from it in any way, he deserves a nod.
But I'm sure there's a dozen other people that "need" to be in this list. I do think it leans a bit heavily towards more recent games, undoubtedly because most gamespot readers would just go "huh?" at the mention anything pre-1985.
Rather, they cannot easily tolerate things that are obvious and appear frivolous. A game Mecca as described in the article is just the sort of thing that makes for a juicy budget cut when times get tight.
Of course inefficiency of a much greater sort often lurks inside every cubicle.
Slashdot Mirror
I know this line has been said before, but apparently it needs to be repeated. The benefit of putting a more heavy duty, non proprietary OS in your appliances is the ability of them to interact.
We've been told for awhile now that the kitchen of the future is going to adapt and mold itself to our whims in ways we can't yet imagine.
Now granted I have yet to see any of these predictions bear fruit yet, but a necessary first step is going to appliances that can communicate, and what better way then giving them a full blown OS?
The costs to this are minimal in the sense that the storage requirements for a mini-linux are small enough that they won't add to the cost of the product(apart from development time).
So I'm going to accept, for the moment, that they have something like this mind instead of wildly bashing MIT.
And if I may ask, how is it dangerous?
Hmm, if this is a troll, apparently it's slipped past the slashdot troll detectors by being modded up so quickly, so I'll respond.
You're basically saying that people will become uncreative if you give them convenient calendars? I've rarely heard such alarmist nonsense.
Certainly for some people they can serve to help regiment their life. But in my experience, a disorganized person (such as myself) will stay disorganized what utilities you provide them with. Start back in grade school with the trapper keeper, I found that no amount of effort or organizational products could keep tendencies in check.
For people like myself, a handheld's organizational capabilities will likely go completely unutilized (as I can attest with my palm pilot). Instead, they serve the role of a mnemonic enhancer, an extension of my brain that can store information far more carefully than my own frazzled bundle of neurons.
As a result, I can remember more, and potentially be more creative by cross indexing ideas I have now, with ideas I had a year ago. These ideas I would have surely lost had I not written them down somewhere. Physical notebooks don't allow one to dynamically rearrange one's notes, so a handheld helps in this enormously.
Data that is easily destroyed goes hand in hand with data that is easily copied. I think data loss will always be more prevalent with digital media than it was with more conventional ones.
At a personal level, I am currently denied access to email of my own from as little as 5 years ago. I would save it into files periodically, on whatever shell account I used at the time. But periodically there are non recoverable file system errors, or shell accounts that just disappear in the dead of night (we'll see alot more of this if the ISP burnout rate continues.)
So forget this problem of losing our digital records as a society, what about losing my personal identity?
I still go back and look at physical letters of mine from 10+ years ago, but email from as recent as 1994 is hard to find. That frightens me, frankly.
War with China means the nukes are probably coming out. Nukes are a likely end state to our civilization. That should be unacceptable to everyone who has the foresight to realize that.
It scares me that there might be a sizeable amount of people in our country who think as you do and continue to blame everything on liberals.
Or maybe it's simpler. International diplomacies often seem to have the undercurrent of grade school recess. But the truth is, if our country appears to have weakness in the eyes of China, this could be taken as a sign of weakness, which will negatively impact future dealings. The political climate in China is complicated and (as I understand it), partially under the control of military interests.
I think the US government is aware of this, and is aware of just how important it is to deal with this situation correctly.
Sure, to those of us on the outside, it seems like an idiotic impasse. Just say you're sorry and no harm done, or is there?
While I admit our government doesn't often act in global best interests, and has become increasingly self-centered in recent years, I'm not willing to judge them on this manner. The emerging political dynamic between the US and China is extremely complex and this incident is going to be very influential in shaping our relations for years to come.
Maybe it's a sad state of affairs that countries can't just apologize and be done with it, but it's the way things are, and there are legitimate reasons that things are this way.
My point was just that there is a sizeable impetus to develop these faster machines, not just for gamers and speed freaks. There is a point to these faster computers, someone is getting practical use out of them.
And businesses do too in ways they may not be aware of. For example, spell checking and grammar checking is now done on the fly in Word, it used to be a specific tool you had to activate, remember that? Because of x00 Mhz machines, they can slip something like that in and you don't even notice. Just an example, there's more.
I am sick and tired of the oft repeated adage that the only people who care about the new CPU speeds are speed freaks and game players. There are a huge amount of applications for which CPU speed is critical outside of the game market. The entire field of academics revels in CPU speed for analyzing data, as well as any kind of industrial or governmental research arena.
We're here, we buy fast computers, and we put them to good use. It's not just about games.
You've obviously got some strong feelings about the manner. I don't doubt that NASA is taking an aggressive stance in affirmative action, I saw evidence of that when I spent a summer at Langeley. But don't you think you're being a tad apocalyptic when you describe them as nearly dead?
I give NASA all kinds of credit. I have nothing but respect for the things they have done. You've misread me apparently.
It was just an idea to bounce off you guys, I didn't expect a kind of Spanish...
When looking back at the recent phase of NASA's better cheaper faster program that has now ended with this much more carefully managed expedition, I can't help but wonder if the cultural ramifications of the "new economy" were far more widespread than just the dot.com hysteria.
Perhaps NASA also got caught up in the mindset that great things were possible by abandoning the careful ways of the previous space program. At the time this new methodology seemed to make sense to me as well. Perhaps all of the care and planning that had previously made our space program so successful was overly redundant, and we could do better by cutting corners and launching more missions, particularly when no human lives were at stake.
But now that we are on the downside of the bubble, we're all shaking our heads and asking what we were thinking? Haste apparently still makes waste. What gave us the idea that we could abandon our ways of old and expect things to just work better?
Note, I'm not criticizing NASA. Variety is the spice of life, and the failure of the quick and dirty approach will be a valuable lesson in the history books. And of course, noone was killed in the process.
It just strikes me as too much of a coincidence that this new economy fad and NASA's revolution in thought occurred at about the same time. So perhaps the ramifications of our recent economic mania were much deeper than we had thought, extending into our culture in a way that affected the space program as well.
Just a thought, flame at will.
I think he just did :)
Are we also to assume that one must be a resident of MN to join the suit?
What if we bought the computer in MN?
What if the dealer was in MN?
I didn't notice much of a drop in 1.0. But more significantly, I didn't notice much of a change in gameplay. It still plays much the same way, and teamwork is crucial.
In Tribes, while I understand that teamwork helps alot, alot of people still don't do it. Also, there's an enormous rambo factor, a single player can be very hard to stop if he's skilled. Therefore, I'm not sure that teamwork is the primary appeal of the game. At least, not anymore, maybe it was.
T2 is a different animal so far, let's hope it keeps going.
As for Diablo 2, I don't know if you played it much, but the same class can have completely different spell sets. There are at least 2 paths of advancement for most of the classes.
Actually the gameplay of Diablo is one of the best things about it. Their interface is decent and intuitive. It's much less dull than many games because you often have to judge when to use this power or that power, and often do so creatively. Two characters of the same class could have completely different styles.
CS is not dead. It has not died, it is not dieing. I have no idea where you got that bit of info. Maybe it's wishful thinking on your part. I still played after 1.0 (on hiatus now because of T2) and it was still the same basic game and still very fun.
About Tribes... funny that very few of the people online actually use teamwork. No, T1 did well because it was nicely positioned and an excellent break from the standard FPS games. T2 is selling out because it is a sequel. Never underestimate the selling power of a sequel. Do you think B&W would be doing this well without Peter's name being dropped?
Statistics? Facts? Where's the soapboxing about how the geek culture is unappreciated? Dammit, there's nothing here for me to get worked up about.
Now I have to rant about having nothing to rant about.
Just not in the way that the authors predicted. Sure we don't have manned spacecraft out in the depths of the solar system, but we've got things Clarke probably wouldn't have expected, most notably a 1 gigahertz computer for the price of $1000 (the price is important).
That's what makes the future so devilishly difficult to predict, there's even more variance in the "what" as the "when".
Lying about a cure right now is different than hope for a cure in the future.
Depending on the ratio of cpu cycles spent on cancer vs their bank account, I could care very much. Let's say they use 99.9% for themselves and the rest for the research. That qualifies as a scam in my book.
Organizations that trick people into giving to "charities" are one of the world's greater evils in my book, because they eventually turn most people into cynics who look warily upon anyone asking for help.
Bleah.
If nothing else, at least it may provide some measure of hope to patients. If my uncle (brain cancer, no surgery possible) came to me and asked about this, I don't think I could tell him that it's probably a scam job. And what good would it do if I did? Hope is the best medicine some of these patients have.
As opposed as I am to companies preying on the generous for their own good, there is at least a thin silver lining here.
I think I'll head over to
obfuscated code on perlmonks and see if I can dig up some winning entries.
Would you have objected to the decision if the website were one that listed pictures and addresses of anti-abortion activists in order to "watch out" for them?
My initial reaction to this website was also one of disgust, but now I have to admit I'm torn between thinking a line should be drawn here or not. Are we or are we not in favor of free speech?
And if so, why not in this particular case?
Here's another one... what if a site listed doctors that provide abortion for those seeking one and provided exactly the same information. It could still be used as a hit list. Would you want to see that gone also?
It's a very slippery slope, and I'm not sure there's a ledge to grab onto.
Frankly, this article doesn't depress me as much as the quality of google results impresses me. Whether it's 1% or 100% of the available space, I can very often find exactly what I'm looking for.
Now maybe there are vast areas of the web unavailable to google searches because of language quirks or protective admins, but so what.
They have as much a right to exist uncataloged as I do to have an unlisted phone number. If sites want to be indexed, they can register with a search engine. If they don't, and are unreachable, so be it. I don't see what the problem is.
This guy was mentioned here on /. a few days back. Apparently he first created pong on an oscilloscope.
Given that this guy didn't even try to patent his invention, nor earn money from it in any way, he deserves a nod.
But I'm sure there's a dozen other people that "need" to be in this list. I do think it leans a bit heavily towards more recent games, undoubtedly because most gamespot readers would just go "huh?" at the mention anything pre-1985.
Rather, they cannot easily tolerate things that are obvious and appear frivolous. A game Mecca as described in the article is just the sort of thing that makes for a juicy budget cut when times get tight.
Of course inefficiency of a much greater sort often lurks inside every cubicle.