I don't care about the discussion about Cuba, but why does this issue always have to be so polarized? It's perfectly possible to offer government health care without restricting private competition. The U.S. and Canada aren't the only examples in the world, and neither seems to work well.
It's also meaningless to compare tax rates, since the difference probably pays for a lot more than just healthcare.
Thanks for the reply, but I still don't understand why audio would be a synchronization issue. As you say, it needs a certain amount of CPU time or it'll stutter, but isn't that a performance issue?
Also, the article would've done better just talking about the thread manager you mention. That makes more sense than the stuff about semaphores affecting performance positively (unless I misunderstood the sentence about the cache no longer being stale).
In my opinion it doesn't even summarize the hurdles properly. I'm not a game programmer, so I don't know if the article makes sense, but it left me with the following questions. Hopefully someone can clarify.
-Why would character movement need to run at a certain rate? It sounds like the thread should spend most of its time blocked waiting for user input.
-What's so special about the audio thread? Shouldn't it just handle events from other threads without communicating back? It can block when it doesn't have anything to do.
-How do semaphores affect SMP cache efficiency? Is the CPU notified to keep the data in shared cache?
-What is a "3D world drawer"? Is it where god keeps us in his living room?
For all I know, I have ridiculous misconceptions about game programming, but this article certainly didn't make anything clearer.
These comments demonstrate a huge flaw in education systems. They shouldn't teach children how to use Windows, MacOS, or even KDE. What they should be doing is teach them how to use operating systems, office suites, and generic user interfaces. The best platform to do that may indeed be KDE/GNU/Linux, but that should be a side issue.
How many people do you know who try to memorize menu locations for every single application they use instead of just automatically "understanding" where a good programmer would have put them? Hell, I know people who have to be retaught copy/paste for every new application. No wonder they're stuck in their ways and are afraid of change.
Unless you are teaching your students kernel architecture, you shouldn't delude yourself into thinking you're teaching them anything that is specific to Linux. The current state of basic computer education is comparable to a math curriculum in which children are taught how to count apples without explaining that you can apply the same knowledge to oranges.
And who says it should stop at at such a basic level? Regular expressions and the command line should at the very least be required high school topics. If you think I'm sounding insane, think about the difficulty level of high school math and physics. The computer is a tool everyone uses every day, and no sane person is even suggesting that math should be dumbed down. There is a huge gap between computer enthusiasts and the average person, because the schools have inexplicably picked one field to not challenge students in at all.
Seriously, though, I don't understand why people feel the need to simplify things in slashdot submissions. Why would you write "79 million terabytes" when the proper way is both more understandable and more concise. Just say 79 exabytes or even just 79 EB. News for nerds, ok? We didn't smoke our way through high school.
Similarly, it would be more useful to define a quality level for some well known video codec and estimate how many hours that would be instead of just giving us a semirandom number. Not that even that is necessary, since the real news is Seagate's achievement.
The submitter shouldn't feel like I'm targeting him specifically. I just wish more people would take advantage of the fact that people on this site should have a basic understanding of things like SI prefixes. It would just be a nice touch to make things that small bit more readable.
Are you saying that you spend so much time worrying about your family that you don't have time for anything else? Your argument is meaningless, and only serves to diminish the importance of technology rather than elevate the importance of "true things".
But let's look at this from the perspective of children, sure. Do you want them to grow up into a world in which the vendors control everything they can do with their devices? A world in which learning is impossible unless you're the best cracker who ever lived, and the economy is in the gutter because industries aren't adapting to new technologies? No, you probably don't.
And what if we replace the word technology with the word freedom? Are you going to continue being so cavalier about fighting one losing battle after another, small as they may seem?
As aimless as that article may seem to us who already know about all the abuse, maybe it'll actually reach someone who doesn't read slashdot.
You can sign your own programs for Symbian. You don't have to authenticate with a certificate authority unless you have a specific reason to do so. You also don't have to use some vendor approved web store, as a simple USB connection is enough. I don't see how the situations are comparable at all.
While I agree with your post, I would advise you to not discard your phone. Why do you want to cripple your ability to call emergency services just to save a couple of euros per month*? If you were using it too much, just learn some self control for God's sake. I know you say you didn't, but how exactly do you end up wasting so much money on it then?
*I checked with a friend, and his base fee is actually 50 cents a month. Mine is a bit higher, but I have more features, like data etc.
I don't feel like we have more to argue about, but I do have two questions:
What value do you see the operator bringing to the offering? I can see how integrating the phone with other Apple products makes sense, but what does the operator have besides a network connection and a billing service for things like coke machines? Any integration there seems to be for the benefit of the companies, not the consumer. (Integration that didn't result in lock in, perhaps for the purpose of cost savings, would be fine with me by the way)
Second, when you say game changer, are you talking about the user interface? I'm sure it's wonderful, but you specifically wrote "mobile application" in your previous post, and I'm wondering what you're referring to. Other manufacturers have been much more ambitious about adding new applications like GPS-based information services, maps, credit card replacement systems, etc. There's also plenty of Free software available, such as the really nice OggPlay music application.
Your points are somewhat understandable, but I would point out that all the other mobile phone companies have been much more open for years without significant problems. Why should Apple be different? And why should the carriers' concerns be of any consequence? My ISP didn't have any input when my computer hardware was designed.
I'm also not saying that developers know better. They might, but it's not necessary for my argument. I'm saying that an interest in the computer industry, perhaps by being a developer, can give people more insight when in the role of a consumer. And I am utterly convinced, as a consumer, that closed platforms are very bad for the public. The reason I'm worried that the market won't decide properly on its own is that it doesn't seem like the general public understands what trends like these can lead to. They might get what they want now, but in a few years they'll just be oblivious to what they're missing.
It's taken this long for Linux to even be taken seriously, on commodity hardware. Do we want to be fighting crippled hardware 10 years from now, or do we want to nip it in the bud?
I mentioned why I think the market won't correct itself on its own, and what I think is bad about the current state. You're just saying I'm wrong. Try coming up with a better argument and I might even agree with you on something.
Defining the act of waiting as an action is just a clever way to change the meaning of the word "inaction". Sometimes inaction is prudent, sometimes it isn't. I'm not arguing for some knee jerk reaction, just for an effort to end what I think is a bad practice.
Is it really elitism when you actually do know better? Proprietary platforms and consumer lock in are really bad for the consumer. We know this from experience. The fact that the average consumer doesn't care gives us a greater responsibility to fight the trend, not an obligation to sit back and let them be used because they don't know better. If Toyota was doing something suspect, I'd sure as hell want my mechanic to tell me to buy something else. The difference between me and others is that I'm willing to listen to my mechanic, without reveling in some kind of inferiority complex that forces me to not take advice.
We live in a specialized society, where everyone fulfills a specific task. Together with the economic benefits comes the necessity to listen to experts in fields you're not familiar with. People have stopped doing this. They'll only listen to the person with the best marketing campaign. Trying to counter that somehow shouldn't be interpreted as messing with the free market.
I'm not even trying to tell people to favor BSD over Linux or something. I'm just trying to tell them to avoid closed platforms*. That can't be wrong.
*which, in this case, doesn't even include Microsoft Windows.
I'm tired of hearing "let the market decide" in general. Nowadays it's almost always used in defense of companies that prey on consumer ignorance, the very definition of something that the market will never solve. At the very least, if the market is to select a solution, someone has to start campaigning for one instead of just sitting on our asses. It's really a justification for inaction, nothing more.
"Although previous events had raised Stallman's ire, he says it wasn't until his Carnegie Mellon encounter that he realized the events were beginning to intrude on a culture he had long considered sacrosanct. As an elite programmer at one of the world's elite institutions, Stallman had been perfectly willing to ignore the compromises and bargains of his fellow programmers just so long as they didn't interfere with his own work. Until the arrival of the Xerox laser printer, Stallman had been content to look down on the machines and programs other computer users grimly tolerated. On the rare occasion that such a program breached the AI Lab's walls-when the lab replaced its venerable Incompatible Time Sharing operating system with a commercial variant, the TOPS 20, for example-Stallman and his hacker colleagues had been free to rewrite, reshape, and rename the software according to personal taste.
Now that the laser printer had insinuated itself within the AI Lab's network, however, something had changed. The machine worked fine, barring the occasional paper jam, but the ability to modify according to personal taste had disappeared. From the viewpoint of the entire software industry, the printer was a wake-up call. Software had become such a valuable asset that companies no longer felt the need to publicize source code, especially when publication meant giving potential competitors a chance to duplicate something cheaply. From Stallman's viewpoint, the printer was a Trojan Horse. After a decade of failure, privately owned software-future hackers would use the term " proprietary" software-had gained a foothold inside the AI Lab through the sneakiest of methods. It had come disguised as a gift."
No, the funniest thing is that it has started migrating to other structures that don't even have contractions. For example, someone might write "I of mine keys in my pocket".
Since when is trying to convince someone that they're wrong oppressive?
If reasonable people never stand up for their beliefs because they don't think it's their place to influence others, every single person who can't think for themselves will end up misled by charlatans.
"If she were to start paying for that kind of stuff, I'd start having a problem, but until then, she can do whatever makes her happy."
I have CPU cycles to spare. Might as well let that virus run in the background as long as it doesn't bother me. Sure it's technically corrupting my operating system, but it seems pretty harmless. Whatever.
You won't necessarily be able to say anything about people's respect for rights, because I think that the cultural difference is that others don't view it as a privacy issue in the first place.
I'm very vocal about people's rights, but even I don't think that the government will be able to oppress us with something as simple as ID cards. They really are useful to everyone. Besides, don't you Americans already have passports for international travel? Of course you do.
The only way it will become oppressive is if they start putting security checkpoints on streets and highways, but they can do that without an ID card system in place. And that's when we have a revolution anyway.
No, the big difference is that while someone commented that Japan has an irrational acceptance of authority, the U.S. swings way too far in the other direction. For example, you're so paranoid about the government messing with the economy that the end result is impotent antitrust legislation and widespread distortion of competition in your "free" market.
There is a middle ground somewhere. If people started using their brains for one issue at a time instead of falling back on decades old behavioral patterns, maybe things would work a bit better.
The problem isn't that SOME people think they're above others, it's that pretty much EVERYONE like to think they're above others. The government may not end up oppressing us, but certain rights are practical only because of everyday anonymity.
Do you really want distant racist relatives you never talk to start giving you shit because they found out you're dating someone of the wrong color? Do you want to be harassed outside your home because you had an abortion and some religious group is constantly monitoring hospitals?
Sure, such public surveillance may carry some benefits as well. Politicians couldn't condemn porn anymore, for example, because it would be completely obvious to everyone that they like it as much as the next person. Hell, the average person might even become more tolerant as a result. But in the end your life would still be a lot more restricted as you'd have to constantly worry about what nutjob you'll piss off next, because they will never go away.
If your computer's compromised, it can execute an arbitrary transaction when you authorize something. That could be prevented by signing the transactions on an external processing device, but even then someone could still steal all kinds of private information. It depends on what level of security you want.
Personally, I'd be comfortable using a signing device with online purchases, but I'd really like a completely separate environment for actually logging onto the bank site.
Your examples are cases of physical security failing. Any measures on the internet wouldn't help. I get your point, but this isn't what the article was discussing.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't care about the discussion about Cuba, but why does this issue always have to be so polarized? It's perfectly possible to offer government health care without restricting private competition. The U.S. and Canada aren't the only examples in the world, and neither seems to work well.
It's also meaningless to compare tax rates, since the difference probably pays for a lot more than just healthcare.
Thanks for the reply, but I still don't understand why audio would be a synchronization issue. As you say, it needs a certain amount of CPU time or it'll stutter, but isn't that a performance issue?
Also, the article would've done better just talking about the thread manager you mention. That makes more sense than the stuff about semaphores affecting performance positively (unless I misunderstood the sentence about the cache no longer being stale).
And, uh, that drawer comment was a joke...
In my opinion it doesn't even summarize the hurdles properly. I'm not a game programmer, so I don't know if the article makes sense, but it left me with the following questions. Hopefully someone can clarify.
-Why would character movement need to run at a certain rate? It sounds like the thread should spend most of its time blocked waiting for user input.
-What's so special about the audio thread? Shouldn't it just handle events from other threads without communicating back? It can block when it doesn't have anything to do.
-How do semaphores affect SMP cache efficiency? Is the CPU notified to keep the data in shared cache?
-What is a "3D world drawer"? Is it where god keeps us in his living room?
For all I know, I have ridiculous misconceptions about game programming, but this article certainly didn't make anything clearer.
Why are you calling me naive? Your conspiracy theory is irrelevant to my point even if you're correct.
Sorry dude, I for one want to increase my latency!
Interesting business plan, though. I don't think that niche has ever been exploited before. Do you want some venture capital?
These comments demonstrate a huge flaw in education systems. They shouldn't teach children how to use Windows, MacOS, or even KDE. What they should be doing is teach them how to use operating systems, office suites, and generic user interfaces. The best platform to do that may indeed be KDE/GNU/Linux, but that should be a side issue.
How many people do you know who try to memorize menu locations for every single application they use instead of just automatically "understanding" where a good programmer would have put them? Hell, I know people who have to be retaught copy/paste for every new application. No wonder they're stuck in their ways and are afraid of change.
Unless you are teaching your students kernel architecture, you shouldn't delude yourself into thinking you're teaching them anything that is specific to Linux. The current state of basic computer education is comparable to a math curriculum in which children are taught how to count apples without explaining that you can apply the same knowledge to oranges.
And who says it should stop at at such a basic level? Regular expressions and the command line should at the very least be required high school topics. If you think I'm sounding insane, think about the difficulty level of high school math and physics. The computer is a tool everyone uses every day, and no sane person is even suggesting that math should be dumbed down. There is a huge gap between computer enthusiasts and the average person, because the schools have inexplicably picked one field to not challenge students in at all.
What if only math nerds understood geometry?
How much is that in football fields?
Seriously, though, I don't understand why people feel the need to simplify things in slashdot submissions. Why would you write "79 million terabytes" when the proper way is both more understandable and more concise. Just say 79 exabytes or even just 79 EB. News for nerds, ok? We didn't smoke our way through high school.
Similarly, it would be more useful to define a quality level for some well known video codec and estimate how many hours that would be instead of just giving us a semirandom number. Not that even that is necessary, since the real news is Seagate's achievement.
The submitter shouldn't feel like I'm targeting him specifically. I just wish more people would take advantage of the fact that people on this site should have a basic understanding of things like SI prefixes. It would just be a nice touch to make things that small bit more readable.
Are you saying that you spend so much time worrying about your family that you don't have time for anything else? Your argument is meaningless, and only serves to diminish the importance of technology rather than elevate the importance of "true things".
But let's look at this from the perspective of children, sure. Do you want them to grow up into a world in which the vendors control everything they can do with their devices? A world in which learning is impossible unless you're the best cracker who ever lived, and the economy is in the gutter because industries aren't adapting to new technologies? No, you probably don't.
And what if we replace the word technology with the word freedom? Are you going to continue being so cavalier about fighting one losing battle after another, small as they may seem?
As aimless as that article may seem to us who already know about all the abuse, maybe it'll actually reach someone who doesn't read slashdot.
You can sign your own programs for Symbian. You don't have to authenticate with a certificate authority unless you have a specific reason to do so. You also don't have to use some vendor approved web store, as a simple USB connection is enough. I don't see how the situations are comparable at all.
While I agree with your post, I would advise you to not discard your phone. Why do you want to cripple your ability to call emergency services just to save a couple of euros per month*? If you were using it too much, just learn some self control for God's sake. I know you say you didn't, but how exactly do you end up wasting so much money on it then?
*I checked with a friend, and his base fee is actually 50 cents a month. Mine is a bit higher, but I have more features, like data etc.
Forget about the ISO. Send your emails to your antitrust authority instead. I doubt the US will do anything, but the EU might.
Make sure you concisely explain why truly open document standards are important and what is wrong with Microsoft's offer.
Bah. He has the whole school eating out of his hand and he didn't even TRY to install Linux. Corporate whore.
He's probably had sex too. Bastard.
I don't feel like we have more to argue about, but I do have two questions:
What value do you see the operator bringing to the offering? I can see how integrating the phone with other Apple products makes sense, but what does the operator have besides a network connection and a billing service for things like coke machines? Any integration there seems to be for the benefit of the companies, not the consumer. (Integration that didn't result in lock in, perhaps for the purpose of cost savings, would be fine with me by the way)
Second, when you say game changer, are you talking about the user interface? I'm sure it's wonderful, but you specifically wrote "mobile application" in your previous post, and I'm wondering what you're referring to. Other manufacturers have been much more ambitious about adding new applications like GPS-based information services, maps, credit card replacement systems, etc. There's also plenty of Free software available, such as the really nice OggPlay music application.
Your points are somewhat understandable, but I would point out that all the other mobile phone companies have been much more open for years without significant problems. Why should Apple be different? And why should the carriers' concerns be of any consequence? My ISP didn't have any input when my computer hardware was designed.
I'm also not saying that developers know better. They might, but it's not necessary for my argument. I'm saying that an interest in the computer industry, perhaps by being a developer, can give people more insight when in the role of a consumer. And I am utterly convinced, as a consumer, that closed platforms are very bad for the public. The reason I'm worried that the market won't decide properly on its own is that it doesn't seem like the general public understands what trends like these can lead to. They might get what they want now, but in a few years they'll just be oblivious to what they're missing.
It's taken this long for Linux to even be taken seriously, on commodity hardware. Do we want to be fighting crippled hardware 10 years from now, or do we want to nip it in the bud?
I liked your idea of using the frog/scorpion.
I mentioned why I think the market won't correct itself on its own, and what I think is bad about the current state. You're just saying I'm wrong. Try coming up with a better argument and I might even agree with you on something.
Defining the act of waiting as an action is just a clever way to change the meaning of the word "inaction". Sometimes inaction is prudent, sometimes it isn't. I'm not arguing for some knee jerk reaction, just for an effort to end what I think is a bad practice.
Is it really elitism when you actually do know better? Proprietary platforms and consumer lock in are really bad for the consumer. We know this from experience. The fact that the average consumer doesn't care gives us a greater responsibility to fight the trend, not an obligation to sit back and let them be used because they don't know better. If Toyota was doing something suspect, I'd sure as hell want my mechanic to tell me to buy something else. The difference between me and others is that I'm willing to listen to my mechanic, without reveling in some kind of inferiority complex that forces me to not take advice.
We live in a specialized society, where everyone fulfills a specific task. Together with the economic benefits comes the necessity to listen to experts in fields you're not familiar with. People have stopped doing this. They'll only listen to the person with the best marketing campaign. Trying to counter that somehow shouldn't be interpreted as messing with the free market.
I'm not even trying to tell people to favor BSD over Linux or something. I'm just trying to tell them to avoid closed platforms*. That can't be wrong.
*which, in this case, doesn't even include Microsoft Windows.
I'm tired of hearing "let the market decide" in general. Nowadays it's almost always used in defense of companies that prey on consumer ignorance, the very definition of something that the market will never solve. At the very least, if the market is to select a solution, someone has to start campaigning for one instead of just sitting on our asses. It's really a justification for inaction, nothing more.
I'm tired of replying to people defending lock in for various reasons, so I'll just suggest that those posters reread the book about one of the greatest people of our time:
"Although previous events had raised Stallman's ire, he says it wasn't until his Carnegie Mellon encounter that he realized the events were beginning to intrude on a culture he had long considered sacrosanct. As an elite programmer at one of the world's elite institutions, Stallman had been perfectly willing to ignore the compromises and bargains of his fellow programmers just so long as they didn't interfere with his own work. Until the arrival of the Xerox laser printer, Stallman had been content to look down on the machines and programs other computer users grimly tolerated. On the rare occasion that such a program breached the AI Lab's walls-when the lab replaced its venerable Incompatible Time Sharing operating system with a commercial variant, the TOPS 20, for example-Stallman and his hacker colleagues had been free to rewrite, reshape, and rename the software according to personal taste.
Now that the laser printer had insinuated itself within the AI Lab's network, however, something had changed. The machine worked fine, barring the occasional paper jam, but the ability to modify according to personal taste had disappeared. From the viewpoint of the entire software industry, the printer was a wake-up call. Software had become such a valuable asset that companies no longer felt the need to publicize source code, especially when publication meant giving potential competitors a chance to duplicate something cheaply. From Stallman's viewpoint, the printer was a Trojan Horse. After a decade of failure, privately owned software-future hackers would use the term " proprietary" software-had gained a foothold inside the AI Lab through the sneakiest of methods. It had come disguised as a gift."
No, the funniest thing is that it has started migrating to other structures that don't even have contractions. For example, someone might write "I of mine keys in my pocket".
Actually, that's just sad...
Since when is trying to convince someone that they're wrong oppressive?
If reasonable people never stand up for their beliefs because they don't think it's their place to influence others, every single person who can't think for themselves will end up misled by charlatans.
"If she were to start paying for that kind of stuff, I'd start having a problem, but until then, she can do whatever makes her happy."
I have CPU cycles to spare. Might as well let that virus run in the background as long as it doesn't bother me. Sure it's technically corrupting my operating system, but it seems pretty harmless. Whatever.
You won't necessarily be able to say anything about people's respect for rights, because I think that the cultural difference is that others don't view it as a privacy issue in the first place.
I'm very vocal about people's rights, but even I don't think that the government will be able to oppress us with something as simple as ID cards. They really are useful to everyone. Besides, don't you Americans already have passports for international travel? Of course you do.
The only way it will become oppressive is if they start putting security checkpoints on streets and highways, but they can do that without an ID card system in place. And that's when we have a revolution anyway.
No, the big difference is that while someone commented that Japan has an irrational acceptance of authority, the U.S. swings way too far in the other direction. For example, you're so paranoid about the government messing with the economy that the end result is impotent antitrust legislation and widespread distortion of competition in your "free" market.
There is a middle ground somewhere. If people started using their brains for one issue at a time instead of falling back on decades old behavioral patterns, maybe things would work a bit better.
Don't worry. If she needs a brain scanner to determine when you're looking at porn, she'll probably leave you soon anyway.
The problem isn't that SOME people think they're above others, it's that pretty much EVERYONE like to think they're above others. The government may not end up oppressing us, but certain rights are practical only because of everyday anonymity.
Do you really want distant racist relatives you never talk to start giving you shit because they found out you're dating someone of the wrong color? Do you want to be harassed outside your home because you had an abortion and some religious group is constantly monitoring hospitals?
Sure, such public surveillance may carry some benefits as well. Politicians couldn't condemn porn anymore, for example, because it would be completely obvious to everyone that they like it as much as the next person. Hell, the average person might even become more tolerant as a result. But in the end your life would still be a lot more restricted as you'd have to constantly worry about what nutjob you'll piss off next, because they will never go away.
If your computer's compromised, it can execute an arbitrary transaction when you authorize something. That could be prevented by signing the transactions on an external processing device, but even then someone could still steal all kinds of private information. It depends on what level of security you want.
Personally, I'd be comfortable using a signing device with online purchases, but I'd really like a completely separate environment for actually logging onto the bank site.
Your examples are cases of physical security failing. Any measures on the internet wouldn't help. I get your point, but this isn't what the article was discussing.