RISC won the IC design wars. Inside every modern CISC processor beats a RISC heart.
RISC lost the instruction set wars, however. Once it was realised that you can translate CISC into RISC using a patch of silicon, the advatanges of switching from coding in CISC to coding in RISC sort of evaporated: you *can* have your cake and eat it.
The point Schneier makes is a valid one, and his transition matches one made by a lot of people over the last few years: the mathematics is exciting, showing the existence of secure encryption and security protocols. After having digested that, you realise the system engineering is depressing: modern computer systems and actually depolyed protocols are highly complex and general, and it is normally impossible to be confident that a system behaves according to a protocol.
Patents do cover what you describe, but only since very recently: not so long ago they were only granted for designs of physical products. This is still true in Europe, but legislation is going through to put the same, loose definition of patentable design through there.
Unfortunetaly and as a shame there is such a program in germany now. And our program doesn't even give you a slightly chance of permanent stay. Sort of slave import for some years. I'm ashamed.
Indeed that's right: I should have rememebered the new program. Well, it's not very nice (I've heard these programs called `fuck 'em and chuck 'em'), but it's not slave labour. Is it in force yet? How long are workers allowed to stay in Germany?
There is no equivalent visa program in Germany. There are very few countries that will repatriate you after you have built a life in the country for such a long length of time.
Seems like a dream come true for the Holocaust denial crowd.
No. Godwin's law only applies when someone brings in the Nazis in the context of a different subject. The `law' doesn't apply to serious discussions *about* fascism, Hitler or the Holocaust. I don't believe there is any danger of these subjects being ignored in the near future.
However, when some Nazi-related idea or symbol is used simply to illustrate a point rather than to attack the opposition, why should it be declared invalid?
Because it is almost invariably used to raise the amount of righteous indignation involved in an argument. It is usually unnecessary: there are usually less emotive examples.
I don't think the report is particularly close to the ESR take. They talk about the need to coordinate requistions with academic reserach, which is not a point that I recall ESR making: not an issue to most businesses.
I had a brief scan of those chapters. It looks to me that you are looking at package management mostly from the point of view of the individual user working within a relatively homogeneous local system. Is this right?
The comment about RPM being adopted by the LSB bothered me a great deal too. Is there any foundation for this claim (I have not heard anything about it either)?
If package managers are to be merged without Redhat and Debian being forced to agree on a single package/configuration policy, then it is clear that there needs to be something like a DISTRIBUTION_POLICY database that governs the behaviour of the package manager. Making this work just possibly might be one of those things that is easier than it sounds...
What's `wrong' is that the GPL virus isn't infecting the host: Sun isn't forced to release the current version of Solaris under the GPL. That upsets people who think that free software should be unable to benefit users of proprietary products.
I don't blame co-ed for the dreadful underrepresentation of women in the computer industry: the USA, Britain and France have dreadful sex ratios, but Germany has much better, and Italy better still. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that in those last two countries, you can be a programmer and still have a life.
Well, if you want to do SMP, you don't want to use an x86 architecture, and it's fundamentally much easier to write code for an SMP target than for a clustered target. There's a lot of work being done now on trying to make Linux perform better for SMP, but whilst it is so x86-centric I can't see them providing much of an alternative for the power hungry Solaris user.
Short answer: not everyone likes Solaris. Why might that be?
Solaris uses the bloody awful CDE gui. Sure it's not too hard to
ditch that in favour of something else, but if you're in the business of replacing things, why not move to a distribution that does these things already.
Sun's idea of what is reasonable to preinstall is way way less
than anyone elses. I don't know about the recnt OS's, but for the longest time they were the only commercial UNIX that didn't automatically come with a C compiler. Sun is the Microsoft of the UNIX world: always trying to sell you new products that everyone else bundles for free. Sun's OSs are a major pain to code for. All of their libraries come without header definitions. Sun forced the awful C shell on the UNIX wordl, for which many of us will never forgive them.
Sure there are nice things about Sun's. For example their hardware is made for SMP, so you get performance to die for. And,... well, I can't think of anything else.
Knuth is the only one I would say was definitely a scientist (though I guess that just shows my theoretical bias). And I don't think his is exactly a household name. Turing's is, but of course we're talking about living scientists.
Hawking's stuff is directed at providing a rigorous understanding of aspects of the world we live in, so if that's not science, I don't know what qualifies. It's the mathematics that isn't directed at trying to understand anything outside itself that I think one might argue isn't science, like number theory and abstract topology.
Other really popular scientists? Well, surely the evolutionary biologists like Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins are pretty well known. Chomsky's work on linguistics is pretty widely known, even if his politics sometimes seems to eclipse it. Roger Penrose, perhaps? Stephen Pinker?
How do you decide what `family' a distribution belongs to? Package management system isn't enough, since SuSE is a very different beast to Redhat (due to configuration management), but uses RPMs.
One thing that struck me as odd in the article was the comment about `betting your company' on a distribution: well, it isn't completely trivial to switch from one distribution to another, but I can't see how anyone could regard making the change as a disaster.
My understanding was that the doubt was where to draw the line between `normal' use of headers and substantive quoting that should be covered by the GPL. That there is an exemption for normal use of headers I thought was not in doubt, since there is a clearly worded paragraph by the copyright holder to this effect.
Isn't the point exactly that people shouldn't be posting with the aim of attracting positive moderation. By the time you've got to +50, hopefully you've proved yourself to be a house-trained member of the \. community, and so your only concern should be making posts that you think others would be interested in reading.
That said, the current system is bizarre: I had a recent post that attracted a fair amount of moderation (as RMS criticisms do), which, although it received net positive moderation, knocked by karma down 4 points. Suggestion: instead of changing the way moderation is done, simply change the way it is displayed: if you have over 50 karma just show ">50".
Re:Someone beat this guy with a clue stick
on
Lawsuits Suck
·
· Score: 2
It isn't true. If a third party takes (or is likely to take) a substantial vote away from a major party in an election, then that will likely have the effect of making the nearest major party change it's policies so as to be more attractive to the third party. Democrats are already worried about Nader, as are Republicans about Buchanan.
It's a risky strategy in terms of final outcome, since it has the effect of splitting the vote, but if you really are pissed off about the major party, it's worth considering. It's a reasonably effective form of protest, so long as enough other voters think likewise.
Slashdot Mirror
RISC lost the instruction set wars, however. Once it was realised that you can translate CISC into RISC using a patch of silicon, the advatanges of switching from coding in CISC to coding in RISC sort of evaporated: you *can* have your cake and eat it.
The point Schneier makes is a valid one, and his transition matches
one made by a lot of people over the last few years: the mathematics
is exciting, showing the existence of secure encryption and security
protocols. After having digested that, you realise the system
engineering is depressing: modern computer systems and actually
depolyed protocols are highly complex and general, and it is normally
impossible to be confident that a system behaves according to a
protocol.
Patents do cover what you describe, but only since very recently: not
so long ago they were only granted for designs of physical products.
This is still true in Europe, but legislation is going through to put
the same, loose definition of patentable design through there.
Indeed that's right: I should have rememebered the new program.
Well, it's not very nice (I've heard these programs called `fuck 'em
and chuck 'em'), but it's not slave labour. Is it in force yet? How
long are workers allowed to stay in Germany?
I count none. I made an empirical assertion, which you haven't denied.
You don't belong to a corner, by any chance?
There is no equivalent visa program in Germany. There are very few
countries that will repatriate you after you have built a life in the
country for such a long length of time.
Linus is on an H1B visa. I recall reading an article about his visa troubles about a year ago.
No. Godwin's law only applies when someone brings in the Nazis in
the context of a different subject. The `law' doesn't apply to
serious discussions *about* fascism, Hitler or the Holocaust. I don't
believe there is any danger of these subjects being ignored in the
near future.
Because it is almost invariably used to raise the amount of
righteous indignation involved in an argument. It is usually
unnecessary: there are usually less emotive examples.
I don't think the report is particularly close to the ESR take. They
talk about the need to coordinate requistions with academic reserach,
which is not a point that I recall ESR making: not an issue to most
businesses.
I had a brief scan of those chapters. It looks to me that you are
looking at package management mostly from the point of view of the
individual user working within a relatively homogeneous local system.
Is this right?
deal too. Is there any foundation for this claim (I have not
heard anything about it either)?
If package managers are to be merged without Redhat and Debian
being forced to agree on a single package/configuration policy, then
it is clear that there needs to be something like a DISTRIBUTION_POLICY
database that governs the behaviour of the package manager. Making
this work just possibly might be one of those things that is easier
than it sounds...
What's `wrong' is that the GPL virus isn't infecting the host: Sun isn't
forced to release the current version of Solaris under the GPL. That
upsets people who think that free software should be unable to benefit
users of proprietary products.
I don't blame co-ed for the dreadful underrepresentation of women in
the computer industry: the USA, Britain and France have dreadful sex
ratios, but Germany has much better, and Italy better still. I think
it has a lot to do with the fact that in those last two countries, you
can be a programmer and still have a life.
Well, if you want to do SMP, you don't want to use an x86
architecture, and it's fundamentally much easier to write code for an
SMP target than for a clustered target. There's a lot of work being
done now on trying to make Linux perform better for SMP, but whilst it
is so x86-centric I can't see them providing much of an alternative
for the power hungry Solaris user.
ditch that in favour of something else, but if you're in the business
of replacing things, why not move to a distribution that does these
things already.
than anyone elses. I don't know about the recnt OS's, but for the
longest time they were the only commercial UNIX that didn't
automatically come with a C compiler. Sun is the Microsoft of the
UNIX world: always trying to sell you new products that everyone else
bundles for free.
Sun's OSs are a major pain to code for. All of their libraries
come without header definitions.
Sun forced the awful C shell on the UNIX wordl, for which many of
us will never forgive them.
Sure there are nice things about Sun's. For example their hardware ... well, I
is made for SMP, so you get performance to die for. And,
can't think of anything else.
If I were the type to swear in posts I might say: Why the fuck can't you take 2 second off to spell check the damn post before submitting?
Knuth is the only one I would say was definitely a scientist (though I
guess that just shows my theoretical bias). And I don't think his is
exactly a household name. Turing's is, but of course we're talking about living scientists.
aspects of the world we live in, so if that's not science, I don't
know what qualifies. It's the mathematics that isn't directed at
trying to understand anything outside itself that I think one might
argue isn't science, like number theory and abstract topology.
Other really popular scientists? Well, surely the
evolutionary biologists like Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins are
pretty well known. Chomsky's work on linguistics is pretty widely
known, even if his politics sometimes seems to eclipse it. Roger
Penrose, perhaps? Stephen Pinker?
management system isn't enough, since SuSE is a very different beast
to Redhat (due to configuration management), but uses RPMs.
One thing that struck me as odd in the article was the comment
about `betting your company' on a distribution: well, it isn't
completely trivial to switch from one distribution to another, but I
can't see how anyone could regard making the change as a disaster.
My understanding was that the doubt was where to draw the line between
`normal' use of headers and substantive quoting that should be covered
by the GPL. That there is an exemption for normal use of headers I
thought was not in doubt, since there is a clearly worded paragraph by
the copyright holder to this effect.
Linux kernel headers are explicitly exempt from the GPL restrictions. There was a discussion about this recently on the linux-kernel mailing list.
of attracting positive moderation. By the time you've got to +50,
hopefully you've proved yourself to be a house-trained member of the
\. community, and so your only concern should be making posts that you
think others would be interested in reading.
That said, the current system is bizarre: I had a recent post
that attracted a fair amount of moderation (as RMS criticisms do),
which, although it received net positive moderation, knocked by karma
down 4 points. Suggestion: instead of changing the way moderation is
done, simply change the way it is displayed: if you have over 50 karma
just show ">50".
substantial vote away from a major party in an election, then that
will likely have the effect of making the nearest major party change
it's policies so as to be more attractive to the third party.
Democrats are already worried about Nader, as are Republicans about
Buchanan.
It's a risky strategy in terms of final outcome, since it has the
effect of splitting the vote, but if you really are pissed off about
the major party, it's worth considering. It's a reasonably effective
form of protest, so long as enough other voters think likewise.