Human feet have thousands upon thousands of sensor sites and they feed back information to the brain which can process all the information in parallel and recognize even the slightest change in environment and adjust accordingly.
You would think that with all the years put into developing computer languages, as well as the decades of software engineering, that these algorithms and techniques would make their way into best practices.
This, of course, has already begun with many frequently used algorithms like sorting or hashing being made part of the language core libraries, but more than that, it seems that duplicating effort occurs much more often than simply that.
This is one instance where Microsoft has really come through. Their COM architecture allows for inter-language reuse of library code. By releasing a library which is binary compatible across different languages, as well as backwards compatible with itself (v2.0 supports v1.9), the COM object architecture takes much of the weight of programming difficult and repetitive tasks out of the hands of programmers and into the hands of library maintainers.
This kind of separation of job function allows library programmers the luxury of focusing on optimizing the library. It also allows the client programmer the luxury of ignoring that optimization and focusing on improving the speed and stability of his own program by improving the general structure of the system rather than the low level mundanities.
Large libraries like Java's and.Net's as well as Smalltalk's are all great. Taking the power of those libraries and making them usable across different languages, even making them scriptable would bring the speed optimizations in those libraries available to everyone.
You can spend all your time optimizing for performance and when you finally release your product, your competition whose main objective was to get the product out the door faster, who uses a slower algorithm, is already first in mindshare with your customers. Not only that, the processors that you thought you would be targetting are already a generation behind and that algorithm that was going to hold back your competition runs perfectly fast on new processors.
Performance gains occur at the hardware level. Any tendency to optimize prematurely ought to be avoided, at least until after v1.0 ships.
Aside from the fact that Iran is off-limits to most Americans and has been since the overthrow of the Shah, one has to wonder what the motivation of these "angels" are. The press release does not say, but it stands to reason that ownership of all advances and technologies must be turned over in part to the benefactors.
Considering how rich these guys already are, this seems like a way to squeeze more money from the public at large by garnering a monopoly on private space faring. 10 million US is a small price to pay for that much upside. Even the downside is mitigated by the fact that if a team doesn't succeed by 1/1/2005, the whole thing is called off and no money is paid out.
Call my cynical, but Iranians wanting in on rockets capable of doubling as ICBMs worry me.
You want the equivalent of a car that runs 1,000 miles per gallon, doesn't need to change oil, never gets a flat tire, is able to avoid all collisions, doesn't scratch, seats a Mormon or Catholic family of 16 easily, and costs less than a Big Mac.
Sorry, bud. It ain't gonna happen.
But if you are interested in a lower tech version of what you want, they sell lightweight versions of ebooks in a more permanent format than digital bits down at Barnes & Noble. They are called paperbacks.
Microsoft never lets projects really die. They may kill off other companies' projects, but never their own.
What they are doing, as they have done in the past with such flops as Bob, is slowly merge the improvements and features that they planned on delivering in a single project into their whole lineup across the board. As the article says, Longhorn is planned to incorporate this security technology.
While this is by no means a cure-all for the problems that Windows faces, it is a step forward in computing. Whereas legacy systems such as Unix are finding it harder to support newer hardware features such as the NX codes in the latest AMD and Intel chips, the deep corporate partnerships that Microsoft has with these companies allows them to bring such technologies to the public at a faster rate than otherwise possible.
That said, Windows sucks, has sucked, and will continue to suck. Linux shows it up every single time. Not to mention that Linux's security structure is already designed to thwart the exact problems that Microsoft is attempting to stop.
We all like to decry all the networking cruft that X has designed into it, but this kind of participation of a first tier vendor like Novell in redeveloping the X remote terminal service really shows how necessary all that cruft really is.
It doesn't really explain why they feel the need to reinvent the wheel, but it just goes to show how far Linux has come when it can attract the likes of Novell into its growing ranks of corporate sponsors.
When choosing to use Linux, one makes a conscious decision to join together with other people from around the world in a salute to freedom. Egyptians join with Finns, Americans, Asians, South Americans, and Europeans when they install Linux. It is both very humbling and yet uplifting to know that the software you are using is a result of international cooperation.
However, the history of the world, and especially North Africa/Middle East is full of wars and territorial animosities. Without trying to peg you as one who would necessarily hold these beliefs, but there are many in Egypt who would like nothing more than to have little to do with America and its allies. Do you think Linux has a calming effect on such feelings? Does it provide a means of exposing those who would not normally have exposure to such things a side of America and its allies that is not simply warmongering and anti-Egyptian?
I'm not asking if Linux is going to come with a worldpeace.pl script or anything. I'm just curious as to the ability of Linux to provide a favorable view of Western society to your Egyptian Linux installbase.
Using LFS as a starting point, Luis and Mike were able to build a minimal Linux kernel that included only the functionality required by the "kiosk style" machines. They added the Gnome desktop environment, the Mozilla browser, and OpenOffice.org to complete the picture.
Windows is a very capable OS. It has features that are designed to ease the many disparate tasks that different users will expect to handle. It is precisely because of this that Windows is unsuitable for a kiosk-like system. It is simply too powerful.
Linux, OTOH, is entirely suitable. It is free, and does not have built into the kernel all the extra luggage that Windows niceties bring with them. Providing websurfing and wordprocessing capabilities with Linux is pretty damn good and more than one would expect from an OS developed in the OSS manner. Users can use Lumix (the MD system's name) and have barely an inkling that something is amiss, that their Windows systems have been replaced with Linux (with flavor crystals).
Linux triumphs again, not by taking on Windows on the desktop, but by stepping into niches where smaller, less feature-filled operating systems are needed.
Using LFS as a starting point, Luis and Mike were able to build a minimal Linux kernel that included only the functionality required by the "kiosk style" machines. They added the Gnome desktop environment, the Mozilla browser, and OpenOffice.org to complete the picture.
If you don't need much more than websurfing and wordprocessing functionality, it doesn't make much sense to keep up with the Joneses running Windows.
Windows is a very capable OS with many features for many tasks. Most of those features, however, are wholly unsuited for a kiosk and totally extraneous.
Linux, OTOH, is able to step in at these places and fill just enough of the hole left by the Windows uninstallation with Windows software clones that the average kiosk user can hardly tell the difference.
Bell curve was such that if you could pull a 50 on a take-home test, you passed with a 'C'.
Ah, grade inflation. The great equalizer.
I remember watching 90% of the class writhing in pain because they didn't know an integral from their elbow, yet somehow the curve always brought them up to a B.
The bell curve describes an standard distribution. It should not dictate it.
CS is about finding algorithms, which has more in common with cooking than calculating. Most math classes that CS majors are required to take a pure esoteric fluff that is meant to jack off the math majors while the CS students snooze in the back of the room.
Even the 'mathy' part of CS, the Big O notation, is little more than saying "well, this one takes a long time so let's just say it's O(n^2), this one is fast so it's O(n), and this one is really fast so it's O(1). And this one we can't figure out? O(log n)." It's really no wonder that computer programs suck as much as they do when the entire concept of algorithm performance is measured in such a slipshod manner.
If math majors could get away with estimating their way through to graduation, we'd all be much worse off. But CS majors certainly don't need all that extra crap.
Netscape sued itself out of existence when it tried to claim that Navigator was being boxed out by Microsoft. Double whammy for Netscape: Inferior product AND litigious management.
Considering that bio-active materials like green tea (yum!) decay and eventually become unusable and must be disposed of properly, doesn't it make more sense to stick with chemicals which, though bad for the environment, do not decay or degrade and can be used in a specific task indefinitely?
Add to this the fact that landfills are full of "biodegradable" waste which because of the lack of oxygen in the area are unable to break down. It makes far more sense to go with a material which can be reused and/or recycled. Bio-degradable sometimes ain't.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is surpassing the U.S. with digital cable/satellite systems and high definition video.
It's one thing to stick with what works. It's another to stick your head in the sand and ignore the changes going on around you.
It's a little like buying a camera, I think. You could bite the bullet and get a digital camera and be on top of the technology. Or you could pretend like you're above the fray and go with an outdated and obsolete film camera. Like I said, leave the old tech for the hobbiests, they don't mind using older stuff.
You knew that one of these days record companies would "get it" and find a way to sell their wares over the internet. Now I await them finding a way to do it without charging money.
Considering how electrons get bled out of materials as the temperature decreases, the amount of power that can be pushed through one of these tape strips is negligble. What applications are there for low powered wiring?
I guess back in those days it was common practice to sue people who infringed on patents. Today we call those people heros.
People who sue for infringement today are called predators.
In the grand scheme of things, however, neither he nor Atari are around anymore to fight for the home gaming market. Both stagnated and were eventually overcome by the Nintendos, Sonies, and Microsofts of the world.
Slashdot Mirror
Human feet have thousands upon thousands of sensor sites and they feed back information to the brain which can process all the information in parallel and recognize even the slightest change in environment and adjust accordingly.
So bare feet are better than these new shoes.
You would think that with all the years put into developing computer languages, as well as the decades of software engineering, that these algorithms and techniques would make their way into best practices.
.Net's as well as Smalltalk's are all great. Taking the power of those libraries and making them usable across different languages, even making them scriptable would bring the speed optimizations in those libraries available to everyone.
This, of course, has already begun with many frequently used algorithms like sorting or hashing being made part of the language core libraries, but more than that, it seems that duplicating effort occurs much more often than simply that.
This is one instance where Microsoft has really come through. Their COM architecture allows for inter-language reuse of library code. By releasing a library which is binary compatible across different languages, as well as backwards compatible with itself (v2.0 supports v1.9), the COM object architecture takes much of the weight of programming difficult and repetitive tasks out of the hands of programmers and into the hands of library maintainers.
This kind of separation of job function allows library programmers the luxury of focusing on optimizing the library. It also allows the client programmer the luxury of ignoring that optimization and focusing on improving the speed and stability of his own program by improving the general structure of the system rather than the low level mundanities.
Large libraries like Java's and
No, I use the language's sort routine. This typically means quicksort or heapsort.
Do you code all your own algorithms?
You can spend all your time optimizing for performance and when you finally release your product, your competition whose main objective was to get the product out the door faster, who uses a slower algorithm, is already first in mindshare with your customers. Not only that, the processors that you thought you would be targetting are already a generation behind and that algorithm that was going to hold back your competition runs perfectly fast on new processors.
Performance gains occur at the hardware level. Any tendency to optimize prematurely ought to be avoided, at least until after v1.0 ships.
Aside from the fact that Iran is off-limits to most Americans and has been since the overthrow of the Shah, one has to wonder what the motivation of these "angels" are. The press release does not say, but it stands to reason that ownership of all advances and technologies must be turned over in part to the benefactors.
Considering how rich these guys already are, this seems like a way to squeeze more money from the public at large by garnering a monopoly on private space faring. 10 million US is a small price to pay for that much upside. Even the downside is mitigated by the fact that if a team doesn't succeed by 1/1/2005, the whole thing is called off and no money is paid out.
Call my cynical, but Iranians wanting in on rockets capable of doubling as ICBMs worry me.
You want the equivalent of a car that runs 1,000 miles per gallon, doesn't need to change oil, never gets a flat tire, is able to avoid all collisions, doesn't scratch, seats a Mormon or Catholic family of 16 easily, and costs less than a Big Mac.
Sorry, bud. It ain't gonna happen.
But if you are interested in a lower tech version of what you want, they sell lightweight versions of ebooks in a more permanent format than digital bits down at Barnes & Noble. They are called paperbacks.
Microsoft never lets projects really die. They may kill off other companies' projects, but never their own.
What they are doing, as they have done in the past with such flops as Bob, is slowly merge the improvements and features that they planned on delivering in a single project into their whole lineup across the board. As the article says, Longhorn is planned to incorporate this security technology.
While this is by no means a cure-all for the problems that Windows faces, it is a step forward in computing. Whereas legacy systems such as Unix are finding it harder to support newer hardware features such as the NX codes in the latest AMD and Intel chips, the deep corporate partnerships that Microsoft has with these companies allows them to bring such technologies to the public at a faster rate than otherwise possible.
That said, Windows sucks, has sucked, and will continue to suck. Linux shows it up every single time. Not to mention that Linux's security structure is already designed to thwart the exact problems that Microsoft is attempting to stop.
We all like to decry all the networking cruft that X has designed into it, but this kind of participation of a first tier vendor like Novell in redeveloping the X remote terminal service really shows how necessary all that cruft really is.
It doesn't really explain why they feel the need to reinvent the wheel, but it just goes to show how far Linux has come when it can attract the likes of Novell into its growing ranks of corporate sponsors.
When choosing to use Linux, one makes a conscious decision to join together with other people from around the world in a salute to freedom. Egyptians join with Finns, Americans, Asians, South Americans, and Europeans when they install Linux. It is both very humbling and yet uplifting to know that the software you are using is a result of international cooperation.
However, the history of the world, and especially North Africa/Middle East is full of wars and territorial animosities. Without trying to peg you as one who would necessarily hold these beliefs, but there are many in Egypt who would like nothing more than to have little to do with America and its allies. Do you think Linux has a calming effect on such feelings? Does it provide a means of exposing those who would not normally have exposure to such things a side of America and its allies that is not simply warmongering and anti-Egyptian?
I'm not asking if Linux is going to come with a worldpeace.pl script or anything. I'm just curious as to the ability of Linux to provide a favorable view of Western society to your Egyptian Linux installbase.
Using LFS as a starting point, Luis and Mike were able to build a minimal Linux kernel that included only the functionality required by the "kiosk style" machines. They added the Gnome desktop environment, the Mozilla browser, and OpenOffice.org to complete the picture.
Windows is a very capable OS. It has features that are designed to ease the many disparate tasks that different users will expect to handle. It is precisely because of this that Windows is unsuitable for a kiosk-like system. It is simply too powerful.
Linux, OTOH, is entirely suitable. It is free, and does not have built into the kernel all the extra luggage that Windows niceties bring with them. Providing websurfing and wordprocessing capabilities with Linux is pretty damn good and more than one would expect from an OS developed in the OSS manner. Users can use Lumix (the MD system's name) and have barely an inkling that something is amiss, that their Windows systems have been replaced with Linux (with flavor crystals).
Linux triumphs again, not by taking on Windows on the desktop, but by stepping into niches where smaller, less feature-filled operating systems are needed.
Using LFS as a starting point, Luis and Mike were able to build a minimal Linux kernel that included only the functionality required by the "kiosk style" machines. They added the Gnome desktop environment, the Mozilla browser, and OpenOffice.org to complete the picture.
If you don't need much more than websurfing and wordprocessing functionality, it doesn't make much sense to keep up with the Joneses running Windows.
Windows is a very capable OS with many features for many tasks. Most of those features, however, are wholly unsuited for a kiosk and totally extraneous.
Linux, OTOH, is able to step in at these places and fill just enough of the hole left by the Windows uninstallation with Windows software clones that the average kiosk user can hardly tell the difference.
Bell curve was such that if you could pull a 50 on a take-home test, you passed with a 'C'.
Ah, grade inflation. The great equalizer.
I remember watching 90% of the class writhing in pain because they didn't know an integral from their elbow, yet somehow the curve always brought them up to a B.
The bell curve describes an standard distribution. It should not dictate it.
You can learn CS without any math at all.
CS is about finding algorithms, which has more in common with cooking than calculating. Most math classes that CS majors are required to take a pure esoteric fluff that is meant to jack off the math majors while the CS students snooze in the back of the room.
Even the 'mathy' part of CS, the Big O notation, is little more than saying "well, this one takes a long time so let's just say it's O(n^2), this one is fast so it's O(n), and this one is really fast so it's O(1). And this one we can't figure out? O(log n)." It's really no wonder that computer programs suck as much as they do when the entire concept of algorithm performance is measured in such a slipshod manner.
If math majors could get away with estimating their way through to graduation, we'd all be much worse off. But CS majors certainly don't need all that extra crap.
Netscape sued itself out of existence when it tried to claim that Navigator was being boxed out by Microsoft. Double whammy for Netscape: Inferior product AND litigious management.
Easy to install on any platform. Easy to administrate. Easy to use. Straightforward interface. And best of all, it is well supported.
The GNU/Linux project could learn a lot from these guys.
So you are talking about a big E-level release? That's a Sigma, friends. Not a Beta. (damn /. doesn't allow Greek chars)
Considering that bio-active materials like green tea (yum!) decay and eventually become unusable and must be disposed of properly, doesn't it make more sense to stick with chemicals which, though bad for the environment, do not decay or degrade and can be used in a specific task indefinitely?
Add to this the fact that landfills are full of "biodegradable" waste which because of the lack of oxygen in the area are unable to break down. It makes far more sense to go with a material which can be reused and/or recycled. Bio-degradable sometimes ain't.
So do analog TVs.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is surpassing the U.S. with digital cable/satellite systems and high definition video.
It's one thing to stick with what works. It's another to stick your head in the sand and ignore the changes going on around you.
It's a little like buying a camera, I think. You could bite the bullet and get a digital camera and be on top of the technology. Or you could pretend like you're above the fray and go with an outdated and obsolete film camera. Like I said, leave the old tech for the hobbiests, they don't mind using older stuff.
Hopefully this signals an end to corporate Unices and a move towards more modern operating system concepts like those found in Plan9.
Let the hobbiests stick with Unix and bring the industry up to speed with the performance/usability gains found in the labs and classrooms.
You knew that one of these days record companies would "get it" and find a way to sell their wares over the internet. Now I await them finding a way to do it without charging money.
Now here's a real real-physics game.
I remember when the web was young. Me and Rosy had so much fun searching sites and downloading porn on Webcrawler and Yahoo.com.
But the idea seems so old now. If you don't know where to go, you usually end up at CNN anyway.
Considering how electrons get bled out of materials as the temperature decreases, the amount of power that can be pushed through one of these tape strips is negligble. What applications are there for low powered wiring?
But like compiling a compiler, can you *really* trust that it is not doing something nefarious?
I guess back in those days it was common practice to sue people who infringed on patents. Today we call those people heros.
People who sue for infringement today are called predators.
In the grand scheme of things, however, neither he nor Atari are around anymore to fight for the home gaming market. Both stagnated and were eventually overcome by the Nintendos, Sonies, and Microsofts of the world.