Most people seem to have read the novels of some great writer, but I find some missing. It is like you would talk about the music of the sixties by mentioning the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but leaving out the Who.
So, in addition to all mentioned greats, here are some people to mention, not only for their great science-fiction, ranging from hard to soft, but also because they created already SF with fantasy elements, before fantasy became popular.
I try to collect all the books of these writers, whether they are out of print or not (love flea markets and second hand stores).
Poul Anderson. Not only a very prolific writer, but also someone with a background in historical sciences. His adventures range from the human paleolitic past up to the end of the universe. He is also one of the writers who is really good in creating a political background to his universes.
Can't mention a favorite book, but to have a grasp of the reach of his work :
The Corridors of Time
The High Crusade
Tau Zero
The Star Fox
Jack Vance. One of the few SF writers who has all his books translated in Dutch. He loves to blur the line between SF and fantasy, but his stories are never unlogical. To grasp his humor, you really should read his stories several times. He is a creator of worlds and cultures infinite in variety.
It is not easy to create a short reading list, but the following books I re-read regularly.
Trullion : Alastor 2262
The trilogy Lyonesse
Emphyrio
The Demon Prince novels
Tanith Lee. This lady must be the most prolific female SF/fantasy writer, although she mostly leans more to the fantasy and even the gothic side of things.
Her real science-fiction books probably date more from the beginning of her career :
All GUI design which is now used is derived from Smalltalk-80. Go read the book or find an old copy of the Byte Magazine which had a special feature on it, and you will have an understanding of all the guidelines those people used in creating a user-friendly and user-empowering graphical desktop environment.
One of the design criteria in the Xerox Smalltalk-80 environment was also that the system should encourage the user to learn to program the system, in addition to only using it. The closest that proprietary GUI's have come to this goal was Apple HyperCard.
To counter your reply, Apple was mostly always backwards compatible. I think they just broke this twice : going to OS 8, and now going to OS X.
When I installed Apple computers in 1990, I could upgrade the OS of 6 year old Macs, with the then new OS 5.6 without problems. That is backward compatibility.
Microsoft broke backward compatibility going from Win1.0 to Win2.0, from 2.0 to 3.11, from 3.11 to Win95, and going to NT.
The EU really does its best to remove monopolies. This succeeded with the telecoms, now with the power. As a matter of fact, because of deregulation and so on, it is an American company which now runs the cable provider Telenet in Belgium. Before that it was a government controlled institution.
The difference between the two is that Sony is in technology and media, while Philips shed a couple of years ago it's media division.
As I work in Philips, I know that they're primary goal is to sell technology, and things based on new technologies.
Working in development, I see and hear nothing about DRM on our technical horizon. A television with a 40 Gb HDD has just been introduced, if there were DRM issues here, I would surely have heard about it.
If there are patents on the bought technology, then I think Philips will use it more to add it to their portfolio, than to really use it.
I am working for Philips CE as a software engineer, and we have reached in our department CCM Level 3. As I have been here some time, I had some training in CMM and I had to participate in the Level 3 Audit.
I read this post already yesterday evening but I had to think a night about it.
What these software processes are about is formalising the right steps needed to obtain a certain product (plans and planning, development templates), the necessary parts of the process (like setting up a process database, configuration management, bug tracking, etc...) and probably the most important part, enhance and promote good ways of working in the development process and trace and remove bad ways of working.
I think that for an organisation like ours, this is very positive. We have scheduled releases of all kinds of software and it sure helps to deliver working software on the right time.
To implement this however, you need a large organisation and people who are really interested in writing processes.
Now for FLOSS side of things. I suppose that KISS helps here, because not many people working on a FLOSS project will be interested in process development. This means that the people which start the project will somehow need to define their own (simple) process(es) and formalise them.
What do you really need?
The tools that should be used
Some requirements management
Configuration management
Problem tracking
An implementation plan, possibly in several steps
I had a look at eXtreme Programming, and I must say that if it is compared with CMM, then it probably fits most goals of CCM from a practical point of view, not from a formal point of view (CMM requires you to keep all your processes written down somehow, for inspection by the auditors).
However, XP (like probably most of these methodologies) is also geared toward fast and correct release of deliverables.
For FLOSS projects, it thus seems more appropriate to concentrate on things which need to be in place, than on procedures to produce deliverables on time. If you want to have this, then mention this at the start of the project and ask people if they are sure that they kan keep their promises.
It has less to do with databases, than with tables. A database is just a very structured and very good way to handle tables.
If you can describe things in tables, put it in a database.
I think that the main reason that people use Excel, is because you need no programmer in between. If you want to use a database, then you need to create new interfaces for every table and view that you add. This asks for someone who understands databases and interface design, and knows how to get information out of people, etc...
Banks do not need a "single unified system, that can provide both ease of use, and integration". I worked in a small bank (which was part of a larger one at the time), and they settled for the following platforms (and they tested it thoroughly) :
Win NT for workstations (not for real work)
Novell Netware for file and print services
Wang VS for preprocessing tasks
HP-UX as a successor to WANG VS, with Oracle
IBM S/390
Bull
The common elements of the real computing platforms where COBOL and transactional index-sequential data storage. The files could easily be transferred to Oracle, and most programs did only need small changes. The real work of porting took about three months.
Yes, it could work. A couple of years ago I worked on WANG VS. They sold a security package as an option to the operating system. One of the things it provided was encrypted storage of passwords. Being administrator, I could read everyone's password from the standard user file.
Anyone interested in saying "Yes, I use dselect!" ?
I am on Debian since 1998, and I must admit that in the beginning, I was put off by dselect. However, I installed Debian from the net and to add packages I had to use dselect to know what packages where available.
Since then I have used without much problems. The only gripe I have with dselect is that searching only works on package names, not descriptions. It is only since this summer that I found out about the other apt-tools, like apt-cache. However, apt-cache sometimes returns too much results from a search.
It seems that a singularity is something that comes out of a formula.
However, if matter is compressed beyond its Schwarzschild radius, it seems to me that nobody knows what happens to it. It is probably denser than neutron star matter, but could it not just be very dense neutron star matter ? Or could it b that the interior of the black hole consist of quarks, just held together by gravity, that the neutrons themselves have dissolved ?
What I meant is that a 16-bit signal provides a S/N ratio of 96 db.
The human ear has a dynamic range of 0-130 dB, of which anything above 100 dB is probably harmful. Sounds less than 30 dB are mostly masked by background noise.
So the human ear can be effectively used in a range of about 70 dB.
A whole lot of the noise is generated by analog, and the noise this produces is always the same. This means that all signals below the analog noise are drowned. E.g. if the analog produces a noise level of -60 dB, and the bottom digital signal has a level of -72 dB, you effectively lose 12 dB, so why add 2 bits extra to your signal ? And don't get me started about speakers!
Slashdot Mirror
Most people seem to have read the novels of some great writer, but I find some missing. It is like you would talk about the music of the sixties by mentioning the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but leaving out the Who.
So, in addition to all mentioned greats, here are some people to mention, not only for their great science-fiction, ranging from hard to soft, but also because they created already SF with fantasy elements, before fantasy became popular.
I try to collect all the books of these writers, whether they are out of print or not (love flea markets and second hand stores).
Poul Anderson. Not only a very prolific writer, but also someone with a background in historical sciences. His adventures range from the human paleolitic past up to the end of the universe. He is also one of the writers who is really good in creating a political background to his universes.
Can't mention a favorite book, but to have a grasp of the reach of his work :
Jack Vance. One of the few SF writers who has all his books translated in Dutch. He loves to blur the line between SF and fantasy, but his stories are never unlogical. To grasp his humor, you really should read his stories several times. He is a creator of worlds and cultures infinite in variety.
It is not easy to create a short reading list, but the following books I re-read regularly.
Tanith Lee. This lady must be the most prolific female SF/fantasy writer, although she mostly leans more to the fantasy and even the gothic side of things.
Her real science-fiction books probably date more from the beginning of her career :
I have it at home. I have read it several times. Another one from Asimov that I rank in the same category is 'Even the Gods themselves'.
I find them very good because of the fact that both these books do not link into his Robot or Foundation series.
All GUI design which is now used is derived from Smalltalk-80. Go read the book or find an old copy of the Byte Magazine which had a special feature on it, and you will have an understanding of all the guidelines those people used in creating a user-friendly and user-empowering graphical desktop environment.
One of the design criteria in the Xerox Smalltalk-80 environment was also that the system should encourage the user to learn to program the system, in addition to only using it. The closest that proprietary GUI's have come to this goal was Apple HyperCard.
To counter your reply, Apple was mostly always backwards compatible. I think they just broke this twice : going to OS 8, and now going to OS X.
When I installed Apple computers in 1990, I could upgrade the OS of 6 year old Macs, with the then new OS 5.6 without problems. That is backward compatibility.
Microsoft broke backward compatibility going from Win1.0 to Win2.0, from 2.0 to 3.11, from 3.11 to Win95, and going to NT.
Nuts and bolts ? That is probably the reason that I liked Meccano and Lego.
Programming tools as constructor sets ?
The EU really does its best to remove monopolies. This succeeded with the telecoms, now with the power. As a matter of fact, because of deregulation and so on, it is an American company which now runs the cable provider Telenet in Belgium. Before that it was a government controlled institution.
The difference between the two is that Sony is in technology and media, while Philips shed a couple of years ago it's media division.
As I work in Philips, I know that they're primary goal is to sell technology, and things based on new technologies.
Working in development, I see and hear nothing about DRM on our technical horizon. A television with a 40 Gb HDD has just been introduced, if there were DRM issues here, I would surely have heard about it.
If there are patents on the bought technology, then I think Philips will use it more to add it to their portfolio, than to really use it.
In Europe this is done since 1969 or so, it is called VAT (Value Added Taxes).
Can you say PKZIP2.04g ? Some advanced features of WinZip will not work if you do not have PKZIP2.04g (it is more than ten years old, I think).
I am working for Philips CE as a software engineer, and we have reached in our department CCM Level 3. As I have been here some time, I had some training in CMM and I had to participate in the Level 3 Audit.
I read this post already yesterday evening but I had to think a night about it.
What these software processes are about is formalising the right steps needed to obtain a certain product (plans and planning, development templates), the necessary parts of the process (like setting up a process database, configuration management, bug tracking, etc...) and probably the most important part, enhance and promote good ways of working in the development process and trace and remove bad ways of working.
I think that for an organisation like ours, this is very positive. We have scheduled releases of all kinds of software and it sure helps to deliver working software on the right time.
To implement this however, you need a large organisation and people who are really interested in writing processes.
Now for FLOSS side of things. I suppose that KISS helps here, because not many people working on a FLOSS project will be interested in process development. This means that the people which start the project will somehow need to define their own (simple) process(es) and formalise them.
What do you really need?
I had a look at eXtreme Programming, and I must say that if it is compared with CMM, then it probably fits most goals of CCM from a practical point of view, not from a formal point of view (CMM requires you to keep all your processes written down somehow, for inspection by the auditors).
However, XP (like probably most of these methodologies) is also geared toward fast and correct release of deliverables.
For FLOSS projects, it thus seems more appropriate to concentrate on things which need to be in place, than on procedures to produce deliverables on time. If you want to have this, then mention this at the start of the project and ask people if they are sure that they kan keep their promises.
Everyone who is interested in issues of bandwidth and latency should read this book :
Computer Architecture : A Quantitative Approach, by John L. Hennessy and David A. Patterson
You know you're in the largest state of the Union, when you're anchored down in Anchorage...
Is there something like rational hatred >
postgreSQL supports BLOB's, but the organisation suggests to store the names in a table and the binary objects in the filesystem.
It has less to do with databases, than with tables. A database is just a very structured and very good way to handle tables.
If you can describe things in tables, put it in a database.
I think that the main reason that people use Excel, is because you need no programmer in between. If you want to use a database, then you need to create new interfaces for every table and view that you add. This asks for someone who understands databases and interface design, and knows how to get information out of people, etc...
Btw, isn't the S/400 filesystem a DB/2 database ?
Dental FLOSS, you mean, FLOSS being the name of a research in Europe about Free Licensed Open Source Software.
Well, what I do find strange is that Microsoft .doc files (binary format) are always larger than OOo .sxw files (text format).
I have heard (but not confirmed) that Bank Brussel Lambert/ING (Belgium/Holland/Europe) have gone to Linux, probably on main frame.
The common elements of the real computing platforms where COBOL and transactional index-sequential data storage. The files could easily be transferred to Oracle, and most programs did only need small changes. The real work of porting took about three months.
Yes, it could work. A couple of years ago I worked on WANG VS. They sold a security package as an option to the operating system. One of the things it provided was encrypted storage of passwords. Being administrator, I could read everyone's password from the standard user file.
Anyone interested in saying "Yes, I use dselect!" ?
I am on Debian since 1998, and I must admit that in the beginning, I was put off by dselect. However, I installed Debian from the net and to add packages I had to use dselect to know what packages where available. Since then I have used without much problems. The only gripe I have with dselect is that searching only works on package names, not descriptions. It is only since this summer that I found out about the other apt-tools, like apt-cache. However, apt-cache sometimes returns too much results from a search.
It seems that a singularity is something that comes out of a formula.
However, if matter is compressed beyond its Schwarzschild radius, it seems to me that nobody knows what happens to it. It is probably denser than neutron star matter, but could it not just be very dense neutron star matter ? Or could it b that the interior of the black hole consist of quarks, just held together by gravity, that the neutrons themselves have dissolved ?
Been thinking about black holes lately (Space from the BBC, the latest SCA special edition about cosmology).
Nobody knows what is inside a black hole, people can only try to make educated guesses.
Consider the sequence white dwarf, neutron star, black hole...
I suppose that the object itself need not shrink far behind the event horizon, which means that after it you hit solid ground in the black hole.
What I meant is that a 16-bit signal provides a S/N ratio of 96 db.
The human ear has a dynamic range of 0-130 dB, of which anything above 100 dB is probably harmful. Sounds less than 30 dB are mostly masked by background noise.
So the human ear can be effectively used in a range of about 70 dB.
A whole lot of the noise is generated by analog, and the noise this produces is always the same. This means that all signals below the analog noise are drowned. E.g. if the analog produces a noise level of -60 dB, and the bottom digital signal has a level of -72 dB, you effectively lose 12 dB, so why add 2 bits extra to your signal ? And don't get me started about speakers!
Latin is the language that is most often used by lawmakers, it was the Greeks who where the scientists...
Anyway, after my first year Latin I quit, and I do not think that I missed it for any course that I ever followed.
I think its value lies more in the fact that it learns people to persist, rather than to learn logic.
If you are into languages, learning Latin and Greek should possibly be a good exercise.
But I have had enough science and engineering courses, and there is no way that learning Latin there can be helpful.