While driving through Florida a couple years ago, on vacation, I got lost. When I stopped by a Seven Eleven and asked where I was, and the guy answered "Melbourne", I promptly returned in the best Australian accent I could fake "I am sure I am still in Florida. It's very unlikely I could get that lost using a car".
The guy pointed my location on a map. 20 minutes later I was back to the hotel.
"in fact it only creates massive inconvenience for people ala Brazil."
Please specify "Brazil, the movie" or "Terry Gilliam's Brazil". My government certainly inconvenience me, but the overall situation is nowhere near the mess you describe;-)
I would love to buy one, but with the 3G access being US-only, its usefulness is severely limited anywhere else. Too bad because the device itself seems to be very interesting.
I wonder who is the bonehead who came up with this deal...
These days a dual processor 32 bit computer with a gigabyte of RAM and 160 GB of storage is an entry level computer.
A couple years back it was a supercomputer you would have to ask the DoD if you could run it.
Isn't it wonderful how things change?
BTW, in 1998 I had a dual 64-bit processor box running Solaris on my desk. I find it astonishing it took so long for the x86 crowd to get almost there (win7 is a crappy OS by any civilized standard).
"you'll want to spend a few extra dollars and a couple of extra watts (up to 1W idle [1]) to get an Atom that has double [1] the performance of the fastest ARM11 based CPU."
I would go with another ARM11 core for a smaller power bugdet than an Atom. Going x86 would take away the fun of being Windows-proof. We need diverse computers with different characteristics. Evolution thrives on diversity. This boring x86-only world has gone on for too long.
"The Alpha 680 will have a 7-inch LCD screen at 800 x 480 pixels, 128 MB of DDR2 RAM"
I would love to have an ARM-based netbook for my programming work (mostly Python/Django under emacs) with the added geek-bonus of being Windows-proof, but, while a 600x1024 screen is a bare minimum, the lower-end 480x800 is absolutely useless. It's just an oversized iPod with a keyboard and without Apple's aura.
Get me an ARM-based netbook with 768x1300+ screen (if using PixelQi's tech, better), 2 gigs of RAM plus a real hard disk and it will still cost much less than a comparable x86, have far longer battery life and I will be very happy.
While I am at it, perhaps I can convince Sun to build a Mac mini-style SPARC T2 box... One can dream, but at least now there is a different guy at the helm...
"Why do we need a new "dominant" player? Why can't we just have a plethora of OSs that inter-operate at a basic level and let users and companies cater to one or all of the preferred OSs?"
Because the market doesn't work that way. Assuming several competing incompatible platforms, the marginally more popular will attract marginally more developers and make it marginally more attractive to users, increasing thus its market share and driving further development in a positive-feedback loop.
If you assume there is a compatibility layer on top of different competing OSs, that could work, but would be a least common denominator scenario where developers would have to stick to the worst feature-set on all competing OSs.
OS makers will want to differentiate to compete. They also need to differentiate in order to evolve.
I find it a shame that the three dominant OSs in use today have their roots in the past decades and did not evolve that much since then. Windows 7 is nothing more than a polished NT, OSX could be called NextStep'2009 and Linux is the only Unix many people know. My OS of choice still has a "terminal" window, even though children born 10 years ago never saw a computer terminal outside of a museum (or my private collection).
20 light-years is about by Wolf 562. There are about 5 stars with detected gas giants around them in this radius, about a dozen without them but with no data on smaller rocky planets we can't yet detect.
There must be plenty of rocks we could live on within this distance. I don't say Earth-like planets, because we would need to replace the whole biosphere with something that doesn't want to kill itself by eating reciprocally toxic earthlings, but Ganymede and Europa-like bodies with low gravity, plenty of water and, with luck, no life.
While I would love to have FTL and the whole galaxy (or universe) within easy reach, 20 LY's and some kind of viable interstellar travel is enough to make sure all humans don't get killed in a stupid way at once.
"Lets face it, if FTL travel isn't possible, the human race is doomed."
That's not a valid assumption. It is absolutely viable to colonize planets around other stars with slower than light travel. It's just not practical to do round-trips. There probably are many viable rocks within a 20 light-year radius.
We need the kinds of non-reactive propulsion needed to propel spaceships to the speeds needed to reach their destinations before the grand-grandchildren of the crew forgets what they are doing.
Without FTL, all that's doomed is the space-opera.
A human pilot still has more flexibility than a preprogrammed drone. Without communications, the drone will have to function autonomously, by switching to a simplified mission profile with limited capability for engaging manned targets or going home to protect itself.
Either way, their capabilities are greatly diminished.
Slashdot Mirror
Before me there were two others who complained about crashes. Shouldn't you bother someone else?
I love those photos of storms in Jupiter that you can measure in how many Earths you could fit in them.
I think most Sun spots you can see from here are larger than the Earth. I remember seeing some that could well be bigger than Jupiter...
While driving through Florida a couple years ago, on vacation, I got lost. When I stopped by a Seven Eleven and asked where I was, and the guy answered "Melbourne", I promptly returned in the best Australian accent I could fake "I am sure I am still in Florida. It's very unlikely I could get that lost using a car".
The guy pointed my location on a map. 20 minutes later I was back to the hotel.
Worked flawlessly for me (Ubuntu 9.04 stock on Atom)
Well... Just don't hold your breath.
It's totally unfair to rate this as flamebait. If any BSD user feels baited by the millionth "BSD is dead" post, he well deserves it.
And, frankly, I guess everybody saw this coming.
I could rate it as redundant, perhaps, but funny fits better.
"Linux needs and App store"
It has. Each distro has one. Mine is called Synaptic.
"in fact it only creates massive inconvenience for people ala Brazil."
Please specify "Brazil, the movie" or "Terry Gilliam's Brazil". My government certainly inconvenience me, but the overall situation is nowhere near the mess you describe ;-)
"and yet they couldn't make a single good movie".
Rick Berman. Do I need to say more?
Or "its"
From the comments on TFA: "I slammed on the brakes, jumped out of the car and wouldn't get back in until I killed it 30 mins later!"
Must have been quite a spider! Resisting a human for 30 minutes!
I would love to buy one, but with the 3G access being US-only, its usefulness is severely limited anywhere else. Too bad because the device itself seems to be very interesting.
I wonder who is the bonehead who came up with this deal...
These days a dual processor 32 bit computer with a gigabyte of RAM and 160 GB of storage is an entry level computer.
A couple years back it was a supercomputer you would have to ask the DoD if you could run it.
Isn't it wonderful how things change?
BTW, in 1998 I had a dual 64-bit processor box running Solaris on my desk. I find it astonishing it took so long for the x86 crowd to get almost there (win7 is a crappy OS by any civilized standard).
If Solaris/SPARC is dead, then so is AIX/POWER.
If I ditch either of them, it will be for lower-end x86s. If the workload can be run on commodity hardware, that's certainly the way to go.
That said, POWER and SPARC have some very specific advantages over x86.
He was merely informing he would take a WebStart client over an AJAX client any day.
Well... I wouldn't.
Now, someone mod me um +5 informative.
I am astonished to hear Project Looking Glass is still around.
"you'll want to spend a few extra dollars and a couple of extra watts (up to 1W idle [1]) to get an Atom that has double [1] the performance of the fastest ARM11 based CPU."
I would go with another ARM11 core for a smaller power bugdet than an Atom. Going x86 would take away the fun of being Windows-proof. We need diverse computers with different characteristics. Evolution thrives on diversity. This boring x86-only world has gone on for too long.
"The Alpha 680 will have a 7-inch LCD screen at 800 x 480 pixels, 128 MB of DDR2 RAM"
I would love to have an ARM-based netbook for my programming work (mostly Python/Django under emacs) with the added geek-bonus of being Windows-proof, but, while a 600x1024 screen is a bare minimum, the lower-end 480x800 is absolutely useless. It's just an oversized iPod with a keyboard and without Apple's aura.
Get me an ARM-based netbook with 768x1300+ screen (if using PixelQi's tech, better), 2 gigs of RAM plus a real hard disk and it will still cost much less than a comparable x86, have far longer battery life and I will be very happy.
While I am at it, perhaps I can convince Sun to build a Mac mini-style SPARC T2 box... One can dream, but at least now there is a different guy at the helm...
"Windows 7 looks like Vista with an OS X Dock"
Actually, it reminds me of Windows 1.0...
"Why do we need a new "dominant" player? Why can't we just have a plethora of OSs that inter-operate at a basic level and let users and companies cater to one or all of the preferred OSs?"
Because the market doesn't work that way. Assuming several competing incompatible platforms, the marginally more popular will attract marginally more developers and make it marginally more attractive to users, increasing thus its market share and driving further development in a positive-feedback loop.
If you assume there is a compatibility layer on top of different competing OSs, that could work, but would be a least common denominator scenario where developers would have to stick to the worst feature-set on all competing OSs.
OS makers will want to differentiate to compete. They also need to differentiate in order to evolve.
I find it a shame that the three dominant OSs in use today have their roots in the past decades and did not evolve that much since then. Windows 7 is nothing more than a polished NT, OSX could be called NextStep'2009 and Linux is the only Unix many people know. My OS of choice still has a "terminal" window, even though children born 10 years ago never saw a computer terminal outside of a museum (or my private collection).
So, WinFS will be in Windows 8, right?
20 light-years is about by Wolf 562. There are about 5 stars with detected gas giants around them in this radius, about a dozen without them but with no data on smaller rocky planets we can't yet detect.
There must be plenty of rocks we could live on within this distance. I don't say Earth-like planets, because we would need to replace the whole biosphere with something that doesn't want to kill itself by eating reciprocally toxic earthlings, but Ganymede and Europa-like bodies with low gravity, plenty of water and, with luck, no life.
While I would love to have FTL and the whole galaxy (or universe) within easy reach, 20 LY's and some kind of viable interstellar travel is enough to make sure all humans don't get killed in a stupid way at once.
There is no such thing as "true" in Physics. There is "fits the measurements" and "doesn't fit the measurements".
"Lets face it, if FTL travel isn't possible, the human race is doomed."
That's not a valid assumption. It is absolutely viable to colonize planets around other stars with slower than light travel. It's just not practical to do round-trips. There probably are many viable rocks within a 20 light-year radius.
We need the kinds of non-reactive propulsion needed to propel spaceships to the speeds needed to reach their destinations before the grand-grandchildren of the crew forgets what they are doing.
Without FTL, all that's doomed is the space-opera.
A human pilot still has more flexibility than a preprogrammed drone. Without communications, the drone will have to function autonomously, by switching to a simplified mission profile with limited capability for engaging manned targets or going home to protect itself.
Either way, their capabilities are greatly diminished.