User: (tries to call his girl friend) Phone: I can't let you call this number. I'm designed to keep damage from you. My integrated medical devices noticed changes in your cardiovascular system when you call this number. Your pulse and blood pressure increase. High blood pressure is a well known risk factor for heart deceases and apoplectic stroke. I have to conclude that calling this number cannot be good for your health.
First, that assumes that all of the files I have are downloads from the net. While it's true for some files, it isn't true for all. There are files I've actually paid for, and there are files I've created, there are files which I created from CDs (and when in doubt, I'd rather get rid of the CDs than of the files, because the CDs take up more physical space), there are recordings from TV,... indeed, downloaded files make up a minority of my files (if you don't include installed software, which normally comes right from the distribution's repository anyway).
Moreover, it assumes that whatever files I got from the net are still available on the net. Sometimes this is true, sometimes it isn't. Even free software projects can die, and sometimes this also means the code isn't out there any more. Or sometimes there's a limited-time free download offer. If I wanted to get the same files again, I'd have to pay for them.
Third, even if the file is still available on the net, finding it on the net isn't necessarily easier than finding it on the hard disk.
The thing is, something *does* happen at the end of the 31st of December – the earth ends it's current revolution around the sun.
So what is so special about the point of the orbit it happens to reach at that time? It's not even the perihel (closest point to the sun), which comes a few days later, nor the winter solstice (when the tilt of the earth's axis aligns with the radial vector of the orbit), which is shortly before Christmas. There's absolutely nothing remarkable about the point in orbit at 31st of December.
Look at the date of the article, and the time estimate they give for the gas stream hitting earth. It means that some people may have seen some lights.
Actually, I cannot find that danger either in the linked article, not in the NASA article sustik linked to in a comment. The latter just says that we have to expect more auroras when the gas stream hits us "in a few days" (and that article was from Jan 11, so it probably has hit us quite some time ago, apparently without major damages).
OK, now you "only" have to write the file system driver for it (probably through fuse), so that normal applications can access the files in your SQL file system...
Reiser was going to go into that direction (at least if I understood the description on the namesys web sites correctly). But then, development stopped because Reiser turned out to be a real killer...
The nice thing about tags is that you don't need to apply all of them right away (yes, it's better if you do, but it's not mandatory). You can easily add tags later if you discover that some specific tag would be useful. In contrast, it's quite hard to retrofit an existing hierarchical structure.
That said, there's unfortunately no way I know to consistently tag arbitrary files without the danger of the tagging getting broken either by file system operations, or by programs to edit the files.
There are about 1.33*10^50 atoms in earth (Source). 250 Exabytes are 2000 Exabits, or 2*10^21 Bits. Thus for each bit, there are about 6.65*10^28 atoms in the earth.
Information theory is interesting stuff. I think that the information content can in some way be measured by what the size of the maximum compressed version of the object is.
Yes and no. This is the information as defined in telecommunication engineering. There you don't really care about the meaning of the transmitted stuff (which you don't know anyway), you only care about that you get it through as efficiently as possible. However, viewed that way white noise contains the maximum information (you cannot compress it at all).
Lossy compression of images and music are a proof that not all information is relevant. You can remove irrelevant information without changing too much the perception (because our brain would remove most of that information anyway). Of course what is relevant information depends on what you want to do with the data. If you record someone talking in a very noisy environment and plan to remove the noise later as much as possible, it's probably not a good idea to record as MP3, because it probably would remove parts of the talking you couldn't hear anyway, but which might have been recovered from a non-lossy audio recording (e.g. because the noise mostly is at different frequencies).
Assuming one bit per atom, and assuming carbon atoms being used for storage, a memory of 2^128 bytes (assuming 8 bit/byte) would have about the same mass as the world oil production of 14 years (using the data for 2001 from Wikipedia as estimate of the average yearly oil production). A silicon-based storage (again, assuming one atom per bit) of that size would have more than twice that mass.
Nokia owns one of the major Linux desktop components, qt. This potentially endangers that component, by removing some of Nokia's incentive to continue qt development.
I don't see the danger of them discontinuing Qt. I do however see the danger of discontinuing Linux support, making it Windows only, and possibly changing the license to something Microsoft likes more.
Fortunately Qt, being open source, can be forked, but that's only the second best alternative.
Nokia owns one of the major open-source phone OSs, Symbian. This potentially endangers that OS.
That's a more serious threat. Even if the OS should get forked, it's unlikely that any phone producer would use it if it's not backed by a major corporation.
Nokia is involved in another open-source, Linux-based phone OS, MeeGo. This potentially endangers that OS, too.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, a phone based on Plan 9 would be an interesting idea.
http://raines.wustl.edu/~anthro/articles/jensen2005intellectual.pdf
And moderate it with a custom header:
User: (tries to call his girl friend)
Phone: I can't let you call this number. I'm designed to keep damage from you. My integrated medical devices noticed changes in your cardiovascular system when you call this number. Your pulse and blood pressure increase. High blood pressure is a well known risk factor for heart deceases and apoplectic stroke. I have to conclude that calling this number cannot be good for your health.
Well, when speaking about Murphy, it's obvious that you have to make mistakes ... even if the Murphy you speak of isn't the one of Murphy's Law.
You forgot to give the link!
Download it again when you need it.
First, that assumes that all of the files I have are downloads from the net. While it's true for some files, it isn't true for all. There are files I've actually paid for, and there are files I've created, there are files which I created from CDs (and when in doubt, I'd rather get rid of the CDs than of the files, because the CDs take up more physical space), there are recordings from TV, ... indeed, downloaded files make up a minority of my files (if you don't include installed software, which normally comes right from the distribution's repository anyway).
Moreover, it assumes that whatever files I got from the net are still available on the net. Sometimes this is true, sometimes it isn't. Even free software projects can die, and sometimes this also means the code isn't out there any more. Or sometimes there's a limited-time free download offer. If I wanted to get the same files again, I'd have to pay for them.
Third, even if the file is still available on the net, finding it on the net isn't necessarily easier than finding it on the hard disk.
So what is so special about the point of the orbit it happens to reach at that time? It's not even the perihel (closest point to the sun), which comes a few days later, nor the winter solstice (when the tilt of the earth's axis aligns with the radial vector of the orbit), which is shortly before Christmas. There's absolutely nothing remarkable about the point in orbit at 31st of December.
No, they just read "Duke Nukem Forever" and thought "oh well, it won't get released anyway."
Yeah, after all, Nokia once made rubber boots! OK, not exactly sports shoes, but not exactly phones either. :-)
Look at the date of the article, and the time estimate they give for the gas stream hitting earth. It means that some people may have seen some lights.
Actually, I cannot find that danger either in the linked article, not in the NASA article sustik linked to in a comment. The latter just says that we have to expect more auroras when the gas stream hits us "in a few days" (and that article was from Jan 11, so it probably has hit us quite some time ago, apparently without major damages).
Maybe you never look again at files which you didn't touch for years. For me, it's a relatively regular thing.
As long as the tagging is available from the command line, shouldn't the following work?
assuming hastag and backup_files have the obvious semantics.
OK, now you "only" have to write the file system driver for it (probably through fuse), so that normal applications can access the files in your SQL file system ...
Reiser was going to go into that direction (at least if I understood the description on the namesys web sites correctly). But then, development stopped because Reiser turned out to be a real killer ...
The nice thing about tags is that you don't need to apply all of them right away (yes, it's better if you do, but it's not mandatory). You can easily add tags later if you discover that some specific tag would be useful. In contrast, it's quite hard to retrofit an existing hierarchical structure.
That said, there's unfortunately no way I know to consistently tag arbitrary files without the danger of the tagging getting broken either by file system operations, or by programs to edit the files.
Can I get your crystal ball please? Or how do you determine what you'll ever watch/listen to/read again?
Ever heard about hidden directories? :-)
It means you still have too few scripts. :-)
Even better. WITH OUT MINDS!
Freudian slip? :-)
There are about 1.33*10^50 atoms in earth (Source). 250 Exabytes are 2000 Exabits, or 2*10^21 Bits. Thus for each bit, there are about 6.65*10^28 atoms in the earth.
Yes and no. This is the information as defined in telecommunication engineering. There you don't really care about the meaning of the transmitted stuff (which you don't know anyway), you only care about that you get it through as efficiently as possible. However, viewed that way white noise contains the maximum information (you cannot compress it at all).
Lossy compression of images and music are a proof that not all information is relevant. You can remove irrelevant information without changing too much the perception (because our brain would remove most of that information anyway). Of course what is relevant information depends on what you want to do with the data. If you record someone talking in a very noisy environment and plan to remove the noise later as much as possible, it's probably not a good idea to record as MP3, because it probably would remove parts of the talking you couldn't hear anyway, but which might have been recovered from a non-lossy audio recording (e.g. because the noise mostly is at different frequencies).
Assuming one bit per atom, and assuming carbon atoms being used for storage, a memory of 2^128 bytes (assuming 8 bit/byte) would have about the same mass as the world oil production of 14 years (using the data for 2001 from Wikipedia as estimate of the average yearly oil production). A silicon-based storage (again, assuming one atom per bit) of that size would have more than twice that mass.
I don't see the danger of them discontinuing Qt. I do however see the danger of discontinuing Linux support, making it Windows only, and possibly changing the license to something Microsoft likes more.
Fortunately Qt, being open source, can be forked, but that's only the second best alternative.
That's a more serious threat. Even if the OS should get forked, it's unlikely that any phone producer would use it if it's not backed by a major corporation.
Same here.