well, Andrew Jackson, at least, that cared for the Constitution.
I wish ny country had a Constitution - but you maybe wouldn't. (hint - if we had a constitution, Blair would be up against the wall....).
I admire America - it is the first nation in modern times to embrace freedom and all the problems that frredom brings. I am not so sure about America as it has turned out - have you ties to Guantanamo Bay?
America, as it was founded, should be the leaders of the world, since America is founded on freedom.
>Let the Founding Fathers speak, and the world will be at peace.
1. All computers are Turing-complete. They may be mapped to the natural numbers.
2. From Godel's Theorem, all true theorems in a mathematical system are derivable via an obvious procedure from the axioms of the system.
3. Turing machines are equivalent to the mathematical system describing natural numbers.
4. All computers are therefore mappable to the set of natural numbers, and all processes performable by a particular computer are therefore mapped to a pair of natural numbers.
From the above, all computers, and all programs that terminate, can be mapped to the natural numbers.
A simple enumeration (though it may take some time) would therefore cover all software.
Sorry if we upset your little picture of the world, but the biggest argument against software patents isn't that we're not allowed to sleep on your couch or to steal your ideas.
If you're clever enough to come up with a new business process (as opposed to manufacturing processes, which patenting was invented for), then you have the right (until your competitors analyse the situation and fight you for market share) to grab as much land as you can.
Patents are intended to protect inventions - as a mathematician, I can prove (beyond all reasonable doubt) that all computer programs follow from all others, therefore all are obvious. Patents are therefore not applicable to software.
Re:They pulled MySQL out!
on
PHP 5 Beta 1
·
· Score: 1
no - old ladies drink gin so much more stylishly than young girls.
Show me a woman over 40, and a bottle of gin, and I'll show you a full English breakfast (even if you have to fsck for it).
But isn't this story a bit like 'the biggest foreskin in Israel', or 'the most honest politician in [fill in country here]', or just maybe 'the most anti-M$ story on/.'?
So somebody's modded an existing rocket, and made it go a bit higher.
Am I supposed to be impressed?
Is it Werner von Braun?
Have the Canadians discovered a new vein of ex-Nazi scientists to propel their rocket programme into the 20th century?
Sorry, guys - I'm not impressed.
Re:They pulled MySQL out!
on
PHP 5 Beta 1
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
If it's not ironic, it's at least paradoxical, which is half way to irony.
The metabolic changes induced by persistent use of amphetamines make the heart and ither internal organs age at a rate that frightened the young me into stopping taking them at an early age.
My drug of choice for pure math was a nice bit of Leb Red in my coffee prior to starting an assignment / doing an exam.
We could do it (almost) transparently with GPRS here in the UK, or if absolutely necessary, the device could make a call and set up a GSM data connection to an access point.
Don't know how you'd get round it in the States, though - I know nothing about the US mobile networks.
as it appears to me is the patenting of business processes as a series of 'desirable outcomes'.
Their patent claims read like a first-pass analysis of the caching-load balancing problem.
To my mind, this sort of thing should not be patentable - it is merely a problem analysis, not an innovative solution.
Most competent people who understood networks and the issues behind content provision would have come up with a similar, if not identical solution.
This could have been failed on the 'non-obvious' requirement, but hasn't been.
It seems that the technical abilities of the patenting authorities are not of a level to deal with patent applications such as this one competently (or indeed in a timely fashion, if it was filed in 1996).
The best solution for everyone (except greedy patent factories such as this example) is to outlaw the patenting of software and software designs. There's plenty of copyright law out there to protect the code you write, and if it's not the best code at the most appropriate price, then you'll fail in the market and too bad.
If on the other hand you have a true innovation in your field, you'll have a good 12 months to build the initial market before the competition comes to play.
If America really is true to the principles of the Founders, it's time that the politicians looked at this issue and came up with a solution to stamp on parasitical patents such as this. Even if unsuccessful in their aims of extracting money, the costs to others in the field of dealing with the attentions of these people is a disruption to trade, and needs to be eliminated.
Ta - never seen it before, but it's roughly what I was thinking of, except about ten times better (I assume the VPN is maintainsed across provider switches).
"Iâ(TM)d want my tablet or my PDA or maybe even my phone to use the best network available wherever it is. So if Iâ(TM)m in my office, I donâ(TM)t want to be using the cell network, I want to be using WiFi, because I can get ten times the bandwidth that way. But as soon as I walk out of my building, I donâ(TM)t want to have to say: OK, Iâ(TM)m flipping from one to another. For this to happen, service providers like Verizon would have to say: we're going to manage you your experience, whatever network that youâ(TM)re on."
Why expect the network to handle this?
The OS should be able to monitor WiFi signal strength, retried packets, etc., and make the decision to switch to the mobile network automatically.
And a periodic retry of the WiFi network isn't going to cost the earth, in processing or in battery life.
Re:Creation of a blue collar computing segment
on
More Cheap Linux PCs
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
7 years ago, I was working at a networking and systems integration firm where the only graduates were in sales.
Us techies were just boys that knew what we were doing - in fact it was only when we got a couple of grads that we ran into problems (no common sense, no problem solving skills, inability to RTFM, etc.).
There's no need for degrees to install and fix computers - just a lively mind, which is better found outside the graduate corps rather than inside.
It looked like that to me, once I'd got as far as the Planetlab site itself - a whole big testbed for distributed (really, truly, actually distributed) applications.
There's a whole lotta comments on this story that don't seem to have got as far as the site yet.
It didn't say when whe Windows version is coming out, though;)
Btrieve was a pig to program for, but it was fast, and stable for what we used to use it for (a work indexing / refernce number allocator), especially compared to the Microsoft stuff that was around at the time.
We had Oracle running on Netware 3.11 at the same time, but it was still easier and cheaper to make a Quickbasic app that talked to Btrieve (I cost lots less per hour than the Oracle programmer...)
What we need to remember is that the NLMs back then ran at ring 0 on the super-duper 386 machines, which made a hell of a difference.
The old SCO Openserver product was indeed a big ugly sucker of an OS.
I once did a fresh install in a very tight timeframe, so tight in fact that I was unable to license the second processor, and missed the fact that the Rio card being used made a nice little 1MB memory hole at 15MB (the box had 128MB, but Openserver wasn't ever going to see it without a bootstring).
Despite this, the box went online and serviced 140 users (all running Sage) without complaints for the whole of the following day, until I could get back in and fix the processor license and bootstring.
I'd love to see an NT box (this was about 5-6 years ago) that could boot properly in 15MB, run on 1/2 its processors, and still support 140 users running a fairly disk-intensive app like Sage.
Yep, Openserver was a BUFF, but it was robust and not too unfriendly.
"IBM, DEC, SCO, and finally Sun have lost the non-Windows portion of the server market to Linux..."
So some of the lower-end boxes, that can be easily load-balanced, are being set up using Linux rather than Solaris / AIX / HP-UX.
What precisely is the 'Windows portion' of the server market, anyway?
Certainly not big-assed application servers that are the meat and drink of the big Unix vendors - in fact the 'Windows portion' of the server market looks tailor made for Linux replacement.
IBM probably isn't too bothered - the ability to run multiple Linux images on their big iron is a major selling point.
Slashdot Mirror
If it's all backscatter, the body should appear a uniform white colour, without the careful shading under the (admittedly quite large) breasts.
I reckon the pic's been Photoshopped.
well, Andrew Jackson, at least, that cared for the Constitution.
I wish ny country had a Constitution - but you maybe wouldn't. (hint - if we had a constitution, Blair would be up against the wall....).
I admire America - it is the first nation in modern times to embrace freedom and all the problems that frredom brings. I am not so sure about America as it has turned out - have you ties to Guantanamo Bay?
America, as it was founded, should be the leaders of the world, since America is founded on freedom.
>Let the Founding Fathers speak, and the world will be at peace.
1. All computers are Turing-complete. They may be mapped to the natural numbers.
2. From Godel's Theorem, all true theorems in a mathematical system are derivable via an obvious procedure from the axioms of the system.
3. Turing machines are equivalent to the mathematical system describing natural numbers.
4. All computers are therefore mappable to the set of natural numbers, and all processes performable by a particular computer are therefore mapped to a pair of natural numbers.
From the above, all computers, and all programs that terminate, can be mapped to the natural numbers.
A simple enumeration (though it may take some time) would therefore cover all software.
All software is obvious. QED.
Sorry if we upset your little picture of the world, but the biggest argument against software patents isn't that we're not allowed to sleep on your couch or to steal your ideas.
If you're clever enough to come up with a new business process (as opposed to manufacturing processes, which patenting was invented for), then you have the right (until your competitors analyse the situation and fight you for market share) to grab as much land as you can.
Patents are intended to protect inventions - as a mathematician, I can prove (beyond all reasonable doubt) that all computer programs follow from all others, therefore all are obvious. Patents are therefore not applicable to software.
Show me a woman over 40, and a bottle of gin, and I'll show you a full English breakfast (even if you have to fsck for it).
So somebody's modded an existing rocket, and made it go a bit higher.
Am I supposed to be impressed?
Is it Werner von Braun?
Have the Canadians discovered a new vein of ex-Nazi scientists to propel their rocket programme into the 20th century?
Sorry, guys - I'm not impressed.
The metabolic changes induced by persistent use of amphetamines make the heart and ither internal organs age at a rate that frightened the young me into stopping taking them at an early age.
My drug of choice for pure math was a nice bit of Leb Red in my coffee prior to starting an assignment / doing an exam.
Don't know how you'd get round it in the States, though - I know nothing about the US mobile networks.
Their patent claims read like a first-pass analysis of the caching-load balancing problem.
To my mind, this sort of thing should not be patentable - it is merely a problem analysis, not an innovative solution.
Most competent people who understood networks and the issues behind content provision would have come up with a similar, if not identical solution.
This could have been failed on the 'non-obvious' requirement, but hasn't been.
It seems that the technical abilities of the patenting authorities are not of a level to deal with patent applications such as this one competently (or indeed in a timely fashion, if it was filed in 1996).
The best solution for everyone (except greedy patent factories such as this example) is to outlaw the patenting of software and software designs. There's plenty of copyright law out there to protect the code you write, and if it's not the best code at the most appropriate price, then you'll fail in the market and too bad.
If on the other hand you have a true innovation in your field, you'll have a good 12 months to build the initial market before the competition comes to play.
If America really is true to the principles of the Founders, it's time that the politicians looked at this issue and came up with a solution to stamp on parasitical patents such as this. Even if unsuccessful in their aims of extracting money, the costs to others in the field of dealing with the attentions of these people is a disruption to trade, and needs to be eliminated.
Cool.
Sorry - just had to do it.
Why expect the network to handle this?
The OS should be able to monitor WiFi signal strength, retried packets, etc., and make the decision to switch to the mobile network automatically.
And a periodic retry of the WiFi network isn't going to cost the earth, in processing or in battery life.
Us techies were just boys that knew what we were doing - in fact it was only when we got a couple of grads that we ran into problems (no common sense, no problem solving skills, inability to RTFM, etc.).
There's no need for degrees to install and fix computers - just a lively mind, which is better found outside the graduate corps rather than inside.
But then, I'm not a compiler god, just a network guy who happens to have to use the fscking things once in a while.
Looking forward to it, but then I am old...
int MAX_CHORDS = 3;
It looked like that to me, once I'd got as far as the Planetlab site itself - a whole big testbed for distributed (really, truly, actually distributed) applications.
There's a whole lotta comments on this story that don't seem to have got as far as the site yet.
It didn't say when whe Windows version is coming out, though ;)
Because it's easier than the Turing test.
Example code:
while(true){
produceRandomQuote(false);
}
See - simple.
We had Oracle running on Netware 3.11 at the same time, but it was still easier and cheaper to make a Quickbasic app that talked to Btrieve (I cost lots less per hour than the Oracle programmer...)
What we need to remember is that the NLMs back then ran at ring 0 on the super-duper 386 machines, which made a hell of a difference.
I once did a fresh install in a very tight timeframe, so tight in fact that I was unable to license the second processor, and missed the fact that the Rio card being used made a nice little 1MB memory hole at 15MB (the box had 128MB, but Openserver wasn't ever going to see it without a bootstring).
Despite this, the box went online and serviced 140 users (all running Sage) without complaints for the whole of the following day, until I could get back in and fix the processor license and bootstring.
I'd love to see an NT box (this was about 5-6 years ago) that could boot properly in 15MB, run on 1/2 its processors, and still support 140 users running a fairly disk-intensive app like Sage.
Yep, Openserver was a BUFF, but it was robust and not too unfriendly.
#ifdef _CHRISTIAN
#ifndef _MANICHEAN
#define GOD 0x11
#endif
#define GOD 0x10
#endif
#ifdef _ISLAM
#define GOD 0x1
#endif
#ifdef _NIETZSCHE
#define GOD L"Dead"
#endif
Note that compilation with _NIETZSCHE will break most implementations.
So some of the lower-end boxes, that can be easily load-balanced, are being set up using Linux rather than Solaris / AIX / HP-UX.
What precisely is the 'Windows portion' of the server market, anyway?
Certainly not big-assed application servers that are the meat and drink of the big Unix vendors - in fact the 'Windows portion' of the server market looks tailor made for Linux replacement.
IBM probably isn't too bothered - the ability to run multiple Linux images on their big iron is a major selling point.
Bah - Slate is a M$ owned site, anyway.