Won't this depend where in the world you are? E.g. in desert areas most days are likely to be hot and sunny. Here in England, we consider stable weather for 10 minutes to be persistent.
Surely if you are going to benchmark the kernel, you would compare different revisions (even minor ones) on the same hardware? Otherwise it'd be a hardware benchmark. I think they should be benchmarking on lots of different hardware, but the comparison has to be on the same hardware.
Also, I think they should be comparing each minor revision, not just those where "there was some reason to believe that one would be faster". Only benchmarking if you expect a faster resultis not very rigorous.
I do agree, however, that for those of us not involved in kernel development, a set of benchmarks across minor revisions that show no change are boring and not worthy of a Slashdot article. If you need to know that stuff, you will know where to find it.
As many have already pointed out, you don't want all your pixels to be perfectly the same when you take a picture of the sky. A certain level of 'noise' (or 'grain' in film photography) is part of the picture. There are circumstances where too much noise can be annoying and it is possible to have faulty/dusty CCDs - but it doesn't sound like that is your problem. Both the GIMP and Photoshop have cloning tools etc that allow you to copy existing areas. This includes the noise from wherever you get the source and is essential for making the new stuff blend in properly.
To see why pictures would look terrible without this natural variation, try taking a picture with a lot of 'uniform' sky and some land. Print one out as it comes and on the other, replace the sky with a 'perfect' blue where all the pixels are the same. Compare the two and decide which you prefer.
This is a genuine question: what surface do they put on highways in the outback? In the UK we mostly have tarmac and it melts in hot summers:( Presumably they use something else in the desert?
There would have to be a suitable counterweight to the space station so that the centre of mass was at whatever the height is for geostationary orbit. Otherwise the station would bring the elevator down with it.
You make some good points about Java being more widely available than Python, but then tail off.
Python is also compiled and byte interpreted. It is certainly not interpreted in the same fashion as a shell script. Python even keeps the bytecode versions around and wil use them later to save recompilation. Any speed difference betwen the 2 will not be due to interpreation.
It is likely that Java will be a bit faster because there has been more resources thrown at and therefore more people able to do optimisation.
However, the big reason is that Python is a dynamic language (similar to Perl) and the compiler cannot make the same optimisations that a more staic language, such as Java and C can. It also tends to mean an extra layer of pointer redirection (hidden behind the scenes). When you have the ability to tie ('tie' is the Perl-speak way of talking about this - not sure if they use another word in Python) variable to external resources, you can't take any chances even with consecutive reads of the same variable. This all adds time.
As you say, you last shot is a low blow. Just because something is 'leading' does not make it the best - is Windows the best OS or IE the best browser? Maybe, maybe not - but I htink on Slashdot we'd agree there is more to it than just 'leading'. I've not used either client, but maybe Azureus is simply a better program with a better interface, maybe it is more widely available for different platforms? I have no idea - but it says nothing about the relative merits of the 2 languages as such.
Wrong! As long as you provide a copy of the source code (or make the source code available at minimal cost), you can charge whatever you like for GPL'd software. The problem is that very few people pay for something if you can get it for free, therefore it is harder to make a profit (or break even).
I'm not familiar with other open source licenses, but I believe Apple ship software with BSD licenses and they charge plenty of money (of course, they are also charging for proprietary stuff as well)
The Silmarillion was not just a vast collection of disparate notes. The majority of the Silmarillion published in 1977 was based very closely on the latest version JRR was working on. The majority of work Christopher did was editing (nspelling of names etc). The latter part of the Silmarillion was more tricky (JRR almost never finished any version of the Sil) - so Christopher and Guy Kay had to reconstruct the ending of Turin and the Fall of Doriath.
I know from your post you are largely supportive of what Christopher has done for us by making his father's work available, but I think a lot of the critical posts are based on this misconception. Christopher Tolkien did NOT write the Silmarillion based of a set of author's notes. He edited a work that the author had already attempted to publish.
But the point is that your taxes are not paying the full cost of the Domesday book going online. Just as our taxes don't cover the full cost of prescriptions so that a lot of us have to pay for them, despite the NHS getting a lot of tax money. If you don't like it that's OK: write to your MP. It could be made free (like the major museums) - they could redirect tax money or lottery money from somewhere else to pay for it, or could raise taxes to cover stuff like this. However, it has to be paid for and our taxes are currently not covering the full cost.
According to the article they will be filming against green screens. I guess it will be a low budget made in a way similar to Sky Captain - cheap (but hopefully reasonable) effects rather than an expensive set
Other than Russia and China, no-one *has* a manned space programme and currently neither of their programmes are as sophisticated as the US's. The shuttle may be causing some headaches, but if it hadn't been tried, people would still be demanding it was tried: "why are we sending up these space rockets and burning them up on re-entry. Why don't we try and save money and materials by building a re-usable vehicle? Added bonus: we can retrieve things from space as well as put them up there." With hindsight, it didn't really work (i.e. it cost too much), but no-one knew that at the time.
As for non-manned space programmes, the US is also doing pretty well. Russia recently blew up something like 18 satellites and my country (UK) recently had the disappointment of a probe that decided to explore the interior of Mars, rather than the exterior:(
The biggest rise is people of 13 to 17 who are having their ipods nicked - I don't think that providing guns to that segment of our population will make me feel a lot safer on the streets.
back to DOS would be an improvement. (i am serious)
You are nuts. There are reasons why folks use Macs, Gnome/KDE on Linux and Windows: some applications are graphical in nature and benefit from that environment. DOS is not a good platform for building a graphical interface. Hell, it wasn't even a good platform for building a command line interface. It did the job it was supposed to: provide an interface to the IBM PC hardware, but that is about it.
Digital information has certain properties that distinguish it from atomic information:
1) It is infinitely easier to distribute.
2) It is significantly easier to index.
3) It is significantly more malleable.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'atomic' information. However,
The conclusion you draw from point 1 is that we rely more on 'gatekeepers'. I'm not sure that we do. We rely on gatekeepers, to be sure, but is it really any more? Take newspapers. With the Internet, I might rely on Google or Yahoo or someone to index the news and make it available. However, with printed newspapers I still rely on editors etc to tell me what is relevant. As least someone like Google will index sites put up by all sorts of people who might have something to say about an issue.
Obviously in a situation like Google China they are restricting, but China would have have being doing that anyway with print. Is it actually worse with electonic sources?
In point 3 you point out that information is more malleable therefore we rely more on gatekeepers. Yet this sort of version info was not really available before, so we are not losing out. If anything, we are gaining more information, provided it can be searched.
I think your last sentence is the weakest part of your argument. You imply that FUD is merely a product of the information age. Personally, I think people were far more susceptible in an age with literacy rates were very low and those who could read/write had enormous power. You only need to look back at old works and what people said about the times they lived in to realise FUD is not new. FUD works because it plays on people's insecurities and inherent laziness to check what is really going on. This is not a new thing.
The ability of large numbers of people to read has at least offered us the chance to read different versions of FUD and choose what we like best and because we can see what different opinions there are it makes us aware that FUD exists. The ability of large numbers to write makes it possible for us to spread our own FUD (eg blogs:)
It is tricky. I can't solve the whole problem, but I woul dlike to see there be proper enforcable standards for advertising such services. We have such things in the UK for Financial products to make sure you can compare products for different vendors. What I would like for braodband providers is the requirement to specify contention ratios, limits on particular protocols in a standard manner as well as the basic bandwidth so I can choose.
If all the providers think they can't make money by allowing unlimited access, then so be it. But if one person decides there is an opportunity to make some money by offering genuinely unlimited access for slightly more money they can do so and everyone can make their choice whether they want the service or not.
It might not improve the framerate but there are some games (eg flight simulators - if you consider those to be games) that can produce really nice results if you have very high res textures. I run X-Plane on a 2x256MB nVidia SLI setup and while I get nice framerates, I am often struggling for video memory if I want to run the really highest res textures and objects.
Hey, don't knock that keyboard! There was a good click when you pressed a key and given that you didn't need to lift your fingers from surface, I still have trouble typing as fast as I could then.
I found that true when I visited the States recently, but it's really hard to get a steak cooked properly rare in England (unless you go to top priced restaurants). Not sure if the chefs are more scared or less competant
Do you get a constant stream of phone calls and red letters from the Television Licensing Authority demanding that you buy a license? Do they keep sending a man round to your house to intimidate you and ask you why you haven't got a license? Do they keep making you sign forms to declare that you haven't got a TV set? Have they put up a huge poster on the nearest billboard to your house declaring that someone in your street hasn't got a TV license?
I keep getting the letters, but strangely, no-one ever seems to call to check it out. I did fill out a form once, but they clearly didn't believe me so I never bothered again.
Slashdot Mirror
And in a strange coincidence, it's also the combination to my luggage!
DRINK! FECK!
Won't this depend where in the world you are? E.g. in desert areas most days are likely to be hot and sunny. Here in England, we consider stable weather for 10 minutes to be persistent.
Also, I think they should be comparing each minor revision, not just those where "there was some reason to believe that one would be faster". Only benchmarking if you expect a faster resultis not very rigorous.
I do agree, however, that for those of us not involved in kernel development, a set of benchmarks across minor revisions that show no change are boring and not worthy of a Slashdot article. If you need to know that stuff, you will know where to find it.
To see why pictures would look terrible without this natural variation, try taking a picture with a lot of 'uniform' sky and some land. Print one out as it comes and on the other, replace the sky with a 'perfect' blue where all the pixels are the same. Compare the two and decide which you prefer.
This is a genuine question: what surface do they put on highways in the outback? In the UK we mostly have tarmac and it melts in hot summers :( Presumably they use something else in the desert?
There would have to be a suitable counterweight to the space station so that the centre of mass was at whatever the height is for geostationary orbit. Otherwise the station would bring the elevator down with it.
Python is also compiled and byte interpreted. It is certainly not interpreted in the same fashion as a shell script. Python even keeps the bytecode versions around and wil use them later to save recompilation. Any speed difference betwen the 2 will not be due to interpreation.
It is likely that Java will be a bit faster because there has been more resources thrown at and therefore more people able to do optimisation.
However, the big reason is that Python is a dynamic language (similar to Perl) and the compiler cannot make the same optimisations that a more staic language, such as Java and C can. It also tends to mean an extra layer of pointer redirection (hidden behind the scenes). When you have the ability to tie ('tie' is the Perl-speak way of talking about this - not sure if they use another word in Python) variable to external resources, you can't take any chances even with consecutive reads of the same variable. This all adds time.
As you say, you last shot is a low blow. Just because something is 'leading' does not make it the best - is Windows the best OS or IE the best browser? Maybe, maybe not - but I htink on Slashdot we'd agree there is more to it than just 'leading'. I've not used either client, but maybe Azureus is simply a better program with a better interface, maybe it is more widely available for different platforms? I have no idea - but it says nothing about the relative merits of the 2 languages as such.
Wrong! As long as you provide a copy of the source code (or make the source code available at minimal cost), you can charge whatever you like for GPL'd software. The problem is that very few people pay for something if you can get it for free, therefore it is harder to make a profit (or break even). I'm not familiar with other open source licenses, but I believe Apple ship software with BSD licenses and they charge plenty of money (of course, they are also charging for proprietary stuff as well)
The Silmarillion was not just a vast collection of disparate notes. The majority of the Silmarillion published in 1977 was based very closely on the latest version JRR was working on. The majority of work Christopher did was editing (nspelling of names etc). The latter part of the Silmarillion was more tricky (JRR almost never finished any version of the Sil) - so Christopher and Guy Kay had to reconstruct the ending of Turin and the Fall of Doriath. I know from your post you are largely supportive of what Christopher has done for us by making his father's work available, but I think a lot of the critical posts are based on this misconception. Christopher Tolkien did NOT write the Silmarillion based of a set of author's notes. He edited a work that the author had already attempted to publish.
He'd probably use the time in his bedroom to send 15 million spams to the judge...
But the point is that your taxes are not paying the full cost of the Domesday book going online. Just as our taxes don't cover the full cost of prescriptions so that a lot of us have to pay for them, despite the NHS getting a lot of tax money. If you don't like it that's OK: write to your MP. It could be made free (like the major museums) - they could redirect tax money or lottery money from somewhere else to pay for it, or could raise taxes to cover stuff like this. However, it has to be paid for and our taxes are currently not covering the full cost.
According to the article they will be filming against green screens. I guess it will be a low budget made in a way similar to Sky Captain - cheap (but hopefully reasonable) effects rather than an expensive set
Other than Russia and China, no-one *has* a manned space programme and currently neither of their programmes are as sophisticated as the US's. The shuttle may be causing some headaches, but if it hadn't been tried, people would still be demanding it was tried: "why are we sending up these space rockets and burning them up on re-entry. Why don't we try and save money and materials by building a re-usable vehicle? Added bonus: we can retrieve things from space as well as put them up there." With hindsight, it didn't really work (i.e. it cost too much), but no-one knew that at the time.
As for non-manned space programmes, the US is also doing pretty well. Russia recently blew up something like 18 satellites and my country (UK) recently had the disappointment of a probe that decided to explore the interior of Mars, rather than the exterior :(
The biggest rise is people of 13 to 17 who are having their ipods nicked - I don't think that providing guns to that segment of our population will make me feel a lot safer on the streets.
No, it would simply make you a seller of illegal DVDs.
Being in the UK myself, I have seen that there has been a switch to using billion to mean 10^9 for sometime. The other use is very rare.
The conclusion you draw from point 1 is that we rely more on 'gatekeepers'. I'm not sure that we do. We rely on gatekeepers, to be sure, but is it really any more? Take newspapers. With the Internet, I might rely on Google or Yahoo or someone to index the news and make it available. However, with printed newspapers I still rely on editors etc to tell me what is relevant. As least someone like Google will index sites put up by all sorts of people who might have something to say about an issue.
Obviously in a situation like Google China they are restricting, but China would have have being doing that anyway with print. Is it actually worse with electonic sources?
In point 3 you point out that information is more malleable therefore we rely more on gatekeepers. Yet this sort of version info was not really available before, so we are not losing out. If anything, we are gaining more information, provided it can be searched.
I think your last sentence is the weakest part of your argument. You imply that FUD is merely a product of the information age. Personally, I think people were far more susceptible in an age with literacy rates were very low and those who could read/write had enormous power. You only need to look back at old works and what people said about the times they lived in to realise FUD is not new. FUD works because it plays on people's insecurities and inherent laziness to check what is really going on. This is not a new thing.
The ability of large numbers of people to read has at least offered us the chance to read different versions of FUD and choose what we like best and because we can see what different opinions there are it makes us aware that FUD exists. The ability of large numbers to write makes it possible for us to spread our own FUD (eg blogs :)
It is tricky. I can't solve the whole problem, but I woul dlike to see there be proper enforcable standards for advertising such services. We have such things in the UK for Financial products to make sure you can compare products for different vendors. What I would like for braodband providers is the requirement to specify contention ratios, limits on particular protocols in a standard manner as well as the basic bandwidth so I can choose. If all the providers think they can't make money by allowing unlimited access, then so be it. But if one person decides there is an opportunity to make some money by offering genuinely unlimited access for slightly more money they can do so and everyone can make their choice whether they want the service or not.
It might not improve the framerate but there are some games (eg flight simulators - if you consider those to be games) that can produce really nice results if you have very high res textures. I run X-Plane on a 2x256MB nVidia SLI setup and while I get nice framerates, I am often struggling for video memory if I want to run the really highest res textures and objects.
Hey, don't knock that keyboard! There was a good click when you pressed a key and given that you didn't need to lift your fingers from surface, I still have trouble typing as fast as I could then.
I keep getting the letters, but strangely, no-one ever seems to call to check it out. I did fill out a form once, but they clearly didn't believe me so I never bothered again.