Two of those things that are in abundance everywhere on the planet is the air and the sea.
Another potential source of energy is gravity. What goes up eventually goes down and can produce energy. Of course, making something go up requires energy as well, but nature offers materials that can assist in lifting things up...
I support this guy's ideas to the fullest. It's hard to do, but it has been done before (see AS/400). It's time we get this technology to consumer level.
The user should not see directories. She should perform queries like 'give me all the letters I wrote from 9/10 to today' or 'open the letter I was working on yesterday'.
The user should also not see menu items, buttons, toolbars and other silly stuff...just the object being manipulated. Everything should be context-sensitive.
Who says that the objects will not be in directory systems? all the Phantom guy says is that the objects will be automatically persisted. But the objects will be organized in graphs, and the graphs will be stored automatically to disk.
Getting the data from one application to another would be a piece of cake: the other app would simply use the object.
Incremental backup? much easier. Just scan the objects, find their date attribute, copy newest objects into a new store, and voila, incremental backup.
Compressing? very simple: serialize the object into an array (another object), then compress the array.
Emailing? much simpler!!! simply program the following: new email().sendTo("foo@bar.com", data).
In short, you are saying that IBM engineers are stupid. Look here sonny...especially the part that says:
While in Unix-like systems everything is a file, on the System i everything is an object, with built-in persistence and garbage collection. It also offers Unix-like file directories using the Integrated File System. Java compatibility is implemented through a native port of the Java virtual machine.
So, it is not only doable, but the best software engineers have already done it 20 years ago and in one of the most critical sectors of the industry!!!
Ok, so you don't have to save anymore. Great. But now you have to deal with that you went to make tea, and your document now has your cat walking on the keyboard saved in it. You can't simply choose not to save, you have to figure out how many changes to undo to get the document to its pre-cat state. How many times do you have to press the undo button?
This can happen now as well. A cat walking over a keyboard can accidentally hit Ctrl+S and save the document or Alt+F4 and close the window. In either case, you don't want your cat around to mess with your computer.
And then there is this thing called 'locking'.
Same goes for extensive modificatons. Maybe you decided to drastically reformat the document, but then decide the idea doesn't look good after all. You can't choose not to save, you've either got to undo 50 times, or have created a copy before starting making the changes
Or pick a previous version from the available ones...like versioning systems provide for.
Here's another issue: since there's no save operation, the undo history has to be kept forever. This means that whoever you're sending the document to, if they're so inclined, can replay your writing process backwards to see if there was anything you changed your mind on. Or if using another document as a starting point, what was there before.
Nope. The document is archived in the versioning system when the user wants.
It also removes safety: I spend much time telling people that they can't easily break anything. With this system they can. Somebody who accidentally selects and overwrites the whole document will find out that even pulling the plug won't bring the document back. Now there's one excellent way of making a newbie really freak out.
You have never used a versioning system, have you?
What if you intentionally or by accident write something insulting in the document? How do you make the program remove the record of it?
Does it say anywhere that the user could not delete objects? it doesn't.
Here's another one: Imagine this sequence of commands: I type a long document, decide I didn't like the last changes, undo too much, and then press a single letter. Does in this moment the undo history become a tree, or do I lose the ability to redo the excessive undo?
Undo/redo has nothing to do with automated persistence.
Resuming: You remove one small thing, the need to explicitly save, and add the requirement of eternal undo (potential issues with embedded images here), requirement for the user to understand the undo system, requirement to design it in such a way that hours of work can be undone without getting RSI, add potential problems with disclosure of things that the user doesn't want to disclose, make it harder to do large experimental changes, and remove a way for an user to completely revert a change.
IMO this is too much of a mess for so little benefit.
Obviously, you don't have a clue. And so do slashdot modders, from what I can see.
If you want to talk about shame, then here is Greece we are last in solar and wind power...and we have sunshine 2/3 of the year and winds all over the season (because Greece is surrounded by sea)...
Let us also not forget that particles exist in wave form until observed. This means the universe 'caches' its graphics and shows them only when required.
The Wikipedia article is total nonsense. Patriotism has always meant to 'love my country', and that includes criticism of my country if I see that my country is wrong.
It's only in the last few years with the wicked Bush administration that patriotism reversed to 'hush, don't say anything, support our troops'.
The screen will only show the objects being viewed/edited. Hovering the mouse on top of the object will open a semi-transparent inactive menu with things to do with the object. Holding the command button down the semi-transparent menu becomes opaque and active and lets the user select the appropriate command.
Everything will be managed in this way. No more menu bars, start buttons and other silly things.
Don't hold your breath for something as radical as the mouse and graphics, it will never come. True voice recognition will mean digital AI at the level of humans. Nature's computers than can do such a task contain a realtime network of almost 100 billion neurons with 100 trillion connections (see wikipedia for the relevant article on the human brain). Building a computer with 100 billion small CPUs and 100 trillion connections is very far far away in the future.
And, bluntly, I'd rather have them copy a good concept than come up with a completely moronic one (Office 2007, I'm looking your way!) just to be "different"
Microsoft changed the Office 2007 UI because otherwise people would not feel the need to buy it. Office 2003 is more than adequate as an Office suite for the majority of people.
Expect Microsoft to do more changes to its products just for this reason in the future. We already have tools that cover our needs in a very satisfactory way, but if we do not buy the new and shiny Microsoft things, Microsoft will go out of business.
Let's also remember that sci-fi is about...science fiction.
Star Trek had not only a measurable impact on TV, but on life as well. Because, beyond moral dilemmas, it also shows some fictional science, inspiring some NASA engineers (and others, there was a documentary on History Channel).
If you feel the need to answer "yes" to the question "Do we have a right to kill off the indigenous population so that we can mine the materials we need?" , then there must be something wrong with you. Even under the most extreme circumstances, killing one person to satisfy another is not moral in the first place.
Star Trek took a stance, BSG does not. That's not a mark of better writing, its a mark of worse writing, because it's very easy not to answer questions. It's far harder to answer and justify your answers.
You don't measure the effectiveness of a weapon by the payload, but by how much damage it will do per unit of time. The nuke at Hiroshima killed 80,000 people the moment it exploded. The firebombing of Tokyo on 9-10 of March, 1945, killed almost 100,000 people, but it lasted 48 hours.
The nuke is a much more devastating weapon than the bombs. It not only kills equal or more people (instantly and in the long run), it also damages the moral of the enemy far more greatly than any other weapon.
Only the browser would have to not be installed. The individual components of IE that other applications use may be installed.
A possible solution to having no browser for downloads is to have a download manager installed, with 3 shortcuts to IE, Firefox and Opera (and perhaps other browsers, like Safari or Mozilla). Then the user downloads and installs the browser of choice.
Slashdot Mirror
Two of those things that are in abundance everywhere on the planet is the air and the sea.
Another potential source of energy is gravity. What goes up eventually goes down and can produce energy. Of course, making something go up requires energy as well, but nature offers materials that can assist in lifting things up...
Files, processes, sockets, ports, handles, open, close, double click, save...dinosaur computing systems indeed.
I support this guy's ideas to the fullest. It's hard to do, but it has been done before (see AS/400). It's time we get this technology to consumer level.
What you say makes a lot of sense.
The user should not see directories. She should perform queries like 'give me all the letters I wrote from 9/10 to today' or 'open the letter I was working on yesterday'.
The user should also not see menu items, buttons, toolbars and other silly stuff...just the object being manipulated. Everything should be context-sensitive.
Who says that the objects will not be in directory systems? all the Phantom guy says is that the objects will be automatically persisted. But the objects will be organized in graphs, and the graphs will be stored automatically to disk.
Getting the data from one application to another would be a piece of cake: the other app would simply use the object.
Incremental backup? much easier. Just scan the objects, find their date attribute, copy newest objects into a new store, and voila, incremental backup.
Compressing? very simple: serialize the object into an array (another object), then compress the array.
Emailing? much simpler!!! simply program the following: new email().sendTo("foo@bar.com", data).
In short, you are saying that IBM engineers are stupid. Look here sonny...especially the part that says:
So, it is not only doable, but the best software engineers have already done it 20 years ago and in one of the most critical sectors of the industry!!!
That's what journaling filesystems are for: you write the data to a different place, and if all goes ok, then you switch data.
Look, you've never used a database? do databases suffer from this problem? no? why not?
Come on people, let's do some thinking and discover some real problems with automated persistence!
This can happen now as well. A cat walking over a keyboard can accidentally hit Ctrl+S and save the document or Alt+F4 and close the window. In either case, you don't want your cat around to mess with your computer. And then there is this thing called 'locking'.
Or pick a previous version from the available ones...like versioning systems provide for.
Nope. The document is archived in the versioning system when the user wants.
You have never used a versioning system, have you?
Does it say anywhere that the user could not delete objects? it doesn't.
Undo/redo has nothing to do with automated persistence.
Obviously, you don't have a clue. And so do slashdot modders, from what I can see.
The object will open automatically in two programs, as if you used one Java object from two threads, for example.
Sony will get its CPU from Intel, not its GPU.
...DNF is released.
If you want to talk about shame, then here is Greece we are last in solar and wind power...and we have sunshine 2/3 of the year and winds all over the season (because Greece is surrounded by sea)...
What about machines? shouldn't this galaxy have been conquered by machines by now?
...and ads for tissues for the you-know-who crowd...
Let us also not forget that particles exist in wave form until observed. This means the universe 'caches' its graphics and shows them only when required.
C++ has exactly the same run-time environment as C.
Please sir. You do not understand. Windows ain't done till Duke Nukem Forever can run!!!
The Wikipedia article is total nonsense. Patriotism has always meant to 'love my country', and that includes criticism of my country if I see that my country is wrong.
It's only in the last few years with the wicked Bush administration that patriotism reversed to 'hush, don't say anything, support our troops'.
Would it be possible for these mini black holes to collide and fuse? and create a bigger one?
Here is a simple idea: the object-oriented GUI.
The screen will only show the objects being viewed/edited. Hovering the mouse on top of the object will open a semi-transparent inactive menu with things to do with the object. Holding the command button down the semi-transparent menu becomes opaque and active and lets the user select the appropriate command.
Everything will be managed in this way. No more menu bars, start buttons and other silly things.
Don't hold your breath for something as radical as the mouse and graphics, it will never come. True voice recognition will mean digital AI at the level of humans. Nature's computers than can do such a task contain a realtime network of almost 100 billion neurons with 100 trillion connections (see wikipedia for the relevant article on the human brain). Building a computer with 100 billion small CPUs and 100 trillion connections is very far far away in the future.
Microsoft changed the Office 2007 UI because otherwise people would not feel the need to buy it. Office 2003 is more than adequate as an Office suite for the majority of people. Expect Microsoft to do more changes to its products just for this reason in the future. We already have tools that cover our needs in a very satisfactory way, but if we do not buy the new and shiny Microsoft things, Microsoft will go out of business.
Let's also remember that sci-fi is about ...science fiction.
Star Trek had not only a measurable impact on TV, but on life as well. Because, beyond moral dilemmas, it also shows some fictional science, inspiring some NASA engineers (and others, there was a documentary on History Channel).
Actually, the original was more entertaining. Not better, but more entertaining.
If you feel the need to answer "yes" to the question "Do we have a right to kill off the indigenous population so that we can mine the materials we need?" , then there must be something wrong with you. Even under the most extreme circumstances, killing one person to satisfy another is not moral in the first place.
Star Trek took a stance, BSG does not. That's not a mark of better writing, its a mark of worse writing, because it's very easy not to answer questions. It's far harder to answer and justify your answers.
You don't measure the effectiveness of a weapon by the payload, but by how much damage it will do per unit of time. The nuke at Hiroshima killed 80,000 people the moment it exploded. The firebombing of Tokyo on 9-10 of March, 1945, killed almost 100,000 people, but it lasted 48 hours.
The nuke is a much more devastating weapon than the bombs. It not only kills equal or more people (instantly and in the long run), it also damages the moral of the enemy far more greatly than any other weapon.
> statistically the average age that people lose their virginity is 14
Have you realized what you just posted on Slashdot? do the words 'insensitive clod' mean nothing to you?
Only the browser would have to not be installed. The individual components of IE that other applications use may be installed.
A possible solution to having no browser for downloads is to have a download manager installed, with 3 shortcuts to IE, Firefox and Opera (and perhaps other browsers, like Safari or Mozilla). Then the user downloads and installs the browser of choice.