Nothing that can't be done with disks. Get it easy, we are just talking about replacing a disk with a chip. Anything can go on a chip, as anything can go at the disk's controller.
Mathematics are a good way to generalize stuff. You can learn less and know the same things if you know math better. It is also a very usefull language that has all science dependent upon.
But get out of this "math solves everything" attitude. It doesn't tell you anything, you had to discover how to calculate that area (did you really mean volume? You got an area.), the same way you'd need to do if you didn't know math. The only advantagge is that you discovered how to calculate the area of all circles at the same time.
MS messenger is prettier. At least this is what people tel me. From what I can see, MS messenger interface displays better the functions of the MSN network. Most people I see chose it because of strict user interfaces problems, and those problems are inherent from the multi network nature of the other messengers.
I was thinking about this recently. The problem is that you need a really higth power laser to create a medium that lasts. If the material is inert (the nearer that I can think about are gold and glass, preferably glass), the degradation time will decrease exponentialy with the laser power*. That is good, but even then, you'll need a very powerful laser.
Things can go better if you use some kind of revelation process, like films. Then you can create higth energy recordings with a low energy laser and a chemical reaction. The problem is that inert media don't sufer chemical reactions easily, that is by definition. Other alternative is using a mechanical process. Mechanical processes with the power required to make your media last a very long time are easy to engineer, but they are not very precise. So, we end up with a low density medium.
The only thing I can see how to create a long lasting medium with is eletrical fuses. I think it is possible to design a hight density PROM chip with this characteristic, but I never saw one.
* The odds of any process happenning that will destroy your data decreases exponentialy with the energy that this process needs to happen. That is, if you use an inert material.
"I use grey as the default background color rather than white."
I find the black background with huge bright characters of the old fashioned full-screen CLI to be much easier to the eyes than a detailed bright GUI. People think I'm a crazy bastard to spend most of my time on emacs while there are some (arguably) better alternatives out there, but after a long coding session my eyes are just fine.
And I think this way since I first met a GUI (ok I didn't code so much by that time), when I was about 14 years old. It is not a case of tired eyes.
There is a hell lot of more expensive, lower-quality reserves out there. Don't compare that with oil, that has supply of low quality reserves for a few decades, uranium reserves are huge, but we use only the very few that gives a lower cost product.
And, yes, solar can be the way to go, until our energy need increase 1000 times at least, but people don't have plenty of it out of the tropics.
Have you ever tried to use the WinXP partitioner? It artificialy limits the number of partitions you can have on your HD, it can't create any kind of modern FS, it requires an enormous technical understanding of what you are doing (not sure if it is bad) and it has a bloated interface that requires an enormous amount of typping (with correspondent typos) for anything and is much less powerfull than any Linux partitioner that I've used.
My bet is that most of this perceived improvement on quality is due to a low noise ratio and the absense of deterioration at the old movies (i.e. because it is digital). Probably most of those people didn't even noticed that beter definition.
"Specifically about video, I've sent people video and had to iterate through several different codec downloads and lots of software installs before they hit something that worked."
Well, when you have a legal system that outlaws writting codecs, you get this situation. Want a fix? It is not on the OS.
Out of the US and with a free player (the proprietary ones dont asjust to the more free situations), you don't have this problem. If you doubt (and don't live on the US), try that on any Linux player.
" guess I'm the only one on Slashdot who thinks it's reasonable for record labels to want to make some money."
You are probably alone. If you've said that it is reasonable for the artist to make some money, I'd be with you. Even if you've said that it is reasonable for the artist to make enogh money to pay a third party to promote and distribute the content, I'd agree. But why the hell do you think that the label should make money?
Implementing a garbage collector for this language, even if optional, will kill it. There is a reason for C++ still not having one, it is because it is impossible to write one without restricting the language. Even if you can disable the collector, you'll can not use the constructions that it doesn't unerstand, so this C++0x wont be suitable exactly to what C++ does well.
If you want Java with native widgets, please, rewrite the widgets, not Java!
What about the internet, is it enogth? If not, take a look at Sourceforge or the Debian repository, you'll see plenty of new stuff there. But if you are expecting open source to magicaly create hard IA or something like that, it won't.
"And even worse: will we notice?"
It semms that you won't.
"I do admit that open source projects have features that commercial projects never bothered to implement (image dumps from video files in VideoLan comes to mind) but I struggle to find something completely new."
Would you mind to tell what you mean on a coherent way?
"I think you'd be foolish to trust that the crew of experts you hired is going to stick around, and be able to solve any problem that comes up. Sooner or later, something high-profile will die. Who do you call??"
I call that bullshit! The only thing that "die" is hardware, and you shouldn't be dependent of any specific hardware. Software doesn't simply "die" (unless you are using that very secure OS that that very competent company sells), you shouldn't have any software emergency (problems on projects, otherwise, are expected).
But if you pay bellow market salaries, and exploits your crew of experts to the point of exaustion (guess what) you really shouldn't trust them (even more if you HR dept is full of morons), so you are more than excused from spending fortunes on support.
"It's like saying, something happens in reality only the very moment you know it. Turn on CNN, and all what they are reporting on, just happened at that very moment you learnt of it, and if you did not hear it or know it, then it did not happen! Crack!"
And how can you be so sure that it does not happen this way? How can you know that the CNN news would happen if you didn't hear about it?
How can you say that the cat isn't dead and alive at the sam time if you didn't open the box?
The must anoying thing about making predictions are those guys that come saying "... bla bla bla... the sky is FALLING!". So, the sky really falls, and they shut up. But a week later, you make another prediction, and they say the same thing again.
You know... There are people out there who really know what they are talking about. Those persons are capable of making a real diagnosis of the situation, and you'd better folowing their advice.
Specificaly for this thread, the only speculation the GP does is that the sky will fall in 2006, not 2007 or 2008. Everybody already knows that it will fall soon, and it isn't even a hard guess, because there are plenty of evidence pointing that the fall will happen next year.
About the other discussion (abrupt or slow falling), My guess (based on a lot of evidences) is that the US (with the world toguether) will face several abrupt hits, with one of them being next year. Every hit, you'll have the chance of avoiding the next ones, but it will become harder and harder to do, since you will probably answer to them with increased protectionism and power concentration.
How many software developpers you have seen buying a proprietary library without readding the fine print? Why don't they? Why didn't those inform themselves about MySQL? It is not because there a few people out there who know the GPL, that I am sure about.
Just because you know some moron it doesn't make make the GPL something unethical. And there is no fine print! If you make a 5 minute research at the FSF web page you'll know more than enogh to know that you shouldn't use a GPL library on a proprietary program. If you just read the home page of MySQL, you'll discover that you must pay them to use it on a proprietary program.
Stop blamming the GPL what should be blammed on stupidity!
3) If you need boring stuff done, you must pay a highter price. Basic microeconomics.
4) It is not "skratch an itch", it is "fell free to pay someone to scratch your itch". That is an potentiality of FOSS that people always throw out to "I'm not a programmer" complainers. Also, there are a few things that the scratch an itch model may never deliver well (but paid for development solves), like integration.
5) Totaly agree, it must be expanded. But for some of those things, contests are better than bounties.
Oh yes, it could. It could happen even by not checking the replicated bots apropriately, getting random errors on the code.
All you need to have for a grey goo situation is an imperfect self replicating being capable of doing that outdoors. And this will probably be the goal of any nanobots project. The only part missing is to replicate without control.
Biotech patents are on a much worse situation than software ones. At least, on software we can still do basic research without paying taxes^W roalties to some company.
That is the real problem, since life seems to not be covered by copyrights. At least until some realy clever lawer get on the way.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing that can't be done with disks. Get it easy, we are just talking about replacing a disk with a chip. Anything can go on a chip, as anything can go at the disk's controller.
Mathematics are a good way to generalize stuff. You can learn less and know the same things if you know math better. It is also a very usefull language that has all science dependent upon.
But get out of this "math solves everything" attitude. It doesn't tell you anything, you had to discover how to calculate that area (did you really mean volume? You got an area.), the same way you'd need to do if you didn't know math. The only advantagge is that you discovered how to calculate the area of all circles at the same time.
MS messenger is prettier. At least this is what people tel me. From what I can see, MS messenger interface displays better the functions of the MSN network. Most people I see chose it because of strict user interfaces problems, and those problems are inherent from the multi network nature of the other messengers.
I was thinking about this recently. The problem is that you need a really higth power laser to create a medium that lasts. If the material is inert (the nearer that I can think about are gold and glass, preferably glass), the degradation time will decrease exponentialy with the laser power*. That is good, but even then, you'll need a very powerful laser.
Things can go better if you use some kind of revelation process, like films. Then you can create higth energy recordings with a low energy laser and a chemical reaction. The problem is that inert media don't sufer chemical reactions easily, that is by definition. Other alternative is using a mechanical process. Mechanical processes with the power required to make your media last a very long time are easy to engineer, but they are not very precise. So, we end up with a low density medium.
The only thing I can see how to create a long lasting medium with is eletrical fuses. I think it is possible to design a hight density PROM chip with this characteristic, but I never saw one.
* The odds of any process happenning that will destroy your data decreases exponentialy with the energy that this process needs to happen. That is, if you use an inert material.
"I use grey as the default background color rather than white."
I find the black background with huge bright characters of the old fashioned full-screen CLI to be much easier to the eyes than a detailed bright GUI. People think I'm a crazy bastard to spend most of my time on emacs while there are some (arguably) better alternatives out there, but after a long coding session my eyes are just fine.
And I think this way since I first met a GUI (ok I didn't code so much by that time), when I was about 14 years old. It is not a case of tired eyes.
There is a hell lot of more expensive, lower-quality reserves out there. Don't compare that with oil, that has supply of low quality reserves for a few decades, uranium reserves are huge, but we use only the very few that gives a lower cost product.
And, yes, solar can be the way to go, until our energy need increase 1000 times at least, but people don't have plenty of it out of the tropics.
Have you ever tried to use the WinXP partitioner? It artificialy limits the number of partitions you can have on your HD, it can't create any kind of modern FS, it requires an enormous technical understanding of what you are doing (not sure if it is bad) and it has a bloated interface that requires an enormous amount of typping (with correspondent typos) for anything and is much less powerfull than any Linux partitioner that I've used.
If you have resolvconf installed, it is somewhere in /etc/resolvconf (RTFM). If not, it is at /etc/resolv.conf.
And you'll probably get better answers if you post this on a forum directed to that topic. And, yes, if I was willing to mod, I'd mod you down.
Has anyone around here saw a flash drive that you can plug on a IDE (or SCSI) interface? That may be a very usefull step into replacing HDs.
My bet is that most of this perceived improvement on quality is due to a low noise ratio and the absense of deterioration at the old movies (i.e. because it is digital). Probably most of those people didn't even noticed that beter definition.
You should never neeed to use a firewall on a computer with only one network interface!
Well, when you have a legal system that outlaws writting codecs, you get this situation. Want a fix? It is not on the OS.
Out of the US and with a free player (the proprietary ones dont asjust to the more free situations), you don't have this problem. If you doubt (and don't live on the US), try that on any Linux player.
Why would someone not use a BSD lincesed software? I can understand why someone wouldn't not write software on this license, but not use.
Anyway, if you are not confortable with it, you can always make a GPLed package that is composed of LILO :)
You are probably alone. If you've said that it is reasonable for the artist to make some money, I'd be with you. Even if you've said that it is reasonable for the artist to make enogh money to pay a third party to promote and distribute the content, I'd agree. But why the hell do you think that the label should make money?
Implementing a garbage collector for this language, even if optional, will kill it. There is a reason for C++ still not having one, it is because it is impossible to write one without restricting the language. Even if you can disable the collector, you'll can not use the constructions that it doesn't unerstand, so this C++0x wont be suitable exactly to what C++ does well.
If you want Java with native widgets, please, rewrite the widgets, not Java!
Ok, you are a troll. But I'll answer anyway.
What about the internet, is it enogth? If not, take a look at Sourceforge or the Debian repository, you'll see plenty of new stuff there. But if you are expecting open source to magicaly create hard IA or something like that, it won't.
It semms that you won't.
Would you mind to tell what you mean on a coherent way?
I call that bullshit! The only thing that "die" is hardware, and you shouldn't be dependent of any specific hardware. Software doesn't simply "die" (unless you are using that very secure OS that that very competent company sells), you shouldn't have any software emergency (problems on projects, otherwise, are expected).
But if you pay bellow market salaries, and exploits your crew of experts to the point of exaustion (guess what) you really shouldn't trust them (even more if you HR dept is full of morons), so you are more than excused from spending fortunes on support.
And how can you be so sure that it does not happen this way? How can you know that the CNN news would happen if you didn't hear about it?
How can you say that the cat isn't dead and alive at the sam time if you didn't open the box?
At least you are free to rename the packages into anything you want... And maybe you should.
The must anoying thing about making predictions are those guys that come saying " ... bla bla bla ... the sky is FALLING!". So, the sky really falls, and they shut up. But a week later, you make another prediction, and they say the same thing again.
You know... There are people out there who really know what they are talking about. Those persons are capable of making a real diagnosis of the situation, and you'd better folowing their advice.
Specificaly for this thread, the only speculation the GP does is that the sky will fall in 2006, not 2007 or 2008. Everybody already knows that it will fall soon, and it isn't even a hard guess, because there are plenty of evidence pointing that the fall will happen next year.
About the other discussion (abrupt or slow falling), My guess (based on a lot of evidences) is that the US (with the world toguether) will face several abrupt hits, with one of them being next year. Every hit, you'll have the chance of avoiding the next ones, but it will become harder and harder to do, since you will probably answer to them with increased protectionism and power concentration.
How many software developpers you have seen buying a proprietary library without readding the fine print? Why don't they? Why didn't those inform themselves about MySQL? It is not because there a few people out there who know the GPL, that I am sure about.
Just because you know some moron it doesn't make make the GPL something unethical. And there is no fine print! If you make a 5 minute research at the FSF web page you'll know more than enogh to know that you shouldn't use a GPL library on a proprietary program. If you just read the home page of MySQL, you'll discover that you must pay them to use it on a proprietary program.
Stop blamming the GPL what should be blammed on stupidity!
Some alternative points:
3) If you need boring stuff done, you must pay a highter price. Basic microeconomics.
4) It is not "skratch an itch", it is "fell free to pay someone to scratch your itch". That is an potentiality of FOSS that people always throw out to "I'm not a programmer" complainers. Also, there are a few things that the scratch an itch model may never deliver well (but paid for development solves), like integration.
5) Totaly agree, it must be expanded. But for some of those things, contests are better than bounties.
Oh yes, it could. It could happen even by not checking the replicated bots apropriately, getting random errors on the code.
All you need to have for a grey goo situation is an imperfect self replicating being capable of doing that outdoors. And this will probably be the goal of any nanobots project. The only part missing is to replicate without control.
Biotech patents are on a much worse situation than software ones. At least, on software we can still do basic research without paying taxes^W roalties to some company.
That is the real problem, since life seems to not be covered by copyrights. At least until some realy clever lawer get on the way.
Now I know why telecom companies want so hard to outlaw it. It is anoying!