Isn't Century City something like what you describe? Sure, it's not the ST universe, but it's a look at the future of law and enforcement of that law in the future.
I have been using Mandrake since 9.1 and am currently running 10.0
My wife and children complain when I break it (doing stupid stuff) because they HATE using Windows XP now. They complain about speed, usability, and the fact that it cannot seem to keep a connection through my 802.11b USB. It also does not normally detect it the first time, and it has to be unplugged then plugged back in.
The only reason we even have Windows at all is because there are games that only run in Windows. For security reasons we only use Linux for email, web, etc.
I am quite certain my wife would have no trouble installing Linux, even though she has never actually seen me install it.
trying to read that patent. It's no wonder patent attorneys make so much money! And I thought linux documentation was dull (except for the occasional schizophrenic programmer who goes off in the comments).
I have believed for some time now that patenting business processes is just plain stupid, but from what I was able to comprehend in this patent, it does not seem like a standard business process patent. If they are able to prove that they own this kind of updating service method, Microsoft, Apple and a number of others could be in some pretty hot water. There is potentially a lot of money involved with this kind of thing. The fact that they have not enforced their patent against these big name companies might hurt their chances.
Anyone else creeped out by this?
on
Biomorphic Software
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
This sentence in the article was rather creepy to me: With minor exceptions, each cell contains the information to become any one of the 256 or so types.
I bet it is directly related to how they develop their stuff and how they develop it. Their tools like Visual Studio are geared towards their own browser (even though it can be used to write compliant code) and I would imagine that they are not encouraged to use other browsers during testing, or if they do, it would be minimal. They do not have a good reason to spend extra effort to make sure it works in other browsers, so they take the easy route provided by the tools.
I've personally seen this happen on a smaller scale. I am currently working on several web projects, all of which are ECMA and HTML 4 compliant completely, so I always keep cross-platform in mind while writing the code, but I still use MSXML3 because it's so damned easy to use when you're writing ASP and XSL.
Our shop has basically been forced into IE 5.5 SP2 or greater only. This is because the web facing part of our CRM is very VERY MS focused. The CRM vendor is a Microsoft lackey it seems like, and is completely dependent on Windows environments and SQL server, as well as Microsoft Exchange too.
Personally, it drives me up the wall, but I don't really have any way to convince anyone to switch to something else, as we have invested heavily in customizing this application to our very specific needs. The data would be VERY easy to move to another database system, as it is pretty much fully ANSI compliant stuff, but 99% of the business logic is built in their proprietary system and could not be replicated easily (by hand!).
I run Mandrake 10 at home and am actually able to get Mozilla to work with the web facing application, but at the same time, it took me several hours to make that happen with a number of extensions and modifications. Macs are completely unable to use it, even using Windows installed in Microsoft's Virtual PC.
They will never get any first-adopters now! They told everyone that after 1 million units it will drop to $100! So everyone will wait, no one will buy it, and it will die.
Thanks for the input. I was in Tae Kwan Do for some time, but left because the owner was a d***. Never went back. I have no experience with Karate, so it's nice to hear someone who knows recommending it.
Someday I may own a gun, at which point I would definitely teach my children about it, and possibly how to use it (depending on their age) effectively. I'm actually a qualified "expert" marksman (at least with a.22).
My point was not that I was not going to teach my children about violence, or not teach them about the tools of violence, I just don't feel it's appropriate for them to view these things as toys, i.e. something to play with.
Hey, thanks for pointing this out. I didn't make myself clear enough before. I'm not saying that my children shouldn't learn about the real world, and I do teach them about that, but that's different than thinking that hurting other people is a form of entertainment.
My oldest is 8, and we are considering sending him to karate or tae kwan do. If I were a gun person (i.e. own or use), I would certainly teach my children how to handle them and fire them.
There's just a difference of opinion about teaching your children about violence and that it is not a good thing, and at the same time teaching them how to deal with it appropriately.
God what a bag of worms I opened. Really, it's not my fault, I just was commenting on the second article linked about parents wanting to ban violent toys!
I know, replying to myself, but instead of just replying to one of the comments directed at me, I'll just do that here.
So to answer those people who stated that kids should play with guns, please elaborate on why that is a good thing? Do you want them to play with knives too? How about matches? Or do you teach your children at all about the dangers of the world?
Seems like a bunch of people with no children replying, I don't even know why I'm responding.
allowed in our house. We don't let them even pretend to make guns with legos or shoot at each other with their fingers. We have a longbow and arrows and I take my oldest son shooting with me at the range and at Renaissance Faires. I have taught him safety and that a bow is a deadly weapon, even though it seems like a toy. We have had discussions about guns, fighting, and violence in general, and have explained that there are a lot of parents who do not have the same rules that we do, and that our children will have to live with not being able to fight back unless absolutely necessary.
Since the inception of this set of rules, our children never get physically violent with anyone at any time, nor do they shout or yell at each other. Sure, they will of course bug each other, and get angry, but they work it out themselves most of the time.
I am not advocating that we should ban violence or violent toys, I'm just stating that as a parent, I have made the choice not to raise my children with violence being equated with fun.
Personally, I had very mixed feelings after the second, but decided to reserve judgement until I had seen the third and saw the Matrix as a complete whole. I now own all three DVDs and found that I truly liked the entire series as a whole when I watched sequentially with no break at all. I did not have any problems suspending my disbelief and really got into the story much more.
The important thing to remember is that these are JUST MOVIES and are for entertainment, not personal enlightenment. That would be like watching Little Buddha to attain Nirvana.
I was just about to ask the same question, but decided to search for anyone else who might have the same idea. It's not that I don't want to use Wine, or that I have come to hate and despise the Windows interface, it's just that I FUCKING HATE IT.
It's really amazing. I just started using Linux about 6 months ago for the first time, and now I hate having to go to work, only because I have to use Windows.
Mandrake 10 is even better than 9.1 and the more I learn about it, and the more I use it, the better I love it.
If a site is featured on/., Fark, Drudge, Howard Stern or any other popular geek hangout, and they al l do it at the same time, when the site in question is taken down, what term should be used? SlashFarkudge?
That's true, but at what expense? Let's say the vendor that a customer is using goes out of business and has done some significant backporting and customization of their kernel. Some of the vendor's applications depend upon this and thus would need some modification to make it work with a vanilla kernel. At that point, there could be significant cost to the customer.
I know that it's a hypothetical situation, but I see it every day at work. The vendor that we are using has built their software and applications in such a way that we cannot migrate any of our applications off of Microsoft platforms because of very specific tie-ins to SQL Server, IIS, and Windows 2000.
The data could move just fine, but all the business logic would be toast.
I just can see this kind of thing happening with a forked and backported kernel. I don't think it is anywhere near as likely, but something to consider.
I believe Linus touched on this point pretty eloquently.
The basic issue that I believe is the root of the problem is that at the end of the day, the majority of Linux users and developers are generally in synch and moving along at a brisk pace, while the backported and modified kernels are effectively not supported except by the specific vendor that created the fork. This basically will always either lock the customer in or make it more difficult to integrate new features if the customer wishes to switch vendors. This is like turning forks into a mini Windows.
I think I would like to speak to what we were looking for in a candidate.
Mostly what we were looking for is a particular mindset with some basic Comp Sci skills. A bachelor's in Comp Sci wasn't even necessary.
Personally I am also making $45K right, looking to go above $50K next year. All based on skill versus knowing particular languages/environments.
You're either good with computers or you're not, and it doesn't seem to matter how many years of classes you take, if you're not good with it, you never will be.
I only say this because it seems that it takes a very special ability that seems inherent in growing up and thinking about things in a certain way. It's rather hard to describe.
If you're prevented from releasing this information until tomorrow, are you in serious danger having posted this? And why are you posting this information if it's so critical to not disclose it until tomorrow? Do you not have any sense of moral obligation to follow the rules on this one?
Sorry for the criticism, but it seems a bit immoral for you to be posting this top secret information ehre.
Hm... I don't know. I'm at work right now, but I'll go take a look at it when I get home tonight and post that reply here. I suspect that I didn't change any of the defaults except for resolution on either version of AA:O. I prefer 1024x768.
I bought an nVidia Ti4200 128mb card, and installed it in both Windows XP and Mandrake 9.1 I play a lot of America's Army, so I decided to benchmark. I have a TON of things installed in Mandrake, all sorts of background applets in Gnome, etc. (I'm a Linux newbie too). Windows XP I have stripped to the bare minimum (including pulling out all sorts of 'extra' crap they throw at home users) because all I ever use it for is to play games now.
I was getting a maximum of 75FPS in Windows, and 130FPS in Mandrake, under Gnome. I got it up to 145FPS in Blackbox. A MAJOR difference. I've been trying to figure out why, but have been scratching my head so far. I've got 256mb DDR 400 on an ALI something or other mobo, with an Athlon 1800+ (i.e. 1.533 GHz). Everything is installed straight out of the box, all I've done in Mandrake and Windows is use nVidia's latest drivers. I've also installed all Windows Updates including DirectX 9.0a(b?). I'm not in Windows right now, so I can't be sure.
Just something to add to the pile of stories about Mandrake/Windows performance.
Their analogy of Vanilla Ice vs. David Bowie/Queen does fit a little bit. But the one thing you have to keep in mind as well is that computer code and music might have some superficial similarities, but are vastly different that music still works if some pieces of it are misplaced, or rearranged, even if it sounds bad. Code does not. You change a couple of letters in a piece of code, and the entire program/application could come crashing down completely.
The scary thing is that these kinds of arguments would work pretty well in a courtroom, because people who don't code don't think like coders do, and these arguments would seem compelling and reasonable.
We will of course see how the courts interpret this type of issue in the coming months and years.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't Century City something like what you describe? Sure, it's not the ST universe, but it's a look at the future of law and enforcement of that law in the future.
I have been using Mandrake since 9.1 and am currently running 10.0
My wife and children complain when I break it (doing stupid stuff) because they HATE using Windows XP now. They complain about speed, usability, and the fact that it cannot seem to keep a connection through my 802.11b USB. It also does not normally detect it the first time, and it has to be unplugged then plugged back in.
The only reason we even have Windows at all is because there are games that only run in Windows. For security reasons we only use Linux for email, web, etc.
I am quite certain my wife would have no trouble installing Linux, even though she has never actually seen me install it.
I actually think I want to have her do it now!
trying to read that patent. It's no wonder patent attorneys make so much money! And I thought linux documentation was dull (except for the occasional schizophrenic programmer who goes off in the comments).
I have believed for some time now that patenting business processes is just plain stupid, but from what I was able to comprehend in this patent, it does not seem like a standard business process patent. If they are able to prove that they own this kind of updating service method, Microsoft, Apple and a number of others could be in some pretty hot water. There is potentially a lot of money involved with this kind of thing. The fact that they have not enforced their patent against these big name companies might hurt their chances.
This sentence in the article was rather creepy to me:
With minor exceptions, each cell contains the information to become any one of the 256 or so types.
That number coming up in biology is interesting.
I bet it is directly related to how they develop their stuff and how they develop it. Their tools like Visual Studio are geared towards their own browser (even though it can be used to write compliant code) and I would imagine that they are not encouraged to use other browsers during testing, or if they do, it would be minimal. They do not have a good reason to spend extra effort to make sure it works in other browsers, so they take the easy route provided by the tools.
I've personally seen this happen on a smaller scale. I am currently working on several web projects, all of which are ECMA and HTML 4 compliant completely, so I always keep cross-platform in mind while writing the code, but I still use MSXML3 because it's so damned easy to use when you're writing ASP and XSL.
Our shop has basically been forced into IE 5.5 SP2 or greater only. This is because the web facing part of our CRM is very VERY MS focused. The CRM vendor is a Microsoft lackey it seems like, and is completely dependent on Windows environments and SQL server, as well as Microsoft Exchange too.
Personally, it drives me up the wall, but I don't really have any way to convince anyone to switch to something else, as we have invested heavily in customizing this application to our very specific needs. The data would be VERY easy to move to another database system, as it is pretty much fully ANSI compliant stuff, but 99% of the business logic is built in their proprietary system and could not be replicated easily (by hand!).
I run Mandrake 10 at home and am actually able to get Mozilla to work with the web facing application, but at the same time, it took me several hours to make that happen with a number of extensions and modifications. Macs are completely unable to use it, even using Windows installed in Microsoft's Virtual PC.
Totally ridiculous!
They will never get any first-adopters now! They told everyone that after 1 million units it will drop to $100! So everyone will wait, no one will buy it, and it will die.
Bye bye, Mr. Tactile Digital Assistant!
Thanks for the input. I was in Tae Kwan Do for some time, but left because the owner was a d***. Never went back. I have no experience with Karate, so it's nice to hear someone who knows recommending it.
.22).
Someday I may own a gun, at which point I would definitely teach my children about it, and possibly how to use it (depending on their age) effectively. I'm actually a qualified "expert" marksman (at least with a
My point was not that I was not going to teach my children about violence, or not teach them about the tools of violence, I just don't feel it's appropriate for them to view these things as toys, i.e. something to play with.
Hey, thanks for pointing this out. I didn't make myself clear enough before. I'm not saying that my children shouldn't learn about the real world, and I do teach them about that, but that's different than thinking that hurting other people is a form of entertainment.
My oldest is 8, and we are considering sending him to karate or tae kwan do. If I were a gun person (i.e. own or use), I would certainly teach my children how to handle them and fire them.
There's just a difference of opinion about teaching your children about violence and that it is not a good thing, and at the same time teaching them how to deal with it appropriately.
God what a bag of worms I opened. Really, it's not my fault, I just was commenting on the second article linked about parents wanting to ban violent toys!
I know, replying to myself, but instead of just replying to one of the comments directed at me, I'll just do that here.
So to answer those people who stated that kids should play with guns, please elaborate on why that is a good thing? Do you want them to play with knives too? How about matches? Or do you teach your children at all about the dangers of the world?
Seems like a bunch of people with no children replying, I don't even know why I'm responding.
*sigh*
allowed in our house. We don't let them even pretend to make guns with legos or shoot at each other with their fingers. We have a longbow and arrows and I take my oldest son shooting with me at the range and at Renaissance Faires. I have taught him safety and that a bow is a deadly weapon, even though it seems like a toy. We have had discussions about guns, fighting, and violence in general, and have explained that there are a lot of parents who do not have the same rules that we do, and that our children will have to live with not being able to fight back unless absolutely necessary.
Since the inception of this set of rules, our children never get physically violent with anyone at any time, nor do they shout or yell at each other. Sure, they will of course bug each other, and get angry, but they work it out themselves most of the time.
I am not advocating that we should ban violence or violent toys, I'm just stating that as a parent, I have made the choice not to raise my children with violence being equated with fun.
I agree with you there.
Personally, I had very mixed feelings after the second, but decided to reserve judgement until I had seen the third and saw the Matrix as a complete whole. I now own all three DVDs and found that I truly liked the entire series as a whole when I watched sequentially with no break at all. I did not have any problems suspending my disbelief and really got into the story much more.
The important thing to remember is that these are JUST MOVIES and are for entertainment, not personal enlightenment. That would be like watching Little Buddha to attain Nirvana.
Piers Anthony, is that you?
I was just about to ask the same question, but decided to search for anyone else who might have the same idea. It's not that I don't want to use Wine, or that I have come to hate and despise the Windows interface, it's just that I FUCKING HATE IT.
It's really amazing. I just started using Linux about 6 months ago for the first time, and now I hate having to go to work, only because I have to use Windows.
Mandrake 10 is even better than 9.1 and the more I learn about it, and the more I use it, the better I love it.
So that brings up an interesting question.
/., Fark, Drudge, Howard Stern or any other popular geek hangout, and they al l do it at the same time, when the site in question is taken down, what term should be used? SlashFarkudge?
If a site is featured on
Oh gawd, you're right.
I've been consumed by the corporate lingo machine. Comes from talking to the CEO too much.
That's true, but at what expense? Let's say the vendor that a customer is using goes out of business and has done some significant backporting and customization of their kernel. Some of the vendor's applications depend upon this and thus would need some modification to make it work with a vanilla kernel. At that point, there could be significant cost to the customer.
I know that it's a hypothetical situation, but I see it every day at work. The vendor that we are using has built their software and applications in such a way that we cannot migrate any of our applications off of Microsoft platforms because of very specific tie-ins to SQL Server, IIS, and Windows 2000.
The data could move just fine, but all the business logic would be toast.
I just can see this kind of thing happening with a forked and backported kernel. I don't think it is anywhere near as likely, but something to consider.
can be good in specific instances.
I believe Linus touched on this point pretty eloquently.
The basic issue that I believe is the root of the problem is that at the end of the day, the majority of Linux users and developers are generally in synch and moving along at a brisk pace, while the backported and modified kernels are effectively not supported except by the specific vendor that created the fork. This basically will always either lock the customer in or make it more difficult to integrate new features if the customer wishes to switch vendors. This is like turning forks into a mini Windows.
Just my $.02
I think I would like to speak to what we were looking for in a candidate.
Mostly what we were looking for is a particular mindset with some basic Comp Sci skills. A bachelor's in Comp Sci wasn't even necessary.
Personally I am also making $45K right, looking to go above $50K next year. All based on skill versus knowing particular languages/environments.
You're either good with computers or you're not, and it doesn't seem to matter how many years of classes you take, if you're not good with it, you never will be.
I only say this because it seems that it takes a very special ability that seems inherent in growing up and thinking about things in a certain way. It's rather hard to describe.
If you're prevented from releasing this information until tomorrow, are you in serious danger having posted this? And why are you posting this information if it's so critical to not disclose it until tomorrow? Do you not have any sense of moral obligation to follow the rules on this one?
Sorry for the criticism, but it seems a bit immoral for you to be posting this top secret information ehre.
Hm... I don't know. I'm at work right now, but I'll go take a look at it when I get home tonight and post that reply here. I suspect that I didn't change any of the defaults except for resolution on either version of AA:O. I prefer 1024x768.
Interesting comment about Video cards.
I bought an nVidia Ti4200 128mb card, and installed it in both Windows XP and Mandrake 9.1 I play a lot of America's Army, so I decided to benchmark. I have a TON of things installed in Mandrake, all sorts of background applets in Gnome, etc. (I'm a Linux newbie too). Windows XP I have stripped to the bare minimum (including pulling out all sorts of 'extra' crap they throw at home users) because all I ever use it for is to play games now.
I was getting a maximum of 75FPS in Windows, and 130FPS in Mandrake, under Gnome. I got it up to 145FPS in Blackbox. A MAJOR difference. I've been trying to figure out why, but have been scratching my head so far. I've got 256mb DDR 400 on an ALI something or other mobo, with an Athlon 1800+ (i.e. 1.533 GHz). Everything is installed straight out of the box, all I've done in Mandrake and Windows is use nVidia's latest drivers. I've also installed all Windows Updates including DirectX 9.0a(b?). I'm not in Windows right now, so I can't be sure.
Just something to add to the pile of stories about Mandrake/Windows performance.
That's a new term for me: hydrophobic pollutants... is that like a guy who smokes and pisses on the sidewalk who is afraid of water?
Wow... the cynicism is deafening.
This reminds me of some arguments presented by patriotic Germans during the second world war for the justification of exterminating the jewish people.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not calling you a Nazi, but broad stereotypes are generally not a good thing.
they come up with are interesting to me.
Their analogy of Vanilla Ice vs. David Bowie/Queen does fit a little bit. But the one thing you have to keep in mind as well is that computer code and music might have some superficial similarities, but are vastly different that music still works if some pieces of it are misplaced, or rearranged, even if it sounds bad. Code does not. You change a couple of letters in a piece of code, and the entire program/application could come crashing down completely.
The scary thing is that these kinds of arguments would work pretty well in a courtroom, because people who don't code don't think like coders do, and these arguments would seem compelling and reasonable.
We will of course see how the courts interpret this type of issue in the coming months and years.