I guess it's just a matter of opinion, but I still don't see your points as innovation.
i can kinda see your async point - what you're saying is the innovation is in the interface? That's fair enough. But i don't know what NT's async i/o does that select() doesn't.
I don't see the "fully preemptible kernel with fine-grained locking" as innovation. I don't know where you get the "Most Unix snobs at the time said it couldn't be done on PC hardware" bit, but anyone with an ounce of sense knows that moores law has been in effect for years. I'd be interested in the reasons why these unix snobs thought it couldn't be done.
Actually, yes. Because the NT kernel's design is so robust, adding support for features like "logical cpu's" and non-uniform memory architectures is relatively easy to do.
How many architectures does NT run on? how many does linux/unix run on? NT's kernel design doesn't look so robust anymore.
I think the thing that makes linux innovative more than anything else is the open source paradigm. Is that specific to linux? No. But that, combined with good leadership has made linux microsoft's number 1 threat. That's no mean feat in itself.
Re:ipv6 vs ipv4 inaccuracy in CNN article
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Hey! I was working on a project like this myself for a while, but i got a new job and didn't have the time to do anything substantial.
I also remember reading about a successor to DNotify that was being developed for one of the winwdow managers. I searched for it and could only find this page which at least lists some of the problems with dnotify as it stands http://www.lambda-computing.com/~rudi/dnotify/
Why does there need to be an incentive to upgrade?
No offence, but microsoft IS a business. Business's are in business to make more business. Kinda like a virus. When a business (especially one with the shrewd monopolistic tactics microsoft has employed in the past) says they are giving something away, there is a catch. Or they will go out of business.
I think what we're asking is what's the catch? It's diverging off past tactics and we want to know why. If microsoft has suddenly started being an ethical company, that's great. But it doesn't hurt to question why.
No offence, but you're a girl. I know that sounds pretty sexist, and (depending on your definition of sexism) could well be. But it's not my intent to offend.
This is all based around primary-high school situations, as later in life the rules change a bit and their aren't as many bullies.
The more you let a bully go the more he/she continues. The worse it gets. Because the gratification they got remains with each bullying, and there are no reasons for them to stop. Their peer group obviously accepts it - either from fear of getting bullied themselves or amusement.
So what are your options? 1) Let them continue 2) Verbally assult them back 3) inflict physical pain
#1
I strongly subscribe to the idea that your body is listening to everything. I've done neural net theory at university, and if neurons work the way we think, every single event in your life is embedded within you. With this in mind, if you let them continue you are subjecting yourself to abuse that is destined to manifest itself in later life. If you heard something enough times you start to believe it. You say you were an unashamed nerd. That's good but it shows you already had a good sense of self-esteem. You were unashamed. Some people are ashamed of what they can't change.
#2
You can try and get your 14 yo son to verbally abuse them back. Call them names. But if the bully has been a bully for any length of time, they are well versed at insults. PLUS they think they have the peer group on their side, which gives them more power in their abuse. Generally this just makes the bully madder, and gives them more of a challenge.
#3
You can hurt them physically. This sends a direct message to their pain receptors. I am yet to see an example of when this technique didn't work. It also (and arguably more importantly) Boosts the confidence of the person being bullied. It's a primal instinct. I'm not condoning weapons use. I'm generally not even an advocate for violence. But if someone is a bully, they aren't someone who can be reasoned with. Their insinct to bully is primal, and the way to deal with it is equally so.
Seriously.... their server admins must be FSCKing angry.
You know you're a geek when you read that as "Seriously.... their server admins must be Filesystem-checking angry". I was trying to work out if they were angry for not having to FSCK their filesystems anymore or what? Doh.
Okay, honestly, have you even thought through this comment?
Yes I thought it out. I'm sorry if I didn't state what is to me at least, blatently obvious.
Having the office suite as a web service allows for simpler document management. If you want to send a document to someone to edit, you just send the link. Working as a sys admin for the government showed me how useful this would be. You would not believe the countless people that would email their documents around, loosing changes between versions because they started editing the wrong email. The majority of people using office are not cluey with computers.
Secondly, running as a webservice allows for trival administration. One point of upgrading. If your computer breaks, just log onto another one - all that computer needs is a web browser and you're ready to go. Set up a VPN, and you can access your work from anywhere in the world, without needing any software in addition to your browser. It makes sense for better collaboration. And what are the bets that it doesn't run under mozilla;)
Why in the world does a WORD PROCESSOR or a SPREADSHEET need internet integration? Do you routinely type out reports by committee? Or do you do the intelligent thing, and delegate out sections?
To me at least, a web service and the internet are very different things. Maybe i'm misreading this, but I assume that this is going to be available for intranet use? You just stick it on your IIS server and everyone has office. How easy was that? Sure, microsoft could host it online, but do you really think microsoft would make the business decision to REQUIRE internet connections for everyone that uses their software? Do you think it would be ecomonical to pay for the internet bandwidth to download MS Word EVERY time you used it? Of course not.
As quite a few people have started realising, the web is the platform of the future. There will always be room for locally run 3d graphics apps/games, but the web just makes sense for business apps.
Since the win32 API is meaning less and less, now is open sources chance to win the API wars:) I'd love to see a mozilla based explorer.exe replacement. Easily customised, easy to lock down for sysadmins, open source, cross platform. It would make migrating from windows to linux be painless, as the interface would be the same. You could transition incrementally. If you still need office, run windows for a while with the replacement shell. Then, as people get comfortable with the new environment, move them to wine or open office.
I can think of heaps of reasons to switch to a shell i've got full control of. Security being a major one. XUL apps too; you could quickly whip up an app in XUL + javascript which would do all your database transactions. What companies don't have a database of some sort?
Holy crap I can't believe i'm hearing this. Haven't you ever seen the matrix? The physical world IS virtual. Hanging out on the net lets us give the proverbial finger to our robotic overlords because if we do it enough, neo will contact us and we'll get into the real world.
When you should worry is if someone finds a way to take a hash and use that to produce something which, when hashed again, will result in the original: that is, two-way hashing. MD5 and SHA1 are both allegedly one-way hashes, so you cannot ever go from the hash to any sort of original data. This is why they're secure for passwords and the like. But if that should turn out to be wrong...
Just wondering, if a hashlength for a given piece of data < length of arithmatically coding that same data then can we consider ourselves safe from restoring the data from the hash?
This is a pretty trivial thing. Sure, Apple wants to make their computers stand out, and they were a bit inventive when thinking of this. But it could be a useful tool for heaps of computers. Why not just limit the patent to 5 years, so Apple can say "we had it first" and everyone can use it after it's been embedded in the market as an apple feature?
I think "thinking at an amazing speed" is actually a fairly important part of what the singularity is about
Ahh, I guess I always considered singularity seperate from people. Because unless every person achieves singularity at the same time (which isn't very singular), we are just a byproduct. By that I mean why would a singularity bother helping/hurting us? And how in fact could it help us? If we weren't the most intellegent beings around, we would be being controlled. Human's ego doesn't really like that. Or it could achieve a god like status, but the idea of god only works because he's not physical. If we had physical proof of a god-like entity, how would we react? EVEN if it is compassionate, it would cause a lot of suffering. I don't really know where i'm getting at, yes human culture would change, but i'm not even sure if our culture would be our own anymore.
I personally believe that emotions are a critical part of intelligence and that we're unlikely to ever produce or encounter an intelligence that does not have emotions (or at least some analogue to them). They are the control system that regulates behaviour in order to ensure the intelligence achieves productive things. In many senses, our emotions are trainers that supervise us to make sure we don't do anything stupid.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. But when you can think on a certain level, it overrides your emotions. When you understand how your emotions work, what's to stop you factoring that into your logical assumtions. "I think the answer is xxx but that is due to affection for xxx. Without this affection i'd choose yyy" is a simplfied example. In the end, the logical being needs at least one emotion they cannot define, nor change. And a major question raised by that is how would you choose this? You need a logical thought process to decide on the all powerful emotion/s.
It's like the only way intelligent life can exist is though not being able to understand itself properly. And that's kinda dangerous. Look at people.
I think a lot of posters are missing the point. Singularity is what happens when a form of "life" understands itself enough to be able to modify every aspect of how it operates. The things that stop everyone from being a super thinker are physical contraints. Emotions, etc.
When you aren't bound by your physical constraints, why would you want to do anything? Are our reasons for staying alive emotional? If not, what are they?
Even if a singularity started off human, (something i doubt) How long before being able to do anything becomes boring?
The singularity is a possibility, but the increasing ignorance of science, not to mention growing political naivety, threatens this. It is hard to build a vast distributed intelligence when ignorance seems to be growing more common. The singularity also threatens more archaic world views, which will become more militant as this threat becomes apparent to them. The singularity would either eradicate religion entirely, or become the dominant religion itself. This is the real root of the conflicts in the middle east--an attempt to preserve what is essentially a medieval world view against the assault of modernity itself. The singularity is also partially dependent on the availability of energy. If we can make fusion work as a safe, cheap, energy supply, we're home free. Otherwise the singularity may recede even if the science and technology is available to make it possible.
I'm not sure if you're a clever troll, or you are just having trouble fully contemplating singularity. Or maybe I just don't get it. A singularity doesn't have to be vast. Over a long period of time, it does need to be distributed, because physics/probability suggest that if you exist in one place for a large enough period of time something bad will happen to you.
But that's beside the point. A singularity, not tied to a vessel of flesh, could be run off a few watts of solar energy. There isn't a speed at which it needs to think, as time is not relative. The point is, a singularity has near perfect control over it's vessel. The key here is that life adapts - as they say in jurassic park, "life finds a way". When you have control over your makeup, it becomes very easy to find a way. It doesn't need fusion. If thinking at an amazing speed were important, then maybe. But it could develop new energy sources quite easily.
I think that the point, and the main question is, without a set physical vessel (emotions etc.), what would the point be? If you can make yourself whatever you want, and you have no emotion attachment - what do you want? Are our wants driven by emotions? Why do we want to be alive as a race? Is it our emotions? Is life in it's essence an emotional being - does pure thought conclude that there is no point?
I'm using sygate firewall (whenever my laptop runs XP and i'm on an unknown network/directly connected to the net), and it has an option "Block all traffic when the service is not loaded." It also has an option "allow initial traffic" so it still picks up on DCHP etc.
Using this feature, anything that tries to deactivate it can delete all my files, but can't access the network:) This would at least stop worms from spreading. And if the worm tried to use a socket without disabling the firewall I'd get a message of the access attempt, asking me if i want to let it go through.
Incidently, anyone know of any open source firewalls for XP? I'd love to be able to add a few features - ie. spoofing host unreachable messages from my gateway when I block a host.
But then again, i think raw sockets are disabled in SP2. Unless you do the old ICMP ping.dll method AFAIK.
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I guess it's just a matter of opinion, but I still don't see your points as innovation.
i can kinda see your async point - what you're saying is the innovation is in the interface? That's fair enough. But i don't know what NT's async i/o does that select() doesn't.
I don't see the "fully preemptible kernel with fine-grained locking" as innovation. I don't know where you get the "Most Unix snobs at the time said it couldn't be done on PC hardware" bit, but anyone with an ounce of sense knows that moores law has been in effect for years. I'd be interested in the reasons why these unix snobs thought it couldn't be done.
Actually, yes. Because the NT kernel's design is so robust, adding support for features like "logical cpu's" and non-uniform memory architectures is relatively easy to do.
How many architectures does NT run on? how many does linux/unix run on? NT's kernel design doesn't look so robust anymore.
I think the thing that makes linux innovative more than anything else is the open source paradigm. Is that specific to linux? No. But that, combined with good leadership has made linux microsoft's number 1 threat. That's no mean feat in itself.
23h or 0x23 please.
all that matters is that she's legal.
This is how i read it too - but one thing doesn't make sense to me.
If the particles are entangled, and it observe one of the observer ones, isn't that going to change all of them because they are still entangled?
or do you unentangle them before you observe them? Can you unentangle particles without changing their state?
If you had ever filled up your gmail account completely (was I the only geek who had to try) you'll see that it can actually hold 102% or 1024MB.
:P
It just says 1000MB at the bottom of the screen
Good of you for noticing.
good suggestion. Maybe authenticated users only to prevent a DoS.
Just in case your not trolling, puslishing an API means LESS work on their behalf for more customer satisfaction.
They won't have to support all platforms. The community does it for them.
Fair enough. But why don't they just publish an API for 3rd party notifiers to adhere to?
:)
If a notifier is requesting the status more often then it's allowed, then ban the ip for x minutes.
Last time i checked there were no google notifiers for anything but windows.
Give me an alternative or publish the APIS!
I'm not really that into operating system history, but at least a few of those things you listed aren't innovations.
Async I/O? Can we say UNIX sockets or iostreams?
fully preemptible kernel with fine-grained locking: A quick search turned up this: http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/eykholt92beyond.html
so solaris definately had it in 92, if not earlier.
support for HT: wtf? now it's innovation to support a chip's features?
Actually, none of the things you have listed are innovations. You sir are a troll.
Hey!
:)
I was working on a project like this myself for a while, but i got a new job and didn't have the time to do anything substantial.
I also remember reading about a successor to DNotify that was being developed for one of the winwdow managers. I searched for it and could only find this page which at least lists some of the problems with dnotify as it stands http://www.lambda-computing.com/~rudi/dnotify/
Anyone know what i'm talking about?
No offence, but microsoft IS a business. Business's are in business to make more business. Kinda like a virus. When a business (especially one with the shrewd monopolistic tactics microsoft has employed in the past) says they are giving something away, there is a catch. Or they will go out of business.
I think what we're asking is what's the catch? It's diverging off past tactics and we want to know why. If microsoft has suddenly started being an ethical company, that's great. But it doesn't hurt to question why.
No offence, but you're a girl. I know that sounds pretty sexist, and (depending on your definition of sexism) could well be. But it's not my intent to offend.
This is all based around primary-high school situations, as later in life the rules change a bit and their aren't as many bullies.
The more you let a bully go the more he/she continues. The worse it gets. Because the gratification they got remains with each bullying, and there are no reasons for them to stop. Their peer group obviously accepts it - either from fear of getting bullied themselves or amusement.
So what are your options?
1) Let them continue
2) Verbally assult them back
3) inflict physical pain
#1
I strongly subscribe to the idea that your body is listening to everything. I've done neural net theory at university, and if neurons work the way we think, every single event in your life is embedded within you. With this in mind, if you let them continue you are subjecting yourself to abuse that is destined to manifest itself in later life. If you heard something enough times you start to believe it. You say you were an unashamed nerd. That's good but it shows you already had a good sense of self-esteem. You were unashamed. Some people are ashamed of what they can't change.
#2
You can try and get your 14 yo son to verbally abuse them back. Call them names. But if the bully has been a bully for any length of time, they are well versed at insults. PLUS they think they have the peer group on their side, which gives them more power in their abuse. Generally this just makes the bully madder, and gives them more of a challenge.
#3
You can hurt them physically. This sends a direct message to their pain receptors. I am yet to see an example of when this technique didn't work. It also (and arguably more importantly) Boosts the confidence of the person being bullied. It's a primal instinct. I'm not condoning weapons use. I'm generally not even an advocate for violence. But if someone is a bully, they aren't someone who can be reasoned with. Their insinct to bully is primal, and the way to deal with it is equally so.
Have a good day!
You know you're a geek when you read that as "Seriously.... their server admins must be Filesystem-checking angry". I was trying to work out if they were angry for not having to FSCK their filesystems anymore or what? Doh.
Disclaimer: I'm not from the US and never have been there.
There is another alternative you are not considering. Put the poor in caravans. Look at how well eminem turned out.
He's successful.
Yes I thought it out. I'm sorry if I didn't state what is to me at least, blatently obvious.
Having the office suite as a web service allows for simpler document management. If you want to send a document to someone to edit, you just send the link. Working as a sys admin for the government showed me how useful this would be. You would not believe the countless people that would email their documents around, loosing changes between versions because they started editing the wrong email. The majority of people using office are not cluey with computers.
Secondly, running as a webservice allows for trival administration. One point of upgrading. If your computer breaks, just log onto another one - all that computer needs is a web browser and you're ready to go. Set up a VPN, and you can access your work from anywhere in the world, without needing any software in addition to your browser. It makes sense for better collaboration. And what are the bets that it doesn't run under mozilla ;)
To me at least, a web service and the internet are very different things. Maybe i'm misreading this, but I assume that this is going to be available for intranet use? You just stick it on your IIS server and everyone has office. How easy was that? Sure, microsoft could host it online, but do you really think microsoft would make the business decision to REQUIRE internet connections for everyone that uses their software? Do you think it would be ecomonical to pay for the internet bandwidth to download MS Word EVERY time you used it? Of course not.
As quite a few people have started realising, the web is the platform of the future. There will always be room for locally run 3d graphics apps/games, but the web just makes sense for business apps.
Joel on Software has a good article here.
Since the win32 API is meaning less and less, now is open sources chance to win the API wars :) I'd love to see a mozilla based explorer.exe replacement. Easily customised, easy to lock down for sysadmins, open source, cross platform. It would make migrating from windows to linux be painless, as the interface would be the same. You could transition incrementally. If you still need office, run windows for a while with the replacement shell. Then, as people get comfortable with the new environment, move them to wine or open office.
I can think of heaps of reasons to switch to a shell i've got full control of. Security being a major one. XUL apps too; you could quickly whip up an app in XUL + javascript which would do all your database transactions. What companies don't have a database of some sort?
This would be mad to serve homebrew gamecube games off! no need to have a computer on!
.au yet. :(
Shame it's not out in
pamela anderson sleeps on her back.
Holy crap I can't believe i'm hearing this. Haven't you ever seen the matrix? The physical world IS virtual. Hanging out on the net lets us give the proverbial finger to our robotic overlords because if we do it enough, neo will contact us and we'll get into the real world.
Just wondering, if a hashlength for a given piece of data < length of arithmatically coding that same data then can we consider ourselves safe from restoring the data from the hash?
This is a pretty trivial thing. Sure, Apple wants to make their computers stand out, and they were a bit inventive when thinking of this. But it could be a useful tool for heaps of computers. Why not just limit the patent to 5 years, so Apple can say "we had it first" and everyone can use it after it's been embedded in the market as an apple feature?
Ahh, I guess I always considered singularity seperate from people. Because unless every person achieves singularity at the same time (which isn't very singular), we are just a byproduct. By that I mean why would a singularity bother helping/hurting us? And how in fact could it help us? If we weren't the most intellegent beings around, we would be being controlled. Human's ego doesn't really like that. Or it could achieve a god like status, but the idea of god only works because he's not physical. If we had physical proof of a god-like entity, how would we react? EVEN if it is compassionate, it would cause a lot of suffering. I don't really know where i'm getting at, yes human culture would change, but i'm not even sure if our culture would be our own anymore.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. But when you can think on a certain level, it overrides your emotions. When you understand how your emotions work, what's to stop you factoring that into your logical assumtions. "I think the answer is xxx but that is due to affection for xxx. Without this affection i'd choose yyy" is a simplfied example. In the end, the logical being needs at least one emotion they cannot define, nor change. And a major question raised by that is how would you choose this? You need a logical thought process to decide on the all powerful emotion/s.
It's like the only way intelligent life can exist is though not being able to understand itself properly. And that's kinda dangerous. Look at people.
I think a lot of posters are missing the point. Singularity is what happens when a form of "life" understands itself enough to be able to modify every aspect of how it operates. The things that stop everyone from being a super thinker are physical contraints. Emotions, etc.
When you aren't bound by your physical constraints, why would you want to do anything? Are our reasons for staying alive emotional? If not, what are they?
Even if a singularity started off human, (something i doubt) How long before being able to do anything becomes boring?
Anko
I'm not sure if you're a clever troll, or you are just having trouble fully contemplating singularity. Or maybe I just don't get it. A singularity doesn't have to be vast. Over a long period of time, it does need to be distributed, because physics/probability suggest that if you exist in one place for a large enough period of time something bad will happen to you.
But that's beside the point. A singularity, not tied to a vessel of flesh, could be run off a few watts of solar energy. There isn't a speed at which it needs to think, as time is not relative. The point is, a singularity has near perfect control over it's vessel. The key here is that life adapts - as they say in jurassic park, "life finds a way". When you have control over your makeup, it becomes very easy to find a way. It doesn't need fusion. If thinking at an amazing speed were important, then maybe. But it could develop new energy sources quite easily.
I think that the point, and the main question is, without a set physical vessel (emotions etc.), what would the point be? If you can make yourself whatever you want, and you have no emotion attachment - what do you want? Are our wants driven by emotions? Why do we want to be alive as a race? Is it our emotions? Is life in it's essence an emotional being - does pure thought conclude that there is no point?
I'm using sygate firewall (whenever my laptop runs XP and i'm on an unknown network/directly connected to the net), and it has an option "Block all traffic when the service is not loaded."
:) This would at least stop worms from spreading. And if the worm tried to use a socket without disabling the firewall I'd get a message of the access attempt, asking me if i want to let it go through.
It also has an option "allow initial traffic" so it still picks up on DCHP etc.
Using this feature, anything that tries to deactivate it can delete all my files, but can't access the network
Incidently, anyone know of any open source firewalls for XP? I'd love to be able to add a few features - ie. spoofing host unreachable messages from my gateway when I block a host.
But then again, i think raw sockets are disabled in SP2. Unless you do the old ICMP ping.dll method AFAIK.