I'm talking about the complexity of the *rules*. That is also what Sid was talking about. Go has simple rules. Chess has more complicated rules. Civ has even more complicated rules.
By the way, I know a civ-like that's a very good AI that doesn't need to cheat at all to compete with a human (except in the most difficult levels). That's Galactic Civilizations, www.galciv.com. The trick is that the AI thinks while you're playing, so it gets lots of CPU time.
As a big fan of Civ1&2 and Alpha Centauri, I find Sid's answers to be very disappointing.
The silliest one is the answer to Question 7.
Sid makes the following argument : Chess, which has simple rules, is the current limit of what computer AI can do as well as a human. So Civilization 4, which has much more complex rules, is too difficult to allow computer AI to compete with humans.
This argument is false : for instance, look at the traditional Asian "Go" game. It has very simple rules, much simpler than Chess. If Sid's argument made sense, computer should be able to play Go very well. But the reality is that as of today, Computers cannot compete with a skilled human. Thus : there is no direct relationship between the complexity of the rules, and the difficulty to design a strong AI.
Not to mention Sid's answer to the question on Free clones... he has no interest in software freedom.
Do rapists, killers, pedophiles and other kinds of criminals get death penalties or lifetime jail ? Not in my country. Not in any country of the EU. Even in the USA, only killers get death sentences, and other kinds of crimes don't get you such harsh sentences (but correct me if I'm wrong here).
Immaterial "crimes" like cracking into a computer system are only crimes because we decide so. We decide so because it is a way of ensuring the stability of our economic system. That's fine, but if we begin to compare that in severity to physical crimes, where people get injured, where violence happens, that means that we have forgotten everything. If we jail more severely (lifetime) a computer cracker than a rapist (usually 2 years jail), then we are totally decadent.
The problem you describe is not a Xorg issue, it's a performance issue which you can solve by renicing the apps that are doing X so much concurrence that it can't redraw windows fast enough.
type 'top', look at the applications using some CPU and having the same priority as X (the PR column). For each of them, renice them with like that:
renice +5 `/sbin/pidof some_application`
And no, X11 isn't a 25+ year old technology. The first release happened in 1987.
They fail to deliver useful drivers for *nix. X.Org developers should be able to implement all what they want, and for that they need better-documented hardware. Only then will we have a real eyecandy, hardware-accelerated desktop à la Quartz Extreme.
The project has already been mentionned twice on Slashdot, but since then it has made a lot of progress. Skimming through their mailing list archives shows that they're even creating their own company to produce the graphics card. The company's name is "Traversal Technology". A website is coming soon.
and human rights do not seem to be violated anymore
Then try to say 'I want democracy, not communism.' in vietnamese and count the seconds before you're arrested.
In Vietnam, today, people may not even move unless explicitly allowed to by the state. Let alone running a successful business. No real criticism of the state is tolerated. When sending mail to your Vietnamese friends, never send a CD-R. The government will open your mail and check for political/ideological content.
Yet, you are right to say that the Viets are quite happy. But happy != free. And about every Viet would love to move to America, if he/she could. No, I'm not American.
Skimming through the changelogs (link in story), I found many interesting CPUFreq changes, like:
* New governor 'Conservative' based on 'ondemand', except that it increases cpu freq step-by-step, instead of switching directly to the highest freq. This should improve battery time and address latency problems on amd64 systems. * Improved support for PPC32 and ARM * Support for dual-core opterons
Yes indeed, it's very important that they block software patents. But I'm very optimistic on this one, because Europe is a place where there are many people directly involved in Free software. I mean, for instance, all these KDE and GNOME European developers must have some weight in the battle against software patents.
One day (using windows by then.... that was a long time ago) my PC crashed as I was listening to an Audio CD. The CD continued playing, so I remained there until the end of the music. That lasted 20 minutes.
PS:IIRC that was beethoven's violin concert by Menuhin&Furtwängler. 1953 version.
Many non-US governments are considering defecting to linux. Knowing that m$ gives the US government a security advantage over them, will surely give them another good reason to switch.
I can't let you say such an absurdity. I didn't even read the rest of your post. I don't care what religion Hitler may have been raised in, the fact is that the only "religion" he stood for was kind of a neo-paganism, and he did all what he can to destroy the christian religion.
In French, using "tiers monde" to designate non-poor countries is unthinkable, as the word "tiers" strongly suggests poverty, because of the expression "tiers état". So "tiers monde" will probably always denote poor countries.
But of course no one said that the English expression "third world" will always have the same meaning : the meaning of expressions evolves with time.
If you're right, then the couple "third world"/"tiers monde" should be added to the list of false cognates, like
actual/actuel (=present)
journey/journée (=day)
no that's wrong. The expression "Third world" is a translation of the french "tiers monde", which is a reference to the "tiers état", litteraly "third state", which used to designate unprivileged people in the kingdom of France, until the 18th century (by contrast with the nobles and the members of the Church).
The expression "tiers monde" dates back to 1952, and has been forged by demographer Alfred Sauvy, to designate poor countries, implying that the "tiers monde" is being despised and exploited just as the "tiers état" used to be.
My ISP says he's offering 20 Mbps, but he's cheating with the difference between ATM and IP bandwidth, so it really isn't serving anyone more than 16 Mbps. Think about that...
I'd like to start a poll (I hope there isn't some good-manners-principle here on/. that will get me flamed for having started a poll)... so I propose to compare our bandwidth, based on ISP and location. I'm really curious to see what high bandwidth japanese readers can get...
Please tell your *actual* bandwidth, in Mbps (megabits per second).
Let's start with me.
ISP / Location / down / up Free / Paris(fr) / 11.5 / 0.85
It's time one realizes that art authentication is totally useless : if a copy is so good that humans fail to see any difference from the original and need machines to do so, then the copy isn't less good than the original. That's all.
If, regarding to this matter, there's anything computers can help with, it's understanding that allowing copies without restriction is not necessary as "evil" as some pretend to think.
This would have been considered obvious a few centuries ago. Art has not always been about the author.
You know TurboLinux 10 F (http://www.turbolinux.com/products/10F/) ? A commercial distro that comes with legal-in-the-US, proprietary codecs like WMA (and also DVD decryption). From their website
Turbolinux is the first distribution to license the official Microsoft WMF codecs.
So the answer to your question is yes. Now I really didn't want to give it free advertising, as I think that it's wrong to encourage proprietary, closed formats like WMA.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm talking about the complexity of the *rules*. That is also what Sid was talking about. Go has simple rules. Chess has more complicated rules. Civ has even more complicated rules.
By the way, I know a civ-like that's a very good AI that doesn't need to cheat at all to compete with a human (except in the most difficult levels). That's Galactic Civilizations, www.galciv.com. The trick is that the AI thinks while you're playing, so it gets lots of CPU time.
As a big fan of Civ1&2 and Alpha Centauri, I find Sid's answers to be very disappointing.
The silliest one is the answer to Question 7.
Sid makes the following argument : Chess, which has simple rules, is the current limit of what computer AI can do as well as a human. So Civilization 4, which has much more complex rules, is too difficult to allow computer AI to compete with humans.
This argument is false : for instance, look at the traditional Asian "Go" game. It has very simple rules, much simpler than Chess. If Sid's argument made sense, computer should be able to play Go very well. But the reality is that as of today, Computers cannot compete with a skilled human. Thus : there is no direct relationship between the complexity of the rules, and the difficulty to design a strong AI.
Not to mention Sid's answer to the question on Free clones... he has no interest in software freedom.
FOSS has always been rated by popularity among users. What's wrong/insufficient with this good old natural rating system ?
Of course this is too harsh.
Do rapists, killers, pedophiles and other kinds of criminals get death penalties or lifetime jail ? Not in my country. Not in any country of the EU. Even in the USA, only killers get death sentences, and other kinds of crimes don't get you such harsh sentences (but correct me if I'm wrong here).
Immaterial "crimes" like cracking into a computer system are only crimes because we decide so. We decide so because it is a way of ensuring the stability of our economic system. That's fine, but if we begin to compare that in severity to physical crimes, where people get injured, where violence happens, that means that we have forgotten everything. If we jail more severely (lifetime) a computer cracker than a rapist (usually 2 years jail), then we are totally decadent.
The problem you describe is not a Xorg issue, it's a performance issue which you can solve by renicing the apps that are doing X so much concurrence that it can't redraw windows fast enough.
:
type 'top', look at the applications using some CPU and having the same priority as X (the PR column). For each of them, renice them with like that
renice +5 `/sbin/pidof some_application`
And no, X11 isn't a 25+ year old technology. The first release happened in 1987.
They fail to deliver useful drivers for *nix. X.Org developers should be able to implement all what they want, and for that they need better-documented hardware. Only then will we have a real eyecandy, hardware-accelerated desktop à la Quartz Extreme.
This is why the Open Graphics Project is so important.
The project has already been mentionned twice on Slashdot, but since then it has made a lot of progress. Skimming through their mailing list archives shows that they're even creating their own company to produce the graphics card. The company's name is "Traversal Technology". A website is coming soon.
I hope you're not Viet Kieu
I'm not, my girlfriend's family is.
and human rights do not seem to be violated anymore
Then try to say 'I want democracy, not communism.' in vietnamese and count the seconds before you're arrested.
In Vietnam, today, people may not even move unless explicitly allowed to by the state. Let alone running a successful business. No real criticism of the state is tolerated. When sending mail to your Vietnamese friends, never send a CD-R. The government will open your mail and check for political/ideological content.
Yet, you are right to say that the Viets are quite happy. But happy != free. And about every Viet would love to move to America, if he/she could. No, I'm not American.
Skimming through the changelogs (link in story), I found many interesting CPUFreq changes, like :
* New governor 'Conservative' based on 'ondemand', except that it increases cpu freq step-by-step, instead of switching directly to the highest freq. This should improve battery time and address latency problems on amd64 systems.
* Improved support for PPC32 and ARM
* Support for dual-core opterons
...you insensitive clod.
Yes indeed, it's very important that they block software patents. But I'm very optimistic on this one, because Europe is a place where there are many people directly involved in Free software. I mean, for instance, all these KDE and GNOME European developers must have some weight in the battle against software patents.
Nice guess, it's indeed Gallium, as a google search will confirm you.
It's Gallium. It's developed by NanoCoolers. I wonder if the name means it's a nano-technology. That would be exciting !
I got Last Post!!! I'm so strong OMG !!!
One day (using windows by then.... that was a long time ago) my PC crashed as I was listening to an Audio CD. The CD continued playing, so I remained there until the end of the music. That lasted 20 minutes.
:IIRC that was beethoven's violin concert by Menuhin&Furtwängler. 1953 version.
PS
Many non-US governments are considering defecting to linux. Knowing that m$ gives the US government a security advantage over them, will surely give them another good reason to switch.
In French, using "tiers monde" to designate non-poor countries is unthinkable, as the word "tiers" strongly suggests poverty, because of the expression "tiers état". So "tiers monde" will probably always denote poor countries.
But of course no one said that the English expression "third world" will always have the same meaning : the meaning of expressions evolves with time.
If you're right, then the couple "third world"/"tiers monde" should be added to the list of false cognates, like
actual/actuel (=present)
journey/journée (=day)
no that's wrong. The expression "Third world" is a translation of the french "tiers monde", which is a reference to the "tiers état", litteraly "third state", which used to designate unprivileged people in the kingdom of France, until the 18th century (by contrast with the nobles and the members of the Church).
:/ 1/1/tiers-monde.shtml
The expression "tiers monde" dates back to 1952, and has been forged by demographer Alfred Sauvy, to designate poor countries, implying that the "tiers monde" is being despised and exploited just as the "tiers état" used to be.
See
http://www.linternaute.com/histoire/motcle/2923/a
A Theory of Fun
you can't use these words together
My ISP says he's offering 20 Mbps, but he's cheating with the difference between ATM and IP bandwidth, so it really isn't serving anyone more than 16 Mbps. Think about that...
/. that will get me flamed for having started a poll)... so I propose to compare our bandwidth, based on ISP and location. I'm really curious to see what high bandwidth japanese readers can get...
I'd like to start a poll (I hope there isn't some good-manners-principle here on
Please tell your *actual* bandwidth, in Mbps (megabits per second).
Let's start with me.
ISP / Location / down / up
Free / Paris(fr) / 11.5 / 0.85
R-T-F-A
It's time one realizes that art authentication is totally useless : if a copy is so good that humans fail to see any difference from the original and need machines to do so, then the copy isn't less good than the original. That's all.
If, regarding to this matter, there's anything computers can help with, it's understanding that allowing copies without restriction is not necessary as "evil" as some pretend to think.
This would have been considered obvious a few centuries ago. Art has not always been about the author.
So the answer to your question is yes. Now I really didn't want to give it free advertising, as I think that it's wrong to encourage proprietary, closed formats like WMA.
What does it say about them ? They're low on slack.