Interesting, I'm in the market for a new box. Got any pointers on your drives - make/model, pros/cons, performance (any quick numbers on real-world read/write)? And, what's your experience with noise and vibrations (not a consideration, or important and influencing your decision)?
Wow, the radiant splendor of ignorance. Perhaps he means "virtual" as in precisely what it means?
"Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name: the virtual extinction of the buffalo."
Shady business practices, yes. Illegal, yes. And with an overwhelming marketshare (over 80%?) on the desktop OS and office suites, it's by definition a virtual monopoly. Slowly: Not. Literally. 100%, But. In. Essence.
Hear hear. I don't know the particulars re the Gif-burning guy, but it's sad when - by default - a dry/dead business image (market-speak, legalese, pin-stripes,...) equates authority, knowledge, et al.
Another blindingly(!) obvious example is RMS. Ridiculed for looking/acting "freaky". His views might or might not be insightful, or even correct, but often the only thing focused on is the unruly hair or whatnot.. Very open-minded:/
I came away with a different understanding of what they did (granted, I only read the press release, pdf link; and I have just about no knowledge in quantum mechanics, so chances are I don't get it right).
From the press release (emphasis mine):
The measuring results are then converted into a string of 0s and 1s the cryptographic key. The sequence of the numbers 0 and 1 is, due to the laws of quantum physics, completely random. Identical strings of random numbers, used as the key for encoding the information, are produced both in the bank and the City Hall.
The information is encoded using the so-called "one time pad" procedures. Here, the key is as long as the message itself. The message is linked with the key bit by bit and then transferred via the glass fibre data channel.
I read this as, they not only exchanged keys, but in fact transmitted an encrypted message as well(?)
On the interception/security issue, the press release says (again, my emphasis):
Eavesdropping can be detected already during the production of the key before the transfer of the encoded message has even started. Any intervention into the transfer of the photons changes the sequence of the number strings at the measuring stations. In case of eavesdropping, both partners receive an unequal sequence. By comparing part of the key, any eavesdropping effort can be discerned. Though the eavesdropper is able to prevent the transfer of the message, he is unable to gain any information contained in the message!
From what I read, a message cannot be stolen. If I understand this correctly, communication can be prevented (which is a weakness of course), but cannot be intercepted and decrypted by an eavesdropper. Am I misunderstanding, and/or are they possibly mixing theory with their actual accomplishment?
Wait a goddammed minute, this ain't right. I shall rant.
Did you READ your original post?!
You shoot down the article for not reporting any cost-effective solutions for mass-storage - "*ZZZZZZZZzzzzZZzzzzzzZ*" - and NO F-ING MENTION of your (later claimed) scientific interest in the research.
Squeamish Ossifrage calls you on it - "This is obviously not in the third category [consumer products], but that doesn't make it uninteresting.". The science presented being it, NOT ABOUT ANY CONSUMER-GRADE storage products; YOU made it about that. It's not even solely about data storage research ("...the technology is well suited for creating identification cards nearly impossible to fake." from the last linked article in the OP).
Then, rather than retracting your initial knee-jerk dismissal of the story, you create a straw-man argument: sure this might be about research (that you're really interested in, promise), but some/.ers will holler about non-existant products, which is dumb - and attack that.
But you can't even stop there, instead the attitude, attacking Squeamish Ossifrage for drawing a relevant parallel to early research in avionics, accusing him of trying to sound smart?! (In which case, why did you feel the need point out you're going into research?)
Then, they could show the student how to adapt the method to the class,...
Yes. I believe education should focus much more on teaching ways of gaining knowledge, than presenting a bunch of facts to be learned in 'whatever way, test on tuesday!'.
Obviously creating and maintaining individually taylored 'methods' for every student is educational utopia (I was sort of going OT to the "general case" - life - in my earlier post). But being taught different techniques for learning, i.e. learning how to learn, seems a very achievable goal - one that was sorely lacking when I went to school, and, by the looks of it, still is.
Speaking for myself, trying to teach someone else, often helps me gain a deeper understanding of a given problem domain. The closest thing in school (that I remember), where the terrible "speaking in front of the class" - which taught no one anything.. Hmm, I'm wondering if teaching could/should be taught - as a way to learn(?)
Very true. I've seen the value of this time and again - especially when trying myself to explain/discuss various things to/with people.
You can never know, a priori, precisely what (educational) devices will work for any given person. So you (should) try a host of things: framing concepts/information/ideas this way and that, using different metaphors, discussing the problems at different levels of abstraction - zooming in on details, connecting them with bird's-eye views of the problem domains, etc.
When exposed to eachother's way of thinking/learning over an extended period of time, you can (slowly) learn the other people's 'optimal' modes of learning/teaching/communicating. If you can achieve this kind of rapport, it's remarkable how much you can learn and teach.
It's quite astonishing then, to see some people *never* "stepping back" and reflect on how to improve their communication with others.
Too often - and I think many recognize the situation - I interact with people, both professionally and privately, who seem unable to step off their beaten path - however briefly. They clasp to their view with astonishing zeal, as if trying another perspective would make their skies fall...
This paper discusses five
fundamental problems with the current Open Source software development trend, explores why these issues are holding the movement back, and offers solutions that might help overcome these problems.
Seems they are only "fundamental problems", if everybody accepts the premise that the highest goal is to become the premier choice of "the general public." I personally don't agree with this agenda at all. In no particular order: Innovation? Quality? Free-as-in-possible-to-use/distribute/complete-acc ess-to-understand/modify/contribute-back-to-the-co mmunity? Etc.
In any case, briefly looking at the list of these "fundamental problems":
1. The lack of focus on user interface design causes users to prefer proprietary software's more intuitive interface.
Do you agree? Is there consensus on this? Is that really a fundamental problem? I'm on fluxbox when I can choose, but are KDE/GNOME/et al. so divergent and/or different from Windows or OSX?
2. Open Source software tends to lack the complete and accessible documentation that retains users.
Huh? As opposed to what, having the same amount of documentation of e.g. the Windows APIs as Microsoft's own coders (who are the competition - Office apps, media players, browsers, etc.)? Oh, wait - it's talking about user docs. Ok, but isn't that always a problem, everywhere? The article offers "Documentation should always cater to the lowest common denominator." The best doc you read was a dumbed-down so anyone could understand it? I'm unconvinced.
3. Developers focus on features in their software, rather than ensuring that they have a solid core.
Feature-creep is hardly more prevalent in open source?!? "Shipping the prototype" is such a standard practice in the closed-source corporate world it's not even funny. Additionally, the article writes about the small 'core' tools doing few things well - I thought that was a fundamental design principle in *n*x.. and subsequently GNU/Linux, BSD, etc.? E.g. mplayer doesn't contain any of the bloat found in MediaPlayer or RealPlayer (been a while since I saw them though, they might've become better..?).
4. Open Source programmers also tend to program with themselves as an intended audience, rather than the general public.
I don't understand this at all, what is the problem? When did Joe User become more important than making the software do what you want? And making it free, Joe User can use it to his heart's content - within the terms of the licence under which you release it. Why is creating software to solve your problem a flaw? If your motto is "General public acceptance or death", it seems to become one..
5. Lastly, there is a widely known stubbornness by Open Source programmers in refusing to learn from what lessons proprietary software has to offer.
One problem might be lack of source;)? But seriously, is it so? Stubborness in hating/flaming Microsoft, etc., perhaps, but surely not using ideas from them (the GUI, Mono, and so on)? If anything, I'd like to see even more divergence from "industry standard 'best practices'".
I'm sorta remembering Douglas Adams writing about spaceships full of simply useless people. Didn't they like, colonize some planet and depress the native humanoids to extinction? I wonder what became of that spacefaring bunch of losers.
The personal stakes are very high for the individual, if one would stand up against wrong-doings in a corporation - or in any other relationship with extremely tilted power balance.
In spite of this, you found the courage to do what's right. Commendable.
"But then we are not allowed to distill it, well just because."
Ah, thanks - that's the word I couldn't find. Almost the same laws here (you're correct: Scandinavia, Sweden - good call, and even without the disallowed umlauts in my name:) ). Distilling is illegal, but beer and some types of wine are allowed.
And possession of a distiller is illegal here too - of any size. Actually, some friends of the family have an antique brass distiller they didn't want to part with. Took some serious effort, but eventually the authorities came, plugged it (rendering it useless, although it was just a decoration in the first place) and provided a certificate for owning the thing sans distilling capability. The police made regular check-ups to make sure no alcohol was produced with it. Your basic "tax kronor at work" thing... ludicrous.
The bottom line is that we pay levies now to download music, and the music industry shouldn't be able to make us pay levies and buy music.
This is very bizarre, isn't it. In my country, alcohol is treated in this way: artificially high taxes (meant, in this case, to keep consumption down - for national health reasons, they say), and laws against making your own (for the same reasons, manage consumption).
Ok, the analogy might not be perfect - but shall we treat music as a barely legal drug?
I concede to using DW for HTML/CSS, even Javascript, on occasion - and with pretty good results. Doing 'skeleton markup', mock-ups, and throw-away code with visual tools can be a time-saver. I made some generalizations, DW became a casualty:)
In a larger perspective though - production code, tweaking, but most importantly innovating - I've a real hard time seeing us all sit around and "paint" software. Graphical tools - a la DW, or Umbrello - can only take us so far.. and on the intarweb, or even internal networks - with a very complex, ever-changing ecology of systems, code-bases, etc.,...whew.
All the stuff needed to facilitate the possibility of having pictures representing functions, transactions, algorithms; it might not (ever) be worth it - I don't know though... But even the very formalized and 'neutral' UML introduces ways of doing/understanding/seeing - or rather, ways of not seeing.
Some good points (but "Access"? No need for profanity, Sir - and if that's the cost to create databases visually, I win!;) ). I do believe there will be (and that there already exist) domains where visual design/'programming' works quite well.
The HTML example wasn't meant as a literal one, or that it follows that every visual design approach is inherently broken. A clearer example might have been the command line (the *n*x one) - decades old and non pareil for quite a lot of stuff, regardfless of the billions spent in GUI development. It's even coming back (OSX, Windows).
Also, expecting to get such an editor for C/C++ is silly. Not only will the tools evolve, but also the languages.
Of course. Languages evolve, as do all things. The entire software/hardware ecology evolves - that's kind of my point too. Evolution also means that what we can (or want to) achieve with programming will evolve. And that we never can take 'everything' into account. Moving targets, the lot of them. Perhaps the frameworks/systems needed to visually create tomorrow's applications will handle all the special cases, and make visual creation of "everything" faster, more powerful/flexible, etc. I'm a doubter;) (and have been wrong before).
Microsoft might have the magic bullet, with their gargantuan.NET framework, managed code etc. VisualEverything *shudder* might become feasible - we'll see, nay, visualize;).
Caesars 0wn3r explained it perfectly in the other post:)
Small addition: The awesome Bobo had a telescope..monocular(?), where each ring/section had an embossed letter (f, l, a, and x). When in a hurry to get his totally sweet self from A to B, Bobo - at position A - put point B in his sights, cranked the zoom to the max, spelling the word and *zzzzaaaapp!*...there he was. Pure childhood magic *sniff*
Precisely. And, for example: given how long friggin HTML has been around - plus the simplicity of that markup "language" - and we still don't have perfect (or even good) WYSIWYG editors for it.
How likely is it we'll get "visual editors" for complex systems (C/C++/et al., in combination with various other languages, frameworks, data formats/databases, etc)?
I don't know, but "China doing very well" might be 'rushing' to conclusions - or a matter of perspective. Saw this article recently.
Rural China - i.e. the bulk of it - is (at some places literally) dirt-poor.
Agreed, trade begets economic power and, as stated in the article, the Chinese people are surely much better off than during the "Cultural revolution". I'm just saying it (like India) is a very large country. A Free market economy will very likely continue to strenghten China, but perhaps more clearly/evidently in a larger time-frame.
No-one's going to force you to use it, unless you want to run their software. That seems fair enough to me.
It's been argued (to death, actually), that this is in itself a major problem. If you're in the IT industry, you've heard/spoken the phrases ten thousand times. "Vendor lock-in", "[forced] migration path", "monopoly", "barriers to entry",..."Microsoft", etc.
Point being, while no one will force you to use apps/systems X, Y, and Z; tomorrow it could be practically impossible to function in society without those very apps/systems.
So, I guess I'm disagreeing with your conclusion of fairness. Consumers and (small/mid-sized) businesses without the muscle/resources to escape or route around TC (should they want it) will - possibly - have no real choice but to "play ball"...
Robert C (Uncle Bob) Martin and others (even the RUP people - nowadays part of IBM, Rational - themselves) have argued that XP can be seen as a (lightweight) subset of RUP.
Slashdot Mirror
Wicked cool setup(!) Thank you for the informative reply.
Interesting, I'm in the market for a new box. Got any pointers on your drives - make/model, pros/cons, performance (any quick numbers on real-world read/write)? And, what's your experience with noise and vibrations (not a consideration, or important and influencing your decision)?
I don't think "Must have skillet experience," is quite the same thing ;)
Wow, the radiant splendor of ignorance. Perhaps he means "virtual" as in precisely what it means?
"Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name: the virtual extinction of the buffalo."
Shady business practices, yes. Illegal, yes. And with an overwhelming marketshare (over 80%?) on the desktop OS and office suites, it's by definition a virtual monopoly. Slowly: Not. Literally. 100%, But. In. Essence.
Hear hear. I don't know the particulars re the Gif-burning guy, but it's sad when - by default - a dry/dead business image (market-speak, legalese, pin-stripes, ...) equates authority, knowledge, et al.
:/
Another blindingly(!) obvious example is RMS. Ridiculed for looking/acting "freaky". His views might or might not be insightful, or even correct, but often the only thing focused on is the unruly hair or whatnot.. Very open-minded
I came away with a different understanding of what they did (granted, I only read the press release, pdf link; and I have just about no knowledge in quantum mechanics, so chances are I don't get it right).
From the press release (emphasis mine):
I read this as, they not only exchanged keys, but in fact transmitted an encrypted message as well(?)
On the interception/security issue, the press release says (again, my emphasis):
From what I read, a message cannot be stolen. If I understand this correctly, communication can be prevented (which is a weakness of course), but cannot be intercepted and decrypted by an eavesdropper. Am I misunderstanding, and/or are they possibly mixing theory with their actual accomplishment?
Wait a goddammed minute, this ain't right. I shall rant.
/.ers will holler about non-existant products, which is dumb - and attack that.
Did you READ your original post?!
You shoot down the article for not reporting any cost-effective solutions for mass-storage - "*ZZZZZZZZzzzzZZzzzzzzZ*" - and NO F-ING MENTION of your (later claimed) scientific interest in the research.
Squeamish Ossifrage calls you on it - "This is obviously not in the third category [consumer products], but that doesn't make it uninteresting.". The science presented being it, NOT ABOUT ANY CONSUMER-GRADE storage products; YOU made it about that. It's not even solely about data storage research ("...the technology is well suited for creating identification cards nearly impossible to fake." from the last linked article in the OP).
Then, rather than retracting your initial knee-jerk dismissal of the story, you create a straw-man argument: sure this might be about research (that you're really interested in, promise), but some
But you can't even stop there, instead the attitude, attacking Squeamish Ossifrage for drawing a relevant parallel to early research in avionics, accusing him of trying to sound smart?! (In which case, why did you feel the need point out you're going into research?)
Weak.
Reading the blurb, did anyone else think of the intro scene in Cool Hand Luke?
:)
Harvesting for a cluster
Yes. I believe education should focus much more on teaching ways of gaining knowledge, than presenting a bunch of facts to be learned in 'whatever way, test on tuesday!'.
Obviously creating and maintaining individually taylored 'methods' for every student is educational utopia (I was sort of going OT to the "general case" - life - in my earlier post). But being taught different techniques for learning, i.e. learning how to learn, seems a very achievable goal - one that was sorely lacking when I went to school, and, by the looks of it, still is.
Speaking for myself, trying to teach someone else, often helps me gain a deeper understanding of a given problem domain. The closest thing in school (that I remember), where the terrible "speaking in front of the class" - which taught no one anything.. Hmm, I'm wondering if teaching could/should be taught - as a way to learn(?)
Very true. I've seen the value of this time and again - especially when trying myself to explain/discuss various things to/with people.
You can never know, a priori, precisely what (educational) devices will work for any given person. So you (should) try a host of things: framing concepts/information/ideas this way and that, using different metaphors, discussing the problems at different levels of abstraction - zooming in on details, connecting them with bird's-eye views of the problem domains, etc.
When exposed to eachother's way of thinking/learning over an extended period of time, you can (slowly) learn the other people's 'optimal' modes of learning/teaching/communicating. If you can achieve this kind of rapport, it's remarkable how much you can learn and teach.
It's quite astonishing then, to see some people *never* "stepping back" and reflect on how to improve their communication with others.
Too often - and I think many recognize the situation - I interact with people, both professionally and privately, who seem unable to step off their beaten path - however briefly. They clasp to their view with astonishing zeal, as if trying another perspective would make their skies fall...
From the abstract, emphasis mine:
Seems they are only "fundamental problems", if everybody accepts the premise that the highest goal is to become the premier choice of "the general public." I personally don't agree with this agenda at all. In no particular order: Innovation? Quality? Free-as-in-possible-to-use/distribute/complete-acc ess-to-understand/modify/contribute-back-to-the-co mmunity? Etc.
In any case, briefly looking at the list of these "fundamental problems":
1. The lack of focus on user interface design causes users to prefer proprietary software's more intuitive interface.
Do you agree? Is there consensus on this? Is that really a fundamental problem? I'm on fluxbox when I can choose, but are KDE/GNOME/et al. so divergent and/or different from Windows or OSX?
2. Open Source software tends to lack the complete and accessible documentation that retains users.
Huh? As opposed to what, having the same amount of documentation of e.g. the Windows APIs as Microsoft's own coders (who are the competition - Office apps, media players, browsers, etc.)? Oh, wait - it's talking about user docs. Ok, but isn't that always a problem, everywhere? The article offers "Documentation should always cater to the lowest common denominator." The best doc you read was a dumbed-down so anyone could understand it? I'm unconvinced.
3. Developers focus on features in their software, rather than ensuring that they have a solid core.
Feature-creep is hardly more prevalent in open source?!? "Shipping the prototype" is such a standard practice in the closed-source corporate world it's not even funny. Additionally, the article writes about the small 'core' tools doing few things well - I thought that was a fundamental design principle in *n*x.. and subsequently GNU/Linux, BSD, etc.? E.g. mplayer doesn't contain any of the bloat found in MediaPlayer or RealPlayer (been a while since I saw them though, they might've become better..?).
4. Open Source programmers also tend to program with themselves as an intended audience, rather than the general public.
I don't understand this at all, what is the problem? When did Joe User become more important than making the software do what you want? And making it free, Joe User can use it to his heart's content - within the terms of the licence under which you release it. Why is creating software to solve your problem a flaw? If your motto is "General public acceptance or death", it seems to become one..
5. Lastly, there is a widely known stubbornness by Open Source programmers in refusing to learn from what lessons proprietary software has to offer. ;)? But seriously, is it so? Stubborness in hating/flaming Microsoft, etc., perhaps, but surely not using ideas from them (the GUI, Mono, and so on)? If anything, I'd like to see even more divergence from "industry standard 'best practices'".
One problem might be lack of source
Et tu, Brute ;)
I'm sorta remembering Douglas Adams writing about spaceships full of simply useless people. Didn't they like, colonize some planet and depress the native humanoids to extinction? I wonder what became of that spacefaring bunch of losers.
(Billions, but who's counting, right.) Nice one-liner and all, but you could've read a couple of more sentences - you know where he wrote
Guess some corners have to be cut when you absolutely must get the joke in, eh.
You have my respect, Sir.
The personal stakes are very high for the individual, if one would stand up against wrong-doings in a corporation - or in any other relationship with extremely tilted power balance.
In spite of this, you found the courage to do what's right. Commendable.
"But then we are not allowed to distill it, well just because."
Ah, thanks - that's the word I couldn't find. Almost the same laws here (you're correct: Scandinavia, Sweden - good call, and even without the disallowed umlauts in my name :) ). Distilling is illegal, but beer and some types of wine are allowed.
And possession of a distiller is illegal here too - of any size. Actually, some friends of the family have an antique brass distiller they didn't want to part with. Took some serious effort, but eventually the authorities came, plugged it (rendering it useless, although it was just a decoration in the first place) and provided a certificate for owning the thing sans distilling capability. The police made regular check-ups to make sure no alcohol was produced with it. Your basic "tax kronor at work" thing... ludicrous.
This is very bizarre, isn't it. In my country, alcohol is treated in this way: artificially high taxes (meant, in this case, to keep consumption down - for national health reasons, they say), and laws against making your own (for the same reasons, manage consumption).
Ok, the analogy might not be perfect - but shall we treat music as a barely legal drug?
In a larger perspective though - production code, tweaking, but most importantly innovating - I've a real hard time seeing us all sit around and "paint" software. Graphical tools - a la DW, or Umbrello - can only take us so far.. and on the intarweb, or even internal networks - with a very complex, ever-changing ecology of systems, code-bases, etc.,
All the stuff needed to facilitate the possibility of having pictures representing functions, transactions, algorithms; it might not (ever) be worth it - I don't know though... But even the very formalized and 'neutral' UML introduces ways of doing/understanding/seeing - or rather, ways of not seeing.
Or to quote Cypher:
Some good points (but "Access"? No need for profanity, Sir - and if that's the cost to create databases visually, I win! ;) ). I do believe there will be (and that there already exist) domains where visual design/'programming' works quite well.
The HTML example wasn't meant as a literal one, or that it follows that every visual design approach is inherently broken. A clearer example might have been the command line (the *n*x one) - decades old and non pareil for quite a lot of stuff, regardfless of the billions spent in GUI development. It's even coming back (OSX, Windows).
Of course. Languages evolve, as do all things. The entire software/hardware ecology evolves - that's kind of my point too. Evolution also means that what we can (or want to) achieve with programming will evolve. And that we never can take 'everything' into account. Moving targets, the lot of them. Perhaps the frameworks/systems needed to visually create tomorrow's applications will handle all the special cases, and make visual creation of "everything" faster, more powerful/flexible, etc. I'm a doubter ;) (and have been wrong before).
Microsoft might have the magic bullet, with their gargantuan .NET framework, managed code etc. VisualEverything *shudder* might become feasible - we'll see, nay, visualize ;).
Caesars 0wn3r explained it perfectly in the other post :)
..monocular(?), where each ring/section had an embossed letter (f, l, a, and x). When in a hurry to get his totally sweet self from A to B, Bobo - at position A - put point B in his sights, cranked the zoom to the max, spelling the word and *zzzzaaaapp!* ...there he was. Pure childhood magic *sniff*
Small addition: The awesome Bobo had a telescope
Precisely. And, for example: given how long friggin HTML has been around - plus the simplicity of that markup "language" - and we still don't have perfect (or even good) WYSIWYG editors for it.
How likely is it we'll get "visual editors" for complex systems (C/C++/et al., in combination with various other languages, frameworks, data formats/databases, etc)?
I don't know, but "China doing very well" might be 'rushing' to conclusions - or a matter of perspective. Saw this article recently.
Rural China - i.e. the bulk of it - is (at some places literally) dirt-poor.
Agreed, trade begets economic power and, as stated in the article, the Chinese people are surely much better off than during the "Cultural revolution". I'm just saying it (like India) is a very large country. A Free market economy will very likely continue to strenghten China, but perhaps more clearly/evidently in a larger time-frame.
It's been argued (to death, actually), that this is in itself a major problem. If you're in the IT industry, you've heard/spoken the phrases ten thousand times. "Vendor lock-in", "[forced] migration path", "monopoly", "barriers to entry", ..."Microsoft", etc.
Point being, while no one will force you to use apps/systems X, Y, and Z; tomorrow it could be practically impossible to function in society without those very apps/systems.
So, I guess I'm disagreeing with your conclusion of fairness. Consumers and (small/mid-sized) businesses without the muscle/resources to escape or route around TC (should they want it) will - possibly - have no real choice but to "play ball"...
Robert C (Uncle Bob) Martin and others (even the RUP people - nowadays part of IBM, Rational - themselves) have argued that XP can be seen as a (lightweight) subset of RUP.
Martin wrote about XP vs RUP in 1998 (gg PDF-as-HTML). Martin calls/~ed it "dX" ("dX: A minimal RUP process"). Gary Pollice, former Rational 'Evangelist', have also explored RUP and XP common ground (gg PDF-as-HTML). Google for more.
"The light bulb was not invented by the candle industry looking to improve output." --Joab Jackson
:) )
(Ok, so you're not claiming they invented themselves from typewriter to PDA - but it's such a good quote!