Look at the old celerons (not the celeron A's).. Those were VERY similar in architecture to the P2's but the p2's ran MUCH better. MHz just means how may times the clock signal flips a second, it doesn't mean now many numbers the chip can crunch, it doesn't mean how many frames you'll get in quake.
I would have prefered that all Linux developer got to define a standard with everyone, but one established developer prefer to be alone on the spotlight.
That's now how open source innovation typically works. The way new stuff usually happens is somebody wants a programme* to exist and implements it first, rather than spending 8 months saying "Hey, I want everyone in the world to tell me how to write the programme I want to use".. Once they have it doing something, they say "Hey, this is cool, anyone want to contribute?" and then the ball gets rolling.
*Libraries, protocols, API's, etcetera all count too.
You mean to say that if someone changes it they must release source code to the changes?
The GPL does not make sense for this kind of thing. It is a license that was specifically written to apply to computer programmes, and while its concepts may be generalizable beyond that, the GPL is legally worded to address specific issues of distribution of programmes and their source code.
M-x less-pedantic-mode
You mean can an "open" license be applies to this API? What would that do? An implementation of this API is already LGPL'd, so you CAN go ahead and extend or modify the API if you like..
I have no problem with people having access to anything they want, but it is *logically impossible* to make the interface simpler than the task it performs. <br><br> THIS IS THE PROBLEM<br> <br> There are two different kinds of complexity here. There is the complexity of how a given task is performed, and the complexity of what the end result is. I don't believe that these are in any way inherently correlated to each other. Complicated processes can produce simple results, and vice versa. <br> <br> In the first case, the user needs to be able to express what they want the final state of the machine to be, rather than tell the machine how to get there. In the second case, it's going to be simpler just to tell the machine what to do, and let it trust you that these steps are towards some desirable end. <br> <br> Given the correct tools, many difficult tasks are easy. Given the incorrect tools, many easy tasks are hard.
I'm pretty happy with this notion that the user interface becomes more complicated only when you're ready to. That seems like a good way to help new users out. However, it is important that it is easy to skip ahead to a more advanced mode of operation (sure, just type M-x I-already-know-what-I'm-doing-mode!) for not just the reason I've seen mentioned (power users / aggressive learners) but also so that you know what IS possible, when you're evaluating the software, maybe to determine if your company wants to buy a big pile of site licenses, or whatever.
For every function F, there's an inifinite set X of programs X1, X2,... that compute that function. (No, X is not recursively enumerable, but there exist subsets of X that are.)
Perhaps on a turing machine. However..
For any finite hardware platform there is a finite number of distinct programmes, as programmes have descrete lengths, and a maximum length (the maximum ammount of addressable memory, or maybe HDD sizes or something) Sure, this is very very large, but is finite. Furthermore since each programme is finite length, the set of them is recursively enummerable.
But that's just pedantry. The real issue is - you're crazy! This may prevent cheating, but it fascilites and encourages distribution and execution of untrusted binaries. Furthermore, while this may be a theoretical possibility, I sure wouldn't want to be the one to debug it!
Maybe distributed.net should stop searching for keys and start doing an exhaustive search for fast factorisation code instead.
I feel that this is a misleading or at least confusing description of what makes a railgun [projectile] go.
Basically you create a solenoid with only one twist, and then crank a large ammount of electricity through it. Well, it wants to fly apart, but only one piece is free to do that (the projectile), so it does.
The ignition slug as you call it is used to become vapour and plasma indeed, but the reason is because metal vapour conducts electricity really good, and because it breaks the rails less than the very hot chunks of metal scraping along them very fast would.
Even if you could, there's no IO to get that much video bandwidth out of the computer - your screen won't do more than, what, 120 hz? Your eyes barely do 60..
it consumes 75W power... The heat dissipation of these puppies will be monsterous!</i><br><br> If it doesn't dissipate all 75 of those watts, I'm going to buy some stock in Sun right now.
Prices have been artificially high due to lack of competition lately.
What are you talking about? Stuff is so amazingly cheap these days, chip prices included. Neither intel nor AMD are making huge profit margins - they're both despearately trying to undercut each other. Sure, cyrix making chips too isn't a bad thing - more options and all that, but I don't think they're going to be able to drive prices down all that much farther.
If the GPL is undefensable in court, it's better to discover that now, rather than go ahead and release under a worthless license until we DO find that out.
Also, this is a much better situation to set a precedent - the resources are stacked on the side of the GPL, as is the evidence. If the GPL can't win here, it's less likely later on. If the GPL can succeed here, that will HELP it in more difficult cases that may crop up in the future.
I'd like to avoid legal confrontations as much as the next guy, but if the GPL is going to have a legal test, this is pretty much as good a legal test as could be. There is NO dispute over who created the original, what the license was, and the defendant cannot afford a million bucks worth of weasels^H^H^H^H^H^Hlawyers.
The way to block a distributed technique is to cease providing that service. This service is useful to individuals, but if it is being used to circumvent measures they took to prevent an aggregate list from being public, it would be appropriate for them to disable it.
You may have troubles with C++ DLL's. I don't believe MS defined anywhere how the names get mangled from C++ names -> DLL entry points names, and as a result C++ DLL's are hard to make work from compiler to compiler. DLLs that came out of C code, I find, do not have this problem, as the name mangling is MUCH simpler.
MSVC++6 does have a better optimizer than C++Builder 4 (at least my code ran some about 15% slower (10 fps?) on C++ Builder (though this isn't a great benchmark - one cache optimisation in one loop would make a SIGNIFICANT difference)
The linking issues you speak of are problems with windows not defining enough of DLL stuff for C++ DLLs to portably exist - the DLL contains the mangled name, and different compilers mangle things differently.
C++ Builder's VCL IS delightfully easy, although it involves some odd extensions and restrictions to the C++ standard. How much that matters depends on what you're doing.
Re:Obfuscated DeCSS programming contest
on
A New DeCSS
·
· Score: 2
Well, kind of. I mean, it's only the source that's obfuscated, so there's no point in obfuscating some code, then hiding it under your mattress or whatever. However...
The spirit of open source is not that you ALLOW other people to work on your code, but you encourage it, and facilitate it. You see other programmers as being people who can and want to help (even if for selfish reasons (I want linux to work with my FooCom USB rubber ducky!), rather than as people who are competing against you.
As such, obfuscated code is contrary to that purpose - if you make code that is virtually impossible to read, few will be able to contribute to it. Rather than prohibiting people's understanding and modification of the code through legal means, you are using technical means, but the end result is the same.
Don't get me wrong - I think there's plenty of room in the 'open source community' for obfuscated code contests, but only in the context of games for programmers, not as development projects.
I will say that it's not unreasonable to allow and encourage people to contribute extra obfuscations to your code, and keep the spirit of OSS that way.
if (case1) if (case2) print "case2"; else print "Neither case1 nor case 2";
There the indentation is rather misleading, in a non-obvious way. (The else gets grouped with the inner if, not the outer)
It's pretty frustrating spending a long time tracking down a "That's not what I meant!" bug, just because it reads just like what you meant. (in C/C++ and many derived languages {&,&&} and {=,==} are good at helping this kind of thing along)
For the record, I programme in neither Perl nor Python, so I'm relatively "unbiased".:)
People really don't mind if others know what CDs they listen to - often quite the contrary. Hell, many people (myself included) spend a fair ammount of time publishing a database of their music collection.
For just doing point to point stuff like this it seems more efficient to just use a 100 or even 10 megabit switch.. And hook THOSE together with a nice fat gigabit uplink.
Also, anybody got information on how collision handling is done on this new architecture? I would suppose that, being a gigabit ethernet, it would surely see much more usage than a 100Mbps one, and being also much higher speed, there should be more collisions.
Yeah, and the faster those packets move, the more likely they'll be damaged when they smack into each other!
I agree that the G400 is up near the top of current 2d video technolgy, which only strengthens the original point about these 200dpi 16" LCD devices - the world's not ready for them!
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Look at the old celerons (not the celeron A's).. Those were VERY similar in architecture to the P2's but the p2's ran MUCH better. MHz just means how may times the clock signal flips a second, it doesn't mean now many numbers the chip can crunch, it doesn't mean how many frames you'll get in quake.
I would have prefered that all Linux developer got to define a standard with everyone, but one established developer prefer to be alone on the spotlight.
That's now how open source innovation typically works. The way new stuff usually happens is somebody wants a programme* to exist and implements it first, rather than spending 8 months saying "Hey, I want everyone in the world to tell me how to write the programme I want to use".. Once they have it doing something, they say "Hey, this is cool, anyone want to contribute?" and then the ball gets rolling.
*Libraries, protocols, API's, etcetera all count too.
can an API be GPL'd the same way that code is?
You mean to say that if someone changes it they must release source code to the changes?
The GPL does not make sense for this kind of thing. It is a license that was specifically written to apply to computer programmes, and while its concepts may be generalizable beyond that, the GPL is legally worded to address specific issues of distribution of programmes and their source code.
M-x less-pedantic-mode
You mean can an "open" license be applies to this API? What would that do? An implementation of this API is already LGPL'd, so you CAN go ahead and extend or modify the API if you like..
I have no problem with people having access to anything they want, but it is *logically impossible* to make the interface simpler than the task it performs.
<br><br>
THIS IS THE PROBLEM<br>
<br>
There are two different kinds of complexity here. There is the complexity of how a given task is performed, and the complexity of what the end result is. I don't believe that these are in any way inherently correlated to each other. Complicated processes can produce simple results, and vice versa. <br>
<br>
In the first case, the user needs to be able to express what they want the final state of the machine to be, rather than tell the machine how to get there. In the second case, it's going to be simpler just to tell the machine what to do, and let it trust you that these steps are towards some desirable end. <br>
<br>
Given the correct tools, many difficult tasks are easy. Given the incorrect tools, many easy tasks are hard.
Why'd the gameboy do well?
It's very small.
It's very cheap.
There are 151753018537 games for it.
I'm pretty happy with this notion that the user interface becomes more complicated only when you're ready to. That seems like a good way to help new users out. However, it is important that it is easy to skip ahead to a more advanced mode of operation (sure, just type M-x I-already-know-what-I'm-doing-mode!) for not just the reason I've seen mentioned (power users / aggressive learners) but also so that you know what IS possible, when you're evaluating the software, maybe to determine if your company wants to buy a big pile of site licenses, or whatever.
It was id software that attached the GPL to Quake granting people the right to the source, not Richard Stallman. Though it is his meme.
For every function F, there's an inifinite set X of programs X1, X2, ... that compute that function. (No, X is not recursively enumerable, but there exist subsets of X that are.)
Perhaps on a turing machine. However..
For any finite hardware platform there is a finite number of distinct programmes, as programmes have descrete lengths, and a maximum length (the maximum ammount of addressable memory, or maybe HDD sizes or something) Sure, this is very very large, but is finite. Furthermore since each programme is finite length, the set of them is recursively enummerable.
But that's just pedantry. The real issue is - you're crazy! This may prevent cheating, but it fascilites and encourages distribution and execution of untrusted binaries. Furthermore, while this may be a theoretical possibility, I sure wouldn't want to be the one to debug it!
Maybe distributed.net should stop searching for keys and start doing an exhaustive search for fast factorisation code instead.
I feel that this is a misleading or at least confusing description of what makes a railgun [projectile] go.
Basically you create a solenoid with only one twist, and then crank a large ammount of electricity through it. Well, it wants to fly apart, but only one piece is free to do that (the projectile), so it does.
The ignition slug as you call it is used to become vapour and plasma indeed, but the reason is because metal vapour conducts electricity really good, and because it breaks the rails less than the very hot chunks of metal scraping along them very fast would.
Even if you could, there's no IO to get that much video bandwidth out of the computer - your screen won't do more than, what, 120 hz? Your eyes barely do 60..
it consumes 75W power ... The heat dissipation of these puppies will be monsterous!</i><br><br>
If it doesn't dissipate all 75 of those watts, I'm going to buy some stock in Sun right now.
Prices have been artificially high due to lack of competition lately.
What are you talking about? Stuff is so amazingly cheap these days, chip prices included. Neither intel nor AMD are making huge profit margins - they're both despearately trying to undercut each other. Sure, cyrix making chips too isn't a bad thing - more options and all that, but I don't think they're going to be able to drive prices down all that much farther.
If the GPL is undefensable in court, it's better to discover that now, rather than go ahead and release under a worthless license until we DO find that out.
Also, this is a much better situation to set a precedent - the resources are stacked on the side of the GPL, as is the evidence. If the GPL can't win here, it's less likely later on. If the GPL can succeed here, that will HELP it in more difficult cases that may crop up in the future.
I'd like to avoid legal confrontations as much as the next guy, but if the GPL is going to have a legal test, this is pretty much as good a legal test as could be. There is NO dispute over who created the original, what the license was, and the defendant cannot afford a million bucks worth of weasels^H^H^H^H^H^Hlawyers.
"if you go into a bicycle shop, you expect to see bicycles. Why should public Internet terminals be any different?"
They shouldn't. If you go out into the world, you should expect to see the world.
The way to block a distributed technique is to cease providing that service. This service is useful to individuals, but if it is being used to circumvent measures they took to prevent an aggregate list from being public, it would be appropriate for them to disable it.
You may have troubles with C++ DLL's. I don't believe MS defined anywhere how the names get mangled from C++ names -> DLL entry points names, and as a result C++ DLL's are hard to make work from compiler to compiler. DLLs that came out of C code, I find, do not have this problem, as the name mangling is MUCH simpler.
MSVC++6 does have a better optimizer than C++Builder 4 (at least my code ran some about 15% slower (10 fps?) on C++ Builder (though this isn't a great benchmark - one cache optimisation in one loop would make a SIGNIFICANT difference)
The linking issues you speak of are problems with windows not defining enough of DLL stuff for C++ DLLs to portably exist - the DLL contains the mangled name, and different compilers mangle things differently.
C++ Builder's VCL IS delightfully easy, although it involves some odd extensions and restrictions to the C++ standard. How much that matters depends on what you're doing.
Well, kind of. I mean, it's only the source that's obfuscated, so there's no point in obfuscating some code, then hiding it under your mattress or whatever. However...
The spirit of open source is not that you ALLOW other people to work on your code, but you encourage it, and facilitate it. You see other programmers as being people who can and want to help (even if for selfish reasons (I want linux to work with my FooCom USB rubber ducky!), rather than as people who are competing against you.
As such, obfuscated code is contrary to that purpose - if you make code that is virtually impossible to read, few will be able to contribute to it. Rather than prohibiting people's understanding and modification of the code through legal means, you are using technical means, but the end result is the same.
Don't get me wrong - I think there's plenty of room in the 'open source community' for obfuscated code contests, but only in the context of games for programmers, not as development projects.
I will say that it's not unreasonable to allow and encourage people to contribute extra obfuscations to your code, and keep the spirit of OSS that way.
I've several times run into problems like:
:)
if (case1)
if (case2)
print "case2";
else
print "Neither case1 nor case 2";
There the indentation is rather misleading, in a non-obvious way. (The else gets grouped with the inner if, not the outer)
It's pretty frustrating spending a long time tracking down a "That's not what I meant!" bug, just because it reads just like what you meant. (in C/C++ and many derived languages {&,&&} and {=,==} are good at helping this kind of thing along)
For the record, I programme in neither Perl nor Python, so I'm relatively "unbiased".
People really don't mind if others know what CDs they listen to - often quite the contrary. Hell, many people (myself included) spend a fair ammount of time publishing a database of their music collection.
How about BeOs?
Let's call a dual Pentium 2/300 a mid-range SMP box, shall we?
A Pentium 2 processor has 512K of level2 cache (running at clk/2 - 150 MHz) on the cartridge. Are you suggesting:
For just doing point to point stuff like this it seems more efficient to just use a 100 or even 10 megabit switch.. And hook THOSE together with a nice fat gigabit uplink.
Also, anybody got information on how collision handling is done on this new architecture? I would suppose that, being a gigabit ethernet, it would surely see much more usage than a 100Mbps one, and being also much higher speed, there should be more collisions.
Yeah, and the faster those packets move, the more likely they'll be damaged when they smack into each other!
I agree that the G400 is up near the top of current 2d video technolgy, which only strengthens the original point about these 200dpi 16" LCD devices - the world's not ready for them!