"the medium for transferring the source code must also be physical:"
Huh, call me silly but isnt internet an entirely physical construct ? Nothing metaphysical or paranormal about it, no ?
Have you ever heard of flywheel power storage and load balancing ? Look it up, pretty interesting. With new materials storage densities are improving hugely and there are significant deployments out there. You can pretty easily couple your wind farm to flywheels and have complete grid independence. Add in some solar backup and there you go. Besides flywheels, there are other power storage methods like pumping water uphill etc. All depending on local optimum cost of installation of course.
define "needed". its clear that humankind has survived for long time without Photoshop without any immediate pressing need for it, so apparently these features can be wanted, but not needed.
which turns the price/performance ratio back to "$0/not the best match for my wishes" which is still very good.
Linux = opsys kernel + a bunch of drivers. Doesnt even come with shell. Desktop = KDE, Gnome, Looking Glass, Xfce
Get with the program, will you ? You can moan why a particular distro doesnt make it to desktop ( my gentoo box cant make it today, still compiling ) or why uptake of certain desktop framework is slow etc.
Kernel, whether its Hurd, BSD derivative, uClinux, Linux or vxWorks will never, ever make it on desktop. Not this year, not next year.
Now, if you want to work on a problem with slow uptake of anyBuntu, Mandriva, Suse or even DesktopBSD, start hiring usability designers or fix some bugs.
The essence of my post : you cant fix a problem if you start by stating it wrong.
There are quite a few. FreeRTOS, eCos, RTEMS, AvrX etc, some of them commercially quite successful. The proprietary counterparts like Nucleus are definitely very successful and in wide use. What, you have never heard of them ? Well, there are other widely used computing platforms besides personal computers.
I have thought about LenPEG a couple of times, and for a widely used compression libraries, similar trick would actually make a tiny, tiny bit of sense.
Consider doing a tar.gz on a large GNU source trees. How many copies of verbatim GPL header are present in such a tree ? Lots. And they have to be there. And now assume that every file contains just one function, which is one of design approaches for large granular C libs.
Now if by some compression format specific trick there would be a way to tag certain well known and oft-repeated fixed byte sequences with short bit strings and the rest with normal huffman trees, there could be some probably trivial and highly application-specific savings to be had. But in certain storage environments it could add up.
Look up the work done in Space Vacuum Epitaxy Center, Houston. There is a design for buggy/rover that crawls over lunar regolith and builds a mat of solar cells on the surface. ( Google on Ignatiev, Freundlich, Lunar.. ) Decoded version.
Also dig around on ISRUInfo.com, especially in their conference proceedings sections. There are lots and lots of ideas for designing the hardware to be applicable in small scale missions.
Many excellent groups or artists may not have the ability to travel all year, such as older artists or people with physical disabilities
Im sure you have heard by this new invention called "Television" by now. Others make music that relies on studio techniques that can't be replicated well in live settings.
I dont care for Kraftwerk much otherwise, but their live concert was the best "live" music experience i've had.
Ah, but you dont take the inflation and exchange rates into account ! A modern american lard-ass works out to be roughly 4.67 units of the original VW Beetle era german lard-asses.
I dont get why slashdot needs two posts about OLPC per day when stuff like really available and accessible cheap open source laptops like Zonbu go largely unnoticed.
i was thinking the exact same thing. my first thought was, oops, does that make my both thinkpads now turn unfriendly on me ? we have been getting along so nicely so far, running various opsyses without any problems, travelling around and holding up nicely, and now, suddenly unfriendly ? wtf.
Thats the common problem with overinflated product announcements, practically any hyperbole they apply will make previous products from the same company look silly.
So you're saying a good GUI would just have a window to type commands in ?
Absolutely not, although for certain subset of user interaction problems i have yet to see a better solution.
What i AM saying, however, is if you want a good user interface for a given human-machine interaction problem, you cant start out with unquestioned assertions. If you start defining the problem in more detail and begin constraining it with certain technical limitations and other restrictions, undoubtedly this will often steer your solution to some commonly used UI paradigm, like windowing and menus and buttons, but this is not universal, and sometimes you need to question whether your imposed limitations and constraints actually apply to the problem.
Well, i HAVE been grilled in US customs because i was entering the country for several weeks with just a rucksack and company credit card, while being dressed casually. That was in 2000 by the way. To these bright minds, it looked highly suspicious. Any deviations from "normality" will apparently get that treatment now.
even though I'm completely innocent.
HA HA. No such thing as completely innocent. What do you think Jesus died for ? Surely you have at least kicked your dog. TSA officers will make sure that this doesnt slip by.
Just one question. Why do you assert that a usable GUI has to have stuff like Dialogs, Buttons and Menus and the user has to Click on something ? I find all of these highly cumbersome UI elements.
Anyone followed First Solar ( FSLR ) IPO ?
They were the first to bring CdTe cells to market, and guess what happened..
Now, several companies have been working furiously to get the competing CIGS cells going. Miasole, Nanosolar, HelioVolt, just to name a few. FSLR of course beat them to market, and is already a winner, but i am waiting for IPOs for the CIGS companies too..
Anything that doesnt use crystalline silicon is going to be huge, and in some instances, already is.
Maybe, i am not paying £40 regularly for the games either. I buy maybe one or two ( counting all Wii, PSP and PC ) ~50 dollar games a year, and the rest of them i pick up from bargain bins for $10-20, or download online, like Sam&Max episodes. If that $10 thing starts irritating me immediately, i definitely toss it on the shelf, and do something else instead.
Can you clarify how you become to hate someting like a computer game ? To me, if i dont like it, or its not to my tastes, i just toss it aside and dont sit in front of it learning to hate it. i'd maybe start to dislike it if its a overall good thing that i really really like and keep playing, but something like crash bug in the middle of the storyline keeps screwing things up... but hating a game ?
Slashdot Mirror
"the medium for transferring the source code must also be physical:" Huh, call me silly but isnt internet an entirely physical construct ? Nothing metaphysical or paranormal about it, no ?
Why is this a Skype vs GPL if its an SMC product, made, distributed and sold by them ?
Have you ever heard of flywheel power storage and load balancing ? Look it up, pretty interesting. With new materials storage densities are improving hugely and there are significant deployments out there. You can pretty easily couple your wind farm to flywheels and have complete grid independence. Add in some solar backup and there you go.
Besides flywheels, there are other power storage methods like pumping water uphill etc. All depending on local optimum cost of installation of course.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
This has nothing to do with Clarke, but in some tech circles this is restated as :
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
I first saw it on beyond3d.com messageboards IIRC
ITake ?. Is this just a way of making sure that you take no salt with your Apple products ?
define "needed". its clear that humankind has survived for long time without Photoshop without any immediate pressing need for it, so apparently these features can be wanted, but not needed. which turns the price/performance ratio back to "$0/not the best match for my wishes" which is still very good.
Regardless of the gadgets that Photoshop has, if you condsider Price/performance ratio of GIMP, its unbeatable.
Im more of a ImageMagick type of guy, myself. Cant beat
#mogrify *.PNG -resize 10%
and simple stuff like that with any mouseweaning.
Linux = opsys kernel + a bunch of drivers. Doesnt even come with shell.
Desktop = KDE, Gnome, Looking Glass, Xfce
Get with the program, will you ? You can moan why a particular distro doesnt make it to desktop ( my gentoo box cant make it today, still compiling ) or why uptake of certain desktop framework is slow etc.
Kernel, whether its Hurd, BSD derivative, uClinux, Linux or vxWorks will never, ever make it on desktop. Not this year, not next year.
Now, if you want to work on a problem with slow uptake of anyBuntu, Mandriva, Suse or even DesktopBSD, start hiring usability designers or fix some bugs.
The essence of my post : you cant fix a problem if you start by stating it wrong.
there, that feels better.
There are quite a few. FreeRTOS, eCos, RTEMS, AvrX etc, some of them commercially quite successful. The proprietary counterparts like Nucleus are definitely very successful and in wide use.
What, you have never heard of them ? Well, there are other widely used computing platforms besides personal computers.
I have thought about LenPEG a couple of times, and for a widely used compression libraries, similar trick would actually make a tiny, tiny bit of sense. Consider doing a tar.gz on a large GNU source trees. How many copies of verbatim GPL header are present in such a tree ? Lots. And they have to be there. And now assume that every file contains just one function, which is one of design approaches for large granular C libs. Now if by some compression format specific trick there would be a way to tag certain well known and oft-repeated fixed byte sequences with short bit strings and the rest with normal huffman trees, there could be some probably trivial and highly application-specific savings to be had. But in certain storage environments it could add up.
doh .. they did build a prototype. Can lead horse to water, but cant make him drink, eh ?
Look up the work done in Space Vacuum Epitaxy Center, Houston. There is a design for buggy/rover that crawls over lunar regolith and builds a mat of solar cells on the surface. ( Google on Ignatiev, Freundlich, Lunar .. )
Decoded version.
Also dig around on ISRUInfo.com, especially in their conference proceedings sections. There are lots and lots of ideas for designing the hardware to be applicable in small scale missions.
Many excellent groups or artists may not have the ability to travel all year, such as older artists or people with physical disabilities
Im sure you have heard by this new invention called "Television" by now.
Others make music that relies on studio techniques that can't be replicated well in live settings.
I dont care for Kraftwerk much otherwise, but their live concert was the best "live" music experience i've had.
Ah, but you dont take the inflation and exchange rates into account ! A modern american lard-ass works out to be roughly 4.67 units of the original VW Beetle era german lard-asses.
I dont get why slashdot needs two posts about OLPC per day when stuff like really available and accessible cheap open source laptops like Zonbu go largely unnoticed.
they WILL find life of course, because Putin said so.
i was thinking the exact same thing. my first thought was, oops, does that make my both thinkpads now turn unfriendly on me ? we have been getting along so nicely so far, running various opsyses without any problems, travelling around and holding up nicely, and now, suddenly unfriendly ? wtf.
Thats the common problem with overinflated product announcements, practically any hyperbole they apply will make previous products from the same company look silly.
So you're saying a good GUI would just have a window to type commands in ?
Absolutely not, although for certain subset of user interaction problems i have yet to see a better solution.
What i AM saying, however, is if you want a good user interface for a given human-machine interaction problem, you cant start out with unquestioned assertions. If you start defining the problem in more detail and begin constraining it with certain technical limitations and other restrictions, undoubtedly this will often steer your solution to some commonly used UI paradigm, like windowing and menus and buttons, but this is not universal, and sometimes you need to question whether your imposed limitations and constraints actually apply to the problem.
i think this is a specially engineered news post to bring out the lamest "in soviet russia" jokes of slashdot. bring it on!
Well, i HAVE been grilled in US customs because i was entering the country for several weeks with just a rucksack and company credit card, while being dressed casually. That was in 2000 by the way.
To these bright minds, it looked highly suspicious. Any deviations from "normality" will apparently get that treatment now.
even though I'm completely innocent. HA HA. No such thing as completely innocent. What do you think Jesus died for ? Surely you have at least kicked your dog. TSA officers will make sure that this doesnt slip by.
Just one question. Why do you assert that a usable GUI has to have stuff like Dialogs, Buttons and Menus and the user has to Click on something ? I find all of these highly cumbersome UI elements.
Anyone followed First Solar ( FSLR ) IPO ? ..
..
They were the first to bring CdTe cells to market, and guess what happened
Now, several companies have been working furiously to get the competing CIGS cells going. Miasole, Nanosolar, HelioVolt, just to name a few. FSLR of course beat them to market, and is already a winner, but i am waiting for IPOs for the CIGS companies too
Anything that doesnt use crystalline silicon is going to be huge, and in some instances, already is.
Maybe, i am not paying £40 regularly for the games either. I buy maybe one or two ( counting all Wii, PSP and PC ) ~50 dollar games a year, and the rest of them i pick up from bargain bins for $10-20, or download online, like Sam&Max episodes.
If that $10 thing starts irritating me immediately, i definitely toss it on the shelf, and do something else instead.
Can you clarify how you become to hate someting like a computer game ? To me, if i dont like it, or its not to my tastes, i just toss it aside and dont sit in front of it learning to hate it.
i'd maybe start to dislike it if its a overall good thing that i really really like and keep playing, but something like crash bug in the middle of the storyline keeps screwing things up... but hating a game ?