The implementation details escape me. It really does sound as though they want to charge extra for a special type of phone call. Sure I tie up the phone line calling my ISP, but I tie up a phone line when I talk to my girlfriend for 2-3 hours at a stretch. And I already pay for that phoneline.
How can they tax a *type* of phone call. If I call up my local ISP's modem with my voice line because I like the squeal, I'm not accessing the internet. Does that count?
Finally, they should tax 911 calls. The demand for them is much more in-elastic. If they tax modems, the demand (and thus their tax base) will shrink. Demand for 911 won't change much (like gasoline or liquor) based on price. This would work out well because I use my modem much more than I use 911 [note - sarcasm]
I would be curious to know what aspect of OSS they are trying to benefit from. Are they interested in seeing WinCE ported to lots of different architectures? Do they just want users to fix their bugs for them? Or do they just open source hype?
I agree with the other commentators that we would most likely see a SCSL-type deal.
Possibly they want to use the hype to steal mindshare from PalmOS? "We're open source, PalmOS isn't!"?
First, I don't normally flame articles, but maybe they should have tried to be a little sensational to get some attention. A Gartner Report has "all but put the kiss of death of linux?" A little extreme...
Also, I thought linux was always considered to be competing with NT in the server space, and not the desktop?
And finally, I don't feel my linux use has meant a loss in sales to a unix vendor. Oh yes, I was this close to plunking down a license for Irix or AIX, but then I realized that I don't have several thousand dollars for an SGI box or an IBM server:)
To be fair, didn't the Gartner group recently put out a report trashing Win2000 over it's total cost of ownership? Mind you, I don't remember any articles labeling that the 'Kiss of Death For Microsoft Operating Systems'
From what I understand, computers still aren't terribly good a translating tasks, and it seems as though this could be even worse. Wouldn't you loose even more context/subtle-language-aspect by translating from, say, English to UNL and then UNL to, say, Japanese? UNL will probably be rigidly defined (context-free grammar?), so you will have to twist and bend English to get it into UNL.
It would be neat to see some amazing developments in natural language processing, but I won't hold my breath
BTW - if you ask Babelfish to translate 'I won't hold my breath' to German and back, you get:
It *does* come with (in addition to the OS, GUI, text editor, web server, and a couple of other goodies) a web browser that does HTML 3.2 and JavaScript. There's a Tower of Hanoi game implemented in JavaScript on the demo.
No Java, but still pretty darned impressive for 1.44 megs!!!
(Anyone know how much QNX costs, they don't seem to have a price anywhere on their site, so I'm going to assume expensive!!!!)
At least it will make the fight scenes easy to choreagraph! All of the good guys each take one swing, then all of the monsters get to take an attcak, then the higher level fighters will get their extra attacks, if they get any. Then, everyone will wait around for another 40-50 seconds for the round to end. Repeat.
Who needs a Palm Pilot when you can walk down the hall hands free as the briefs you on your next meeting, or allows you to read and compose your mail on the way to work. My hands shake.
I wonder if that would be terribly successful. Apparently, the first car phones marketed were speaker phones, which sounded like a good idea because both hands would be free for driving. The idea flopped because people looked kind of odd talking to themselves while driving.
I bet there would be a similar effect (at least for a long time). People walking down the sidewalk talking to themselves usually get some pretty strange looks:)
The important difference is that there is no hypocracy. No one, that I see, ever claims that Linux is innovative and bleeding edge. The usual claims (which are justified) are that it is stable and that it works!
If there is innovation, it is in the software development model. By conventional software engineering wisdom, hundreds (1000s?) of developers working remotely across the Internet shouldn't work. The linux community (and many other OSS projects) have proven that it does.
Microsoft steals ideas and claims them as it's own. Linux cheerfully borrows good ideas! Freedom of information is one of the basic concepts of the Open Source (or Free Software). No one is going to run around saying, 'Linus and Alan Cox invented journaling file systems!!!!' If they use SGI's code, I'm sure credit will be given where credit is due.
Borrowing & sharing is completely, utterly different than stealing.
It has been a while since I looked through the SCSL, but if I remember correctly, it doesn't allow derivative works. You can download the source code, look at it, say Gee-Whiz this is neat, you can even compile it for your own entertainment, but you won't be seeing Debian Solaris or RedHat Solaris. You can't re-distribute it.
Heck, Sun won't even accept bug fixes for Java from the developer community. You have to log your bug report at the Java Developer Site, hope people vote for it and that Sun actually fixes it.
It's a little more open (as in transparent) a process than Microsoft's I guess, but it is a far cry from genuine open source development!
On behalf of Canada, I'd like to apologize for the metric system, although if I remember my history, it's really France's fault. Of course, Star Trek is also partly to blame:)
(Note...please don't take the following seriously, last night I went through a rather lengthy C++ debug session and am a little bitter at the moment)
The problem, as I see it, with C++ is that give them a few more iterations and the Standards Folks will have used every English word as a keyword and we will be left using hard coded constants. I suspect that is why unicode is getting more and more popular. They've even had to start re-using keywords (if re-use works for code, why not language syntax). At last count, the number of different uses for 'const' was approaching Avagadro's number.
Mind you, I think keyword bloat is probably good for compiler writers. Since no one can possibly implement ALL of the C++ keywords a lot of the pressure is gone. They only have to implement the subset of them that they like most. For the rest of the keywords, they can just give suitably entertaining compiler errors, such as the following that I got out of g++ (or was it CC?) a couple of years ago...
Agreed. There is a lot of variety in what people would consider a base install. Being a geek, I install pretty much every compiler & language that comes with the distribution, several text editors and that is the basic set of tools for me:) I think the greatest part about linux is that you get to pick pretty much exactly what goes onto your machine...
My OEM version of Win95 forces me to install The Works and then I get to spend an hour or so deleting stuff I don't want. Not helped by the fact that you have to reboot almost everytime you un-install something!
Windows installs make things a little more entertaining because afterwards you get to run through it going...Huh? What's this? But novelty of that wears out after a while:)
Huh? Mandrake 6.0 came with legions of more stuff than Win98! All the compilers, editors, games, graphics programs, shells, scripting languages, admin utils, graphic programs, window managaers, Gnome, KDE, ftp utils, browsers, various servers,...and so on.
In terms of Stuff, Win98 is dwarfed by your typical Linux distribution!
It's interesting, but I would have liked more details, instead of just hints. How much practice has the author had at installing either operating systems and what procedures did he use?
I like to pick my packages individually while installing linux, so it takes me a little longer. On the hand, I've had to re-install NT Workstation so many times due to it's f**king up, I can do it in under 15 minutes.
(And I have a friend who insists that re-compiling your linux kernal is a basic step in the installation procedure, which would add a little more time:) )
Finally, it is vastly more important to me which computer *functions* once the install is complete, rather than how long it takes. Looks as though Win98 is the big lemon, though.
I'm thinking that the evolutionary imperatives hardcoded into our wetware will probably eventually doom any really generally intelligent system.
I'm not sure I agree with you on this...it has been pointed out, even by Richard Dawkins (the uber-evolutionist) that as soon as we gained consciousness, we stopped being slaves to our genetic heritage. Our behaviour is noew determined (mostly) by what we consider good for ourselves, rather than what is good for our genes. Contraceptives for example, or choosing career over family.
As long as we believed we would benefit from an AI, I don't see us pulling the plug. And society has proven remarkably poor at seeing the negative consequences of technology we develop.
Dana
Aha! The Immigration Website
on
Dear Mr. Straw
·
· Score: 2
I found the Citizenship & Immigration website. Here is the link to some useful info.
The way I read it, you are assessed an elligibility score. You need a total of 70 (out of 100 possible) points, if you are fluent in both French & English, you get 15 points, if you are fluent in one of them, 9 points. Contact C&I for details about how the points are assessed, but it looks as though it is relatively easy to qualify, especially if you are young, have a degree (or other post-secondary training) or job experience in the computer field.
Hope that helps (and wasn't getting to far off topic)
Dana
Re:Not unless the law has changed..
on
Dear Mr. Straw
·
· Score: 1
Hmm...it could be, having never had to immigrate to Canada, I was trying to think back to high school:) I'd look into it again and try to find a written policy.
I do know that, thanks to NAFTA, I am automatically allowed to work in the United States in high tech fields once I have finished my university degree and have a job lined up. I assume the law works in vice versa for Americans coming to Canada, although working in a country and immigrating are different things.
Dana
Re:Whee.. (going a little off topic :-) )
on
Dear Mr. Straw
·
· Score: 1
I pretty sure that you are not required to speak conversational French to be a permanent resident. I've known quite a few people who immigrate here and don't speak French. Hell, my French (and English for that matter:) ) is rudamentary. I believe you are required to be able to speak *one* of our official languages with a reasonable comptenecy.
The advantage to reading French is that the way stuff gets translated can be pretty odd, especially slogans/jingles on junk food:)
Time and time again, I get to think, "Yay, I live in Canada". Here is an excerpt from John Manley (Canada's Industry Minister) outlining his governments crypto policy:
The policy allows Canadians to develop, import and use whatever cryptography products they wish and does not impose mandatory key recovery requirements or a licensing regime. "This policy is good for the Canadian economy," said Minister Manley. "It supports the increased use of electronic commerce products and services in Canada, as well as the export of Canadian information technologies to other countries."
Wow! A consumer/industry friendly approach! The full article is here
Hmm...perhaps entrapment was the wrong term. It just smacks a little too much of the GIF/Unisys nonsense:
Patent something, sit on it (or in the case of the Norwegian company, deliberately hide it), wait until tonnes of companies are using your patent, then start demanding fees for using your technology. In a sense, these guys are worse than Unisys because they were *concealing* their patent while ecommerce got bigger and bigger.
And they never even did anything with their patent (that I've heard of, they aren't one of the big companies with e-commerce site, so far as I heard they aren't developing e-commerce software)!
I don't understand how they can sneak buying stuff over the phone in there. As long as I have been watching TV there have been ads for buying K-Tel records and Ronco Turnip Twadlers (quick, copyright 'As Seen on TV', it's right up there with you've got mail). Not that I think it would be a bad thing if there were no more Time-Life Sounds of the 60s commercials, but buying stuff over the phone seems to have been going on for a long time.
Also, they admit to entrapping people!!! 'Our patent has been a closely kept secret...' They deliberately waited until there were alls sorts of potential defendants using e-commerce before revealing their patent.
Hmm...I have to say that I think the article was sounding a little flakey:)
However, I do have to question why we need AI software to filter web content and act like a buffer. This was mentioned a few times in response to part I: I can choose for myself what I do and don't want to read. I don't want to spend 8 hours a day surfing the web reading as many pages as possible, so I don't. There are a few pages I visit regularly and if I have to look something up, I fire up Google.
I've read the forecasts about PDAs that will look up articles that match your interest and spoon feed them to you, but this sounds like just another way to get hooked on information/technology.
The cure for any 'cyberclysm' is...an OFF BUTTON!
Dana [hmm...feeling a little like ranting this morning:) ]
A question for you (and this is absolutely not a flame)...do you think Macs are so efficient because you 'have been using them your whole life', or by design?
Using Linux or Windows, I still do a lot of stuff from the command line simply because I am a much faster typist that I am with a mouse. It's probably an illness, but I like the script files much more than searching through menus and hitting check boxes.
I have a question about Open Source projects that has been nagging at me lately. It's often said that one of the advantages of OSS is that you have, literally, thousands of eyes peering at your code, which makes 'all bugs shallow'. It seems to me there must be a deeper principle operating.
Microsoft apparently has 4000 programmers working on Windows 2000, which has got to be close to the number of coders who regularly work on the linux kernel, yet the linux kernel seems to be much more stable. M$ doesn't appear to be benefiting from 1000s upon 1000s of eyes, so where do the differences in the models lie besides the sheer numbers? Can anyone enlighten me?
Slashdot Mirror
The implementation details escape me. It really does sound as though they want to charge extra for a special type of phone call. Sure I tie up the phone line calling my ISP, but I tie up a phone line when I talk to my girlfriend for 2-3 hours at a stretch. And I already pay for that phoneline.
How can they tax a *type* of phone call. If I call up my local ISP's modem with my voice line because I like the squeal, I'm not accessing the internet. Does that count?
Finally, they should tax 911 calls. The demand for them is much more in-elastic. If they tax modems, the demand (and thus their tax base) will shrink. Demand for 911 won't change much (like gasoline or liquor) based on price. This would work out well because I use my modem much more than I use 911 [note - sarcasm]
Dana
I would be curious to know what aspect of OSS they are trying to benefit from. Are they interested in seeing WinCE ported to lots of different architectures? Do they just want users to fix their bugs for them? Or do they just open source hype?
I agree with the other commentators that we would most likely see a SCSL-type deal.
Possibly they want to use the hype to steal mindshare from PalmOS? "We're open source, PalmOS isn't!"?
Dana
First, I don't normally flame articles, but maybe they should have tried to be a little sensational to get some attention. A Gartner Report has "all but put the kiss of death of linux?" A little extreme...
:)
Also, I thought linux was always considered to be competing with NT in the server space, and not the desktop?
And finally, I don't feel my linux use has meant a loss in sales to a unix vendor. Oh yes, I was this close to plunking down a license for Irix or AIX, but then I realized that I don't have several thousand dollars for an SGI box or an IBM server
To be fair, didn't the Gartner group recently put out a report trashing Win2000 over it's total cost of ownership? Mind you, I don't remember any articles labeling that the 'Kiss of Death For Microsoft Operating Systems'
Dana
From what I understand, computers still aren't terribly good a translating tasks, and it seems as though this could be even worse. Wouldn't you loose even more context/subtle-language-aspect by translating from, say, English to UNL and then UNL to, say, Japanese? UNL will probably be rigidly defined (context-free grammar?), so you will have to twist and bend English to get it into UNL.
It would be neat to see some amazing developments in natural language processing, but I won't hold my breath
BTW - if you ask Babelfish to translate 'I won't hold my breath' to German and back, you get:
I do not hold mean breath on
:)
Dana
It *does* come with (in addition to the OS, GUI, text editor, web server, and a couple of other goodies) a web browser that does HTML 3.2 and JavaScript. There's a Tower of Hanoi game implemented in JavaScript on the demo.
No Java, but still pretty darned impressive for 1.44 megs!!!
(Anyone know how much QNX costs, they don't seem to have a price anywhere on their site, so I'm going to assume expensive!!!!)
Dana
At least it will make the fight scenes easy to choreagraph! All of the good guys each take one swing, then all of the monsters get to take an attcak, then the higher level fighters will get their extra attacks, if they get any. Then, everyone will wait around for another 40-50 seconds for the round to end. Repeat.
Dana
Who needs a Palm Pilot when you can walk down the hall hands free as the briefs you on your next meeting, or allows you to read and compose your mail on the way to work. My hands shake.
:)
I wonder if that would be terribly successful. Apparently, the first car phones marketed were speaker phones, which sounded like a good idea because both hands would be free for driving. The idea flopped because people looked kind of odd talking to themselves while driving.
I bet there would be a similar effect (at least for a long time). People walking down the sidewalk talking to themselves usually get some pretty strange looks
Dana
The important difference is that there is no hypocracy. No one, that I see, ever claims that Linux is innovative and bleeding edge. The usual claims (which are justified) are that it is stable and that it works!
If there is innovation, it is in the software development model. By conventional software engineering wisdom, hundreds (1000s?) of developers working remotely across the Internet shouldn't work. The linux community (and many other OSS projects) have proven that it does.
Microsoft steals ideas and claims them as it's own. Linux cheerfully borrows good ideas! Freedom of information is one of the basic concepts of the Open Source (or Free Software). No one is going to run around saying, 'Linus and Alan Cox invented journaling file systems!!!!' If they use SGI's code, I'm sure credit will be given where credit is due.
Borrowing & sharing is completely, utterly different than stealing.
Dana
It has been a while since I looked through the SCSL, but if I remember correctly, it doesn't allow derivative works. You can download the source code, look at it, say Gee-Whiz this is neat, you can even compile it for your own entertainment, but you won't be seeing Debian Solaris or RedHat Solaris. You can't re-distribute it.
Heck, Sun won't even accept bug fixes for Java from the developer community. You have to log your bug report at the Java Developer Site, hope people vote for it and that Sun actually fixes it.
It's a little more open (as in transparent) a process than Microsoft's I guess, but it is a far cry from genuine open source development!
Dana
On behalf of Canada, I'd like to apologize for the metric system, although if I remember my history, it's really France's fault. Of course, Star Trek is also partly to blame :)
Dana
(Note...please don't take the following seriously, last night I went through a rather lengthy C++ debug session and am a little bitter at the moment)
:) )
The problem, as I see it, with C++ is that give them a few more iterations and the Standards Folks will have used every English word as a keyword and we will be left using hard coded constants. I suspect that is why unicode is getting more and more popular. They've even had to start re-using keywords (if re-use works for code, why not language syntax). At last count, the number of different uses for 'const' was approaching Avagadro's number.
Mind you, I think keyword bloat is probably good for compiler writers. Since no one can possibly implement ALL of the C++ keywords a lot of the pressure is gone. They only have to implement the subset of them that they like most. For the rest of the keywords, they can just give suitably entertaining compiler errors, such as the following that I got out of g++ (or was it CC?) a couple of years ago...
WARNING! Namespaces is mostly broken!
(Ah, I feel better after that rant
Dana
Agreed. There is a lot of variety in what people would consider a base install. Being a geek, I install pretty much every compiler & language that comes with the distribution, several text editors and that is the basic set of tools for me:)
:)
I think the greatest part about linux is that you get to pick pretty much exactly what goes onto your machine...
My OEM version of Win95 forces me to install The Works and then I get to spend an hour or so deleting stuff I don't want. Not helped by the fact that you have to reboot almost everytime you un-install something!
Windows installs make things a little more entertaining because afterwards you get to run through it going...Huh? What's this? But novelty of that wears out after a while
Dana
Huh? Mandrake 6.0 came with legions of more stuff than Win98! All the compilers, editors, games, graphics programs, shells, scripting languages, admin utils, graphic programs, window managaers, Gnome, KDE, ftp utils, browsers, various servers,...and so on.
In terms of Stuff, Win98 is dwarfed by your typical Linux distribution!
Dana
It's interesting, but I would have liked more details, instead of just hints. How much practice has the author had at installing either operating systems and what procedures did he use?
:) )
I like to pick my packages individually while installing linux, so it takes me a little longer. On the hand, I've had to re-install NT Workstation so many times due to it's f**king up, I can do it in under 15 minutes.
(And I have a friend who insists that re-compiling your linux kernal is a basic step in the installation procedure, which would add a little more time
Finally, it is vastly more important to me which computer *functions* once the install is complete, rather than how long it takes. Looks as though Win98 is the big lemon, though.
Dana
I'm thinking that the evolutionary imperatives hardcoded into our wetware will probably eventually doom any really generally intelligent system.
I'm not sure I agree with you on this...it has been pointed out, even by Richard Dawkins (the uber-evolutionist) that as soon as we gained consciousness, we stopped being slaves to our genetic heritage. Our behaviour is noew determined (mostly) by what we consider good for ourselves, rather than what is good for our genes. Contraceptives for example, or choosing career over family.
As long as we believed we would benefit from an AI, I don't see us pulling the plug. And society has proven remarkably poor at seeing the negative consequences of technology we develop.
Dana
I found the Citizenship & Immigration website. Here is the link to some useful info.
The way I read it, you are assessed an elligibility score. You need a total of 70 (out of 100 possible) points, if you are fluent in both French & English, you get 15 points, if you are fluent in one of them, 9 points. Contact C&I for details about how the points are assessed, but it looks as though it is relatively easy to qualify, especially if you are young, have a degree (or other post-secondary training) or job experience in the computer field.
Hope that helps (and wasn't getting to far off topic)
Dana
Hmm...it could be, having never had to immigrate to Canada, I was trying to think back to high school :) I'd look into it again and try to find a written policy.
I do know that, thanks to NAFTA, I am automatically allowed to work in the United States in high tech fields once I have finished my university degree and have a job lined up. I assume the law works in vice versa for Americans coming to Canada, although working in a country and immigrating are different things.
Dana
I pretty sure that you are not required to speak conversational French to be a permanent resident. I've known quite a few people who immigrate here and don't speak French. Hell, my French (and English for that matter :) ) is rudamentary. I believe you are required to be able to speak *one* of our official languages with a reasonable comptenecy.
:)
The advantage to reading French is that the way stuff gets translated can be pretty odd, especially slogans/jingles on junk food
Dana
Time and time again, I get to think, "Yay, I live in Canada". Here is an excerpt from John Manley (Canada's Industry Minister) outlining his governments crypto policy:
The policy allows Canadians to develop, import and use whatever cryptography
products they wish and does not impose mandatory key recovery requirements or
a licensing regime. "This policy is good for the Canadian economy," said Minister
Manley. "It supports the increased use of electronic commerce products and
services in Canada, as well as the export of Canadian information technologies to
other countries."
Wow! A consumer/industry friendly approach! The full article is here
Dana
Hmm...perhaps entrapment was the wrong term. It just smacks a little too much of the GIF/Unisys nonsense:
Patent something, sit on it (or in the case of the Norwegian company, deliberately hide it), wait until tonnes of companies are using your patent, then start demanding fees for using your technology. In a sense, these guys are worse than Unisys because they were *concealing* their patent while ecommerce got bigger and bigger.
And they never even did anything with their patent (that I've heard of, they aren't one of the big companies with e-commerce site, so far as I heard they aren't developing e-commerce software)!
Dana
(Thanks for the quick translation)
I don't understand how they can sneak buying stuff over the phone in there. As long as I have been watching TV there have been ads for buying K-Tel records and Ronco Turnip Twadlers (quick, copyright 'As Seen on TV', it's right up there with you've got mail). Not that I think it would be a bad thing if there were no more Time-Life Sounds of the 60s commercials, but buying stuff over the phone seems to have been going on for a long time.
Also, they admit to entrapping people!!! 'Our patent has been a closely kept secret...' They deliberately waited until there were alls sorts of potential defendants using e-commerce before revealing their patent.
Dana
Hmm...I have to say that I think the article was sounding a little flakey :)
:) ]
However, I do have to question why we need AI software to filter web content and act like a buffer. This was mentioned a few times in response to part I: I can choose for myself what I do and don't want to read. I don't want to spend 8 hours a day surfing the web reading as many pages as possible, so I don't. There are a few pages I visit regularly and if I have to look something up, I fire up Google.
I've read the forecasts about PDAs that will look up articles that match your interest and spoon feed them to you, but this sounds like just another way to get hooked on information/technology.
The cure for any 'cyberclysm' is...an OFF BUTTON!
Dana [hmm...feeling a little like ranting this morning
A question for you (and this is absolutely not a flame)...do you think Macs are so efficient because you 'have been using them your whole life', or by design?
Using Linux or Windows, I still do a lot of stuff from the command line simply because I am a much faster typist that I am with a mouse. It's probably an illness, but I like the script files much more than searching through menus and hitting
check boxes.
Dana
I have a question about Open Source projects that has been nagging at me lately. It's often said that one of the advantages of OSS is that you have, literally, thousands of eyes peering at your code, which makes 'all bugs shallow'. It seems to me there must be a deeper principle operating.
Microsoft apparently has 4000 programmers working on Windows 2000, which has got to be close to the number of coders who regularly work on the linux kernel, yet the linux kernel seems to be much more stable. M$ doesn't appear to be benefiting from 1000s upon 1000s of eyes, so where do the differences in the models lie besides the sheer numbers? Can anyone enlighten me?
Dana
If you want a nice, lean Java IDE, go with Kawa. VisualAge is nice (as well as nice and fat) but more suited for a team doing a big project.
If you are working on your own, Kawa is nice. If provides just about everything you need for small Java projects.
It is especially nice for students, as it is cheap ($29 academic pricing) and simple.
Frankly, I'd rather Sun concentrated on the core language and left tools (and many of the APIs) to third parties.
-Dana