And Software Engineering is still math in the sense that all programs are literally -- no analogy needed -- symbolic representations of math. Not "something that can be described by math", like the motion of a clock's pendulum. They are math in the same way that "a^2 = b^2 + c ^2" is math.
Many computer programs are math in the same way drawing is chemistry. In other words, not so much... Sure, it's math under the hood, just like it's chemistry (which of course is just a simplification of certain aspects of physics) that's keeping the color on the drawing paper.
Ok, that's the ideal world. We're not quite there yet, we don't have advanced enough hardware or software. But high-level application (like game) engines and GUI design are examples of areas where the maths are starting to be pushed to the background, implemented "once" without knowledge of any particular problem, any particular application that will be using them.
For example a game with a GUI and a physics engine isn't a symbolic representation of math, it's symbolic representation of a game world and possible user interactions. It's not math, unless you are of the opinion that everything with symbols is math, including any written text... The underlying engine could be implemented in any number of different methods, all giving slightly different results as long as they are within certain limits so that the application works correctly within it's limits.
And even programming that game physics engine, even though it's mostly math, isn't the same binary math that's running the electronic computer. The mathematics the physics engine would be the same no matter what's underneath. The days of implementing what the underlying hardware could do efficiently (like hardware detection of 2D sprite collisions) are pretty much over.
I'm pretty sure that if somebody starts to damage property eg. by throwing brick, then in most countries it would be perfectly legal to stop him using minimal sufficient force. Four or more people can pretty much subdue one person without injuring him (enough to hold each arm and leg). And if a protesters are even 10% troublemakers, it certainly isn't a peaceful protest any more...
But even that wouldn't be necessary. Imagine a dozen peaceful protesters grouping around one or two troublemakers and telling them to stop and get lost, NOW, or else. What do you think the troublemakers would do?
It should really be a bit of same thing as in an airplane these days, when it's as likely as not to be flown into a building or something. If somebody tries to hijack the plane, it's in the best interest of the passengers to stop them at any cost. Though not quite as bad, the same applies to peaceful demonstrations: stop the troublemakers or risk getting blasted with "non-lethal" weapons.
The use of agents provocateurs is standard practice at these sort of events. You can't legally break up a peaceful riot, so you send men in, incite the crowd, and then break up the riot you started. It happened at the last G20 in london. It happened at the WTO protests in Seattle. And you can bet your ass it's happening here.
Well, there's a simple solution, if it's really a peaceful demonstration. If anybody in the crowd starts to riot, rest of the crowd should subdue them and tie them down (like with cable ties or duct tape). Problem solved.
Now we can have free time (if we choose to). For almost everybody 5000 years ago, and for most people even just 100 years ago, choosing to have free time would equal choosing to starve.
Just think about your own life. Now take away all free time, like time used to read slashdot, surf the web, play (all kinds of playing, not just computer games), follow world events... Replace it with work where you have to give results all the time or you won't eat tomorrow.
In my opinion, this is a fundamental, revolutionary difference.
I know many Redhat devs that also work for M$. It does not make redhat any more appealing than windows nor is Gentoo more appealing as they steal code from BSD ports. Ubuntu is a debian clone also.
Maybe I am disillusioned, but as I understand, graduating to BSD from Linux is the only way to go. IMHO the only honest Linux distro's left are Debian and Slackware, but your average person on the street is not that intelligent anymore.
Not sure if you're trolling, but sounds like you've gotten the idea of FOSS somewhat wrong. There's no "stealng code" in FOSS world. The code is free, it can't be stolen. Free code is meant to be used and modified by others. Various derived distributions are not only honest to FOSS ideals, they crystallize what FOSS is all about: take it if it's great, improve it if it's not quite good or suitable enough, roll your own if it's bad.
But its probably not recyclable after it catches on fire from my overclocked processor
No worries. I think the melting point of solder is lower than ignition point of cardboard. So there's an automatic safety mechanism: solder melts, electric connections break, heating stops.
I'm under the impression that a lot of their web and server technology is not very derivative, being different from anything else. I'm talking about technolgies like ActiveX, DCOM,.net. What are they derived from?
C# is a Java clone after Sun female-dog-slapped Microsoft for the J++ incident. VB.NET is Visual Basic with more Java-like semantics, designed to compile into the same CLR bytecode as C#.
I wasn't talking about C#, I was talking about.NET framework, which is comparable to Jave EE, not Java language itself. And as far as I know, without having actually worked with either,.NET is quite different from Java EE, not derived from it.
Another issue is that a cat can't be alive and dead, only one or the other. Just because YOU don't know which, doesn't mean that it doesn't, or that reality doesn't. It's arrogant/solipsistic to assume that the cat's state needs you to see it. Solipsism, while interesting to me has never been useful. i'ven't been able to hack the matrix yet. So either reality is real or the matrix is so secure that it might as well be reality.
Quantum computing (a bit early to say "quantum computers"...) is real. The superposition of states is a real state, not just an illusion, or quantum computing wouldn't work like it works in various experiments.
What we don't know is, are there theoretical or practical limits to what can be in superposition. If a human can be in a superposition of states, we don't know. What it would mean (or feel like) if it were possible, we don't know that either.
Sir, you make distinctions without a difference. All of Microsoft's work is derivative.
I'm under the impression that a lot of their web and server technology is not very derivative, being different from anything else. I'm talking about technolgies like ActiveX, DCOM,.net. What are they derived from? Also, are IIS or SQL Server derived of something else?
So you define "real colour" by the technical properties of current camera technology instead of by the properties of the eye?
Technical properties of current camera technology are mostly defined by the technical properties of current eye technology. Once we are able to improve on current eye technology, changing cameras to match that is trivial.
There is a better way: hold people accountable for the actions of their computers.
Or better yet, hold programmers personally responsible for the misbehavior of their programs. So if you release a program that has a security hole that causes a million PCs to be hijacked, BAM, it's life in a prison! And not just your regular US federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison, no. This is international crime. The guilty should be sent to some real prison, somewhere in the remote parts of China for example.
ISS is just fine, in fact it'll be totally brilliant, if one thing happens: we learn what was done right and what was done wrong, and then we apply what we learned on future international space projects, whatever they be. Because ISS total cost will peanuts compared to anything interplanetary, and there's a chance to save much more than what was "wasted" on ISS.
Now what are the odds, that the powers that be learn the right lessons... Bleh.
You're talking about something entirely different and unrelated.
Strange matter (and the Earth converting into it), miniature black holes (and the Earth being devoured by one) etc are "HERE BE DRAGONS" on the white areas of todays "maps" (scientific theories) of the world. So it's very related to what I was replying to.
Hallelujah. Some time during the 20th century (or maybe the late 19th century) we decided that we knew mostly anything about everything, and we "froze" our conception of what is possible or impossible. A great parallel and maybe one reason for that attitude is that we live in closed world that we have entirely mapped. No more "HERE BE DRAGONS" on maps, we've seen it all, there's no mystery, no Atlantis, no big cave leading to the centre of the Earth, no lost 7th continent, and so on... And I think that it's something that anyone can confirm. Deep down, you know we know mostly everything about anything. You know there's no such things as ghosts, witches, mysterious dragons, angels, giant sea serpents, mole people, space aliens roaming our atmosphere, reincarnation, because what you really think is, if any such thing really existed, we would surely know by now.
No. It's that what we don't know has moved to an area that "layman" no longer easily understands, such as incompatibility of general relativity and quantum mechanics, string "theories" (or whatever you want to call them), current problems in cosmology, etc.
Currently (21st century) scientists very acutely know we don't know everything, not by a long shot. It's just that there are many things experimentally known to match current theories to the limits of current measurements. Offering something that doesn't match current measurements as a valid replacement is just silly.
I'd like to see you run something like Emacs or Wireshark on a phone anyway. The user interface constraints of a phone will practically require you to rewrite a GUI anyway. As for non-GUI code: that runs just fine on a Pre. Remember: it's just a normal Linux system with a different GUI.
Let me tell you, at least emacs can be used very nicely on a QWERTY phone, even in text terminal (putty/ssh or telnet or serial connection). Running it natively with GUI support could make it only better.
Only problem with any real application would be screen size, many modern applications have been designed for a larger screen, and their UI just doesn't fit in too small screen (just resize an application on full PC and see how small you can make it before there are problems with layout).
PCI Express 2.0 has more bandwidth than anyone will ever need
It might have more bandwidth than hardly anyone will ever need before 2011... So start saving, 2011 you'll be paying blood for your new PCIe 3.0 graphics card!
In industrialized countries, obesity is more a problem for the poor. Fatty, sugary (corn syrup!) foods are cheap. They contain lots of calories, but not much other nutrients. The healthy food (fresh veggies and fruits, full grain rice, bread and pasta, quality meat etc) is more expensive.
Well its not trivial. This is not a remote exploit, its local.
Trivial local exploit becomes trivial remote exploit, if the machine is running any insecure application reachable from the net, or just connecting to the net. A daemon running as non-root (as they usually do), a CGI script on a user's web page, a vulnerable http/ftp/irc/ntp/dhcp/whatever client connecting to a compromised server, shared disk accessible from a compromised other computer...
Unless the machine is a hardened server where only local use is doing administration,, and doing even that with security in mind, then a trivial local exploit often is a trivial remote exploit.
But a good compiler would've seen it was useless code and removed it. God needs to upgrade to gcc 4.3.3
We weren't intended as release version, so full optimization options were not used when compiling. But once our DNA worked... Well, if it works, and if recompiling with different options might break it... Just ship it! Too bad God remembered to strip the symbols at that point, because if he had left them in, we wouldn't have this silly evolution vs. intelligent design argument at all, and wouldn't have to figure out everything about our DNA by ourselves.
Suppose it does. The GPL V2 allows creation of derivative works; the restrictions are on distribution of them. Since nobody distributes the dynamically linked work, there's no copyright violation.
If you distribute both the library and the application, then (under GPL) you're distributing a dynamically linking derivative work of the library, and the entire work must be GPL'd. Also, if you're #including the header files of the GPL'd library when you compile the application, you're putting GPL'd code into your application, with obvious licensing consequences.
So if you write your own function prototypes etc, and don't distribute the libraries with the application, I think there's no legal problem, just the gnashing of teeth coming from GPL zealots, and frustration of users when installing. Quite unpractical, not to mention that distributing an entire operating system but leaving out a library needed by some applications would be rather stupid, but possible...:-)
So? What does it matter whether it's "an actual stream of electrons moving along like wires"? Electrical signals in biological systems get generated and transmitted by tiny local movements of ions across membranes in order to change local electrical fields, fields that then change the shape of charged molecules slightly. The process is very sensitive to electrical fields, and it can be affected by radio waves.
The process is certainly not very sensitive to electrical fields... Which should be self-evident, considering what kind of electromagnetic fields are all around us all the time, without no measurable or perceivable effect. If you have to have special and rare circumstances to get the effect, that's not very sensitive. Which is why we have all this nifty technology (radio receivers, voltage testers, power-on lights, warning signs saying "high voltage" etc etc) to help us work with electric fields and electromagnetic radiation.
Slashdot Mirror
And Software Engineering is still math in the sense that all programs are literally -- no analogy needed -- symbolic representations of math. Not "something that can be described by math", like the motion of a clock's pendulum. They are math in the same way that "a^2 = b^2 + c ^2" is math.
Many computer programs are math in the same way drawing is chemistry. In other words, not so much... Sure, it's math under the hood, just like it's chemistry (which of course is just a simplification of certain aspects of physics) that's keeping the color on the drawing paper.
Ok, that's the ideal world. We're not quite there yet, we don't have advanced enough hardware or software. But high-level application (like game) engines and GUI design are examples of areas where the maths are starting to be pushed to the background, implemented "once" without knowledge of any particular problem, any particular application that will be using them.
For example a game with a GUI and a physics engine isn't a symbolic representation of math, it's symbolic representation of a game world and possible user interactions. It's not math, unless you are of the opinion that everything with symbols is math, including any written text... The underlying engine could be implemented in any number of different methods, all giving slightly different results as long as they are within certain limits so that the application works correctly within it's limits.
And even programming that game physics engine, even though it's mostly math, isn't the same binary math that's running the electronic computer. The mathematics the physics engine would be the same no matter what's underneath. The days of implementing what the underlying hardware could do efficiently (like hardware detection of 2D sprite collisions) are pretty much over.
I'm pretty sure that if somebody starts to damage property eg. by throwing brick, then in most countries it would be perfectly legal to stop him using minimal sufficient force. Four or more people can pretty much subdue one person without injuring him (enough to hold each arm and leg). And if a protesters are even 10% troublemakers, it certainly isn't a peaceful protest any more...
But even that wouldn't be necessary. Imagine a dozen peaceful protesters grouping around one or two troublemakers and telling them to stop and get lost, NOW, or else. What do you think the troublemakers would do?
It should really be a bit of same thing as in an airplane these days, when it's as likely as not to be flown into a building or something. If somebody tries to hijack the plane, it's in the best interest of the passengers to stop them at any cost. Though not quite as bad, the same applies to peaceful demonstrations: stop the troublemakers or risk getting blasted with "non-lethal" weapons.
The use of agents provocateurs is standard practice at these sort of events. You can't legally break up a peaceful riot, so you send men in, incite the crowd, and then break up the riot you started. It happened at the last G20 in london. It happened at the WTO protests in Seattle. And you can bet your ass it's happening here.
Well, there's a simple solution, if it's really a peaceful demonstration. If anybody in the crowd starts to riot, rest of the crowd should subdue them and tie them down (like with cable ties or duct tape). Problem solved.
Now we can have free time (if we choose to). For almost everybody 5000 years ago, and for most people even just 100 years ago, choosing to have free time would equal choosing to starve.
Just think about your own life. Now take away all free time, like time used to read slashdot, surf the web, play (all kinds of playing, not just computer games), follow world events... Replace it with work where you have to give results all the time or you won't eat tomorrow.
In my opinion, this is a fundamental, revolutionary difference.
I know many Redhat devs that also work for M$. It does not make redhat any more appealing than windows nor is Gentoo more appealing as they steal code from BSD ports. Ubuntu is a debian clone also.
Maybe I am disillusioned, but as I understand, graduating to BSD from Linux is the only way to go. IMHO the only honest Linux distro's left are Debian and Slackware, but your average person on the street is not that intelligent anymore.
Not sure if you're trolling, but sounds like you've gotten the idea of FOSS somewhat wrong. There's no "stealng code" in FOSS world. The code is free, it can't be stolen. Free code is meant to be used and modified by others. Various derived distributions are not only honest to FOSS ideals, they crystallize what FOSS is all about:
take it if it's great,
improve it if it's not quite good or suitable enough,
roll your own if it's bad.
But its probably not recyclable after it catches on fire from my overclocked processor
No worries. I think the melting point of solder is lower than ignition point of cardboard. So there's an automatic safety mechanism: solder melts, electric connections break, heating stops.
I'm under the impression that a lot of their web and server technology is not very derivative, being different from anything else. I'm talking about technolgies like ActiveX, DCOM, .net. What are they derived from?
C# is a Java clone after Sun female-dog-slapped Microsoft for the J++ incident. VB.NET is Visual Basic with more Java-like semantics, designed to compile into the same CLR bytecode as C#.
I wasn't talking about C#, I was talking about .NET framework, which is comparable to Jave EE, not Java language itself. And as far as I know, without having actually worked with either, .NET is quite different from Java EE, not derived from it.
Another issue is that a cat can't be alive and dead, only one or the other. Just because YOU don't know which, doesn't mean that it doesn't, or that reality doesn't. It's arrogant/solipsistic to assume that the cat's state needs you to see it. Solipsism, while interesting to me has never been useful. i'ven't been able to hack the matrix yet. So either reality is real or the matrix is so secure that it might as well be reality.
Quantum computing (a bit early to say "quantum computers"...) is real. The superposition of states is a real state, not just an illusion, or quantum computing wouldn't work like it works in various experiments.
What we don't know is, are there theoretical or practical limits to what can be in superposition. If a human can be in a superposition of states, we don't know. What it would mean (or feel like) if it were possible, we don't know that either.
Sir, you make distinctions without a difference. All of Microsoft's work is derivative.
I'm under the impression that a lot of their web and server technology is not very derivative, being different from anything else. I'm talking about technolgies like ActiveX, DCOM, .net. What are they derived from? Also, are IIS or SQL Server derived of something else?
So you define "real colour" by the technical properties of current camera technology instead of by the properties of the eye?
Technical properties of current camera technology are mostly defined by the technical properties of current eye technology. Once we are able to improve on current eye technology, changing cameras to match that is trivial.
There is a better way: hold people accountable for the actions of their computers.
Or better yet, hold programmers personally responsible for the misbehavior of their programs. So if you release a program that has a security hole that causes a million PCs to be hijacked, BAM, it's life in a prison! And not just your regular US federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison, no. This is international crime. The guilty should be sent to some real prison, somewhere in the remote parts of China for example.
ISS is just fine, in fact it'll be totally brilliant, if one thing happens: we learn what was done right and what was done wrong, and then we apply what we learned on future international space projects, whatever they be. Because ISS total cost will peanuts compared to anything interplanetary, and there's a chance to save much more than what was "wasted" on ISS.
Now what are the odds, that the powers that be learn the right lessons... Bleh.
You're talking about something entirely different and unrelated.
Strange matter (and the Earth converting into it), miniature black holes (and the Earth being devoured by one) etc are "HERE BE DRAGONS" on the white areas of todays "maps" (scientific theories) of the world. So it's very related to what I was replying to.
Hallelujah. Some time during the 20th century (or maybe the late 19th century) we decided that we knew mostly anything about everything, and we "froze" our conception of what is possible or impossible. A great parallel and maybe one reason for that attitude is that we live in closed world that we have entirely mapped. No more "HERE BE DRAGONS" on maps, we've seen it all, there's no mystery, no Atlantis, no big cave leading to the centre of the Earth, no lost 7th continent, and so on... And I think that it's something that anyone can confirm. Deep down, you know we know mostly everything about anything. You know there's no such things as ghosts, witches, mysterious dragons, angels, giant sea serpents, mole people, space aliens roaming our atmosphere, reincarnation, because what you really think is, if any such thing really existed, we would surely know by now.
No. It's that what we don't know has moved to an area that "layman" no longer easily understands, such as incompatibility of general relativity and quantum mechanics, string "theories" (or whatever you want to call them), current problems in cosmology, etc.
Currently (21st century) scientists very acutely know we don't know everything, not by a long shot. It's just that there are many things experimentally known to match current theories to the limits of current measurements. Offering something that doesn't match current measurements as a valid replacement is just silly.
I'd like to see you run something like Emacs or Wireshark on a phone anyway. The user interface constraints of a phone will practically require you to rewrite a GUI anyway. As for non-GUI code: that runs just fine on a Pre. Remember: it's just a normal Linux system with a different GUI.
Let me tell you, at least emacs can be used very nicely on a QWERTY phone, even in text terminal (putty/ssh or telnet or serial connection). Running it natively with GUI support could make it only better.
Only problem with any real application would be screen size, many modern applications have been designed for a larger screen, and their UI just doesn't fit in too small screen (just resize an application on full PC and see how small you can make it before there are problems with layout).
Is Firefox locked down because its interface is written using XUL and CSS? Palm is doing essentialy the same thing.
Hint: Firefox is not an operating system. Your question is meaningless as it is.
But sure, a Firefox based device could be locked down, by crippling normal Firefox features (configuration, add-ons etc).
PCI Express 2.0 has more bandwidth than anyone will ever need
It might have more bandwidth than hardly anyone will ever need before 2011... So start saving, 2011 you'll be paying blood for your new PCIe 3.0 graphics card!
In industrialized countries, obesity is more a problem for the poor. Fatty, sugary (corn syrup!) foods are cheap. They contain lots of calories, but not much other nutrients. The healthy food (fresh veggies and fruits, full grain rice, bread and pasta, quality meat etc) is more expensive.
Well its not trivial. This is not a remote exploit, its local.
Trivial local exploit becomes trivial remote exploit, if the machine is running any insecure application reachable from the net, or just connecting to the net. A daemon running as non-root (as they usually do), a CGI script on a user's web page, a vulnerable http/ftp/irc/ntp/dhcp/whatever client connecting to a compromised server, shared disk accessible from a compromised other computer...
Unless the machine is a hardened server where only local use is doing administration,, and doing even that with security in mind, then a trivial local exploit often is a trivial remote exploit.
But a good compiler would've seen it was useless code and removed it. God needs to upgrade to gcc 4.3.3
We weren't intended as release version, so full optimization options were not used when compiling. But once our DNA worked... Well, if it works, and if recompiling with different options might break it... Just ship it! Too bad God remembered to strip the symbols at that point, because if he had left them in, we wouldn't have this silly evolution vs. intelligent design argument at all, and wouldn't have to figure out everything about our DNA by ourselves.
Helium three has no known use, with the exception of the trivial amount used in low-temperature science.
Well, Helium-3 gives a lot more lift than Helium-4 for balloons and zeppelins. And you certainly need a non-trivial amount of it for this use... ;-)
Suppose it does. The GPL V2 allows creation of derivative works; the restrictions are on distribution of them. Since nobody distributes the dynamically linked work, there's no copyright violation.
If you distribute both the library and the application, then (under GPL) you're distributing a dynamically linking derivative work of the library, and the entire work must be GPL'd. Also, if you're #including the header files of the GPL'd library when you compile the application, you're putting GPL'd code into your application, with obvious licensing consequences.
So if you write your own function prototypes etc, and don't distribute the libraries with the application, I think there's no legal problem, just the gnashing of teeth coming from GPL zealots, and frustration of users when installing. Quite unpractical, not to mention that distributing an entire operating system but leaving out a library needed by some applications would be rather stupid, but possible... :-)
Then again, IANAL.
Indeed. Such a predator might even cause a mass extinction of other species...
So? What does it matter whether it's "an actual stream of electrons moving along like wires"? Electrical signals in biological systems get generated and transmitted by tiny local movements of ions across membranes in order to change local electrical fields, fields that then change the shape of charged molecules slightly. The process is very sensitive to electrical fields, and it can be affected by radio waves.
The process is certainly not very sensitive to electrical fields... Which should be self-evident, considering what kind of electromagnetic fields are all around us all the time, without no measurable or perceivable effect. If you have to have special and rare circumstances to get the effect, that's not very sensitive. Which is why we have all this nifty technology (radio receivers, voltage testers, power-on lights, warning signs saying "high voltage" etc etc) to help us work with electric fields and electromagnetic radiation.
Nothing in the universe combats entropy.
I do! Entropy will only win over my dead body!