Interesting you mention this section positively, because I am undecided. The first thing I think of when you say politics on the Internet is "ugh". I enjoy the analysis and perspective of others, but it can also be a great tinderbox for flamewars and trolls. Add that to the dangers of misinformation - deliberate or ignorant - and the spectrum of motivations./. can either fight these problems or become another battleground.
If/. really makes this something a respectable candidate would participate in, I would be extremely impressed.
Will global/regional politics, political economy, neo-classical economics, development, war, foreign policy, etc. fall into this category? If so, why not? I would prefer a middle-class global perspective rather than a U.S.-president centric one (I assume most readers are middle class and know something about the world around them).
There is a great/. poll in this somewhere. Favorite open source TODO's maybe?
Re:Communism is good for something
on
China Goes Nuclear
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
OT, but China is not so much communism as authoritarianism. Yes, the communist party is in control and yes the propoganda is alive. But communism implies more than simply a government - it's a social structure.
You ask who cares?
Well, China is playing a game of accepting limited market economy while still controling many economic things, including some prices, as it sees fit. China is accepted by business interests because it has made committments to the WTO and other institutions. However, it is still classified as a developing country and therefore gets a lot of slack from the WTO. This also means it gets a lot of development loans at great rates and other things. If all it did was preach communism, it would not be in this position. There have been real changes in China, some incomplete, but many progressive.
Regardless, Lenin, Mao, Marx, etc. would probably not consider current China (PRC) communist. If communism to you means a socialist state controlled by one party of elites and the military interactive in the market economy, then yes it is. Otherwise, I wouldn't so easily label it.
What's most disconcerting is that such legislation as the Patriot Act was approved by elected officials. Said representatives are intended to provide some balance between the people and the state (ideally moderate law). If that balance is disrupted by outside influences and major events, then this radical reaction may become endemic.
That is, this is not an isolated event of corruption or total control, but possibly a trend.
How can eBay verify an item without having access to said item?
eBay will be hesitant to interfere when their whole premise is a marketplace where transactions are easy to setup. Only when eBay's volume of sales and listings goes down or high-ticket items become rare, will radical changes be likely. Perhaps public criticism, and some bad karma with investors, could shake something.
However since none of these conditions seem to be fulfilled, I would not expect a broad change of policy at eBay.
Oracle charges for cores individually. (see the Processor section)
Perhaps a compromise will result. Eventually a 2CPU license could entirely replace a single CPU license. At such a stage licenses could be bundled as 2CPU, 4CPU, etc. As multicores become the norm, naturally 1CPU licenses should phase out entirely.
This would allow companies to keep their per core licensing scheme. Customers would get the feeling of a deal by getting a muticore license. Perhaps the market would lower the cost of 2CPU license to what a single CPU would be worth.
HT is another matter - architecturally and performance-wise.
Between China and the U.S., 2003 trade exceeded $150Bn (from $81Bn in 1999).
The only thing I do not like about outsourcing is that I can't move as easily as jobs can. No amount of cheap food/merchandise can equate to a good job. In that sense, free trade is not necessarily fair trade (if we can call anything fair).
Dogs, as your example includes, are given better care than many children in the world. They appeal to women as well, which make up a significant consumer market.
Linux however, lacks the obvious charm and commonality of a dog and doesn't necessarily appeal to women. Ironic how a geek and Linux seem perfect for one another.
1) Microsoft wants to give users an incentive to upgrade in the future. Mozilla Firefox, for example, has a majority of the functionality endusers actually need. There is little incentive to upgrade Mozilla (I'm speaking of the nontechnical majority) apart from things users typically do not understand (security, bugfixes, etc.). If IE were a real competitor for Mozilla, there would be less incentive to upgrade Windows in the future.
2) Microsoft doesn't want to appear to copy or compete with an open source, free product. How can something free compete with something from Microsoft? That's the last question they want to hear from users, shareholders, etc. In fact, once a browser war started, Mozilla would not only be on top but would call the shots. That's not a position Microsoft wants to be in. Perhaps, that is a position Microsoft refuses to be in.
I have not seen XP SP2 releases so I can't speak to changes made there.
"Do you really remember significantly more detail about a story from reading a book than from seeing a movie?"
I agree that sight/sound/effects is a better combination for memory, but I think time plays a critical role in format. When I was reading LOTR, I remember thinking, outside of reading, about the characters (mostly characters - Gandalf's voice/tone, the beauty of Arwen, etc.) and what the fantasy world was like. As I took my time reading the books, I grew my own conception of the world. Now I'm not a big fiction/fantasy reader (in fact, LOTR is the only such series I can name), but Middleearth was a place in my mind and I was a part of that mental creation. In a way, I made my kind of film-like experience in my head.
But that took time. I had to think a little about it, turn over a few ideas at night (I read before bed), until I decided what I wanted the world to be like. As I read, my world grew with the book's story. By the end, I was left somewhere else where I was comfortable.
Having three movies with some good length helped the theater experience, but the books were my highlight (which I read before the films). The films also reinforced how I envisioned the world from the books. In some ways, the movies are foriegn to me (if that makes sense).
Businesses that work primarily offline see the web as advertising - like an alternative to mailing a brochure maybe. That's probably what MBA's were all taught when they first heard about the Internet and what all the salespeople promised them later. And today a webdesigner will still sell a client on getting exposure (maybe through something like Google).
Remember when everyone/company/pet/etc. had to be online just because? While that craze went on, advertising boomed and still lingers today. Google makes money because it can attract millions of eyes.
I think overdesign, as you put it, is partly a filler for lack of content and taste, as well as the other reasons you mentioned.
The real problem with PDF's are the plugins have a load time, the navigation of a site is broken, there's a stupid Adobe starting logo (application pop-up), and the PDF has it's own interface on top of the browser's. But the load time for an entire document is the worst by far (there are speedups, but they're not default).
If PDF plugins were more seemless (like Flash - not that I'm any huge fan of Flash), then I wouldn't avoid them so much.
OT, I hate that magnifying glass that doesn't map zoom-in to left-click and zoom-out to right-click.
Even the simplest tools can be used to great effect. Likewise, the most sophisticated ones can be applied ineptly. I take advanced to mean "what you always wanted to do".
Even developers are subject to it's pressures and allures sometimes. Who wants to pass up something "enterprise-grade", scalable, industry supported, etc. for something that amatuers might use? How can you call yourself a professional when you don't use the best?
It's all relative to your task. Of course, that might be so obvious as to not warrant hiring a consultant.
I agree it could be a misleading step considering this is only a service pack. And it will be a big inconvenience (heh, isn't that life in IT work?). However, there are some considerations:
1) It's overdue really - networking is pervasive. 2) This change may be necessary to migrate to a new Windows model. If XP isn't changed, then the new OS, requiring software changes, will be much more expensive to adopt. 3) Longhorn and other projects are well off. 4) Businesses might have real issue if they have to buy security after MS already said they were focused on it. 5) Compatibility is expensive and someone has to pay for it. Either the majority take the hit or the minority find special solutions.
Benchmarks capture an implementation of an implementation of an implementation. If you could recurse back through all that, you might be able to draw better general conclusions. However, in the same amount of time you can run your own results. (Which one gets you published or on/.?)
You would be surprised how much people change themselves and force themselves to conform to be accepted. They stop learning and keep going to school; they stop exploring and settle down on what they are comfortable with; they simplify their lives and are dull to challenges. Also, you sound like you're not really sure where you are going and what you want. Don't worry, most of us are the same way. You're just looking at yourself and wondering how you fit in. Everyone does that. Most people just conform to what they see around them - it seems easier, safer, and the clear path.
It's good to see you're not blindly following that path.
One issue of this discussion is not merely practicality, but principle.
Programming is inherently about using finite resources to solve a problem (execute a process, etc.). Finite is, ultimately, a relative term. But that's not the point. To understand 1)why implementations exist as they do, 2)how the machine really works, and 3)how they can use their resources most effectively (because programmers need to be able to improve code as well as write it), programming within less-than-desired constraints is important. A parallel to this is the ability to apply algorithms and more complete components, to different circumstances.
Your point is taken. However time is the most valuable resource of the programmer. A tool which can provide the fastest solution in both development and execution can be an attractive option. Computer resources are meant to be spent, but a programmer's should be invested.
As tools have matured, I think we can see that the emphasis on time has only increased. Reusability and abstraction for more reliable interfacing are important OOP goals. Standard and broad libraries, IDE's, gc, etc. are all geared towards saving someone time. There are less obvious perspectives to this paradigm as well - low, economical maintenaince and error-free code, for example.
I think a lot of programmers have gotten into the habit of sacrificing time for performance, and vice versa. In some form, this will always be true. However it is an asset of the programmer to have the choice of exactly what component of his project he should spend the most time on. Hopefully, this is the design.
That's a point I never fully considered. When you want something done reasonably fast (and right of course), you have to synchronize decision-making with developement. The competitor's are already moving, the task is newer ground for the company/market, it's not a simplistic glue project, and time is definitely money on this stretch.
Rapid, but reliable turn-around requires either clear personal communication or slower-reacting, official long-distance communication. Both of these are probably harder to get when your workforce is a world away and take more time. That time is money.
That's in addition to all the overhead of outsourcing any project anywhere - contract negotiation and maintenance can be a fulltime job! Sometimes, a business can't afford to miss deadlines and/or project goals. So actually, sometimes a business cannot afford outsourcing. I never thought of it quite like that.
I think this might be a modern illusion of a consumer-based society. When we see events on TV, like a robbing, the 9/11 hijackers, etc. we are looking through a camera's perspective. That is our perspective on many of these events. When we watch a cop show on TV and see them bring the criminals to justice, they always are looking for the camera's tapes to look at the guy. I remember seeing the 9/11 guys on the airport video dozens of times.
But go back to my first point - we were sort of consuming the images, not really living them. The camera was our major source of information and we go back to it. So people seem to associate cameras with information and prosecuting justice. If it is on a camera, it will be seen and when seen, we can do something. There's this widespread perception, true or false, that what's not on camera/recording is not on record.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting you mention this section positively, because I am undecided. The first thing I think of when you say politics on the Internet is "ugh". I enjoy the analysis and perspective of others, but it can also be a great tinderbox for flamewars and trolls. Add that to the dangers of misinformation - deliberate or ignorant - and the spectrum of motivations. /. can either fight these problems or become another battleground.
/. really makes this something a respectable candidate would participate in, I would be extremely impressed.
If
Will global/regional politics, political economy, neo-classical economics, development, war, foreign policy, etc. fall into this category? If so, why not? I would prefer a middle-class global perspective rather than a U.S.-president centric one (I assume most readers are middle class and know something about the world around them).
There is a great /. poll in this somewhere. Favorite open source TODO's maybe?
OT, but China is not so much communism as authoritarianism. Yes, the communist party is in control and yes the propoganda is alive. But communism implies more than simply a government - it's a social structure.
You ask who cares?
Well, China is playing a game of accepting limited market economy while still controling many economic things, including some prices, as it sees fit. China is accepted by business interests because it has made committments to the WTO and other institutions. However, it is still classified as a developing country and therefore gets a lot of slack from the WTO. This also means it gets a lot of development loans at great rates and other things. If all it did was preach communism, it would not be in this position. There have been real changes in China, some incomplete, but many progressive.
Regardless, Lenin, Mao, Marx, etc. would probably not consider current China (PRC) communist. If communism to you means a socialist state controlled by one party of elites and the military interactive in the market economy, then yes it is. Otherwise, I wouldn't so easily label it.
What's most disconcerting is that such legislation as the Patriot Act was approved by elected officials. Said representatives are intended to provide some balance between the people and the state (ideally moderate law). If that balance is disrupted by outside influences and major events, then this radical reaction may become endemic.
That is, this is not an isolated event of corruption or total control, but possibly a trend.
How can eBay verify an item without having access to said item?
eBay will be hesitant to interfere when their whole premise is a marketplace where transactions are easy to setup. Only when eBay's volume of sales and listings goes down or high-ticket items become rare, will radical changes be likely. Perhaps public criticism, and some bad karma with investors, could shake something.
However since none of these conditions seem to be fulfilled, I would not expect a broad change of policy at eBay.
Oracle charges for cores individually. (see the Processor section)
Perhaps a compromise will result. Eventually a 2CPU license could entirely replace a single CPU license. At such a stage licenses could be bundled as 2CPU, 4CPU, etc. As multicores become the norm, naturally 1CPU licenses should phase out entirely.
This would allow companies to keep their per core licensing scheme. Customers would get the feeling of a deal by getting a muticore license. Perhaps the market would lower the cost of 2CPU license to what a single CPU would be worth.
HT is another matter - architecturally and performance-wise.
Between China and the U.S., 2003 trade exceeded $150Bn (from $81Bn in 1999).
The only thing I do not like about outsourcing is that I can't move as easily as jobs can. No amount of cheap food/merchandise can equate to a good job. In that sense, free trade is not necessarily fair trade (if we can call anything fair).
Dogs, as your example includes, are given better care than many children in the world. They appeal to women as well, which make up a significant consumer market.
Linux however, lacks the obvious charm and commonality of a dog and doesn't necessarily appeal to women. Ironic how a geek and Linux seem perfect for one another.
"What's so special about Java or .NET that makes them the talk of the day..."
Marketing.
1) Microsoft wants to give users an incentive to upgrade in the future. Mozilla Firefox, for example, has a majority of the functionality endusers actually need. There is little incentive to upgrade Mozilla (I'm speaking of the nontechnical majority) apart from things users typically do not understand (security, bugfixes, etc.). If IE were a real competitor for Mozilla, there would be less incentive to upgrade Windows in the future.
2) Microsoft doesn't want to appear to copy or compete with an open source, free product. How can something free compete with something from Microsoft? That's the last question they want to hear from users, shareholders, etc. In fact, once a browser war started, Mozilla would not only be on top but would call the shots. That's not a position Microsoft wants to be in. Perhaps, that is a position Microsoft refuses to be in.
I have not seen XP SP2 releases so I can't speak to changes made there.
"Do you really remember significantly more detail about a story from reading a book than from seeing a movie?"
I agree that sight/sound/effects is a better combination for memory, but I think time plays a critical role in format. When I was reading LOTR, I remember thinking, outside of reading, about the characters (mostly characters - Gandalf's voice/tone, the beauty of Arwen, etc.) and what the fantasy world was like. As I took my time reading the books, I grew my own conception of the world. Now I'm not a big fiction/fantasy reader (in fact, LOTR is the only such series I can name), but Middleearth was a place in my mind and I was a part of that mental creation. In a way, I made my kind of film-like experience in my head.
But that took time. I had to think a little about it, turn over a few ideas at night (I read before bed), until I decided what I wanted the world to be like. As I read, my world grew with the book's story. By the end, I was left somewhere else where I was comfortable.
Having three movies with some good length helped the theater experience, but the books were my highlight (which I read before the films). The films also reinforced how I envisioned the world from the books. In some ways, the movies are foriegn to me (if that makes sense).
Businesses that work primarily offline see the web as advertising - like an alternative to mailing a brochure maybe. That's probably what MBA's were all taught when they first heard about the Internet and what all the salespeople promised them later. And today a webdesigner will still sell a client on getting exposure (maybe through something like Google).
Remember when everyone/company/pet/etc. had to be online just because? While that craze went on, advertising boomed and still lingers today. Google makes money because it can attract millions of eyes.
I think overdesign, as you put it, is partly a filler for lack of content and taste, as well as the other reasons you mentioned.
The real problem with PDF's are the plugins have a load time, the navigation of a site is broken, there's a stupid Adobe starting logo (application pop-up), and the PDF has it's own interface on top of the browser's. But the load time for an entire document is the worst by far (there are speedups, but they're not default).
If PDF plugins were more seemless (like Flash - not that I'm any huge fan of Flash), then I wouldn't avoid them so much.
OT, I hate that magnifying glass that doesn't map zoom-in to left-click and zoom-out to right-click.
The DVD format had a lot of corporate influences, some through the DVD Consortium (now Forum).
article of Warren Lieberfarb being fired
Even the simplest tools can be used to great effect. Likewise, the most sophisticated ones can be applied ineptly. I take advanced to mean "what you always wanted to do".
The problem is perception.
Even developers are subject to it's pressures and allures sometimes. Who wants to pass up something "enterprise-grade", scalable, industry supported, etc. for something that amatuers might use? How can you call yourself a professional when you don't use the best?
It's all relative to your task. Of course, that might be so obvious as to not warrant hiring a consultant.
I agree it could be a misleading step considering this is only a service pack. And it will be a big inconvenience (heh, isn't that life in IT work?). However, there are some considerations:
1) It's overdue really - networking is pervasive.
2) This change may be necessary to migrate to a new Windows model. If XP isn't changed, then the new OS, requiring software changes, will be much more expensive to adopt.
3) Longhorn and other projects are well off.
4) Businesses might have real issue if they have to buy security after MS already said they were focused on it.
5) Compatibility is expensive and someone has to pay for it. Either the majority take the hit or the minority find special solutions.
Only on /. is the notion of pioneering space travel with prostitution...
nevermind.
Benchmarks capture an implementation of an implementation of an implementation. If you could recurse back through all that, you might be able to draw better general conclusions. However, in the same amount of time you can run your own results. (Which one gets you published or on /.?)
Incidentally, how old is this benchmark?
...just not fixated on mimicking everyone else.
You would be surprised how much people change themselves and force themselves to conform to be accepted. They stop learning and keep going to school; they stop exploring and settle down on what they are comfortable with; they simplify their lives and are dull to challenges. Also, you sound like you're not really sure where you are going and what you want. Don't worry, most of us are the same way. You're just looking at yourself and wondering how you fit in. Everyone does that. Most people just conform to what they see around them - it seems easier, safer, and the clear path.
It's good to see you're not blindly following that path.
One issue of this discussion is not merely practicality, but principle.
Programming is inherently about using finite resources to solve a problem (execute a process, etc.). Finite is, ultimately, a relative term. But that's not the point. To understand 1)why implementations exist as they do, 2)how the machine really works, and 3)how they can use their resources most effectively (because programmers need to be able to improve code as well as write it), programming within less-than-desired constraints is important. A parallel to this is the ability to apply algorithms and more complete components, to different circumstances.
Your point is taken. However time is the most valuable resource of the programmer. A tool which can provide the fastest solution in both development and execution can be an attractive option. Computer resources are meant to be spent, but a programmer's should be invested.
As tools have matured, I think we can see that the emphasis on time has only increased. Reusability and abstraction for more reliable interfacing are important OOP goals. Standard and broad libraries, IDE's, gc, etc. are all geared towards saving someone time. There are less obvious perspectives to this paradigm as well - low, economical maintenaince and error-free code, for example.
I think a lot of programmers have gotten into the habit of sacrificing time for performance, and vice versa. In some form, this will always be true. However it is an asset of the programmer to have the choice of exactly what component of his project he should spend the most time on. Hopefully, this is the design.
That's a point I never fully considered. When you want something done reasonably fast (and right of course), you have to synchronize decision-making with developement. The competitor's are already moving, the task is newer ground for the company/market, it's not a simplistic glue project, and time is definitely money on this stretch.
Rapid, but reliable turn-around requires either clear personal communication or slower-reacting, official long-distance communication. Both of these are probably harder to get when your workforce is a world away and take more time. That time is money.
That's in addition to all the overhead of outsourcing any project anywhere - contract negotiation and maintenance can be a fulltime job! Sometimes, a business can't afford to miss deadlines and/or project goals. So actually, sometimes a business cannot afford outsourcing. I never thought of it quite like that.
Actually, I'm a little more convinced about black holes than free markets. No, really ;)
I think this might be a modern illusion of a consumer-based society. When we see events on TV, like a robbing, the 9/11 hijackers, etc. we are looking through a camera's perspective. That is our perspective on many of these events. When we watch a cop show on TV and see them bring the criminals to justice, they always are looking for the camera's tapes to look at the guy. I remember seeing the 9/11 guys on the airport video dozens of times. But go back to my first point - we were sort of consuming the images, not really living them. The camera was our major source of information and we go back to it. So people seem to associate cameras with information and prosecuting justice. If it is on a camera, it will be seen and when seen, we can do something. There's this widespread perception, true or false, that what's not on camera/recording is not on record.