Arthur C. Clarke is famous for saying that the space elevator "will be built about 10 years after everybody stops laughing
I thought that "10 years" was a misquotation, so I dug this up via google:
Clarke, who spoke via a satellite link from his home in Sri Lanka, also recalled his earlier remark about the elevator reaching fruition "about 50 years after everybody quits laughing."
He updated that prediction in Santa Fe. "It will be built about 10 years after everybody stops laughing," Clarke said. "And they've stopped laughing." http://www.conway.com/ssinsider/snapshot/sf031201. htm
Hollywood seems to have latched onto Mr Dick's style of science fiction with a death grip.
Wel, that's OK. See, "A scanner darkly" isn't really science fiction.
Sure it has a few futuristic props, but moreso than in most PKD novels, they get pushed to the background. It's about the human condition, really. And serious drug use. It's quite good, quite real. Though I'm a bit unsure about how Keanu is going to do a "trainspotting" style role.
I have yet to try it and don't know how well it works
I've used it a bit. As a basic HTML widget it works Ok. However for advanced use, many of the functions are just stubs, and don't do anything except return a failure. It's not a complete replacement yet.
Why would Apple want to support the Ogg Vorbis format? Call me cynical, and I've said this before, but what's in it for Apple?
Apple support MP3 because it's vital to their business model to get people with MP3 collections on board. Apple supports their own DRM-encumbered format so that they can sell you tunes via iTunes that you can't then share for free.
What's in it for Apple to support a new format that has no DRM? DRM where they want you to go. MP3 is just the bait.
Open Source is nice, but not necessary for most Java users. How many Java programmers are complaining, "Man, I could write the program I want to write if I could just change the source code for Java!"
Open source is nice, and is beneficial to Java. How many programmers are complaining, "Man, I could write the program I want to write in Java, if I could just convince my boss that Java has unstopable support, will always be here even if the parent company goes away or loses interest"
There are various implementations of Java with truly good enhancements, like real templates, design-by-contract and other good stuff
There are two dangers to this:
1) Incompatible forks. Java is supposed to be "write once, run anywhere". Different implementations of a common standard can be good. Diverging language features can't be.
2) At heart (without the class libraries) Java is still a small, simple, clean, readable, easy to learn language. Enough well-meaning enhancements, and it could end up looking like perl. Ugg.
Someone will ask you to maintain some code, and you'll take a look at it and have no idea what is going on, until you learn the extensions. This will happen over and over again with every project you are supposed to maintain.
Eh, that's no different from the usual: starting a new job and being asked to maintain and extend a regular 100 000 line program: you'll take a look at it and have no idea what is going on, until you learn the objects and functions.
In both cases, standard libraries and readable, maintainable, consitent design and coding can make your learning curve more pleasant. But how often does that happen in business?
Once you recognize that things like this can be added to words, then they can be removed, and then in that state of removal you can postulate "accentless" English.
No you can't. Not unless you convince the Americans to pronounce the 'h' in herbs, the 'min' in aluminium; get the Austraians to stop saying 'bar' like 'baa', remind Londoners that there's a 't' at the end of 'got', get people from the north of England to say "graph" like "barf" not "baf", etc...
There's no such thing. It is imposible to speak English (or any other language for that matter) without pronouncing your words in a particualr way. That is a way of speaking, an accent. Travel a bit, and you'll realise that "unaccented speach" is really just "the way people talk where I grew up".
Um, that quotation isn't an admission of guilt. He refers to "charges", which is how one refers to the unproven. He does not admit there that the charges are true.
but Linux rose to the challenge, Minix pretty much didn't.
RTA. particularly the bit where Tanenbaum says that he kept MINIX small in order to to keep it up the challenge of being a good teaching tool. And then goes on to imply that he was suprised that it took so long for the niche of free, open production-featured UNIX to be filled by Linux and BSD.
Of course, Tanenbaum would have prefered that niche to be filled by a microkernel OS, but MINIX was never going to be that OS. MINIX was going to be the code that the creators of free UNIX cut thier teeth on at university. And guess what, it was.
Economists always seek commoditization and Linux is a very difficult product to commoditize.
Um, I thoguht that Linux was (part of) the comoditization of operating systems - ie it is part of the trend of operating systems becoming a widely available, cheap commodity; and that what Microsoft, Apple et all are trying to do in the market is decomoditization, ie trying to give people the idea, rightely or wrongly, that their product is different to other operating systems, much like Coca-Cola is regarded as different (and hence more valuable) than generic commodity soda-water.
"Mail.app doesn't share the filtering database - No that's a bad idea
Isn't one of the ways in that spam differs from regular email is that it's the same message (in the same or similar text) sent to very many people? Cannot this fact be exploited by comparing messages sent to multiple users?
Suppose we're sitting in an office... You don't want to see penis enlargement ads but I love 'em
"Diebold system works on Microsoft software, it has no seals on locks and panels to detect a tempering. It has a keyboard interface (!!!) and the server was tested to have "Blaster" virus."
The claim is that a Diebold box was insecure enough to be wide open for use by any passing hacker via the back-door.
Value for whom - software makers or software users?
If you are a shoemaker, then someone else giving away free shoes is a detriment to your business, but a benefit to the shoe-wearing population. If you are a software make...
However, software makers are also software users: In order to write the business apps that I am paid to write, I need an operating system, a compiler, a database, etc. So I benefit if the software up the chain is cheaper (or if we broke the windows habit), but I might lose my job if the company's clients can get the same business app that I write for free. That's far less likely, as it's rather a specialised application.
A few large, and largely American, companies that exist to make software near the top of the chain will be the losers if free software takes over. The world's population in general will be the winners - they will pay less and get more, counteracting the tendency for the rich to get richer by further impoverishing the poor.
I asert without proof that it's not a zero-sum gain. That is, the total gains to many from freeing IP will always match or more likely far exceed the losses to a few rich people by not gettting IP-rent any more.
Thus I don't think it true that "downward pressure on intellectual property is having a serious impact upon... the entire U.S. economy."
I'm very happy with that, but then I'm not one of the very rich few, and I don't own a large software company. The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution isn't happy with it, so take it from whence it comes.
When nordic nations state owned oil companies run out of oil to drill and sell we will see how long you have that "free" healthcare.:)
1) Nobody said it was free. It's self-evidently not. However much of Europe has heathcare available to all, funded by tax. And you know what? For all they bicker about just how to run it, they wouldn't give it up. Not for anything. Any political party that proposed abolishing publix healthcare would be comitting electoral suicide.
2) When speaking of public heathcare I was not thinking exclusively of Nordic countries, which you characterise as oil-rich. I could mention the UK's NHS, but better avoid that. Um, France I believe has a particularly good one.
This is America, we're supposed to have the best of everything
Says who? It's no law of nature. You certainly don't have the best public healthcare, and the overall quality of life indexes are highest in the Nordic countries. And don't get me started on the quality of the USA's polical processes.
The program source code gets smaller (by as many bytes as the removed whitespace occupied),
Who cares? I'll bet that for a typical techie, the collection of all the source code they've ever written ever is smaller than thier current MP3 collection. By at least one order of magnitiude. Give me readability.
and compiles faster (because the parser doesn't have to read and ignore all those whitespace characters).
Technically you are right. However this effect will be utterly negligable next to the things that really take up time when compiling a c++ program, such as preprocessing #defines, expanding tempate code, checking types, resolving variable references, and generating machine code. c++ compilers are generally quite slow (as compared to say, Borland Delphi) this is due to the complexities and terseness of the language, not the whitespace.
A. Guy takes home corporate laptop. B. Plugs laptop into phone-line / uses internet C. Gets infected D. Takes his laptop back to the job E. Infects the entire LAN *FROM THE INSIDE* while the firewall hapilly keeps the fire "IN" (instead of out).
This actually happend to us last year. If you fire anyone, please fire the laptop-owner.
Uh, problem being that it's good odds that the laptop owner is the boss of the people wanting to fire someone.
Slashdot Mirror
Java is not a good choice for a variety of reasons, so Mono is looking pretty tempting right now.
What's different? Language-wise, there's not a lot of distance between Java and C#.
I thought that "10 years" was a misquotation, so I dug this up via google:
Hollywood seems to have latched onto Mr Dick's style of science fiction with a death grip.
Wel, that's OK. See, "A scanner darkly" isn't really science fiction.
Sure it has a few futuristic props, but moreso than in most PKD novels, they get pushed to the background. It's about the human condition, really. And serious drug use. It's quite good, quite real. Though I'm a bit unsure about how Keanu is going to do a "trainspotting" style role.
I have yet to try it and don't know how well it works
I've used it a bit. As a basic HTML widget it works Ok. However for advanced use, many of the functions are just stubs, and don't do anything except return a failure. It's not a complete replacement yet.
Exactly. Mod parent up. Etc.
Why would Apple want to support the Ogg Vorbis format? Call me cynical, and I've said this before, but what's in it for Apple?
Apple support MP3 because it's vital to their business model to get people with MP3 collections on board. Apple supports their own DRM-encumbered format so that they can sell you tunes via iTunes that you can't then share for free.
What's in it for Apple to support a new format that has no DRM? DRM where they want you to go. MP3 is just the bait.
Open Source is nice, but not necessary for most Java users. How many Java programmers are complaining, "Man, I could write the program I want to write if I could just change the source code for Java!"
Open source is nice, and is beneficial to Java. How many programmers are complaining, "Man, I could write the program I want to write in Java, if I could just convince my boss that Java has unstopable support, will always be here even if the parent company goes away or loses interest"
There are various implementations of Java with truly good enhancements, like real templates, design-by-contract and other good stuff
There are two dangers to this:
1) Incompatible forks. Java is supposed to be "write once, run anywhere". Different implementations of a common standard can be good. Diverging language features can't be.
2) At heart (without the class libraries) Java is still a small, simple, clean, readable, easy to learn language. Enough well-meaning enhancements, and it could end up looking like perl. Ugg.
Someone will ask you to maintain some code, and you'll take a look at it and have no idea what is going on, until you learn the extensions. This will happen over and over again with every project you are supposed to maintain.
Eh, that's no different from the usual: starting a new job and being asked to maintain and extend a regular 100 000 line program: you'll take a look at it and have no idea what is going on, until you learn the objects and functions.
In both cases, standard libraries and readable, maintainable, consitent design and coding can make your learning curve more pleasant. But how often does that happen in business?
Once you recognize that things like this can be added to words, then they can be removed, and then in that state of removal you can postulate "accentless" English.
No you can't. Not unless you convince the Americans to pronounce the 'h' in herbs, the 'min' in aluminium; get the Austraians to stop saying 'bar' like 'baa', remind Londoners that there's a 't' at the end of 'got', get people from the north of England to say "graph" like "barf" not "baf", etc...
I haven't noticed a need for CSS2 and PNG
You haven't noticed the need because nobody uses them. Nobody uses them because IE doesn't support them.
they teach a neutral accent
There's no such thing. It is imposible to speak English (or any other language for that matter) without pronouncing your words in a particualr way. That is a way of speaking, an accent. Travel a bit, and you'll realise that "unaccented speach" is really just "the way people talk where I grew up".
And next on BBC: "If you are thirsty, drink!", scientist claims.
The British really don't need to be told to drink more. But apparently they do need to be told to sleep more.
Um, that quotation isn't an admission of guilt. He refers to "charges", which is how one refers to the unproven. He does not admit there that the charges are true.
but Linux rose to the challenge, Minix pretty much didn't.
RTA. particularly the bit where Tanenbaum says that he kept MINIX small in order to to keep it up the challenge of being a good teaching tool. And then goes on to imply that he was suprised that it took so long for the niche of free, open production-featured UNIX to be filled by Linux and BSD.
Of course, Tanenbaum would have prefered that niche to be filled by a microkernel OS, but MINIX was never going to be that OS. MINIX was going to be the code that the creators of free UNIX cut thier teeth on at university. And guess what, it was.
Economists always seek commoditization and Linux is a very difficult product to commoditize.
Um, I thoguht that Linux was (part of) the comoditization of operating systems - ie it is part of the trend of operating systems becoming a widely available, cheap commodity; and that what Microsoft, Apple et all are trying to do in the market is decomoditization, ie trying to give people the idea, rightely or wrongly, that their product is different to other operating systems, much like Coca-Cola is regarded as different (and hence more valuable) than generic commodity soda-water.
"Mail.app doesn't share the filtering database - No that's a bad idea
Isn't one of the ways in that spam differs from regular email is that it's the same message (in the same or similar text) sent to very many people? Cannot this fact be exploited by comparing messages sent to multiple users?
Suppose we're sitting in an office... You don't want to see penis enlargement ads but I love 'em
Then my job is much safer than yours.
Oh look. nntp has been reinvented, only without the standardisation.
Come-on really, Do I want to measure a piece of paper using the square root of two?
No, but it's very pleasant that an A3 page folded in half is exactly the same size as an A4 page. root-two is just the mathematical means to that end.
"Diebold system works on Microsoft software, it has no seals on locks and panels to detect a tempering. It has a keyboard interface (!!!) and the server was tested to have "Blaster" virus."
The claim is that a Diebold box was insecure enough to be wide open for use by any passing hacker via the back-door.
Value for whom - software makers or software users?
...
... the entire U.S. economy."
If you are a shoemaker, then someone else giving away free shoes is a detriment to your business, but a benefit to the shoe-wearing population. If you are a software make
However, software makers are also software users: In order to write the business apps that I am paid to write, I need an operating system, a compiler, a database, etc. So I benefit if the software up the chain is cheaper (or if we broke the windows habit), but I might lose my job if the company's clients can get the same business app that I write for free. That's far less likely, as it's rather a specialised application.
A few large, and largely American, companies that exist to make software near the top of the chain will be the losers if free software takes over. The world's population in general will be the winners - they will pay less and get more, counteracting the tendency for the rich to get richer by further impoverishing the poor.
I asert without proof that it's not a zero-sum gain. That is, the total gains to many from freeing IP will always match or more likely far exceed the losses to a few rich people by not gettting IP-rent any more.
Thus I don't think it true that "downward pressure on intellectual property is having a serious impact upon
I'm very happy with that, but then I'm not one of the very rich few, and I don't own a large software company. The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution isn't happy with it, so take it from whence it comes.
When nordic nations state owned oil companies run out of oil to drill and sell we will see how long you have that "free" healthcare. :)
1) Nobody said it was free. It's self-evidently not. However much of Europe has heathcare available to all, funded by tax. And you know what? For all they bicker about just how to run it, they wouldn't give it up. Not for anything. Any political party that proposed abolishing publix healthcare would be comitting electoral suicide.
2) When speaking of public heathcare I was not thinking exclusively of Nordic countries, which you characterise as oil-rich. I could mention the UK's NHS, but better avoid that. Um, France I believe has a particularly good one.
This is America, we're supposed to have the best of everything
Says who? It's no law of nature. You certainly don't have the best public healthcare, and the overall quality of life indexes are highest in the Nordic countries. And don't get me started on the quality of the USA's polical processes.
The program source code gets smaller (by as many bytes as the removed whitespace occupied),
Who cares? I'll bet that for a typical techie, the collection of all the source code they've ever written ever is smaller than thier current MP3 collection. By at least one order of magnitiude. Give me readability.
and compiles faster (because the parser doesn't have to read and ignore all those whitespace characters).
Technically you are right. However this effect will be utterly negligable next to the things that really take up time when compiling a c++ program, such as preprocessing #defines, expanding tempate code, checking types, resolving variable references, and generating machine code. c++ compilers are generally quite slow (as compared to say, Borland Delphi) this is due to the complexities and terseness of the language, not the whitespace.
A. Guy takes home corporate laptop.
B. Plugs laptop into phone-line / uses internet
C. Gets infected
D. Takes his laptop back to the job
E. Infects the entire LAN *FROM THE INSIDE* while the firewall hapilly keeps the fire "IN" (instead of out).
This actually happend to us last year.
If you fire anyone, please fire the laptop-owner.
Uh, problem being that it's good odds that the laptop owner is the boss of the people wanting to fire someone.
nd when you are looking at around 500,000 desktops/ servers/ etc.. you can't do foolish things like installing patches willy nilly.
No, you can't. However with that many machines you naturally must have a firewall (right?). So you'll be all right for this one.