Warnings are a very gray are of law. Regardless, all medical equipment manufacturers sell their equpiment with a "If this breaks, doesn't work, or even kills someone, we can't get in trouble. Use at your own risk and hope it works." kind of agrrement with the buyers. Otherwise everytime a defibrillator didn't save someone's life, or wasn't charged properly, or was placed on the wrong section of the body, or (insert some bad scenario here), the manufacturer would get sued. This saves their ass, including from software crashes and virus/worm infections. Once they sell, they no longer have any worries, although they will support it and provide maintenance. That's why a hospital may only buy from certain trusted suppliers and you'll see the competetion trying to assure them that they could have a superior product for cheaper if they switched. But many hospitals would rather stick with what works and who they trust. Regards, Steve
Good to see your checking posts for errors, but while your post is accurate, it in no way has anything to do with my post. I stated 199% of one card, not a 199% increase of one card. In math terms: 199% of X is represented as 1.99 * X == roughly 2X. Your thinking X + 1.99 * X == roughly 3X. So I was right and needed no correction:) Wording is everything, but thanks anyway. Regards, Steve
Because of how (like you said) graphics algorithms are good for parallel scenarios and the fact that most data is flowing in one direction, I'd have to say your getting at least 199% of the performance of one card which is close enough to 2x for me. Regards, Steve
Your good ol' ide harddrive I believe can support a little over 150 petabytes of data. For some reason though I don't think we'll be seeing that anytime soon;) Regards, Steve
Everyone keeps comparing this to a regular IPO. As far as I understand, its not. This whole dutch auction things changes everything. The idea is that the stock starts at a ridiculously high price and they keep lowering it until people buy. Then when people stop buying, they lower it some more. They keep doing this until all shares are sold. And whatever the last person pays is what everyone pays including the very first bidder. So if you start paying $135 for a share, its really just a short term initial risk your taking because at the end of the day you may only be paying $5 bucks for it. Its kinda like saying, "I have faith in this company so I'll pay this much for a share right now" knowing full well that you'll pay less, its just you dont know how much less and thats where the risk is.Personally, I think the system is ingenious and I hope it catches on. This is all of course assuming that I understand correctly how it works. Regards, Steve
"How can I trust a device I don't know what is REALLY doing with my votes?"
More importantly pertaining to the current system, how do you know a person counting your votes, who may have different political views from yourself, is counting them and/or submitting the correct numbers? This has always bothered me, although I've never been on a committee, how hard could it be to sit there and be like " 5 for my choice, 1 for his choice, 5 for my choice, 1 for his choice, etc...". Granted, if it was too extreme of a difference then you'd probably get caught. But seriosuly, does anyone know what kind of defenses are in place to protect against this sort of thing? Regards, Steve
Yes I totally agree. But where most foreigners fail to make the connection is that Bush != America. At least 50% of America doesn't like him and wants him out of office. He got into office through a lawsuit (which is a whole other topic) and alot of those who even do like him don't want to be at war. I personally think we need to focus more on our economy, etc... rather then going out trying to be some gun slinging hero. Bush is not the typical American, he's got millions, and I think the money and power just got to his head. Personally, some arguments make sense as far as freeing Iraq, but I mean we should of at least had NATO or several other large countries backing us up. Regards, Steve
Have you played the game? It is perfection. Never has such detail and thought been put into a project. It is amazing. It is definitly worth $55. Hell, it took 4+ years to develop! Thats alot of time and resources. Stop bitching and get a job, jesus its like 1 - 3 hours of working depending on your wage (even at minimum wage its like 10 hours). You will definitly play this game for much longer then that. Give the developers some credit, its not some shitty new Office suite that is the same as 3 years ago but with DRM or some useless feature added. This is what real developing is about, so let the slashdot community support it! Regards, Steve
You obviously haven't used java within the past 3 years or so.... Its speed on every platform I've developed on is no different then native speed, and in many scenarios its faster because of the many optimizations that java makes to your code and also from years of optimizing their own algorithms. This could be debated well... forever, but anymore if you need something faster then java then you should probably be using assembly. Speed and overall performance has only gotten better with the new 1.5 VM as well (It's now known as 5.0, and its still in beta but very useable). Regards, Steve
The real java OS is of course jNode. Regardless, I think you fail to miss the importance of java. Java is an amazing language. Very fast, powerful, clean, flexible and has such a large library of classes that the programmer just focuses on the things that need focusing. It really is a great language. I mean, a minimalistic server can be written in like 4 lines of code. Granted, it shouldn't be everywhere like Sun is trying to put it (its in some microwaves now !?), but it does belong in many places. I for one find it an indispensable tool, just the "Web Start" feature alone puts it far above any other language that I use. So in reality, its more like saying its a good thing Mathematics uses numbers and symbols that are internationally understood, because otherwise our world wouldn't be half as advanced as it is. Or even better, its like saying the fact that every OS can use TCP/IP is a good thing because otherwise we'd have a broken, proprietary internet. Regards, Steve
Yea, thats right... The only reason the Linux desktop even has an office suite that is business ready is because of Sun. Open Office is a key to linux being on the desktop and yet people always seem to forget who gave it to us. Not to mention they also came out with that wonderful little language known as java and fully support it on Linux. Java is going to be a key in the desktop migration, well java and.net. But being able to develop on one platform and know it will run on another without modification is an amazing thing when developing. Sun has been very nice to the OSS community and often donates large sums of money to various projects. Not to mention the whole Project Looking Glass thing. When Looking Glass is released, it will show some real competition with Longhorn and Mac on the desktop. Regards, Steve
In Philadelphia they have several hotspots now that are completely free to use and all have pretty decent bandwidth. The two most notable areas are Love Park and Reading Terminal, both which have wifi supported I guess by taxes. Each area has big signs letting people know it too, and how to set it up. Its pretty sweet, the only down side is that if I wanted to do something illegal, then what better area then a free public access point used by tons of people in the center of a very large city everyday. If you spoof your MAC address, I don't see how you could ever be tracked down. But then again all good things have bad uses. Free wifi though is an awesome thing. Regards, Steve
I live in philly too. Everything you described and the grandparent about Sal's neighborhood is extremely accurate. I've lived in Philadelphia my whole life. The cops have barely any power in some areas, either because of the mob, or just sheer numbers of gangs. Not all of philadelphia is bad, but there are a few sections that you just don't go to, and when you live here, you know that. Me personally, I live in a great neighborhood in Philly, barely any crime, I go for walks nearly every night and I have no fear in my neighborhood. But honestly in some neighborhoods, once its dark, you stay in. The bombing you were referring to was done by Philadelphia's first black mayor, Wilson Goode. It was to get rid of a radical group called MOVE who had been fighting with the city for years. The naturalists/radicals/ and everything else that composed MOVE got out of hand and seriously started disrupting the city at large. That's when our good ol' mayor decided to literally wage ware upon its citizens. With military aircraft they bombed the block that MOVE lived on, then let it burn for an hour, wiping out 60 houses and killing a few. A few people at city hall got in trouble for it, but the Mayor who actually okayed it was granted immunity. It was quite an incident, I hope I got all the details right. Regards, Steve
Like a post below mentioned, Froogles didn't file their trademark claim until September 8, 2003, just a few months ago. Google filed their trademark for Froogle on November 22, 2002, well over a year before then. That means that when Google was trademarking Froogle, and they researched anythign similiar, they came up with nothing simply because nothing else like it was trademarked at the time. So they were right in trademarking it, there was no similar trademark. Then over a year later Froogles decided to file for a trademark. The catch is, technically a trademark is valid from the date it was first used in commerce, so it is retroactive. For instance I could sell you something on ebay and tell you I call my company CoolComputingDevices. Then 5 years from now, some big company could start up, search for CoolComputingDevices and find nothing, so they use it as their name. At that point I trademark my name and *bang* all the sudden its been in affect for the past 5 years. Trademark law is one of the most confusing areas of the law. So techincally in this case both parties have their arguments. They are essentially, Google trademarked it first and had a big business built around it right away, but Froogles was supposedly in business for over a year prior(although that could have simply meant one sale that whole year) and then tradmarked their name over a year later after Google. Its interesting and we'd all need more details to come to a real conclusion, but considering Froogles filed in September, and the decision was made recently, that means Google's lawyers probably picked it up right away, took it to litigation and has been on top of its game. Regards, Steve
I can write a minimilastic server in java in less then 10 lines of code, maybe even 4 depending on how you count. The core APIs of Java are just amazing. I feel spoiled whenever I am using Java and not using C++. Java is very powerful and allows the programmer to focus more on what the programmer should be focusing on. And as far as Java powered devices go, that is a requirement for me because I like to code my own stuff where I can (I'm not gonna pay 10 dollars for nibbles when I can just code it.) Regards, Steve
Thats only true until someone writes that all important shell script that lets the computer write shell scripts, and efficiently too. I mean genetic algorithsm are already used to design hardware in ways we couldn't imagine, and I've seen Kurzweil's bots' art, music, and poems, and its all really good stuff. He has tons of original works of art made by computers that is of excellent quality, you'd never know that it wasnt a human who made it. Once AI is brought to the level where it can write logic for other bots and itself, then there will truly be nothing left for humans to do other then enjoy life and take up whatever hobbies/interests they want to. Thats assuming that something doesnt go horribly wrong, but one day we may reach the point of "perfect happiness" if you will. We just have to get there on the right path. Regards, Steve
He probably means that our brains' consciousness is simply a controlled series of electrical pulses as guided through a neural network. One day we will easily have neural networks made out of silicon rather then carbon (silicon conducts better) that will mimick the brain and actually become superior. In this way the robots will have achieved what we consider consciousness. We are humans and give ourselves too much credit, we are complex but not so complex that we cant recreate ourselves in a better fashion. I mean we only do one thing well and that is pattern recognition, recognizing series of images, events, sounds, etc... it all simplifies to pattern recognition. We are hard pressed to multiply a million numbers together because we weren't designed for it. Our brain is a neural network, its not made for calculations, its made for recognizing patterns. We will recreate it one day in the form of a machine, despite what some people say. Its no more the 40 years away. Regards, Steve
Wow... heh guess in typical/. fashion I didn't follow the link. Thanks for pointing that out, I just responded out of habit. I'll know better next time. Regards, Steve
By the time thats released, firefox will already have machine learning and we won't even need to browse anymore! Our computers will do it for us! Let's see what IE does then:) In all seriousness though, thats just what they plan, they also planned WinFS which is falling apart and was supposed to be the biggest part of longhorn. In two to three years when MS does release all their big new shiny toys, just think how much further Linux, etc.. will all be. Look at how much we've progressed since 2000 or so. I mean alot of of big thigns are gonna be happening soon like DRM and 64-bit computing. People might hate microsoft for DRM if implemented poorly. And linux and apple already have a huge lead on windows for 64-bit computing. So we'll see how it plays out, this will be an interesting next 5 years. Regards, Steve
There are some important differences. For one, a program can't be executed until you set the executable bit on the file. This isn't as annoying as it sounds because on linux most things are installed through apt-get, yum or your variation. These things are cryptographically signed etc... There really is no need to ever download a binary(executable) especially through email. Have you ever needed to d/l an executable through email? Nearly noone does, and those who do know what they are doing. Typically if users d/l it thinking its a pic, but guess what, when they d/l it and double click on linux, all the sudden nothing happens because the executable bit isn't set and well if the email is saying that its a picture why would you need to execute it? Most users are too lazy to set the bit anyway despite it being a right-click away. I have never needed to receive a bin or exe in email and most users will just delete the attatchment once double clicking it doesn't work. When you d/l a file, the executable bit is not set. So that solves most of your problems right there. And then you also have the security of user accounts that work really well, so in a worst case scenario you can only screw up your home directory. Most distro's will make logging in as root harder then loggin in normal so most users wont log in as root. On top of this there are still more things like SELinux, etc... All in all, this wont ever be a major problem on linux, maybe here and there but never as bad as Windows. Regards, Steve
Slashdot Mirror
Blizzard also relesaes some of its bigger or more popular demos through bittorrent. They may use it for patches too, not sure though.
Regards,
Steve
Warnings are a very gray are of law. Regardless, all medical equipment manufacturers sell their equpiment with a "If this breaks, doesn't work, or even kills someone, we can't get in trouble. Use at your own risk and hope it works." kind of agrrement with the buyers. Otherwise everytime a defibrillator didn't save someone's life, or wasn't charged properly, or was placed on the wrong section of the body, or (insert some bad scenario here), the manufacturer would get sued. This saves their ass, including from software crashes and virus/worm infections. Once they sell, they no longer have any worries, although they will support it and provide maintenance. That's why a hospital may only buy from certain trusted suppliers and you'll see the competetion trying to assure them that they could have a superior product for cheaper if they switched. But many hospitals would rather stick with what works and who they trust.
Regards,
Steve
Good to see your checking posts for errors, but while your post is accurate, it in no way has anything to do with my post. I stated 199% of one card, not a 199% increase of one card. In math terms: 199% of X is represented as 1.99 * X == roughly 2X. Your thinking X + 1.99 * X == roughly 3X. So I was right and needed no correction :) Wording is everything, but thanks anyway.
Regards,
Steve
Because of how (like you said) graphics algorithms are good for parallel scenarios and the fact that most data is flowing in one direction, I'd have to say your getting at least 199% of the performance of one card which is close enough to 2x for me.
Regards,
Steve
Your good ol' ide harddrive I believe can support a little over 150 petabytes of data. For some reason though I don't think we'll be seeing that anytime soon ;)
Regards,
Steve
Everyone keeps comparing this to a regular IPO. As far as I understand, its not. This whole dutch auction things changes everything. The idea is that the stock starts at a ridiculously high price and they keep lowering it until people buy. Then when people stop buying, they lower it some more. They keep doing this until all shares are sold. And whatever the last person pays is what everyone pays including the very first bidder. So if you start paying $135 for a share, its really just a short term initial risk your taking because at the end of the day you may only be paying $5 bucks for it. Its kinda like saying, "I have faith in this company so I'll pay this much for a share right now" knowing full well that you'll pay less, its just you dont know how much less and thats where the risk is.Personally, I think the system is ingenious and I hope it catches on. This is all of course assuming that I understand correctly how it works.
Regards,
Steve
Luckily we only need one person to get it past borders, at which point it can be mirrored a million times to different streams.
Regards,
Steve
"How can I trust a device I don't know what is REALLY doing with my votes?"
More importantly pertaining to the current system, how do you know a person counting your votes, who may have different political views from yourself, is counting them and/or submitting the correct numbers? This has always bothered me, although I've never been on a committee, how hard could it be to sit there and be like " 5 for my choice, 1 for his choice, 5 for my choice, 1 for his choice, etc...". Granted, if it was too extreme of a difference then you'd probably get caught. But seriosuly, does anyone know what kind of defenses are in place to protect against this sort of thing?
Regards,
Steve
Yes I totally agree. But where most foreigners fail to make the connection is that Bush != America. At least 50% of America doesn't like him and wants him out of office. He got into office through a lawsuit (which is a whole other topic) and alot of those who even do like him don't want to be at war. I personally think we need to focus more on our economy, etc... rather then going out trying to be some gun slinging hero. Bush is not the typical American, he's got millions, and I think the money and power just got to his head. Personally, some arguments make sense as far as freeing Iraq, but I mean we should of at least had NATO or several other large countries backing us up.
Regards,
Steve
Have you played the game? It is perfection. Never has such detail and thought been put into a project. It is amazing. It is definitly worth $55. Hell, it took 4+ years to develop! Thats alot of time and resources. Stop bitching and get a job, jesus its like 1 - 3 hours of working depending on your wage (even at minimum wage its like 10 hours). You will definitly play this game for much longer then that. Give the developers some credit, its not some shitty new Office suite that is the same as 3 years ago but with DRM or some useless feature added. This is what real developing is about, so let the slashdot community support it!
Regards,
Steve
Just remove your slashdot cookies and all is well again... go figure.
Regards,
Steve
P.S. Anyone know what the hell is going on over at Slashdot HQ?
You obviously haven't used java within the past 3 years or so.... Its speed on every platform I've developed on is no different then native speed, and in many scenarios its faster because of the many optimizations that java makes to your code and also from years of optimizing their own algorithms. This could be debated well... forever, but anymore if you need something faster then java then you should probably be using assembly. Speed and overall performance has only gotten better with the new 1.5 VM as well (It's now known as 5.0, and its still in beta but very useable).
Regards,
Steve
Well gosh you could have had that since before Linux, I suggest you walk over to GNU.org and download yourself the Hurd!
Regards,
Steve
The real java OS is of course jNode. Regardless, I think you fail to miss the importance of java. Java is an amazing language. Very fast, powerful, clean, flexible and has such a large library of classes that the programmer just focuses on the things that need focusing. It really is a great language. I mean, a minimalistic server can be written in like 4 lines of code. Granted, it shouldn't be everywhere like Sun is trying to put it (its in some microwaves now !?), but it does belong in many places. I for one find it an indispensable tool, just the "Web Start" feature alone puts it far above any other language that I use. So in reality, its more like saying its a good thing Mathematics uses numbers and symbols that are internationally understood, because otherwise our world wouldn't be half as advanced as it is. Or even better, its like saying the fact that every OS can use TCP/IP is a good thing because otherwise we'd have a broken, proprietary internet.
Regards,
Steve
Yea, thats right... The only reason the Linux desktop even has an office suite that is business ready is because of Sun. Open Office is a key to linux being on the desktop and yet people always seem to forget who gave it to us. Not to mention they also came out with that wonderful little language known as java and fully support it on Linux. Java is going to be a key in the desktop migration, well java and .net. But being able to develop on one platform and know it will run on another without modification is an amazing thing when developing. Sun has been very nice to the OSS community and often donates large sums of money to various projects. Not to mention the whole Project Looking Glass thing. When Looking Glass is released, it will show some real competition with Longhorn and Mac on the desktop.
Regards,
Steve
In Philadelphia they have several hotspots now that are completely free to use and all have pretty decent bandwidth. The two most notable areas are Love Park and Reading Terminal, both which have wifi supported I guess by taxes. Each area has big signs letting people know it too, and how to set it up. Its pretty sweet, the only down side is that if I wanted to do something illegal, then what better area then a free public access point used by tons of people in the center of a very large city everyday. If you spoof your MAC address, I don't see how you could ever be tracked down. But then again all good things have bad uses. Free wifi though is an awesome thing.
Regards,
Steve
3 words..... Data Transfer Rates....
I live in philly too. Everything you described and the grandparent about Sal's neighborhood is extremely accurate. I've lived in Philadelphia my whole life. The cops have barely any power in some areas, either because of the mob, or just sheer numbers of gangs. Not all of philadelphia is bad, but there are a few sections that you just don't go to, and when you live here, you know that. Me personally, I live in a great neighborhood in Philly, barely any crime, I go for walks nearly every night and I have no fear in my neighborhood. But honestly in some neighborhoods, once its dark, you stay in. The bombing you were referring to was done by Philadelphia's first black mayor, Wilson Goode. It was to get rid of a radical group called MOVE who had been fighting with the city for years. The naturalists/radicals/ and everything else that composed MOVE got out of hand and seriously started disrupting the city at large. That's when our good ol' mayor decided to literally wage ware upon its citizens. With military aircraft they bombed the block that MOVE lived on, then let it burn for an hour, wiping out 60 houses and killing a few. A few people at city hall got in trouble for it, but the Mayor who actually okayed it was granted immunity. It was quite an incident, I hope I got all the details right.
Regards,
Steve
Like a post below mentioned, Froogles didn't file their trademark claim until September 8, 2003, just a few months ago. Google filed their trademark for Froogle on November 22, 2002, well over a year before then. That means that when Google was trademarking Froogle, and they researched anythign similiar, they came up with nothing simply because nothing else like it was trademarked at the time. So they were right in trademarking it, there was no similar trademark. Then over a year later Froogles decided to file for a trademark. The catch is, technically a trademark is valid from the date it was first used in commerce, so it is retroactive. For instance I could sell you something on ebay and tell you I call my company CoolComputingDevices. Then 5 years from now, some big company could start up, search for CoolComputingDevices and find nothing, so they use it as their name. At that point I trademark my name and *bang* all the sudden its been in affect for the past 5 years. Trademark law is one of the most confusing areas of the law. So techincally in this case both parties have their arguments. They are essentially, Google trademarked it first and had a big business built around it right away, but Froogles was supposedly in business for over a year prior(although that could have simply meant one sale that whole year) and then tradmarked their name over a year later after Google. Its interesting and we'd all need more details to come to a real conclusion, but considering Froogles filed in September, and the decision was made recently, that means Google's lawyers probably picked it up right away, took it to litigation and has been on top of its game.
Regards,
Steve
I can write a minimilastic server in java in less then 10 lines of code, maybe even 4 depending on how you count. The core APIs of Java are just amazing. I feel spoiled whenever I am using Java and not using C++. Java is very powerful and allows the programmer to focus more on what the programmer should be focusing on. And as far as Java powered devices go, that is a requirement for me because I like to code my own stuff where I can (I'm not gonna pay 10 dollars for nibbles when I can just code it.)
Regards,
Steve
Thats only true until someone writes that all important shell script that lets the computer write shell scripts, and efficiently too. I mean genetic algorithsm are already used to design hardware in ways we couldn't imagine, and I've seen Kurzweil's bots' art, music, and poems, and its all really good stuff. He has tons of original works of art made by computers that is of excellent quality, you'd never know that it wasnt a human who made it. Once AI is brought to the level where it can write logic for other bots and itself, then there will truly be nothing left for humans to do other then enjoy life and take up whatever hobbies/interests they want to. Thats assuming that something doesnt go horribly wrong, but one day we may reach the point of "perfect happiness" if you will. We just have to get there on the right path.
Regards,
Steve
He probably means that our brains' consciousness is simply a controlled series of electrical pulses as guided through a neural network. One day we will easily have neural networks made out of silicon rather then carbon (silicon conducts better) that will mimick the brain and actually become superior. In this way the robots will have achieved what we consider consciousness. We are humans and give ourselves too much credit, we are complex but not so complex that we cant recreate ourselves in a better fashion. I mean we only do one thing well and that is pattern recognition, recognizing series of images, events, sounds, etc... it all simplifies to pattern recognition. We are hard pressed to multiply a million numbers together because we weren't designed for it. Our brain is a neural network, its not made for calculations, its made for recognizing patterns. We will recreate it one day in the form of a machine, despite what some people say. Its no more the 40 years away.
Regards,
Steve
Wow... heh guess in typical /. fashion I didn't follow the link. Thanks for pointing that out, I just responded out of habit. I'll know better next time.
Regards,
Steve
By the time thats released, firefox will already have machine learning and we won't even need to browse anymore! Our computers will do it for us! Let's see what IE does then :) In all seriousness though, thats just what they plan, they also planned WinFS which is falling apart and was supposed to be the biggest part of longhorn. In two to three years when MS does release all their big new shiny toys, just think how much further Linux, etc.. will all be. Look at how much we've progressed since 2000 or so. I mean alot of of big thigns are gonna be happening soon like DRM and 64-bit computing. People might hate microsoft for DRM if implemented poorly. And linux and apple already have a huge lead on windows for 64-bit computing. So we'll see how it plays out, this will be an interesting next 5 years.
Regards,
Steve
There are some important differences. For one, a program can't be executed until you set the executable bit on the file. This isn't as annoying as it sounds because on linux most things are installed through apt-get, yum or your variation. These things are cryptographically signed etc... There really is no need to ever download a binary(executable) especially through email. Have you ever needed to d/l an executable through email? Nearly noone does, and those who do know what they are doing. Typically if users d/l it thinking its a pic, but guess what, when they d/l it and double click on linux, all the sudden nothing happens because the executable bit isn't set and well if the email is saying that its a picture why would you need to execute it? Most users are too lazy to set the bit anyway despite it being a right-click away. I have never needed to receive a bin or exe in email and most users will just delete the attatchment once double clicking it doesn't work. When you d/l a file, the executable bit is not set. So that solves most of your problems right there. And then you also have the security of user accounts that work really well, so in a worst case scenario you can only screw up your home directory. Most distro's will make logging in as root harder then loggin in normal so most users wont log in as root. On top of this there are still more things like SELinux, etc... All in all, this wont ever be a major problem on linux, maybe here and there but never as bad as Windows.
Regards,
Steve