I've read many of the comments and have seen points made that Marc Andreessen (marca) is not a visionary, is over his head as CTO, etc... This pathetic. Marca had the good fortune to be at NCSA, but he was also smart enough to realize the potential of the web. Mosaic was good, very good. But netscape was awesome. I hope that most of you remember when you made the switch.
What makes one a visionary in the computer business? A bunch of "kids" at Stanford decide to take advantage of the new-fangled internet and form a company that is now a major force. Am I talking about Yahoo or Sun? Two guys in silicon valley put together a personal computer and sell it to their fellow nerds. Later, one of them brings the GUI to the masses (and later the personal laser printer). A computer uber-geek decides that software should be free so that the source code can be seen by everybody. A college student wants to work on unix at home, so he decides to create one that he can use. He then makes the source code available for all to see. A nerd in an obscure college in Michigan puts up a web site that caters to an obscure OS, and makes it a meeting place for fellow nerds.
So what makes one a visionary in the computer business. Skill? Timing? Luck?
BTW, there once was a person that was dumped by the company that started. At the time he was dumped it was said that he was not suitable to take that company into the future. This person name is Steve and he is back. The company is improving.
Lots of domain names change so this won't be a major problem. If a company sells the rights to something, then part of the arrangement could be to sell the domain name. They could also stipulate that the former host must maintain a linking page to the new site for a prescribed period of time.
But you do raise a good point. Suppose a company changes it's name. For example, Foo Bar Incorporated (foobar.com and foo.com) decides to become fbi.com. (hmmm, so that is what fbi really stands for). Do they get to keep foobar.com? Probably, yes, but do they then get to keep foo.com?
Hey I'm going to try out this No Score option on this pathetic comment.
I don't know if anybody has posted this, but here goes. The problem with domain names is that they are extremely limited (for instance,.com,.net,.edu,.org). This the legacy policy that we now have. Hence, there is an incredible amount of potential overlap between corporate names and other legitimate ones.
In this freelance world of domain names, disputes such as the one with clue will continue to happen. This might be unpopular, but I would impose a rather draconian solution. Incorporated companies are given.com; in this case hasbro.com. Web sites associated with hasbro, such as clue, will be something like, clue.hasbro.com. The caveat to all of this is that hasbro can still register hasbro.net, or hasbro.org. However, they cannot force someone to give the name up if it was already registered. OTOH, with time, ppl will search check out.com sites if they are looking for corporate info.
I know that they are working on additional domain suffixes. However, unless drastic measures are taken to restrict and control which domain can be registered and for what purpose, things are going to be real ugly during the next decade. Otherwise, the only unregistered domain in ten years will be gpqidnzw.com, or the only way to navigate the web will be by use of portals.
Hehehe, only two clicks? *Warning Sexist Offensive Comment* I bet women would prefer that it took more clicks.
But on a more serious note (yeah, right), I once thought about the following. It is too bad that this site is not more pro Microsoft (boy, does this company's name have Freudian meaning, right Billy boy?). Then Rod can put up a link to assembler info. It would be:
Nit-pick. The author says the web is not random but seems to follow a power-law function. Sounds good but power-law functions are also used to characterize random functions. I haven't read the scientific article but I would have to think that term random refers to a white noise function; equal noise level at all frequencies.
Stochastic (random) functions can be characterized by a range of power-law functions and other spectral shapes. The randomness of the power-law function is given by the randomness (e.g., mean and variance) of the individual components of the spectral function. For instance, draw a x-y plot consisting of a straight line that has a negative slope. The y-axis is the amplitude while the x-axis is the frequency (or the inverse wavelength). Now suppose that this straight line represents the "average" value as random fluctuations about this line exists. This is power-law random function.
Sorry if this is over simplified. BTW, fractals are characterized by a power-law function. OTOH, true fractal functions have constraints on what the power-law slope can be (Haussdorf dimension).
Now for something silly. What is the degree of freedom from Gore (Father of the Internet) to Slashot (the bastard child of the Internet)?
Thanks for your comment. Now I feel even worse. I never met the man although his books and the attitude contain in them were very good. I'm a scientist, not a professional programmer. As such I greatly appreciate an education source of info that is concise and lucid. As a person that has been working on Unix systems for about 15 yrs, I can also appreciate the trials and tribulations of mastering the mysteries of troff and other pre-historic formatting languages. Hell, I started out with Script, IIRC that came out of Waterloo.
Someone once asked me to document how to use one of my kluge programs. I told him that it would take me as much time to write the documentation in troff as it took me write the program. My ability to write concise and proper test is pathetic. To have to go in an edit the test is difficult.
Thank you for your reply. As I initially stated, I feel even worse after reading your reply and some of the other posts on this story.
FWIW, statistically older ppl vote at a higher rate than the younger ones. This makes the older ppl an important bloc of voters that are courted by politicians. Issues such as medicare and social security become extremely important issues.
I predict that if Internet voting becomes a reality, you will see a dramatic increase in the "young" vote. Politicians will finally have to confront issues that affect young ppl (like fixing social security). One could say that the "older" voters would also increase; for instance, put computers in retirement community centers and retirement homes. However, they already get vans to transport older ppl to the voting centers.
Some other thoughts: I wonder which company will get the contract to put together the voting system? I bet you will see ppl trying to sell their voting private key on eBay. Finally, I would really get paranoid if someone found _NSAKEY in the voting program.;-)
As a +2 guy, I would rather have no karma, and start all my posts at the +1 level. This is strictly personal reasons as it is embarassing to me to have a mediocre comment listed up there as a +2. And I totally agree with you, rarely (for me at least) does a +2 initial post get knocked down. Sometimes I do post as an AC when I have something funny/tasteless to say. This is done not because I don't want to loose my +2, rather I hate to see the comment up there as a +2. Ironically, sometimes these posts get bumped up (+1, Funny).
Perhaps one's karma should be based on the points accumulated after the initial level. That way a +2 person only gets karma points for +3 above.
Elsewhere there has been comments about daveo. I too support the effort to get daveo back to the +1 level. Then again, I am also a person who really misses MEEPT.
Off-topic: I'm also watching TV right now. I just saw a Miller-Lite commercial with Norm McDonald (sp?) and Marc Anderssen (sp?). Lot's of bad dot.com puns.
What happened last night was not work of trolls. Troll is too nice a word and does not properly characterize the absolutely vile nature of some of the posts. Perhaps, there should be a special category of -1 (or -2) moderation points for a class of posts that are grossly offensive. Moderators are given a bunch of them when a sensitive story get posted.
I realize that censorship is a bad word for many people. However, there are bounds of human decency that one should not cross. Not all stories are created equal. Those dealing with people are prone to greater abuse and hurtfulness, and therefore need to be dealt with accordingly.
Ironically, I'm watching a PBS show featuring a round-table discussion about the Internet while I writing this (pre-emptive multitasking).
BTW, banning AC's may not have completely solved last night's problem. The idiots would just keep creating new login accounts.
When somebody passes away, you should either speak of the good things about him/her, or otherwise keep your mouth shut. With that in mind, I would like to quote from his last book. This was in the preface.
I produced camera-ready copy of the book (PostScript), which was then typeset for the final book. The formatting system used was James Clark's wonderful groff package, on a SparcStation running Solaris 2.6. (Reports of troff's death are greatly exagerated.) I typed in all 138,897 words using the vi editor, created the 72 illustrations using the gpic program (using many of Gary Wright's macros), produced the 35 tables using the gtbl program, performed all the indexing (using a set of awk scripts written by Jon Bentley and Brian Kernighan), and did the final page layout. Dave Hanson's loom program, the GNU indent program, and some scripts by Gary Wright were used to include the 8,046 lines of C source code in the book.
I just had a big smile on my face after I first read this. Stevens was Unix to the very core.
How can one get a long-tailed statistical distribution as oppose to a symmetrical Gaussian distribution? There is one simple model that will generate this.
Suppose that ppl's programming skills are statistically Gaussian distributed. These ppl then decide to produce a "new" OS called linux. The contribution of these ppl are then plotted up. One would find that the majority of ppl produced a lot of "minor" improvements, smaller programs, scripts, and responses on mailing lists. There would be a smaller group of ppl that contributed a lot of important stuff.
This is the lognormal statistical distribution, IIRC. A bunch of ppl are capable of writing good code in support of this new OS. Unfortunately, only a smaller subset of these ppl have the time to work on the project for a long period of time. Then only a smaller subset of these ppl have the inclination to volunteer their services for this long period of time. Additionally, only a smaller portion of these ppl have the overall skills to do this. The result is that their are only a few ppl that have all of these attributes.
Sorry for this simplistic explanation (it is late and should really be sleeping now). A log normal is really a summation of normal distributions in log space (multiplication in regular space). Another way to view this is to ask yourself a bunch of statistical what if questions (the questions should really generate a set of answers that are Gaussian distributed). When you answer no then you are out of the game. More ppl are eliminated early.
The graph is rather confusing. This is my interpretation of it. Go out in the field and count the number of critters and categorize them by their species (id). Then normalize this count by some factor (perhaps total number of critters that were counted). For instance, I counter 1K monkeys, 500 cats, 500 dogs, 480 turnips, 200 rats, 50 snakes, 10 roaches, 5 hippos, 3 programmers, and 2 script kiddies. Now plot this distro.
The monkeys were less rare and therefore plot to the right, while the programmers, and script kiddies are rare and plot to the left. The "mean" value is the dogs and cats; this plots more to the right.
So what they are saying is that there are more species that have a smaller (rarer) number of critters that they could find. The "most common" value corresponds to the "average" number of critters per species.
I guessing now, but if one did a similar survey of the world's population using nationality instead of species, one may get a similar type of distribution.
I hope I don't screw this up. Roblimo, we greatly appreciate that work that you do. However, please try to refrain from responding to criticism that you do receive. Leave it up to us to respond for you. Trust the moderators (wow, my nose just turned brown).
To Duncan: I agree with you. I do like when the original story is not later edited without any indication that it was edited. I think the Update additions are best and necessary.
Since I standing on my soap box, I would like to add the following comment. The one thing great about/. is that breaking news is sometimes posted without the requisite follow-up research that other news sources usually conduct. As we are all aware of, many times the initial story and/. posting contains misleading information. Eventually, however, the various responses and comments lead to the "true" story. Remember the 1st principle of OSS; many ppl looking at the code is better than a close source of information. The reason why/. works is because many ppl looking at a story eventually leads to the better version of the truth.
Except when it comes to anything to do with Apple.:-)
This is slightly off-topic. But 1st let me thank all the ppl that have worked on the linux port of X11 and OpenGL. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, but I want more.:-)
I work on various unix workstations (including SGI, HP, Sun, and linux) and find that the commercial versions of unix have greater support for more visual classes than linux. I realize that linux has the "disadvantage" of trying to support a very wide range of graphic cards. I also realize that the lack of support (e.g., documentation) from various graphic card manufacturers makes things very difficult.
My X Window and OpenGL code sucks. I'm not a professional programmer but some low-life scientist that writes a lot of inefficient code; you know, cheese-ware full of holes. Giving me a wide range of available visual classes really helps. Pseudo-color overlay planes is also nice (coming soon in 4.0!).
My point is that I would really support anybody that makes my life easier. Writing code that has to take into account the availability of all the various visual classes and default depths is a real pain in the butt. I have to think that other ppl with legacy code would also want to have this. The economics of the problem also indicates that the cost of relatively cheap graphic cards easily offsets the cost of rewriting the programs.
I ask you to have some compassion for me as I have to use Motif.:-) OTOH, I'm not so proud to ask how I can better solve my problem. Nonetheless, congrats Brian; I'll start watching Precision Insight more.
Because of the way the odds are setup, it is sometime said that the lottery is a tax on people who aren't good at math. OTOH, the money will help the schools. Duh. I guess the key is to just teach two of the R's, reading, riting, and forget the rithmetic.
But there could be some real nice benefits from an internet tax. The money raised could pay for the printing and distribution of Ten Commandment Posters! Or better yet, it can go to purchasing new science books that don't mention evolution! And if they do increase teacher salaries, then the NEA can raise union dues so that they can give more campaign contributions to the politicians. It's a win-win solution!
Immigrants to the US speak will speak with a distinct accent if they come to this country after a certain age. Linguists have studied this and have concluded that one's accent (e.g., pronounciation of various words) is controlled by one's early training.
Yellow? I won't comment on this except to say that I once had to fill out a US Gov. document (security clearance form, IIRC), that asked me what was my ethnic identity; yellow was one of the options.
Henry Kissinger had a horrible non-US accent. IIRC, he was the Secretary of State and the head of the National Security Council (National Security Advisor).
Style over substance. Let's all pay attention to how someone says something as oppose to what they have to say. Some of them Europeans really speak funny. You know what I mean; those people from England and even worse, Ireland. They are idiotsas they can't even speak proper English.
I'm of Asian ancestry. My great grandparents immigrated to the US over a 100 yrs ago. The Asian in the US are doing okay (too bad they have a quota on the number of Asians attending UCB).
Many ppl have already said this but I'll repeat it again. If you are going to pursue getting a Ph.D. the most important thing is the adviser (prof). This person will control your life during grad school and will have an important role when you seek a job afterwards (like in providing contacts, job references, etc...).
One thing to note is that you will probably be funded off of grant money; your research will be in support of some specific project. Therefore, in most cases you will not have the totally flexibility to pick any research topic of your choosing. Therefore, it is important to check out what work the profs are doing now, not ten years ago. What direction is their work leading to in the future? Remember that most journal articles indicate work done about two to three years ago; hence, check out conference proceedings for the latest stuff (or talk to your profs). It is likely that work that you will be doing has not even been funded yet; your future adviser may be writing the proposal at this moment.
Also keep in mind that profs only have a finite amount of grant money to support their grad students. This usually means the "good" ones have more money, more projects, and hence, more students. This could be good and bad.
My personal experience. I picked a school that had a fairly young and relatively small faculty that were on the rise up in terms of their careers. My adviser was just starting out but had already established a very good scientific reputation. Ppl told me that he also a very nice guy, honest, and easy to work with. My working for him turned out to be a good decision. It also turned out that my fellow grad students were great; we studied hard, played hard, and are friends for life.
We can talk about OS's, and we can talk about programming languages. While these are important, the key point is application software. MS has done some "interesting" things with regard to maintaining their OS dominance. But their most important thing that they have done is their Office suite and how it is integrated into their other sh*t.
PPl that make the duh decisions are upper/middle level managers. What software do they need? Word processing (not that they write documents, they just need to read and print them), transmission of the documents (e-mail attachments), spreadsheets (not that they generate spreadsheets, they just want to read em), and finally, viewgraphs (not that they, well you get the point).
The upper level managers that I deal with are technically clueless. They don't want their secretaries figuring out different formats. I swear that they are the first to upgrade to the next incompatible version of Word or PowerPoint thereby forcing the others to upgrade. No, No, just save this document with the previous format version. Sorry, too hard to comprehend. The ironic part is that they don't need or use the new features. I/we just got another PowerPoint "template" to fill out. Except the format was not a template except for how the final viewgraphs should look like.
Why am I rambling about all of this? Is there a java based program(s) that provides all of this upper management functionality? All most of these bozos need is java script capabilities so that their web browser works okay.
Back on subject. Sun will probable win this round. MS will put their normal spin on this. Sorry for this off-topic rant but obviously I'm kind of pissed off at this time.
BTW, I work for THE MAN who is part of THE MAN that blindly uses PHB friendly software. (Geez, I really had a bad day at work today.:))
I'm just curious. How long can you be disconnected from the rest of world before you get rather frazzled and out of sync. I say this because one of life's pleasures (for me at least), is to get away and out of contact. No internet, no phone, no fax, no TV, nobody can get in touch with you.
I sometimes have to go out to sea to conduct research. In the earlier days, communication with the rest of world was extremely limited. In this type of environment one truly realizes who one truly wants to be in contact with. Everything else is a waste on bandwidth (and money).
At work I sometimes disappear into the library to read journal articles. I grab a bunch of papers and disappear into the depths of the stacks.
I use the internet a lot. But sometimes I just have to get away from everything and everybody. In this modern age of total communication and linkage, this can be one of life's last pleasures.
My buddy B. Gates could not figure out how to post here so he asked me to forward this msg. It is me, the best Basic programmer ever. Even better than my pal, Paul. Here's my score:
Openness: C-3PO (0%)
Conscientious: Han Solo (0%)
Extraversion: Wampas (2%)
Agreeableness: Emperor Palpatine (0%)
Neuroticism: Tuscan Warriors (99%)
This means that I am: conventional, down to earth, narrow interests, uncreative, disorganized, undependable, negligent, introverted, reserved, inhibited, quiet, critical, rude, harsh, callous, nervous, high-strung, insecure, and, worrying. Damn, I wanted to be Darth Vader and the Emperor. I'm going to have to buy this company.
To me what we are seeing is the maturation of the relationship between the software industry and business world. In the past, computer usage (and dependency) was limited to ppl and groups that were technically savy and technically cynical. Software bugs, downtime, bug patches were all part of the business of using computers. Ask any computer tech, would you really trust version X.0 of any software package?
Now companies are getting more and more dependent on computers. Any downtime is not tolerated and is in fact reason for sensational press reporting(e.g., eBay). The tolerance level for any type of computer failure has shrunk. For instance, I remember a time when the central mainframe computer would fry it's core memory (literally). No computer, no problem. We would do other things.
Now? Failure is not an option. CIO's know this. CIO's who make big bucks and cannot screw up know this. The "old" way of instantly upgrading then fighting the bugs is becoming ancient history. Upper management who decide upgrading decisions are very cognizant of when one of their bretheren gets burned by an unproven upgrade. Before, the mode of operation was keeping up with the Jones. Perhaps, now the stakes are much higher; this leads to more caution.
It is important for linux to maintains "stable" kernel version. Relatively incremental improvements in an OS usually leads to stability.
We're on the express elevator to Hell, going down!
Maybe you haven't been keeping up with current events, but we just got our asses kicked!
Paxson/Hudson was great, and he had all the good lines. He was the techo-geek of the Marine outfit. He was my hero. I cried when they got him. You want some this? Oh yeah? How about you? Aaaaaaaa! I wish there was a slashdot poll about our favorite movie by different categories, but not the ones that are obvious like scifi. Categories more like movies with the best kick-ass aliens, or movies with aliens that you would have sex with. Maybe we should skip that last one as I would really hate to see the comments.
This way off-topic but you got me thinking about fun with names, or more specially about anagrams. I know that this has been done before, but here goes:
Bill Gates: Steal glib: Bag it, sell
Linus Torvalds: Rival sold nuts: Sun's vital lord (hmmmm, what does this mean?)
Rob Malda: A bar mold: Rod a lamb (hmmm, better not touch this last one)
There's a lot more (ES Raymond = Sermon Day). Perhaps we could start using anagrams as/. login names.
This what I do on my powermac running LinuxPPC 1999 (enlightenment-0.15.5-32 rpm). Run the enlightenment configuration editor (/usr/bin/e-conf). Select Desktops. Then all you have to do is select the size of the virtual screen using the scroll bars, then hit Apply.
I have to say that in the past I was not a real big fan of enlightenment. However, I have started to enjoy working in this environment (gnome/E). I haven't had any real problems ever since I disabled the tapping function of the touchpad.
Anything to do with the military will raise ethical questions related to technology and humanity. I won't debate this issue except to point out the response of Oppenheimer when asked about the atomic bomb. I can't find the exact quote so I'm have to paraphrase it. I hope I don't butcher it too much.
Q: Isn't it a tragedy of science for your invention to be used for destruction.
A: No, it is not a tragedy of science. It is a tragedy of humanity.
This "quote" was taken from Jacob Bronowski's excellent PBS series called "The Accent of Man." Many of you have not seen this as it appear many years ago. The book is still available (AFAIK); read the chapter about the quest for absolute knowledge.
Slashdot Mirror
What makes one a visionary in the computer business? A bunch of "kids" at Stanford decide to take advantage of the new-fangled internet and form a company that is now a major force. Am I talking about Yahoo or Sun? Two guys in silicon valley put together a personal computer and sell it to their fellow nerds. Later, one of them brings the GUI to the masses (and later the personal laser printer). A computer uber-geek decides that software should be free so that the source code can be seen by everybody. A college student wants to work on unix at home, so he decides to create one that he can use. He then makes the source code available for all to see. A nerd in an obscure college in Michigan puts up a web site that caters to an obscure OS, and makes it a meeting place for fellow nerds.
So what makes one a visionary in the computer business. Skill? Timing? Luck?
BTW, there once was a person that was dumped by the company that started. At the time he was dumped it was said that he was not suitable to take that company into the future. This person name is Steve and he is back. The company is improving.
craw, now posting using no score.
But you do raise a good point. Suppose a company changes it's name. For example, Foo Bar Incorporated (foobar.com and foo.com) decides to become fbi.com. (hmmm, so that is what fbi really stands for). Do they get to keep foobar.com? Probably, yes, but do they then get to keep foo.com?
Hey I'm going to try out this No Score option on this pathetic comment.
In this freelance world of domain names, disputes such as the one with clue will continue to happen. This might be unpopular, but I would impose a rather draconian solution. Incorporated companies are given .com; in this case hasbro.com. Web sites associated with hasbro, such as clue, will be something like, clue.hasbro.com. The caveat to all of this is that hasbro can still register hasbro.net, or hasbro.org. However, they cannot force someone to give the name up if it was already registered. OTOH, with time, ppl will search check out .com sites if they are looking for corporate info.
I know that they are working on additional domain suffixes. However, unless drastic measures are taken to restrict and control which domain can be registered and for what purpose, things are going to be real ugly during the next decade. Otherwise, the only unregistered domain in ten years will be gpqidnzw.com, or the only way to navigate the web will be by use of portals.
But on a more serious note (yeah, right), I once thought about the following. It is too bad that this site is not more pro Microsoft (boy, does this company's name have Freudian meaning, right Billy boy?). Then Rod can put up a link to assembler info. It would be:
http://slashdot.org/asm
Stochastic (random) functions can be characterized by a range of power-law functions and other spectral shapes. The randomness of the power-law function is given by the randomness (e.g., mean and variance) of the individual components of the spectral function. For instance, draw a x-y plot consisting of a straight line that has a negative slope. The y-axis is the amplitude while the x-axis is the frequency (or the inverse wavelength). Now suppose that this straight line represents the "average" value as random fluctuations about this line exists. This is power-law random function.
Sorry if this is over simplified. BTW, fractals are characterized by a power-law function. OTOH, true fractal functions have constraints on what the power-law slope can be (Haussdorf dimension).
Now for something silly. What is the degree of freedom from Gore (Father of the Internet) to Slashot (the bastard child of the Internet)?
Someone once asked me to document how to use one of my kluge programs. I told him that it would take me as much time to write the documentation in troff as it took me write the program. My ability to write concise and proper test is pathetic. To have to go in an edit the test is difficult.
Thank you for your reply. As I initially stated, I feel even worse after reading your reply and some of the other posts on this story.
I predict that if Internet voting becomes a reality, you will see a dramatic increase in the "young" vote. Politicians will finally have to confront issues that affect young ppl (like fixing social security). One could say that the "older" voters would also increase; for instance, put computers in retirement community centers and retirement homes. However, they already get vans to transport older ppl to the voting centers.
Some other thoughts: I wonder which company will get the contract to put together the voting system? I bet you will see ppl trying to sell their voting private key on eBay. Finally, I would really get paranoid if someone found _NSAKEY in the voting program.;-)
Perhaps one's karma should be based on the points accumulated after the initial level. That way a +2 person only gets karma points for +3 above.
Elsewhere there has been comments about daveo. I too support the effort to get daveo back to the +1 level. Then again, I am also a person who really misses MEEPT.
Off-topic: I'm also watching TV right now. I just saw a Miller-Lite commercial with Norm McDonald (sp?) and Marc Anderssen (sp?). Lot's of bad dot.com puns.
I realize that censorship is a bad word for many people. However, there are bounds of human decency that one should not cross. Not all stories are created equal. Those dealing with people are prone to greater abuse and hurtfulness, and therefore need to be dealt with accordingly.
Ironically, I'm watching a PBS show featuring a round-table discussion about the Internet while I writing this (pre-emptive multitasking).
BTW, banning AC's may not have completely solved last night's problem. The idiots would just keep creating new login accounts.
I produced camera-ready copy of the book (PostScript), which was then typeset for the final book. The formatting system used was James Clark's wonderful groff package, on a SparcStation running Solaris 2.6. (Reports of troff's death are greatly exagerated.) I typed in all 138,897 words using the vi editor, created the 72 illustrations using the gpic program (using many of Gary Wright's macros), produced the 35 tables using the gtbl program, performed all the indexing (using a set of awk scripts written by Jon Bentley and Brian Kernighan), and did the final page layout. Dave Hanson's loom program, the GNU indent program, and some scripts by Gary Wright were used to include the 8,046 lines of C source code in the book.
I just had a big smile on my face after I first read this. Stevens was Unix to the very core.
Suppose that ppl's programming skills are statistically Gaussian distributed. These ppl then decide to produce a "new" OS called linux. The contribution of these ppl are then plotted up. One would find that the majority of ppl produced a lot of "minor" improvements, smaller programs, scripts, and responses on mailing lists. There would be a smaller group of ppl that contributed a lot of important stuff.
This is the lognormal statistical distribution, IIRC. A bunch of ppl are capable of writing good code in support of this new OS. Unfortunately, only a smaller subset of these ppl have the time to work on the project for a long period of time. Then only a smaller subset of these ppl have the inclination to volunteer their services for this long period of time. Additionally, only a smaller portion of these ppl have the overall skills to do this. The result is that their are only a few ppl that have all of these attributes.
Sorry for this simplistic explanation (it is late and should really be sleeping now). A log normal is really a summation of normal distributions in log space (multiplication in regular space). Another way to view this is to ask yourself a bunch of statistical what if questions (the questions should really generate a set of answers that are Gaussian distributed). When you answer no then you are out of the game. More ppl are eliminated early.
The monkeys were less rare and therefore plot to the right, while the programmers, and script kiddies are rare and plot to the left. The "mean" value is the dogs and cats; this plots more to the right.
So what they are saying is that there are more species that have a smaller (rarer) number of critters that they could find. The "most common" value corresponds to the "average" number of critters per species.
I guessing now, but if one did a similar survey of the world's population using nationality instead of species, one may get a similar type of distribution.
To Duncan: I agree with you. I do like when the original story is not later edited without any indication that it was edited. I think the Update additions are best and necessary.
Since I standing on my soap box, I would like to add the following comment. The one thing great about /. is that breaking news is sometimes posted without the requisite follow-up research that other news sources usually conduct. As we are all aware of, many times the initial story and /. posting contains misleading information. Eventually, however, the various responses and comments lead to the "true" story. Remember the 1st principle of OSS; many ppl looking at the code is better than a close source of information. The reason why /. works is because many ppl looking at a story eventually leads to the better version of the truth.
Except when it comes to anything to do with Apple.:-)
I work on various unix workstations (including SGI, HP, Sun, and linux) and find that the commercial versions of unix have greater support for more visual classes than linux. I realize that linux has the "disadvantage" of trying to support a very wide range of graphic cards. I also realize that the lack of support (e.g., documentation) from various graphic card manufacturers makes things very difficult.
My X Window and OpenGL code sucks. I'm not a professional programmer but some low-life scientist that writes a lot of inefficient code; you know, cheese-ware full of holes. Giving me a wide range of available visual classes really helps. Pseudo-color overlay planes is also nice (coming soon in 4.0!).
My point is that I would really support anybody that makes my life easier. Writing code that has to take into account the availability of all the various visual classes and default depths is a real pain in the butt. I have to think that other ppl with legacy code would also want to have this. The economics of the problem also indicates that the cost of relatively cheap graphic cards easily offsets the cost of rewriting the programs.
I ask you to have some compassion for me as I have to use Motif.:-) OTOH, I'm not so proud to ask how I can better solve my problem. Nonetheless, congrats Brian; I'll start watching Precision Insight more.
But there could be some real nice benefits from an internet tax. The money raised could pay for the printing and distribution of Ten Commandment Posters! Or better yet, it can go to purchasing new science books that don't mention evolution! And if they do increase teacher salaries, then the NEA can raise union dues so that they can give more campaign contributions to the politicians. It's a win-win solution!
Yellow? I won't comment on this except to say that I once had to fill out a US Gov. document (security clearance form, IIRC), that asked me what was my ethnic identity; yellow was one of the options.
Henry Kissinger had a horrible non-US accent. IIRC, he was the Secretary of State and the head of the National Security Council (National Security Advisor).
Style over substance. Let's all pay attention to how someone says something as oppose to what they have to say. Some of them Europeans really speak funny. You know what I mean; those people from England and even worse, Ireland. They are idiotsas they can't even speak proper English.
I'm of Asian ancestry. My great grandparents immigrated to the US over a 100 yrs ago. The Asian in the US are doing okay (too bad they have a quota on the number of Asians attending UCB).
One thing to note is that you will probably be funded off of grant money; your research will be in support of some specific project. Therefore, in most cases you will not have the totally flexibility to pick any research topic of your choosing. Therefore, it is important to check out what work the profs are doing now, not ten years ago. What direction is their work leading to in the future? Remember that most journal articles indicate work done about two to three years ago; hence, check out conference proceedings for the latest stuff (or talk to your profs). It is likely that work that you will be doing has not even been funded yet; your future adviser may be writing the proposal at this moment.
Also keep in mind that profs only have a finite amount of grant money to support their grad students. This usually means the "good" ones have more money, more projects, and hence, more students. This could be good and bad.
My personal experience. I picked a school that had a fairly young and relatively small faculty that were on the rise up in terms of their careers. My adviser was just starting out but had already established a very good scientific reputation. Ppl told me that he also a very nice guy, honest, and easy to work with. My working for him turned out to be a good decision. It also turned out that my fellow grad students were great; we studied hard, played hard, and are friends for life.
PPl that make the duh decisions are upper/middle level managers. What software do they need? Word processing (not that they write documents, they just need to read and print them), transmission of the documents (e-mail attachments), spreadsheets (not that they generate spreadsheets, they just want to read em), and finally, viewgraphs (not that they, well you get the point).
The upper level managers that I deal with are technically clueless. They don't want their secretaries figuring out different formats. I swear that they are the first to upgrade to the next incompatible version of Word or PowerPoint thereby forcing the others to upgrade. No, No, just save this document with the previous format version. Sorry, too hard to comprehend. The ironic part is that they don't need or use the new features. I/we just got another PowerPoint "template" to fill out. Except the format was not a template except for how the final viewgraphs should look like.
Why am I rambling about all of this? Is there a java based program(s) that provides all of this upper management functionality? All most of these bozos need is java script capabilities so that their web browser works okay.
Back on subject. Sun will probable win this round. MS will put their normal spin on this. Sorry for this off-topic rant but obviously I'm kind of pissed off at this time.
BTW, I work for THE MAN who is part of THE MAN that blindly uses PHB friendly software. (Geez, I really had a bad day at work today.:))
I sometimes have to go out to sea to conduct research. In the earlier days, communication with the rest of world was extremely limited. In this type of environment one truly realizes who one truly wants to be in contact with. Everything else is a waste on bandwidth (and money).
At work I sometimes disappear into the library to read journal articles. I grab a bunch of papers and disappear into the depths of the stacks.
I use the internet a lot. But sometimes I just have to get away from everything and everybody. In this modern age of total communication and linkage, this can be one of life's last pleasures.
Openness: C-3PO (0%)
Conscientious: Han Solo (0%)
Extraversion: Wampas (2%)
Agreeableness: Emperor Palpatine (0%)
Neuroticism: Tuscan Warriors (99%)
This means that I am: conventional, down to earth, narrow interests, uncreative, disorganized, undependable, negligent, introverted, reserved, inhibited, quiet, critical, rude, harsh, callous, nervous, high-strung, insecure, and, worrying. Damn, I wanted to be Darth Vader and the Emperor. I'm going to have to buy this company.
Now companies are getting more and more dependent on computers. Any downtime is not tolerated and is in fact reason for sensational press reporting(e.g., eBay). The tolerance level for any type of computer failure has shrunk. For instance, I remember a time when the central mainframe computer would fry it's core memory (literally). No computer, no problem. We would do other things.
Now? Failure is not an option. CIO's know this. CIO's who make big bucks and cannot screw up know this. The "old" way of instantly upgrading then fighting the bugs is becoming ancient history. Upper management who decide upgrading decisions are very cognizant of when one of their bretheren gets burned by an unproven upgrade. Before, the mode of operation was keeping up with the Jones. Perhaps, now the stakes are much higher; this leads to more caution.
It is important for linux to maintains "stable" kernel version. Relatively incremental improvements in an OS usually leads to stability.
We're on the express elevator to Hell, going down!
Maybe you haven't been keeping up with current events, but we just got our asses kicked!
Paxson/Hudson was great, and he had all the good lines. He was the techo-geek of the Marine outfit. He was my hero. I cried when they got him. You want some this? Oh yeah? How about you? Aaaaaaaa! I wish there was a slashdot poll about our favorite movie by different categories, but not the ones that are obvious like scifi. Categories more like movies with the best kick-ass aliens, or movies with aliens that you would have sex with. Maybe we should skip that last one as I would really hate to see the comments.
Bill Gates: Steal glib: Bag it, sell
Linus Torvalds: Rival sold nuts: Sun's vital lord (hmmmm, what does this mean?)
Rob Malda: A bar mold: Rod a lamb (hmmm, better not touch this last one)
There's a lot more (ES Raymond = Sermon Day). Perhaps we could start using anagrams as /. login names.
I have to say that in the past I was not a real big fan of enlightenment. However, I have started to enjoy working in this environment (gnome/E). I haven't had any real problems ever since I disabled the tapping function of the touchpad.
Anything to do with the military will raise ethical questions related to technology and humanity. I won't debate this issue except to point out the response of Oppenheimer when asked about the atomic bomb. I can't find the exact quote so I'm have to paraphrase it. I hope I don't butcher it too much.
Q: Isn't it a tragedy of science for your invention to be used for destruction.
A: No, it is not a tragedy of science. It is a tragedy of humanity.
This "quote" was taken from Jacob Bronowski's excellent PBS series called "The Accent of Man." Many of you have not seen this as it appear many years ago. The book is still available (AFAIK); read the chapter about the quest for absolute knowledge.