When I replaced my Dell laptop with my Acer, I swapped over the HD because I've so much stuff installed it would take far too long. Power-on the Acer; BSOD.
Boot from the WinXP cd, select the Repair option, and WinXP is re-installed (sans security patches) from the ground up. Apply the Acer drivers and the machine is now totally set up as if the HD came straight from Acer.
Are you confusing the issue of "iPod vs. everything else" with "wma vs. everything else"?
My wife has an iPod. It is, without a doubt, the slickest piece of computing machinery in our house. All the other portable music players are clunky by comparison, or too limited. The fact that it plays mp3 or aac is totally irrelevent.
... until they are tested in court. So says the lawer at the company I work for, and who is involved in patent (not software) battles on our behalf in a few countries.
Essentially, he says, the granting of a patent means that you were able to convince some guy in an office that your idea was new, un-obvious etc. etc. So the patent is granted.
The fun starts when your product hits the market and someone else tries to do the same thing. Then it goes to court, and only then is the validity of your patent tested.
Fair enough; but just suppose you actually want a phone, a gameboy and a camera one day. So you're going to carry around 3 discreet devices, or would you prefer just the one? Me, I'd choose the single device.
The phone "boot up" isn't just glitz and noise - the phone is actually doing something:
1. Initialise the SIM and read out important data;
2. Find a nearby tower and establish a connection;
3. Attempt to connect to the home network;
4. Wait for the network to send an authentication packet.
5. With the random number in the packet, use the encryption function in the SIM to authenticate the phone and subscriber identity as a valid user and send it back to the service provider;
6. Be granted access to the network.
This is for your protection; if not for the authentication, I could grab your IMEI and phone number using an over-the-air packet sniffer and spoof your phone. So, all my calls are billed to you:)
As for losing functionality as a phone, my Siemens C60 works at least as well as my original Nokia 100 AMPS phone - that's about as basic a phone as you could ever get!
The kernel that you talk about, was mostly stolen from DEC
Stolen from DEC? A quick search on the net (or even here on/.) will tell you the truth: Dave Cutler was sitting at his desk at DEC West, pissed as all hell that DEC cancelled the new Prism computers that would run Mica, his new VAX-Compatible OS. Bill Gates hears of this, and offers Cutler and anyone else from his lab a job at MS writing a next-gen OS/2 (which later becamse Windows NT after the MS/IBM split). Of course NT would look like something from DEC - but remember that DEC had the source code to NT from quite early in the piece (they did the original Alpha port) and either chose not to sue or saw that there was nothing they could sue for.
The UI and application layers were microsoft's own code bolted on top
It was rewritten for NT from the ground up.
The original kernel was a microkernel architecture where device drivers shouldn't have been able to drop the whole system, microsoft screwed that up by allowing drivers to be loaded into kernel space
You do have a fair point here. Under NT 3.1 - 3.51, drivers operated in user space. They took a performance hit for that, but until (say) Win2k SP2, NT 3.51 was the most stable Windows out there. Moving the drivers into kernel space caused quite a bit of angst in the trade press, but for the most part it seems to have survived.
There's a comment elsewhere that the greatest flaw in Windows today is not being able to abort a kernel call, and it's a fair comment.
So your final summary sentence come across as nothing more that a nasty slur, hardly worthy of +4, Informative.
Ok, fair enough:) For a spectacularly simple example like this, of course the compiler will inline the code. And thanks for pointing out that setQ() wasn't supposed to be returning an int:)
That, however, wan't the point I was trying to make. What I was (extreamly badly) trying to say was that the compiler doesn't have a global view of the code, it can only be looking at the code from a local point of view. So, if your class design is badly thought out, the complier's performance, no matter how clever, isn't going to help for the real world.
This isn't to say that a modern compiler can't do some amazing things. If you want real performance, though, depending on the compiler to magically fix a bad design is not the smartest thing.
No matter how good the compiler is, it can't possibly compensate for poor program design.
Right at the outset, you need to decide if the program is performance critical or not. Take, for example, this code:
class fred{
int q;
int setQ(int newQ)
{
q=newQ;
}
};
fred myFred=new(fred);
Now, which is going to execute faster:
myFred.setQ(10);
or
myFred.q=10;
Using your super optimising compiler, how is it going to know the best way of setting q in myFred? It can't, because no compiler could make an assumption like that.
What's the source of that quote? I'd like to read the full article, as I'm currently looking at the whole mobile game industry as a part-time "on the side" job.
I'm posting from Australia, so I don't know the lie of the mobile land in your part of the world.
1. It's gonna bring the price down, no question. Lots of proprietary software in those little handheld phones.
The first phone I bought this year, a Siemens A55, cost me AU$99 pre-paid. That's about US$80. A $3 data cable from eBay and it was flash-upgraded to become a C55, which enabled the Java and Data Access functions, which leads me to...
And maybe some cheaper ringtones while we're at it. I'd love to be able to do my own, rather than buying them at $1 each.
My laptop has 9,643 MIDI ringtones, and I've found a site with heaps more MIDI's that I like. I simply copy them to the phone via the data cable. Before you jump on me, telling me that this is Windows only crap, I've also got the AT command spec for the Siemens range, and I've written a program in Visual Basic that allows me to upload MIDI's to the phone. The program is reasonably trivial; I ported it to my Mac in Future Basic in an evening (and this included the SMS sending function, too).
Last week I upgraded to a Siemens C60, and the same data cable and software lets me do all the fun stuff with ringtones (and unlocking, for that matter) as before. Since getting it, I spent the weekend learning Java (specifically, J2ME) and wrote a Tetris game for the C60. With a bit of effort, I can get the game running on my wife's A55 (which is also now a C55).
So, why do I need a Linux phone when I have a Java phone?
Creationism doesn't make any testable predictions; it is simply a statement of how things came to be.
A scientific theory, such as the Inflation theory, makes predictions that can be tested. The earlier theory to Inflation, the Big Bang Theory, predicted that there would be leftover radiation at a certain temperature if the Big Bang did indeed happen. Researchers went looking for this radiation and lo! there is was. The Cosmic Background Radiation (http://background.uchicago.edu/~whu/beginners/int roduction.html)
Where are the predictions in Creation that can be tested? Oh, that's right - there are none.
It's not enough to simple make a statement like this - back it up with proof - a URL, a citation, whatever - so I can go to the same source as you and read that comment myself.
For example, http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/benton.h tml states that Carbon 14 dating is useless for objects more than 70,000 years old, because the half-life of C14 is 5730 years. The article goes on in some depth about dating old things, in direct contradiction to your comment.
Maybe it's fairly easy to install and use Linux; at least to you and me. However, what about the legions of AOL users who can barely check their email without having their hand held? Do you honestly think that they would be able to use Linux on a day to day basis without problems?
Using Linux day-to-day is a different issue entirely to installing it.
Sure, having an easy to install OS is nice, but honestly, how many AOL users (or mum's and dad's, sisters etc) are going to be installing an OS frequently? And just as a point of interest, once the OS is set up just how many problems do you have that require getting into the OS and fixing? On XP here and at home, none. On RH9 here, none.
just call linux what it is: a powerful hobbyist OS
Why do that? Honestly, RH9 on my laptop with OpenOffice was easy enough for my wife to get to grips with, once she learned how to work in Gnome - and mostly that was clicking the OO icon on the toolbar! Printing was already set up and working, so as far as she was concerned, the underlying OS didn't matter a damn. WinXP is still on her machine for a variety of reasons, but the only thing stopping us from making her machine RH9 is Windows apps (SPSS is one) that she needs for uni.
Here in Australia, our new combat "Collins" class subs had a user interfce designed by committee. It took 13 button presses to designate a target and launch a torpedo. The generals, when assessing this new sub, complained that the UI in a Playstation game to at most three clicks to designate a target and launce; why can't a multi-billion dollar sub work like that.
The contractor then employed some game UI designers to rewrite the combat system.
It's a true story! I don't have tome to search for the reports now, but it should be available on www.smh.com.au or www.theaustralian.com.au.
You're referring to the aura that a patient develops when a seizure (fit) is going to happen. The usual indicators of an aura is:
- Metallic taste in the mouth;
- Visual distortion (red tint, sometimes blue tint or solid object moving / morphing); and
- Strange / intense headaches.
All these are experienced by the patient - they are not necessarliy obvious to the observer. An observer can sometimes pick when a seizure is going to happen.
The point about dogs is that they can pick up a seizure apparently by smell alone - sometimes several hours in advance. Some dogs can even detect a seizure before the patient's aura develops. There's definitely someting interesting happening here.
If your typical user has Norton's or McAfee's running (I'm a Nortin Internet Security person myself), this problem would be stopped stone dead.
However, as far as I can see the typical user with Kazaa running is not exactly interested in parting with cash for a program, not matter how useful it is. Hence, the problem we see today.
This is only going to get worse. All these virii with different attack vectors; it's only a matter of time before we start seeing some *real* blended threats.
Slashdot Mirror
That's why you do a repair install.
When I replaced my Dell laptop with my Acer, I swapped over the HD because I've so much stuff installed it would take far too long. Power-on the Acer; BSOD.
Boot from the WinXP cd, select the Repair option, and WinXP is re-installed (sans security patches) from the ground up. Apply the Acer drivers and the machine is now totally set up as if the HD came straight from Acer.
Are you confusing the issue of "iPod vs. everything else" with "wma vs. everything else"?
My wife has an iPod. It is, without a doubt, the slickest piece of computing machinery in our house. All the other portable music players are clunky by comparison, or too limited. The fact that it plays mp3 or aac is totally irrelevent.
Why stop at limbs? Why not bodies? I want to be a hive mind.
Yeah, yeah - we ALL want to be with Seven of Nine!
So who's the MS equivelent of Seven of Nine???
... until they are tested in court. So says the lawer at the company I work for, and who is involved in patent (not software) battles on our behalf in a few countries.
Essentially, he says, the granting of a patent means that you were able to convince some guy in an office that your idea was new, un-obvious etc. etc. So the patent is granted.
The fun starts when your product hits the market and someone else tries to do the same thing. Then it goes to court, and only then is the validity of your patent tested.
Fair enough; but just suppose you actually want a phone, a gameboy and a camera one day. So you're going to carry around 3 discreet devices, or would you prefer just the one? Me, I'd choose the single device.
:)
The phone "boot up" isn't just glitz and noise - the phone is actually doing something:
1. Initialise the SIM and read out important data;
2. Find a nearby tower and establish a connection;
3. Attempt to connect to the home network;
4. Wait for the network to send an authentication packet.
5. With the random number in the packet, use the encryption function in the SIM to authenticate the phone and subscriber identity as a valid user and send it back to the service provider;
6. Be granted access to the network.
This is for your protection; if not for the authentication, I could grab your IMEI and phone number using an over-the-air packet sniffer and spoof your phone. So, all my calls are billed to you
As for losing functionality as a phone, my Siemens C60 works at least as well as my original Nokia 100 AMPS phone - that's about as basic a phone as you could ever get!
How on earth did this get modded "Informative"??
/.) will tell you the truth: Dave Cutler was sitting at his desk at DEC West, pissed as all hell that DEC cancelled the new Prism computers that would run Mica, his new VAX-Compatible OS. Bill Gates hears of this, and offers Cutler and anyone else from his lab a job at MS writing a next-gen OS/2 (which later becamse Windows NT after the MS/IBM split). Of course NT would look like something from DEC - but remember that DEC had the source code to NT from quite early in the piece (they did the original Alpha port) and either chose not to sue or saw that there was nothing they could sue for.
The kernel that you talk about, was mostly stolen from DEC
Stolen from DEC? A quick search on the net (or even here on
The UI and application layers were microsoft's own code bolted on top
It was rewritten for NT from the ground up.
The original kernel was a microkernel architecture where device drivers shouldn't have been able to drop the whole system, microsoft screwed that up by allowing drivers to be loaded into kernel space
You do have a fair point here. Under NT 3.1 - 3.51, drivers operated in user space. They took a performance hit for that, but until (say) Win2k SP2, NT 3.51 was the most stable Windows out there. Moving the drivers into kernel space caused quite a bit of angst in the trade press, but for the most part it seems to have survived.
There's a comment elsewhere that the greatest flaw in Windows today is not being able to abort a kernel call, and it's a fair comment.
So your final summary sentence come across as nothing more that a nasty slur, hardly worthy of +4, Informative.
Good point, but actually tons are a metric unit. One ton is 1000Kg :)
Actually, the metric unit is the tonne.
Ok, fair enough :) For a spectacularly simple example like this, of course the compiler will inline the code. And thanks for pointing out that setQ() wasn't supposed to be returning an int :)
That, however, wan't the point I was trying to make. What I was (extreamly badly) trying to say was that the compiler doesn't have a global view of the code, it can only be looking at the code from a local point of view. So, if your class design is badly thought out, the complier's performance, no matter how clever, isn't going to help for the real world.
This isn't to say that a modern compiler can't do some amazing things. If you want real performance, though, depending on the compiler to magically fix a bad design is not the smartest thing.
No matter how good the compiler is, it can't possibly compensate for poor program design.
Right at the outset, you need to decide if the program is performance critical or not. Take, for example, this code:
class fred{
int q;
int setQ(int newQ)
{
q=newQ;
}
};
fred myFred=new(fred);
Now, which is going to execute faster:
myFred.setQ(10);
or
myFred.q=10;
Using your super optimising compiler, how is it going to know the best way of setting q in myFred? It can't, because no compiler could make an assumption like that.
But the great demos on the Amiga and C64 never hit the OS.
Have a look at some of the PC demos that boot from DOS and take over the machine (eg. www.scene.org) and tell me that they aren't just as amazing.
What's the source of that quote? I'd like to read the full article, as I'm currently looking at the whole mobile game industry as a part-time "on the side" job.
From what I can see, the Siemens M55 and above have Outlook syncronisation. Not sure about memory size etc., but my little C60 has a meg of flash.
I'm posting from Australia, so I don't know the lie of the mobile land in your part of the world.
1. It's gonna bring the price down, no question. Lots of proprietary software in those little handheld phones.
The first phone I bought this year, a Siemens A55, cost me AU$99 pre-paid. That's about US$80. A $3 data cable from eBay and it was flash-upgraded to become a C55, which enabled the Java and Data Access functions, which leads me to...
And maybe some cheaper ringtones while we're at it. I'd love to be able to do my own, rather than buying them at $1 each.
My laptop has 9,643 MIDI ringtones, and I've found a site with heaps more MIDI's that I like. I simply copy them to the phone via the data cable. Before you jump on me, telling me that this is Windows only crap, I've also got the AT command spec for the Siemens range, and I've written a program in Visual Basic that allows me to upload MIDI's to the phone. The program is reasonably trivial; I ported it to my Mac in Future Basic in an evening (and this included the SMS sending function, too).
Last week I upgraded to a Siemens C60, and the same data cable and software lets me do all the fun stuff with ringtones (and unlocking, for that matter) as before. Since getting it, I spent the weekend learning Java (specifically, J2ME) and wrote a Tetris game for the C60. With a bit of effort, I can get the game running on my wife's A55 (which is also now a C55).
So, why do I need a Linux phone when I have a Java phone?
In Accidental Empires, Bob Cringely stated something like :
... or similar words to that effect.
Analysts serve the computer industry in the same way a lamp post serves a drunk
What "Theory of Creation"?
t roduction.html)
Creationism doesn't make any testable predictions; it is simply a statement of how things came to be.
A scientific theory, such as the Inflation theory, makes predictions that can be tested. The earlier theory to Inflation, the Big Bang Theory, predicted that there would be leftover radiation at a certain temperature if the Big Bang did indeed happen. Researchers went looking for this radiation and lo! there is was. The Cosmic Background Radiation (http://background.uchicago.edu/~whu/beginners/in
Where are the predictions in Creation that can be tested? Oh, that's right - there are none.
And the source of these comments would be???
h tml states that Carbon 14 dating is useless for objects more than 70,000 years old, because the half-life of C14 is 5730 years. The article goes on in some depth about dating old things, in direct contradiction to your comment.
It's not enough to simple make a statement like this - back it up with proof - a URL, a citation, whatever - so I can go to the same source as you and read that comment myself.
For example, http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/benton.
Maybe it's fairly easy to install and use Linux; at least to you and me. However, what about the legions of AOL users who can barely check their email without having their hand held? Do you honestly think that they would be able to use Linux on a day to day basis without problems?
Using Linux day-to-day is a different issue entirely to installing it.
Sure, having an easy to install OS is nice, but honestly, how many AOL users (or mum's and dad's, sisters etc) are going to be installing an OS frequently? And just as a point of interest, once the OS is set up just how many problems do you have that require getting into the OS and fixing? On XP here and at home, none. On RH9 here, none.
just call linux what it is: a powerful hobbyist OS
Why do that? Honestly, RH9 on my laptop with OpenOffice was easy enough for my wife to get to grips with, once she learned how to work in Gnome - and mostly that was clicking the OO icon on the toolbar! Printing was already set up and working, so as far as she was concerned, the underlying OS didn't matter a damn. WinXP is still on her machine for a variety of reasons, but the only thing stopping us from making her machine RH9 is Windows apps (SPSS is one) that she needs for uni.
Elitism isn't going to help the cause.
Here in Australia, our new combat "Collins" class subs had a user interfce designed by committee. It took 13 button presses to designate a target and launch a torpedo. The generals, when assessing this new sub, complained that the UI in a Playstation game to at most three clicks to designate a target and launce; why can't a multi-billion dollar sub work like that.
The contractor then employed some game UI designers to rewrite the combat system.
It's a true story! I don't have tome to search for the reports now, but it should be available on www.smh.com.au or www.theaustralian.com.au.
Oh, and as a point of interest, dogs can detect a stroke hours before it happens, too.
Actually, it is.
You're referring to the aura that a patient develops when a seizure (fit) is going to happen. The usual indicators of an aura is:
- Metallic taste in the mouth;
- Visual distortion (red tint, sometimes blue tint or solid object moving / morphing); and
- Strange / intense headaches.
All these are experienced by the patient - they are not necessarliy obvious to the observer. An observer can sometimes pick when a seizure is going to happen.
The point about dogs is that they can pick up a seizure apparently by smell alone - sometimes several hours in advance. Some dogs can even detect a seizure before the patient's aura develops. There's definitely someting interesting happening here.
That's the thing, isn't it?
If your typical user has Norton's or McAfee's running (I'm a Nortin Internet Security person myself), this problem would be stopped stone dead.
However, as far as I can see the typical user with Kazaa running is not exactly interested in parting with cash for a program, not matter how useful it is. Hence, the problem we see today.
This is only going to get worse. All these virii with different attack vectors; it's only a matter of time before we start seeing some *real* blended threats.
You're all quick to blame email users; is there any data on how effective the Kazza spreading is?