Hmmm. You do know that in Windows you can just unplug the network cable and plug it back whenever you want, and things will Just Work -- no need to reach for "ifconfig eth0 up", right?
Yes, but the GPL allows you to go dual-license. Qt does that; you can use Qt as GPL'ed software and be obligated to release all your efforts, or you can buy a commercial license and keep your code improvements to yourself.
"You can (1) repay me with money or (2) repay releasing your improvements to the community. Your choice."
Sometimes people like to eat.
mod me flamebait
on
Linux, Inc.
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
But is Linux really growing?
I mean, Linux in early 2004 was a lot bigger than in early 2003, but does it look any bigger in early 2005?
According to a theorem usually attributed to Cybenko, any continuous nonlinear function can be represented by a linear combination of sigmoid functions of a linear combination of your parameters. In neural nets terms, a single hidden layer net with 2n+1 neurons in your hidden layer can represent _any_ continuous function.
That doesn't mean the usual neural net training algorithms are able to achieve that representation, but it's still a strong result, and it mostly justifies neural nets being increasingly looked at seriously at nonparametric (without individual input effect parameters as an usual OLS model would yield) statistics.
All in all, I do have a lot of faith in the future of nonparametric methods. They might be no substitute of empirical experiment (and that's what the parametric statistical methods that comprise econometrics strive for), but the sheer success of neural nets in spite of their lukewarm academic reception shows they can be quite useful.
A: "Debian is all old!" B: "Yes, but it's stable and it rulez in professional environments where you can't crash" C: "Um, but Red Hat has pro support, if you're a pro" B: "You can buy support from vendors" D: "Don't people realize stable means stable, and testing means testing and it's wonderful that there are so many options?" E: "My Gentoo system rox!" A,C,D: link to sites like funroll-loops.org F: Hypes up debian-based Knoppix. G: Hypes up debian-based Ubuntu. A: "Debian testing is still old, I need new" B: 'You could try gentoo, you unfaithful kid". yadda yadda yadda.
Firstuvall, I'd like to applaud the uncommon scientific focus of this; topics related to science in general are gee-whiz news of space exploration, not about science in its making. I would guess many slashdotters are scientists, and this brings good rest from the "SCO says they own Mickey Mouse and the patents to condoms" days.
That said, peer-reviewed outfits are still ran by humans. Neural nets have been essentially blocked by the nonparametric statistics community for a long while -- leading to the bizarre situation of having electrical engineers understand a lot about time-series prediction that the people who are actually involved with it don't -- and is only now making advance as econometricians -- who typically develop parametric statistical methods and then try to fit everything to their methods -- are adopting it, partly because of sheer job-market pressure.
And all that is in a pretty technical, numbers-in-numbers-out field.
So you pick up a peer-reviewed rag in economics -- and if economics isn't science, medicine isn't either --, and it risks having at least three types of ideological bias: a political one (generally from the more-or-less-state-intervention kind), a established-scientific-practices one (people already know their field, and getting game-theorists to accept category theory and arrow-chasing proofs is proving hard) _and_ a schools-competition one (possibly linked to political issues, since hyping up schools linked to free-market stances will harm the more-intervention camp).
Yes, you could say that physics has less politics involved. But when you're dealing with the very nature of "actual stuff", you are bumping into very deep philosophical stances that may be much harder to shake than political convictions with the scientific process only. I know many people who have come to adopt a more-free-market POV after being exposed to general equilibrium and microeconomic theory, but it's harder to convince people -- Einstein wouldn't -- that the universe is ultimately stochastic, or that our behaviour might be evolutionarily stable and a product of our genes, etc. etc.
In the end, economics has nothing like the controversy on sociobiology. Outside radical circles who have been essentially ignoring economic theory since uncertainty and assymetric information have come into play in the models, there is a very deep consensus among economists at least in the basic issues -- from Paul Krugman to Arthur Laffer.
Politics is just politics. We have our own interests, and we act to defend them. And after a while, people start to analyze what people do in the defense of their interests, and the action of special-interest groups, rent-seeking behaviour, etc. becomes clear.
Personal philosophies are a lot muddier. And physics touches the bottom of them.
People cluster out. Austrian economists have more to profit in reading and debating with other austrian economists.
See, it's not that the separation is politically motivated - i.e. that scientists want to believe in what they want to believe - but that different methods often lead to different conclusions, and scientists who follow a particular methodology have more to profit in debating with others who share it.
Many many issues in science are just controversial for scientific reasons. I suggest reading some Tommy Kuhn.
Now, some things like out-of-the-box suspend to disk are needed, but the essential issue is perceived performance.
Linux has objectively better performance in things like filesystems (going back to FAT32 is a pain, now that I've switched back to WinXP after a year and a half on Linux only), but the typical Linux desktop tends to be very processor-intensive, screen redraws will be very slow when doing basic stuff like scrolling a long document in OOo, application startups are painful and there's often no hint (even with KDE and app wait cursors enabled) that they're starting, boot up times themselves will be painful, there is no generalized copy-and-paste for nontext objects, etc.
I really like unix as a concept, I like the power that comes with it, but I actually need to get work done on my computer now. And after getting used to the general pain of being a Linux desktop user, going back to WinXP (a change first triggered by OOo piss-poor rendering of.xls files) was a very pleasant surprise. Sure, it has its quirks, and it's not half as pretty as a KDE desktop, but I manage to get work done.
Stuff works, already.
Yes, I tried every single performance hack. I used all kinds of experimental kernels, did all sorts of prelinking combinations, even did a stage 1 Gentoo install. With all the eye candy on (including some really pretty stuff like true alpha blending), WinXP runs cleaner/faster than Gentoo+ion3. I mean, there is something very wrong going on with Linux desktop.
Part of the perceived difference in performance might be that Linux is very very demanding in processor, and less demanding in memory (maybe Linux coders like doing things the niftier way?), while WinXP is much more forgiving processor-wise, but will take up more memory. As I have relatively abundant memory (384 megs) but a piss-poor processor (a K6-II 500), that might be a significant part of the effect.
But I've used Gentoo in P4's, and while the bootup times are civilized, many of the performance pitfalls are still there.
All in all, it was good that I got around to learning how to use a unixlike and saw the pretty sights of KDE/Enlightenment/Fluxbox desktops, but time comes when one becomes an adult.
And with all its faults, WinXP is a desktop for us adults. (Cue in predictable joke about garish colors in Luna Blue).
Doesn't it strike you as just appropriate that there are cultural references to small people eveywhere? Hobbits, yes, but nibelungs (actually, LOTR is heavily based on The Ring of the Nibelungs. Worth listening the four-opera cycle, it's an amazingly complex ploy in a geek-friendly way), dwarves, elves, gnomes, Yoda, etc?
Slashdot Mirror
This is huge. Props to Microsoft.
Too bad it happened shortly after the iWork'05 release. Sure Apple can release downloadable plugins for Pages and Keynote2, can it?
... does it run SkyOS?
Hmmm. You do know that in Windows you can just unplug the network cable and plug it back whenever you want, and things will Just Work -- no need to reach for "ifconfig eth0 up", right?
The same people who type "literally" when they mean "littered"?
Yes, but the GPL allows you to go dual-license. Qt does that; you can use Qt as GPL'ed software and be obligated to release all your efforts, or you can buy a commercial license and keep your code improvements to yourself.
"You can (1) repay me with money or (2) repay releasing your improvements to the community. Your choice."
Sometimes people like to eat.
But is Linux really growing?
I mean, Linux in early 2004 was a lot bigger than in early 2003, but does it look any bigger in early 2005?
I see stagnation.
But A9's results are provided by Google, so if Google manages to provide the same services A9 does, then A9 _is_ redundant.
These are NOT a "Teen Beat" magazine photoshoot.
These are pictures of mr. Gates POSING LIKE models usually pose for "Teen Beat". I mean, like, learn to read.
Tsk.
I think they mean software that optimizes time allocation given a set of limited resources.
There are streamlined genetic algorithms applications, and a few new ideas -- ant colonies and swarm algorithms among them.
I'd say, roll your own in Matlab.
About one fourth of brazilian cars have been running on cellulose-based ethanol since the late 80's.
:-|.
The whole system is only economical when we subsidize sugarcane farmers though
Python is line-based, like Old Basic. There's no ";", so each command has to be on a different line.
He will just lose space in the profitable spam industry.
When he wants to come back, his place won't be there anymore.
According to a theorem usually attributed to Cybenko, any continuous nonlinear function can be represented by a linear combination of sigmoid functions of a linear combination of your parameters. In neural nets terms, a single hidden layer net with 2n+1 neurons in your hidden layer can represent _any_ continuous function.
That doesn't mean the usual neural net training algorithms are able to achieve that representation, but it's still a strong result, and it mostly justifies neural nets being increasingly looked at seriously at nonparametric (without individual input effect parameters as an usual OLS model would yield) statistics.
All in all, I do have a lot of faith in the future of nonparametric methods. They might be no substitute of empirical experiment (and that's what the parametric statistical methods that comprise econometrics strive for), but the sheer success of neural nets in spite of their lukewarm academic reception shows they can be quite useful.
A: "Debian is all old!"
B: "Yes, but it's stable and it rulez in professional environments where you can't crash"
C: "Um, but Red Hat has pro support, if you're a pro"
B: "You can buy support from vendors"
D: "Don't people realize stable means stable, and testing means testing and it's wonderful that there are so many options?"
E: "My Gentoo system rox!"
A,C,D: link to sites like funroll-loops.org
F: Hypes up debian-based Knoppix.
G: Hypes up debian-based Ubuntu.
A: "Debian testing is still old, I need new"
B: 'You could try gentoo, you unfaithful kid".
yadda yadda yadda.
Firstuvall, I'd like to applaud the uncommon scientific focus of this; topics related to science in general are gee-whiz news of space exploration, not about science in its making. I would guess many slashdotters are scientists, and this brings good rest from the "SCO says they own Mickey Mouse and the patents to condoms" days.
That said, peer-reviewed outfits are still ran by humans. Neural nets have been essentially blocked by the nonparametric statistics community for a long while -- leading to the bizarre situation of having electrical engineers understand a lot about time-series prediction that the people who are actually involved with it don't -- and is only now making advance as econometricians -- who typically develop parametric statistical methods and then try to fit everything to their methods -- are adopting it, partly because of sheer job-market pressure.
And all that is in a pretty technical, numbers-in-numbers-out field.
So you pick up a peer-reviewed rag in economics -- and if economics isn't science, medicine isn't either --, and it risks having at least three types of ideological bias: a political one (generally from the more-or-less-state-intervention kind), a established-scientific-practices one (people already know their field, and getting game-theorists to accept category theory and arrow-chasing proofs is proving hard) _and_ a schools-competition one (possibly linked to political issues, since hyping up schools linked to free-market stances will harm the more-intervention camp).
Yes, you could say that physics has less politics involved. But when you're dealing with the very nature of "actual stuff", you are bumping into very deep philosophical stances that may be much harder to shake than political convictions with the scientific process only. I know many people who have come to adopt a more-free-market POV after being exposed to general equilibrium and microeconomic theory, but it's harder to convince people -- Einstein wouldn't -- that the universe is ultimately stochastic, or that our behaviour might be evolutionarily stable and a product of our genes, etc. etc.
In the end, economics has nothing like the controversy on sociobiology. Outside radical circles who have been essentially ignoring economic theory since uncertainty and assymetric information have come into play in the models, there is a very deep consensus among economists at least in the basic issues -- from Paul Krugman to Arthur Laffer.
Politics is just politics. We have our own interests, and we act to defend them. And after a while, people start to analyze what people do in the defense of their interests, and the action of special-interest groups, rent-seeking behaviour, etc. becomes clear.
Personal philosophies are a lot muddier. And physics touches the bottom of them.
There's no howto, it already works!
Oh damn, there goes my karma.
i.e. genetic algorithms.
GA's are used to maximize arbitrary functions by a mixture of random mutation and crossover between the solution candidates with better aptitude.
It's hot stuff, and it comes up with good solutions for analytically untractable problems.
Cue in predictable jokes about a) hallucinogenic mushrooms and b) latex fetishes.
People cluster out. Austrian economists have more to profit in reading and debating with other austrian economists.
See, it's not that the separation is politically motivated - i.e. that scientists want to believe in what they want to believe - but that different methods often lead to different conclusions, and scientists who follow a particular methodology have more to profit in debating with others who share it.
Many many issues in science are just controversial for scientific reasons. I suggest reading some Tommy Kuhn.
Oh, come on. Class out the peer-reviewed journals you don't like as "crank" and publish a research that says "Journals I like agree with me".
That's life in the more controversial sciences. Everyday business in economics, you learn to keep your ears up.
56th psot!
... of one thousand elephants stomping an ant?
C'mon boys, let's get him!
Now, some things like out-of-the-box suspend to disk are needed, but the essential issue is perceived performance.
.xls files) was a very pleasant surprise. Sure, it has its quirks, and it's not half as pretty as a KDE desktop, but I manage to get work done.
Linux has objectively better performance in things like filesystems (going back to FAT32 is a pain, now that I've switched back to WinXP after a year and a half on Linux only), but the typical Linux desktop tends to be very processor-intensive, screen redraws will be very slow when doing basic stuff like scrolling a long document in OOo, application startups are painful and there's often no hint (even with KDE and app wait cursors enabled) that they're starting, boot up times themselves will be painful, there is no generalized copy-and-paste for nontext objects, etc.
I really like unix as a concept, I like the power that comes with it, but I actually need to get work done on my computer now. And after getting used to the general pain of being a Linux desktop user, going back to WinXP (a change first triggered by OOo piss-poor rendering of
Stuff works, already.
Yes, I tried every single performance hack. I used all kinds of experimental kernels, did all sorts of prelinking combinations, even did a stage 1 Gentoo install. With all the eye candy on (including some really pretty stuff like true alpha blending), WinXP runs cleaner/faster than Gentoo+ion3. I mean, there is something very wrong going on with Linux desktop.
Part of the perceived difference in performance might be that Linux is very very demanding in processor, and less demanding in memory (maybe Linux coders like doing things the niftier way?), while WinXP is much more forgiving processor-wise, but will take up more memory. As I have relatively abundant memory (384 megs) but a piss-poor processor (a K6-II 500), that might be a significant part of the effect.
But I've used Gentoo in P4's, and while the bootup times are civilized, many of the performance pitfalls are still there.
All in all, it was good that I got around to learning how to use a unixlike and saw the pretty sights of KDE/Enlightenment/Fluxbox desktops, but time comes when one becomes an adult.
And with all its faults, WinXP is a desktop for us adults. (Cue in predictable joke about garish colors in Luna Blue).
Doesn't it strike you as just appropriate that there are cultural references to small people eveywhere? Hobbits, yes, but nibelungs (actually, LOTR is heavily based on The Ring of the Nibelungs. Worth listening the four-opera cycle, it's an amazingly complex ploy in a geek-friendly way), dwarves, elves, gnomes, Yoda, etc?
Sorry, Matlab/Octave is the best language for scientists.