Sure, you could make your own engine, using a lathe, scraps of steel you have laying around, etc... but you don't. Why not? It's simple... you want uniform, standard, tested designs.
It's true that machine language code is non-object oriented, but that's not the issue here. The main objective is to build software components that have known behavior in all circumstances. It's not practical to do that with procedure oriented programming. There is ALWAYS some side-effect in a non-trivial program which leads to bugs.
Implementing interfaces with known boundaries using the object paradigm is a rugged, well known way to isolate the effects of a software defect to a single section of code. With procedures and functions free to grab at all the available variables, any line of code can take out the whole works.
It's like using Grade-8 hardware instead of whatever happens to be in the bin at a hardware store. You get a high-strength, durable, part with guaranteed specifications. While it wastes some CPU cycles, it's an acceptable tradeoff for 100% reliablity.
None of the popular OSs out there are truely object oriented, and very few of the development platforms as well. There's no way for the end user of an application to pull back the covers and see all the objects at work, so they could fix it themselves (or at least see the problem).
Visual C++ is NOT object oriented in a nice way, Delphi is much better, but still not there... Everything is still doing function calls with parameters, dangling pointers all over the place, and the number of layers is going up all the time. It's no wonder that the stuff breaks more often instead of less.
How can you not believe Microsoft would cut corners to increase profits?
<SARCASM>
Just because Windows is the most tested, perfectly stable windowing shell available is no reason to believe the rest of the company operates like that. </SARCASM>
"He can make is spontaneously appear where he wants. I know him and Bandy is not shitting you."
Cool! If they can put a quantom dot on the spot (no pun intended)... then I do indeed congratulate them. It would be a good way to start building things like gates, and my favorite...RAM. If they can get them to be low noise, and stable, imagine having RAM cells without capacitors... the size could go way down. If they can make them non-volitle (sp?) (as a quantum dot should be able to be)... then that's even better! (I hope I'm not hyping things too much)
Like I said later... (#3)... focus on the positive. (I hope they weren't the victims of a bad reporter looking for hype).
So, I've become a kharma whore, I guess. Or, you could look at it like this... 3 different ideas, 3 different posts. Since there isn't a good way to comment on part of a post without forcing the reader to parse the whole thing, figure out what's referenced, etc... I figured I'd do what I'd like... and break it up.
Personally, I'd like to be able to do something like annotation, or the like, to mark up someone's comments, so there isn't the continually need to re-parse things.
I'd also like to be able to note in my link somewhat automatically that I agree or disagree with the author (a color code)?
Those are some of my thoughts, all put into once nice package.... if you prefer it that way.
"The patent covers an inexpensive construction method for vast arrays of quantum dots, involving an easy-to-perform electrochemical process on an aluminum substrate. Quantum dots are described as "spontaneously" forming atop the aluminum substrate in a regular array suitable for processing information. "
So what we really have here is a process that just "spontaneously" happens to make a pattern that looks good for storing bits. This is not a process for putting a quantum dot at location X. Stand alone quantum dots certainly have their uses, such as laser diodes, but if there are no interconnects, it's not going to be a computing device.
In order for this to be useful, you have to be able to put a quantum dot where you want it, and be able to get data into and out of it. You also have to be able to do this and to get at least 1% yield for the entire die, in production quantities. This is not the ballpark this research is headed for.
Ok... here's the beef.... "You could build a quantum computer that has 2 to the 1,000th bits of data, which you could never do with a binary computer, because the number 21,000 is larger than the number of atoms in the known universe. But a quantum computer could store that many bits with just 1,000 atoms," said Bandyopadhyay.
Bullshit! Every time you add a bit of information to a quantum state, you double the number of possible states available, at the cost of doubling the time it takes to determine the state. I don't know about you, but I don't want to wait around for the lifetime of 2^100+ universes just to save a few bits of memory. If anyone gives me grief, I'll be happy to do the math, and show just how absurd the hype is.
Imagine an Athalon tweaked with this to a production clock rate of 2Ghz... then the overclockers come in with the Peltier effect coolers, etc... next thing you know, you've got 250 watts in just the CPU... but a 3Ghz machine!
The scans are huge, but very clear, I'm quite happy with the resolution, it's too bad they couldn't up the contrast a bit and/or scan for the top of the paper, instead of showing the bleed through.
I like the fact that they also scanned related items such as an indulgence, one of the fund raising schemes which precipitated the end of the Catholic Monopoly, and the start of the reformation.
It's time to push for someone to do the math, some experiments, and determine the actual error rates, factors, etc. I can't believe there is NO possiblity of an error in a "match". There has to be a false-positive as well as a much higher false-negative rate, we need to know what they are, so we, as a society, do the right thing, instead of the emotionally appealing expedient.
To guestimate, I suspect the real numbers are about 10^12:1 false matches, which is quite alarming, if there are 10^7 entries, one in 10,000 will be a false hit with someone totally at random. The false negative rate is probably closer to 1% and might be as high as 10%.
Does anyone have better numbers, after all, I'm just guessing at this point.
I have no problem keeping my exchange server up for hundreds of days at a crack (except for the planned outages to do service packs, etc.).
It handles attachments like a dream, never introduces problems into the mix.
The great thing about Exchange is that the mail stays on the server, and gets replicated out by the client, if you need it offline. This feature alone pays for the software. I can't believe people put up with POP3 email, having to remember which computer they last read the email on, etc.
Web access works well, it's not as fully featured as the Outlook client, but it does a good job.
I am upset that Outlook 98 and later automatically pull images from the net to render HTML email. This is my current pet peeve.
I followed the links and wrote them a short email and asked. The reply came back quickly, (showing that IBM definitely has a clue) and unambigously...
Hi. The consumer calls IBM or goes to IBM's web site and purchases the
product take back for $29.99. The consumers pays. The consumer receives a
kit with special label for UPS. The consumer packages the PC and takes it
to UPS. UPS ships it to Envirocycle in Hallstead, Penna., for recycling or
donation. Hope that helps. Best.
So, I clipped the address lines off the bottom (because I didn't ask for permission to post, but it seems reasonable to quote them). This area of ettiquite is still up for grabs, IMHO.
This seems like a reasonable sum to include shipping, and to find a good home (I hope) for all of the hardware that works, but I don't want to have to support if it breaks because I gave it to a person.
Why would a widget (control) cause an OS crash? Only an idiot would build graphics into the kernel. I assume the folks that put together the windowing environments for Linux are smarter than that. (At least I hope so). You should be able to NUKE the video card, and still telnet (or SSH) into the box and get work done (perhaps telling it to kill -9 X, and start it over again).
Am I wrong, has Linux also did the performance over reliablilty tradeoff with video drivers?
According to the glossary at Red-Hat, it's "A standardized on-screen representation of a control that may be manipulated by the user. Scroll bars, buttons, and text boxes are all examples of widgets"
Ok, so why should a different widget (control) cause any OS problems? It worst it should cause confusion with the user, and/or crash the application.
I asked the same question back in 7th grade math, and I'll probably get slapped verbally, like I did then. What the heck is a Widget?
Is it the sent of system dialog boxes, like file, open, etc? Is it the cute little icons in the corners of windows for Maximize, Minimize, Restore, Close?
Can you imagine a beowolf cluster of these articles? They would have us believe that we're going to turn our civilization (and each one of us with it) into God in a few years.
I'm continually amazed at Moore's law, and how long we've managed to keep it going. My little web page to guestimate hard drive prices has been revised twice because it wasn't optimistic enough.
That being said, I think it would take about 10^9 current generation systems networked together to approximate the learning skills of a single two year old. (OK, perhaps I'm being optimistic)
If the current trends hold, that means we can take off a factor of 10 every five years, so it's at least 45 years until our computers are as smart as a 2 year old.
On another point, I fail to see how a new technology is going to eliminate the need for capitalism to keep us all motivated.
#1. It's easy to do
It seems fairly easy to me do do a good "fingerprint" of a song by doing the math, determining the notes of the song, and the tempo, and maybe even determining who is singing based on voice sample matches once you're close.
#2. It's hard to defeat
Once you've got the code to do it, you can tweak the engine to work with different bit rates, streaming, etc.
Because they base it on the psychoacoustic model, it pays attention only to the parts you want to hear anyway. It will ignore the various means you use to tweak the files, as long as they sound the same, which is the main goal for the consumer of the files in the first place.
#3. It's hard/impossible to implement
What's also obvious is that the "search engine" would now have to download every instance of MP3 file it happens to encounter. This whould result in a massive increase in the amount of traffic for an already futile system of indexing the web.
We've already seen that the spiders that back search engines just don't have a prayer of keeping up with everything that is available. This is just dealing with the text part of web pages. Imagine trying to deal with millions of 3-10 Megabyte files that change every day!
#4. It must surface in a different model
It's just not feasible to download all of the MP3s that are available to do this, which means that the system is going to have to be selective in its downloading, and will, by necessity, result in "selective enforcement" of any laws this may detect the violation thereof.
If lawmakers decide to run with this approach, they'll have to settle for selective enforcement (with the resulting requirement of making the penalty huge to compensate for the odds of getting caught), or they will have to resort to the insipid approach of requiring ISPs to run the program against their own servers. (The FBI could also be even more insidious and build it into Carnivore). Let's also consider it might get built as a feature into the web servers. (Good thing Apache is open source!)
Well, I did the math, at 128Kbits/Second for MP3s, with about 1% overhead for directories, etc.. you could get 100 continous days of unique music on a single disk!
Imagine my 72 CD pack full of these, almost 20 continous years of MP3.
Another way to look at it, there are about 20 FM stations in Chicago, I could record all of them, continously for 5 days on a single disk.
Putting a price tag on IP addresses does NOT solve anything, it only provides a way to tax the internet. If you start treating IP addresses like real-estate, you're asking for a massive set of problems, just like auctioninng off the airwaves to cellphone providers, instead of leaving them open for all takers.
Well, it's a good thing the Germans had Hitler to keep them from duplicating efforts, and wasting time on things like atomic weapons.
Options need to be explored, it's the genetic algorithm, it's very powerful, in the long run. It's why we're all here, and not still some primordial ooze.
I believe I can prove that there are boards which are NOT solvable (at least in terms of not losing).
All you need are to points at which a pair of cells share a single mine, and the game now reverts to chance, just like quantum mechanics.
Perhaps quantum mechanics can be reduced to minesweeper as well??
Slashdot Mirror
It's true that machine language code is non-object oriented, but that's not the issue here. The main objective is to build software components that have known behavior in all circumstances. It's not practical to do that with procedure oriented programming. There is ALWAYS some side-effect in a non-trivial program which leads to bugs.
Implementing interfaces with known boundaries using the object paradigm is a rugged, well known way to isolate the effects of a software defect to a single section of code. With procedures and functions free to grab at all the available variables, any line of code can take out the whole works.
It's like using Grade-8 hardware instead of whatever happens to be in the bin at a hardware store. You get a high-strength, durable, part with guaranteed specifications. While it wastes some CPU cycles, it's an acceptable tradeoff for 100% reliablity.
--Mike--
Visual C++ is NOT object oriented in a nice way, Delphi is much better, but still not there... Everything is still doing function calls with parameters, dangling pointers all over the place, and the number of layers is going up all the time. It's no wonder that the stuff breaks more often instead of less.
--Mike--
<SARCASM>
Just because Windows is the most tested, perfectly stable windowing shell available is no reason to believe the rest of the company operates like that.
</SARCASM>
--Mike--
Cool! If they can put a quantom dot on the spot (no pun intended)... then I do indeed congratulate them. It would be a good way to start building things like gates, and my favorite...RAM. If they can get them to be low noise, and stable, imagine having RAM cells without capacitors... the size could go way down. If they can make them non-volitle (sp?) (as a quantum dot should be able to be)... then that's even better! (I hope I'm not hyping things too much)
Like I said later... (#3)... focus on the positive. (I hope they weren't the victims of a bad reporter looking for hype).
--Mike--
I figured I'd try to get at least one of my points into play before the party moved on.
I really like Slashdot, but I think it can be even better... not quite sure how... but I know it can.
--Mike--
Personally, I'd like to be able to do something like annotation, or the like, to mark up someone's comments, so there isn't the continually need to re-parse things.
I'd also like to be able to note in my link somewhat automatically that I agree or disagree with the author (a color code)?
Those are some of my thoughts, all put into once nice package.... if you prefer it that way.
So what we really have here is a process that just "spontaneously" happens to make a pattern that looks good for storing bits. This is not a process for putting a quantum dot at location X. Stand alone quantum dots certainly have their uses, such as laser diodes, but if there are no interconnects, it's not going to be a computing device.
In order for this to be useful, you have to be able to put a quantum dot where you want it, and be able to get data into and out of it. You also have to be able to do this and to get at least 1% yield for the entire die, in production quantities. This is not the ballpark this research is headed for.
Bullshit! Every time you add a bit of information to a quantum state, you double the number of possible states available, at the cost of doubling the time it takes to determine the state. I don't know about you, but I don't want to wait around for the lifetime of 2^100+ universes just to save a few bits of memory. If anyone gives me grief, I'll be happy to do the math, and show just how absurd the hype is.
Cool beanz!
--Mike--
I like the fact that they also scanned related items such as an indulgence, one of the fund raising schemes which precipitated the end of the Catholic Monopoly, and the start of the reformation.
--Mike--
To guestimate, I suspect the real numbers are about 10^12:1 false matches, which is quite alarming, if there are 10^7 entries, one in 10,000 will be a false hit with someone totally at random. The false negative rate is probably closer to 1% and might be as high as 10%.
Does anyone have better numbers, after all, I'm just guessing at this point.
--Mike--
It handles attachments like a dream, never introduces problems into the mix.
The great thing about Exchange is that the mail stays on the server, and gets replicated out by the client, if you need it offline. This feature alone pays for the software. I can't believe people put up with POP3 email, having to remember which computer they last read the email on, etc.
Web access works well, it's not as fully featured as the Outlook client, but it does a good job.
I am upset that Outlook 98 and later automatically pull images from the net to render HTML email. This is my current pet peeve.
--Mike--
Hi. The consumer calls IBM or goes to IBM's web site and purchases the
product take back for $29.99. The consumers pays. The consumer receives a
kit with special label for UPS. The consumer packages the PC and takes it
to UPS. UPS ships it to Envirocycle in Hallstead, Penna., for recycling or
donation. Hope that helps. Best.
So, I clipped the address lines off the bottom (because I didn't ask for permission to post, but it seems reasonable to quote them). This area of ettiquite is still up for grabs, IMHO.
This seems like a reasonable sum to include shipping, and to find a good home (I hope) for all of the hardware that works, but I don't want to have to support if it breaks because I gave it to a person.
Mike Warot, Hoosier
Does anyone have an example in something like X86 assember, Pascal, Delphi or even C?
--Mike--
Am I wrong, has Linux also did the performance over reliablilty tradeoff with video drivers?
Mike Warot, Hoosier
According to the glossary at Red-Hat, it's "A standardized on-screen representation of a control that may be manipulated by the user. Scroll bars, buttons, and text boxes are all examples of widgets"
Ok, so why should a different widget (control) cause any OS problems? It worst it should cause confusion with the user, and/or crash the application.
Mike Warot, Hoosier
Is it the sent of system dialog boxes, like file, open, etc? Is it the cute little icons in the corners of windows for Maximize, Minimize, Restore, Close?
Mike Warot, Hoosier
I'm continually amazed at Moore's law, and how long we've managed to keep it going. My little web page to guestimate hard drive prices has been revised twice because it wasn't optimistic enough.
That being said, I think it would take about 10^9 current generation systems networked together to approximate the learning skills of a single two year old. (OK, perhaps I'm being optimistic) If the current trends hold, that means we can take off a factor of 10 every five years, so it's at least 45 years until our computers are as smart as a 2 year old.
On another point, I fail to see how a new technology is going to eliminate the need for capitalism to keep us all motivated.
Mike Warot, Hoosier
It seems fairly easy to me do do a good "fingerprint" of a song by doing the math, determining the notes of the song, and the tempo, and maybe even determining who is singing based on voice sample matches once you're close.
#2. It's hard to defeat
Once you've got the code to do it, you can tweak the engine to work with different bit rates, streaming, etc.
Because they base it on the psychoacoustic model, it pays attention only to the parts you want to hear anyway. It will ignore the various means you use to tweak the files, as long as they sound the same, which is the main goal for the consumer of the files in the first place.
#3. It's hard/impossible to implement
What's also obvious is that the "search engine" would now have to download every instance of MP3 file it happens to encounter. This whould result in a massive increase in the amount of traffic for an already futile system of indexing the web.
We've already seen that the spiders that back search engines just don't have a prayer of keeping up with everything that is available. This is just dealing with the text part of web pages. Imagine trying to deal with millions of 3-10 Megabyte files that change every day!
#4. It must surface in a different model
It's just not feasible to download all of the MP3s that are available to do this, which means that the system is going to have to be selective in its downloading, and will, by necessity, result in "selective enforcement" of any laws this may detect the violation thereof.
If lawmakers decide to run with this approach, they'll have to settle for selective enforcement (with the resulting requirement of making the penalty huge to compensate for the odds of getting caught), or they will have to resort to the insipid approach of requiring ISPs to run the program against their own servers. (The FBI could also be even more insidious and build it into Carnivore). Let's also consider it might get built as a feature into the web servers. (Good thing Apache is open source!)
Mike Warot, Hoosier
Imagine my 72 CD pack full of these, almost 20 continous years of MP3.
Another way to look at it, there are about 20 FM stations in Chicago, I could record all of them, continously for 5 days on a single disk.
Mike Warot, Hoosier
It's a VERY good website, and helped me focus on the issues I really think are important. It's definitely worth the look.
--Mike--
Bad idea, bad kharma
Mike Warot, Hoosier
Actually, they didn't settle on just one value of pi, they had many... including 3.2. Here's the requisite hyperlink.
Mike Warot, Hoosier
Options need to be explored, it's the genetic algorithm, it's very powerful, in the long run. It's why we're all here, and not still some primordial ooze.
Excellent Satire, BTW.
--Mike--
All you need are to points at which a pair of cells share a single mine, and the game now reverts to chance, just like quantum mechanics.
Perhaps quantum mechanics can be reduced to minesweeper as well??
--Mike--