As to the question of whether a BIOS upgrade matters once the OS has taken over -- here is my experience:
New motherboard. Via chipset. Soundblaster Live!. Any questions? (Sizzle in the background, smell of eggs frying...)
I got a new motherboard, set everything up, it POSTed, but kept on booting, crashing, booting in safe mode, acting really weird, crashing... I reinstalled the OS. It took three or four times to actually get it through the install process, and even then not all of the features on my video card (like the DVD decode) were running correctly. And it still crashed a lot. Memory tests, CPU tests, biology tests (actually, it failed the biology test) revealed nothing. Swapping memory didn't fix anything. Upgrading the BIOS did.
Ok, so now it doesn't crash randomly. But if I ever tried to rip one of my DVDs onto DivX:), there was a 90% chance that my computer would hang in the middle of the process. (A few 6 hour rips cut short with only minutes left can create a lot of frustration.) Nothing on any newsgroups or web sites. Two months later, a new BIOS patch shows up. And fixes the problem.
And a few months ago, I got a nifty new USB 2.0 hard drive. I hadn't installed my USB 2.0 card yet, but I tried it on the USB 1.1 port of my newest machine (1.2 Ghz). Worked great (slower, but it worked properly). Then I shut down the computer. Came back a few hours later and turned it on. NOTHING. The fan turned on, the cursor appeared on the display, but no POST messages. I played around trying to figure it out for a while, then unplugged the USB 2.0 device. Presto, the machine worked. Checked the motherboard site, and (you guessed it!) there was a new BIOS upgrade. And guess what it fixed?
Then my older computer - a PII-300 - had some problems with DVD decoding that a BIOS upgrade fixed (but I don't remember the specifics).
So: assuming that the OS takes over everything, BIOS upgrades are still useful for the boot process (add new hardware and expect it to still boot? better have the newest BIOS!). However, I am pretty convinced by experience alone that the OS depends on the BIOS for something (timings, CPU microcode, chipset support, etc.).
Of course other posts have explained what that something is, so I won't go into it. But if you know what you are doing, a BIOS upgrade is a great way to keep your machine up-to-date.
As to whether to upgrade if nothing is broken? That is a good question. I wish BIOS upgrades had better changelogs. (But I guess that would ruin the surprise!) My opinion is that it will rarely hurt (if you know what you are doing), and that it might help (although you'll probably never know about the trouble it saved you). But it is especially important and especially likely to help in the first 18 months that a motherboard has been on the market. After that, the major problems have probably been solved, so upgrades are probably a waste of time.
If the ROM is borked "properly" (i.e. really borked, not just a little bit), you can't even boot up to a floppy, so how would you run the new BIOS?
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As far as the sig goes (grin), I've found some things about little endian to be quite convenient... So call me crazy! : ) I suppose too much exposure to Intel's stupid-o-rays have made me messed in the head, but I think I am more comfortable with little-endian at this point.
Sorry, needed to be more clear. The sheer number of "USB" (1 or 2) devices already out there (installed base) is a huge factor in USB 2.0's success. If Joe already has a dozen USB peripherals, and has a choice between USB 2.0 and Firewire for a few higher-speed peripherals, he is likely to get USB 2.0. He's more familiar with it, and he can use it to run his existing devices. He knows that he can put old devices on his new USB 2 bus without a problem. He can even take his new high-speed devices and put them on a USB 1 bus (with a speed drop, of course).
I don't dispute that Firewire is a superior product in many ways. However, USB 2 is probably going to dominate in sheer numbers, if for no other reason than the existing USB 1.1 devices.
Question: I know why I don't want USB 1.1 for a hard drive, and it is pretty dumb for CDRW, too. I also know that it is pointless to use USB 1.1 for a NIC if you want the full bandwidth.
But why is it stupid to connect a modem? 12 Mbps should be enough for any modem, no? I'm interested in knowing why you think otherwise.
Sorry, didn't respond to everything in the first post:)
I really do like a lot of what you said. Unfortunately, even among scientific circles, there are a lot of "non-true" scientists. But I always try to be open to new ideas when they come along (although I'm sure I've been closed to way too many good ones that I should have grabbed).
Not all religions ask for ignorance. However, it is a good way to keep control of people, and a lot of religions resort to it. Hey -- it works! However, I believe in a God that doesn't want me to be stupid or ignorant. I believe that my God knows more about physics, chemistry, and mathematics than anybody on earth, and he is equally fluent in both C++ and Java. He can even program an operating system in BrainF*** (well, I'm assuming that it is Turing complete, which I don't remember at the moment...). Whether he chose to work through evolution or creation is pretty much a moot point (unless you want to interpret every word of the Bible 100% literally, in which case you have chosen an impossible position to hold).
As far as the scripture you cited -- it seems to me that the particular verse you've quoted was originally written in Hebrew. Although I never learned much about Hebrew, my Bible Concordance says that the Hebrew root for Repent can also be translated as "feel deep sorrow."
God didn't change his mind about creating the earth. The Man that God created went off and became wicked, and God cried over them as a parent cries over the bad choices of a child. (Of course, most parents don't go kill their kids and start a new family when the first one doesn't go so well, but that is another problem to explain... I would be here all night!) He had known they were going to screw up, but he let them make their own choices anyway.
Wow, that one is easy to handle (there are some harder ones out there -- I know, I've seen them!).
Moses sluffed his Algebra and Zoology classes. So what? It is more than obvious that Moses screwed up from time to time. I imagine the conversation went something like this:
God:... And the people are not to eat the flesh of unclean animals.
Moses: No unclean animals. Got that. So what is the definition of an unclean animal?
God: Those that chew the cud and have cloven hooves.
Moses Chew cud, cloven hooves. Ok, continue.
God: Now, they must dress...
Later that day...
Moses: And you shall eat only clean animals, which are animals that chew the cud and have cloven hooves.
Belligerent kid at the back of the crowd: Is this going to be on the final?
Moses: Yes.
Kid in the third row: Can you give us some examples?
Moses: Cows, goats, oxen.
Geeky kid: How about the bunny?
Moses: No, the hare doesn't count. It doesn't have cloven hooves, see. Gotta have both.
Please don't speak for all religions when you say "only religion does [pretend to have all the answers]." Also recognize that there are many people who seem to think that science DOES have all the answers.
From what I can see, science has a lot of good answers, and religion does, too. I have yet to come to a conflict between the two that I could not resolve. However, I've come to understand a few things:
1. The laws of physics don't change (well, maybe a little, as mentioned in a Slashdot story a few days ago). But our understanding of them does change and grow more accurate with every new discovery. Things we thought we knew are cast aside in the face of new discoveries. And often, it takes a long time for the new discoveries to be accepted and understood. While science often answers the How, it never really explains the Why.
2. The core Truths of "Religion" never change. However, Man's understanding of them will always be limited, and the application of the core Truths will change according to environment. Even the prophets and apostles of the scriptures showed imperfections and even misunderstood the directions God gave them; they also progressed as they came to better understand God. Religion tends to answer the Why, and often doesn't bother too much with the How. Religion tends to be personal -- we can learn from the experiences of others, but the most important steps and the most crucial moments of understanding happen on a personal basis.
Creationism is inherently unsupportable. It is a belief that comes in consequence of other beliefs, which come as a consequence of faith and supporting experiences. I also cannot think of much that would support Creationism (I can think of a few things more easily explained by Creationism than by other theories, but the way science is moving, I'm sure they'll get cleared up in the near future).
This is a cart-before-the-horse situation. Even if I did believe in Creationism (I don't, although I do believe strongly in God), I could never convince anybody of it. If I were smart (debateable, grin), I would never try.
If I really had a goal of getting someone to believe in creationism, I would start with getting them to believe in God. THEN I would work on the creationism thing.
Yes, the industry will change significantly. But we'll adapt. This is the kind of thing we're asking the media industry to do, remember? This adapt thing?
Hardware will probably slow down. Computers will become commodities more like cars: got the latest model? My CPU overheats all the time... That used computer only has 14 quintillion cycles on it -- It has a lot of life left! : )
The market will definitely slow down, but gradually. It already is slowing down -- more people are happy with 5-year-old systems than in 1997, so a lot of people don't buy a new system. My system is only 1.2 Ghz -- half as fast as the newest machines, and only a single proc! But do I need to get a new one? Not anytime soon.
I think I still have enough software work to do to last me an entire career. I don't think I'll be recommending software engineering as a career to my (hypothetical) grandkids, but I don't think I'll have much problem finding work to do.
The example that comes to mind is my grandpa. He took classes in diesel mechanics back when diesel engines were very much a new idea. He was then an expert in a growing field, and well respected. Nowadays, you learn diesel mechanics in a Vo-Tech school, and go to work in a repair shop. For now, software engineering is an important white-collar trade that smacks of research and development. In the future, it may be more of a blue collar trade where most of the major advances come from just a few at the top while the rest just keep the machines running and adjust the configurations.
In most cases, I can no longer beat the average optimizing C++ compiler for performance. I can occasionally do a better job of register allocation and calculated value reuse, but the compiler does stuff like pipeline-modeling based instruction scheduling and some branch prediction optimizations that I would have a hard time getting right. In the past year, I've had to write some assembly language for OS kernel code, but just a little bit. I read assembly language almost daily (debugging), but even when CPUs stop increasing in speed, I don't expect to write more ASM code.
You're probably right about the multi-CPU and new architecture ideas. Note the trend towards this already. The 486 didn't even support multi-CPU boxes. Now, just 7 years later, a lot of serious software developers have dual CPU boxes, servers go up to 32 CPUs, and multi-CPU boxes are starting to make their way into the high-end home market. Also notice that in the past few years it has become more reasonable (and more expected) to support multiple architechtures for a product: Linux runs on everything from Itanium servers to toasters (grin); Windows is heading back in the direction of multiple architectures (i386, ia64, AMD 64, Alpha, etc). In the process, it becomes easier to go to any new architecture.
Right now, things are moving so quickly that quality is sometimes sacrificed in the effort to get things to market. Microsoft is often cited as an example of this. In addition, Java 1.3 is obviously much better than Java 1.0 (yuck!). Once consumers stop begging for new features, the software makers might take some time to go through and reduce duplicated code, modularize, simplify, redesign, remove leaks, remove crashes, optimize.
Right now, code quality isn't always as profitable as features and first-to-market. But when all the really nice features are on the market already, and performance isn't going anywhere, I hope we take some time to clean things up a bit. I really hope it happens before then, and I try to use (whether it is purchase or download for open-source stuff) the software that has done this nicely.
Actually, I'm kindof looking forward to seeing how that file system turns out. For speed, it shouldn't be much slower than NTFS is now. For disk usage... We'll see.
But I hope it means I can invert my MP3 tree: Right now, it is sorted by album, then by Genre. But some genres overlap. And sometimes I want it sorted by artist, not album. And other times I want it sorted by song name. This can be done inside media player, but it would be nice to do it at the file system level for other files.
So I want to see how it turns out. Then I'll cast judgement.
Yes, but it sounds like the either new computers (with the DRM chip) won't run any OS that isn't approved by Hollywood to interoperate with the DRM chip, or anything that doesn't properly interoperate with the DRM chip won't be able to play any digital media.
Why do you get to have and express your opinions, and "radicals" don't? Are they less human? How do you know that they are wrong and you are right? I would guess that the "radical" population has about the same average IQ as the "less-radical" population. If they are just as intelligent as you, why aren't their ideas valid?
I mean, I agree with you -- I think the Nazis were wrong, and I generally disagree with radical movements. But I believe that radicals have the same rights as I do to express their ideas, up to the point where their expression causes me direct harm: your right to extend your fist ends where my nose begins.
In the case of Nazism, I believe it is a sad example of when the majority of the people made the wrong choice. Apparantly, the people were willing to let themselves be persuaded by other people with bad ideas.
I have a firm belief in the following concept: the majority will tend to make generally good decisions. However, when the majority starts to make bad decisions, it is wise to prepare yourself for a rough ride (war, economic turbulence, terrorism, fraud, etc.). It is also wise to speak up about your ideas -- radicals don't have a monopoly on persuasion!
To a certain extent, you are right. Criminals are (hopefully) judged according to the law and according to the facts that can be determined from legally obtained evidence.
If not judged by law, then how? Letting much subjectivity into the process (there isn't a specific law against that, but it seems wrong to me, so go to jail!) leads to a lawlessness, and a power-elite class of judges and lawyers even worse than today. People getting off on technicalities is the price we pay for a (somewhat) deterministic legal system -- i.e. it is generally possible for a person to determine (through research, if necessary) if a certain action will be legal or not.
As far as resetting the law -- laws are "upgraded" or changed every year in an effort to improve them. They are subject to "code review" all the time. Although they aren't perfect, and we keep finding "easter eggs" and "dead code," I would really think twice about tossing the whole thing. It took years to get Linux up and running, and it still doesn't have enough apps to keep everybody happy. It would take much longer to get a "new and improved" legal system working smoothly, and I don't want to be around in the transition period.
The laws about evidence are once again the price we pay. In return, we are protected from self incrimination and from being implicated by things that don't directly relate to our crime.
Because there are good legal reasons to dismiss evidence.
I regularly send emails about how I am going to strangle my manager, etc. My mom can be quoted, with many witnesses, as saying with great intensity and anger, "I am going to kill Natalie [my sister] the moment she walks through the door." I really would hate it if either of us were convicted of murder based on this evidence, though.
In this case, somebody talked about doing something. There is no evidence of anyone else picking up on his ideas, and while he might have been more literal about what he meant than I was about my boss, there isn't evidence that his suggestion became reality.
Our court system leaves the burden of proof on the accuser: innocent until proven guilty. A letter mentioning something is only proof that the idea flowed through his mind, not proof that it was carried out. If I had to prove that I didn't do all of the nasty things that go through my mind, and even get verbalized, I'd probably be convicted sooner or later.
Let the court examine the real evidence -- the things Microsoft actually did do. Don't worry about the things that get excluded. I'm sure that there will be enough evidence to go 'round.
I'm definitely not a lawyer, so correct me where I am wrong.
From what I understand, the vast majority of Microsoft's actions have normally been legal. Corporations naturally (and legally) tend to do all they can to make as much money as they can. In fact, there are certain stipulations that compel company leadership to act in the best interests of the company (and the shareholders). Just about all of the pressure Microsoft has brought to bear on other companies is normally legal, even if it isn't nice. Nearly all companies act similarly when given the opportunity -- Microsoft has just had more opportunities and has taken the initiative. In some cases, their behavior has been shady and even quite possibly illegal. But I don't know enough about the specifics...
The change came when Microsoft was found to have abused its monopoly position. Microsoft is quite definitely a monopoly -- it is subject to competition, and could lose its monopoly position quickly if something crazy were to happen. But the courts determined that not only was Microsoft a monopoly, but was guilty of abusing that position.
At this point, normal business rules cease to apply. But what replaces them? Well, the antitrust laws are actually quite vague. There is some precedent in previous cases. But for the most part, there really isn't anything that says what a Monopoly can and cannot do, nothing that gives a definition of "abuse of monopoly power," and no standard to determine when a situation has been rectified.
A normal business can always bring pressure to bear on partner businesses. It is a standard business tactic. However, Microsoft was warned that certain kinds of pressure would not be tolerated. But I will leave it to the lawyers who have seen the exact wording of all of the injunctions to determine exactly what they were prohibited from doing.
In any case, it appears that one of the higher-ups started suggesting bringing pressure to bear against Intel. Microsoft and Intel are mutual cash-cows. He was suggesting using "standard business practice" (some pressure) to remind Intel that Microsoft was a good company to keep as an ally. In a non-monopoly situation, this would be fine (perhaps not good business tactics, and it has the potential of damaging the relationship between the companies, but it would probably be legal).
In Microsoft's case, with antitrust litigation pending, other VPs apparently determined that it might be wise to curtail heavy-handed tactics. So nothing was done. So the email was just free speech and nothing more. So nothing illegal happened here. So it was probably a reasonable objection.
Perhaps not the USPTO office, per se. From what I can tell, they are doing the best they can, and their problems are being exploited by greedy businesses. However, the govnerment that has a constitutional mandate to provide a reasonable PTO should be responsible when it doesn't provide it and when citizens suffer as a consequence.
Reason tells me that the only way to solve this is by correcting the economic imbalances that exist: the cost of a thorough examination of a patent vs. the cost of applying for a patent; the cost of bringing a patent lawsuit/defending against a patent lawsuit vs. the benefits of doing so.
I would like to say that the price for patents should be jacked up to cover the actual cost of examining the patent. Then, the PTO could hire enough examiners to actually do the job. However, this might make it more difficult for Mr. Inventor to submit a perfectly valid patent, again giving the advantage to the big guy.
More than anything, the whole IP issue needs to be revised carefully. The problem is that I'm not sure that I trust the government to do the revising -- let them get involved, and the DMCA might happen all over again!
Well, I left that out to keep it simple, but yes, that is also done (great minds -- you and the OS developers -- think alike). In UNIX, you set up your program to trap a signal. The default signal handler will abort. Some signals can't be trapped. I've heard of other extensions being added to handle this situation in a more structured way, but I'm not up-to-date on them.
Windows will throw an exception through its "Structured Exception Handling" (SEH) mechanism. It is basically like C++ exceptions, but it doesn't call destructors on the way up the stack. It unwinds the stack until it finds a handler for the exception, or until it gets to the top of the stack. At the top of the stack, the program terminates. BTW, Visual C++ implements its C++ exception handling by piggybacking on top of an OS exception. This way, the stack-unwinding is done mostly by OS code, and the C++ RTL only needs to worry about the destructors and the exception handlers.
In some cases, when the program knew that what it was about to do was risky, the program can then recover. But most of the time, when it was an actual bug, the program is in a completely unknown state -- it can't trust its variables any more. Some programs go to the effort of trying to recover, but often they end up writing corrupted data. Since graceful failure is difficult to program, and since the results are questionable (which is better: losing 1 hour of work on your document, or losing the whole document because you saved a corrupted version after an access violation?), most programs just let the exception go unhandled.
It is true that newer chips have even better crash-trapping than the 386, but the 386 has most of the important stuff. NT could run on the 386, and it had much of the same crash protection that Win2k has now.
The difference was that 3.1 wasn't completely protected. The multitasking was cooperative, not preemptive, i.e. one program could take the CPU and get caught in an infinite loop, effectively hanging the system. Also, an application could write all over memory and screw up other programs (there was some protection, but it wasn't very complete). Win3.1 had a lot of non-386 code that it had to run, and this opened up a lot of holes that the 386 hardware could have closed, but the Win3.1 architecture left open anyway.
Basically, there is "kernel space" and "user space."
Apps run in user space. They pretty much can't do anything except mess around in their own memory space and make calls to the OS's API. Thus, the OS can check parameters to any API calls. A good OS design would make it impossible for anything in user space to violate any security or stability rules -- any action on the app's part that would do so is rejected and an exception is raised.
Drivers and the OS run in kernel space. Since the driver is by definition there to extend the functionality of the kernel into something that the kernel itself cannot do, the kernel in general cannot anticipate all actions by the driver. The driver has an API into the OS, but it also has direct access to all kinds of additional resources that it may need to get things done: kernel memory, device memory, IO ports, IRQ's, etc. But this also means that the OS has no way of knowing if the driver is screwing up.
Whereas a user mode program screwing up generally doesn't do anything except shut down the offending program (Access Violation -- program terminated), a kernel mode program can screw up to the point of overwriting the kernel or something similar. At this point, there is not much left that can be safely done. Usually, some effort is made to bring down the system as safely as possible (flush all disk buffers, etc.), output some diagnostic information, and then halt the system. This is the UNIX kernel panic and the Windows Blue Screen of Death.
There is research into the idea of avoiding these problems, but it has been considered expensive (in terms of performance) and complex. I haven't looked into the recent research much, so I can't comment. But the idea would be to have ALL system resources (device memory and IO ports included) virtualized. Design the kernel interface so that if the device driver fails, only that device dies. It would be cool -- just restart the video card when the video driver crashes! But so far, it hasn't gotten into any major OSes of which I am aware.
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Ben's answer was amazingly creative, but it failed the rule that the sticks can only connect at the ends.
As to the question of whether a BIOS upgrade matters once the OS has taken over -- here is my experience:
New motherboard. Via chipset. Soundblaster Live!. Any questions? (Sizzle in the background, smell of eggs frying...)
I got a new motherboard, set everything up, it POSTed, but kept on booting, crashing, booting in safe mode, acting really weird, crashing... I reinstalled the OS. It took three or four times to actually get it through the install process, and even then not all of the features on my video card (like the DVD decode) were running correctly. And it still crashed a lot. Memory tests, CPU tests, biology tests (actually, it failed the biology test) revealed nothing. Swapping memory didn't fix anything. Upgrading the BIOS did.
Ok, so now it doesn't crash randomly. But if I ever tried to rip one of my DVDs onto DivX:), there was a 90% chance that my computer would hang in the middle of the process. (A few 6 hour rips cut short with only minutes left can create a lot of frustration.) Nothing on any newsgroups or web sites. Two months later, a new BIOS patch shows up. And fixes the problem.
And a few months ago, I got a nifty new USB 2.0 hard drive. I hadn't installed my USB 2.0 card yet, but I tried it on the USB 1.1 port of my newest machine (1.2 Ghz). Worked great (slower, but it worked properly). Then I shut down the computer. Came back a few hours later and turned it on. NOTHING. The fan turned on, the cursor appeared on the display, but no POST messages. I played around trying to figure it out for a while, then unplugged the USB 2.0 device. Presto, the machine worked. Checked the motherboard site, and (you guessed it!) there was a new BIOS upgrade. And guess what it fixed?
Then my older computer - a PII-300 - had some problems with DVD decoding that a BIOS upgrade fixed (but I don't remember the specifics).
So: assuming that the OS takes over everything, BIOS upgrades are still useful for the boot process (add new hardware and expect it to still boot? better have the newest BIOS!). However, I am pretty convinced by experience alone that the OS depends on the BIOS for something (timings, CPU microcode, chipset support, etc.).
Of course other posts have explained what that something is, so I won't go into it. But if you know what you are doing, a BIOS upgrade is a great way to keep your machine up-to-date.
As to whether to upgrade if nothing is broken? That is a good question. I wish BIOS upgrades had better changelogs. (But I guess that would ruin the surprise!) My opinion is that it will rarely hurt (if you know what you are doing), and that it might help (although you'll probably never know about the trouble it saved you). But it is especially important and especially likely to help in the first 18 months that a motherboard has been on the market. After that, the major problems have probably been solved, so upgrades are probably a waste of time.
If the ROM is borked "properly" (i.e. really borked, not just a little bit), you can't even boot up to a floppy, so how would you run the new BIOS?
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As far as the sig goes (grin), I've found some things about little endian to be quite convenient... So call me crazy! : ) I suppose too much exposure to Intel's stupid-o-rays have made me messed in the head, but I think I am more comfortable with little-endian at this point.
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Sorry, needed to be more clear. The sheer number of "USB" (1 or 2) devices already out there (installed base) is a huge factor in USB 2.0's success. If Joe already has a dozen USB peripherals, and has a choice between USB 2.0 and Firewire for a few higher-speed peripherals, he is likely to get USB 2.0. He's more familiar with it, and he can use it to run his existing devices. He knows that he can put old devices on his new USB 2 bus without a problem. He can even take his new high-speed devices and put them on a USB 1 bus (with a speed drop, of course).
I don't dispute that Firewire is a superior product in many ways. However, USB 2 is probably going to dominate in sheer numbers, if for no other reason than the existing USB 1.1 devices.
Question: I know why I don't want USB 1.1 for a hard drive, and it is pretty dumb for CDRW, too. I also know that it is pointless to use USB 1.1 for a NIC if you want the full bandwidth.
But why is it stupid to connect a modem? 12 Mbps should be enough for any modem, no? I'm interested in knowing why you think otherwise.
Thanks.
And never underestimate the power of backwards compatibility, which IMHO is the most important feature USB 2.0 has over Firewire.
Careful with the speeds, there.
USB 2.0 = 480Mbps
IEEE-1394 = 400Mbps
Where did you get 800Mbps from? : )
Or you buy the equivalent at Walmart for $10. Popular for using CD players in cars.
But I think this guy wants a little bit higher quality and longer range...
Sorry, didn't respond to everything in the first post :)
I really do like a lot of what you said. Unfortunately, even among scientific circles, there are a lot of "non-true" scientists. But I always try to be open to new ideas when they come along (although I'm sure I've been closed to way too many good ones that I should have grabbed).
Not all religions ask for ignorance. However, it is a good way to keep control of people, and a lot of religions resort to it. Hey -- it works! However, I believe in a God that doesn't want me to be stupid or ignorant. I believe that my God knows more about physics, chemistry, and mathematics than anybody on earth, and he is equally fluent in both C++ and Java. He can even program an operating system in BrainF*** (well, I'm assuming that it is Turing complete, which I don't remember at the moment...). Whether he chose to work through evolution or creation is pretty much a moot point (unless you want to interpret every word of the Bible 100% literally, in which case you have chosen an impossible position to hold).
As far as the scripture you cited -- it seems to me that the particular verse you've quoted was originally written in Hebrew. Although I never learned much about Hebrew, my Bible Concordance says that the Hebrew root for Repent can also be translated as "feel deep sorrow."
God didn't change his mind about creating the earth. The Man that God created went off and became wicked, and God cried over them as a parent cries over the bad choices of a child. (Of course, most parents don't go kill their kids and start a new family when the first one doesn't go so well, but that is another problem to explain... I would be here all night!) He had known they were going to screw up, but he let them make their own choices anyway.
Wow, that one is easy to handle (there are some harder ones out there -- I know, I've seen them!).
... And the people are not to eat the flesh of unclean animals.
Moses sluffed his Algebra and Zoology classes. So what? It is more than obvious that Moses screwed up from time to time. I imagine the conversation went something like this:
God:
Moses: No unclean animals. Got that. So what is the definition of an unclean animal?
God: Those that chew the cud and have cloven hooves.
Moses Chew cud, cloven hooves. Ok, continue.
God: Now, they must dress...
Later that day...
Moses: And you shall eat only clean animals, which are animals that chew the cud and have cloven hooves.
Belligerent kid at the back of the crowd: Is this going to be on the final?
Moses: Yes.
Kid in the third row: Can you give us some examples?
Moses: Cows, goats, oxen.
Geeky kid: How about the bunny?
Moses: No, the hare doesn't count. It doesn't have cloven hooves, see. Gotta have both.
Please don't speak for all religions when you say "only religion does [pretend to have all the answers]." Also recognize that there are many people who seem to think that science DOES have all the answers.
From what I can see, science has a lot of good answers, and religion does, too. I have yet to come to a conflict between the two that I could not resolve. However, I've come to understand a few things:
1. The laws of physics don't change (well, maybe a little, as mentioned in a Slashdot story a few days ago). But our understanding of them does change and grow more accurate with every new discovery. Things we thought we knew are cast aside in the face of new discoveries. And often, it takes a long time for the new discoveries to be accepted and understood. While science often answers the How, it never really explains the Why.
2. The core Truths of "Religion" never change. However, Man's understanding of them will always be limited, and the application of the core Truths will change according to environment. Even the prophets and apostles of the scriptures showed imperfections and even misunderstood the directions God gave them; they also progressed as they came to better understand God. Religion tends to answer the Why, and often doesn't bother too much with the How. Religion tends to be personal -- we can learn from the experiences of others, but the most important steps and the most crucial moments of understanding happen on a personal basis.
Creationism is inherently unsupportable. It is a belief that comes in consequence of other beliefs, which come as a consequence of faith and supporting experiences. I also cannot think of much that would support Creationism (I can think of a few things more easily explained by Creationism than by other theories, but the way science is moving, I'm sure they'll get cleared up in the near future).
This is a cart-before-the-horse situation. Even if I did believe in Creationism (I don't, although I do believe strongly in God), I could never convince anybody of it. If I were smart (debateable, grin), I would never try.
If I really had a goal of getting someone to believe in creationism, I would start with getting them to believe in God. THEN I would work on the creationism thing.
Yes, the industry will change significantly. But we'll adapt. This is the kind of thing we're asking the media industry to do, remember? This adapt thing?
Hardware will probably slow down. Computers will become commodities more like cars: got the latest model? My CPU overheats all the time... That used computer only has 14 quintillion cycles on it -- It has a lot of life left! : )
The market will definitely slow down, but gradually. It already is slowing down -- more people are happy with 5-year-old systems than in 1997, so a lot of people don't buy a new system. My system is only 1.2 Ghz -- half as fast as the newest machines, and only a single proc! But do I need to get a new one? Not anytime soon.
I think I still have enough software work to do to last me an entire career. I don't think I'll be recommending software engineering as a career to my (hypothetical) grandkids, but I don't think I'll have much problem finding work to do.
The example that comes to mind is my grandpa. He took classes in diesel mechanics back when diesel engines were very much a new idea. He was then an expert in a growing field, and well respected. Nowadays, you learn diesel mechanics in a Vo-Tech school, and go to work in a repair shop. For now, software engineering is an important white-collar trade that smacks of research and development. In the future, it may be more of a blue collar trade where most of the major advances come from just a few at the top while the rest just keep the machines running and adjust the configurations.
In most cases, I can no longer beat the average optimizing C++ compiler for performance. I can occasionally do a better job of register allocation and calculated value reuse, but the compiler does stuff like pipeline-modeling based instruction scheduling and some branch prediction optimizations that I would have a hard time getting right. In the past year, I've had to write some assembly language for OS kernel code, but just a little bit. I read assembly language almost daily (debugging), but even when CPUs stop increasing in speed, I don't expect to write more ASM code.
You're probably right about the multi-CPU and new architecture ideas. Note the trend towards this already. The 486 didn't even support multi-CPU boxes. Now, just 7 years later, a lot of serious software developers have dual CPU boxes, servers go up to 32 CPUs, and multi-CPU boxes are starting to make their way into the high-end home market. Also notice that in the past few years it has become more reasonable (and more expected) to support multiple architechtures for a product: Linux runs on everything from Itanium servers to toasters (grin); Windows is heading back in the direction of multiple architectures (i386, ia64, AMD 64, Alpha, etc). In the process, it becomes easier to go to any new architecture.
Or worse, they could get the features RIGHT!
Right now, things are moving so quickly that quality is sometimes sacrificed in the effort to get things to market. Microsoft is often cited as an example of this. In addition, Java 1.3 is obviously much better than Java 1.0 (yuck!). Once consumers stop begging for new features, the software makers might take some time to go through and reduce duplicated code, modularize, simplify, redesign, remove leaks, remove crashes, optimize.
Right now, code quality isn't always as profitable as features and first-to-market. But when all the really nice features are on the market already, and performance isn't going anywhere, I hope we take some time to clean things up a bit. I really hope it happens before then, and I try to use (whether it is purchase or download for open-source stuff) the software that has done this nicely.
Actually, I'm kindof looking forward to seeing how that file system turns out. For speed, it shouldn't be much slower than NTFS is now. For disk usage... We'll see.
But I hope it means I can invert my MP3 tree: Right now, it is sorted by album, then by Genre. But some genres overlap. And sometimes I want it sorted by artist, not album. And other times I want it sorted by song name. This can be done inside media player, but it would be nice to do it at the file system level for other files.
So I want to see how it turns out. Then I'll cast judgement.
Yes, but it sounds like the either new computers (with the DRM chip) won't run any OS that isn't approved by Hollywood to interoperate with the DRM chip, or anything that doesn't properly interoperate with the DRM chip won't be able to play any digital media.
Why do you get to have and express your opinions, and "radicals" don't? Are they less human? How do you know that they are wrong and you are right? I would guess that the "radical" population has about the same average IQ as the "less-radical" population. If they are just as intelligent as you, why aren't their ideas valid?
I mean, I agree with you -- I think the Nazis were wrong, and I generally disagree with radical movements. But I believe that radicals have the same rights as I do to express their ideas, up to the point where their expression causes me direct harm: your right to extend your fist ends where my nose begins.
In the case of Nazism, I believe it is a sad example of when the majority of the people made the wrong choice. Apparantly, the people were willing to let themselves be persuaded by other people with bad ideas.
I have a firm belief in the following concept: the majority will tend to make generally good decisions. However, when the majority starts to make bad decisions, it is wise to prepare yourself for a rough ride (war, economic turbulence, terrorism, fraud, etc.). It is also wise to speak up about your ideas -- radicals don't have a monopoly on persuasion!
To a certain extent, you are right. Criminals are (hopefully) judged according to the law and according to the facts that can be determined from legally obtained evidence.
If not judged by law, then how? Letting much subjectivity into the process (there isn't a specific law against that, but it seems wrong to me, so go to jail!) leads to a lawlessness, and a power-elite class of judges and lawyers even worse than today. People getting off on technicalities is the price we pay for a (somewhat) deterministic legal system -- i.e. it is generally possible for a person to determine (through research, if necessary) if a certain action will be legal or not.
As far as resetting the law -- laws are "upgraded" or changed every year in an effort to improve them. They are subject to "code review" all the time. Although they aren't perfect, and we keep finding "easter eggs" and "dead code," I would really think twice about tossing the whole thing. It took years to get Linux up and running, and it still doesn't have enough apps to keep everybody happy. It would take much longer to get a "new and improved" legal system working smoothly, and I don't want to be around in the transition period.
The laws about evidence are once again the price we pay. In return, we are protected from self incrimination and from being implicated by things that don't directly relate to our crime.
Because there are good legal reasons to dismiss evidence.
I regularly send emails about how I am going to strangle my manager, etc. My mom can be quoted, with many witnesses, as saying with great intensity and anger, "I am going to kill Natalie [my sister] the moment she walks through the door." I really would hate it if either of us were convicted of murder based on this evidence, though.
In this case, somebody talked about doing something. There is no evidence of anyone else picking up on his ideas, and while he might have been more literal about what he meant than I was about my boss, there isn't evidence that his suggestion became reality.
Our court system leaves the burden of proof on the accuser: innocent until proven guilty. A letter mentioning something is only proof that the idea flowed through his mind, not proof that it was carried out. If I had to prove that I didn't do all of the nasty things that go through my mind, and even get verbalized, I'd probably be convicted sooner or later.
Let the court examine the real evidence -- the things Microsoft actually did do. Don't worry about the things that get excluded. I'm sure that there will be enough evidence to go 'round.
I'm definitely not a lawyer, so correct me where I am wrong.
From what I understand, the vast majority of Microsoft's actions have normally been legal. Corporations naturally (and legally) tend to do all they can to make as much money as they can. In fact, there are certain stipulations that compel company leadership to act in the best interests of the company (and the shareholders). Just about all of the pressure Microsoft has brought to bear on other companies is normally legal, even if it isn't nice. Nearly all companies act similarly when given the opportunity -- Microsoft has just had more opportunities and has taken the initiative. In some cases, their behavior has been shady and even quite possibly illegal. But I don't know enough about the specifics...
The change came when Microsoft was found to have abused its monopoly position. Microsoft is quite definitely a monopoly -- it is subject to competition, and could lose its monopoly position quickly if something crazy were to happen. But the courts determined that not only was Microsoft a monopoly, but was guilty of abusing that position.
At this point, normal business rules cease to apply. But what replaces them? Well, the antitrust laws are actually quite vague. There is some precedent in previous cases. But for the most part, there really isn't anything that says what a Monopoly can and cannot do, nothing that gives a definition of "abuse of monopoly power," and no standard to determine when a situation has been rectified.
A normal business can always bring pressure to bear on partner businesses. It is a standard business tactic. However, Microsoft was warned that certain kinds of pressure would not be tolerated. But I will leave it to the lawyers who have seen the exact wording of all of the injunctions to determine exactly what they were prohibited from doing.
In any case, it appears that one of the higher-ups started suggesting bringing pressure to bear against Intel. Microsoft and Intel are mutual cash-cows. He was suggesting using "standard business practice" (some pressure) to remind Intel that Microsoft was a good company to keep as an ally. In a non-monopoly situation, this would be fine (perhaps not good business tactics, and it has the potential of damaging the relationship between the companies, but it would probably be legal).
In Microsoft's case, with antitrust litigation pending, other VPs apparently determined that it might be wise to curtail heavy-handed tactics. So nothing was done. So the email was just free speech and nothing more. So nothing illegal happened here. So it was probably a reasonable objection.
Perhaps not the USPTO office, per se. From what I can tell, they are doing the best they can, and their problems are being exploited by greedy businesses. However, the govnerment that has a constitutional mandate to provide a reasonable PTO should be responsible when it doesn't provide it and when citizens suffer as a consequence.
Reason tells me that the only way to solve this is by correcting the economic imbalances that exist: the cost of a thorough examination of a patent vs. the cost of applying for a patent; the cost of bringing a patent lawsuit/defending against a patent lawsuit vs. the benefits of doing so.
I would like to say that the price for patents should be jacked up to cover the actual cost of examining the patent. Then, the PTO could hire enough examiners to actually do the job. However, this might make it more difficult for Mr. Inventor to submit a perfectly valid patent, again giving the advantage to the big guy.
More than anything, the whole IP issue needs to be revised carefully. The problem is that I'm not sure that I trust the government to do the revising -- let them get involved, and the DMCA might happen all over again!
Well, I left that out to keep it simple, but yes, that is also done (great minds -- you and the OS developers -- think alike). In UNIX, you set up your program to trap a signal. The default signal handler will abort. Some signals can't be trapped. I've heard of other extensions being added to handle this situation in a more structured way, but I'm not up-to-date on them.
Windows will throw an exception through its "Structured Exception Handling" (SEH) mechanism. It is basically like C++ exceptions, but it doesn't call destructors on the way up the stack. It unwinds the stack until it finds a handler for the exception, or until it gets to the top of the stack. At the top of the stack, the program terminates. BTW, Visual C++ implements its C++ exception handling by piggybacking on top of an OS exception. This way, the stack-unwinding is done mostly by OS code, and the C++ RTL only needs to worry about the destructors and the exception handlers.
In some cases, when the program knew that what it was about to do was risky, the program can then recover. But most of the time, when it was an actual bug, the program is in a completely unknown state -- it can't trust its variables any more. Some programs go to the effort of trying to recover, but often they end up writing corrupted data. Since graceful failure is difficult to program, and since the results are questionable (which is better: losing 1 hour of work on your document, or losing the whole document because you saved a corrupted version after an access violation?), most programs just let the exception go unhandled.
It is true that newer chips have even better crash-trapping than the 386, but the 386 has most of the important stuff. NT could run on the 386, and it had much of the same crash protection that Win2k has now.
The difference was that 3.1 wasn't completely protected. The multitasking was cooperative, not preemptive, i.e. one program could take the CPU and get caught in an infinite loop, effectively hanging the system. Also, an application could write all over memory and screw up other programs (there was some protection, but it wasn't very complete). Win3.1 had a lot of non-386 code that it had to run, and this opened up a lot of holes that the 386 hardware could have closed, but the Win3.1 architecture left open anyway.
Basically, there is "kernel space" and "user space."
Apps run in user space. They pretty much can't do anything except mess around in their own memory space and make calls to the OS's API. Thus, the OS can check parameters to any API calls. A good OS design would make it impossible for anything in user space to violate any security or stability rules -- any action on the app's part that would do so is rejected and an exception is raised.
Drivers and the OS run in kernel space. Since the driver is by definition there to extend the functionality of the kernel into something that the kernel itself cannot do, the kernel in general cannot anticipate all actions by the driver. The driver has an API into the OS, but it also has direct access to all kinds of additional resources that it may need to get things done: kernel memory, device memory, IO ports, IRQ's, etc. But this also means that the OS has no way of knowing if the driver is screwing up.
Whereas a user mode program screwing up generally doesn't do anything except shut down the offending program (Access Violation -- program terminated), a kernel mode program can screw up to the point of overwriting the kernel or something similar. At this point, there is not much left that can be safely done. Usually, some effort is made to bring down the system as safely as possible (flush all disk buffers, etc.), output some diagnostic information, and then halt the system. This is the UNIX kernel panic and the Windows Blue Screen of Death.
There is research into the idea of avoiding these problems, but it has been considered expensive (in terms of performance) and complex. I haven't looked into the recent research much, so I can't comment. But the idea would be to have ALL system resources (device memory and IO ports included) virtualized. Design the kernel interface so that if the device driver fails, only that device dies. It would be cool -- just restart the video card when the video driver crashes! But so far, it hasn't gotten into any major OSes of which I am aware.