Could someone please explain to me the British fetish for its Monarchy ? The government is now a constitutional democracy, so why is there so much homage paid to the archaic traditions and figureheads of the past?
I'm English and I can't explain it. Mind you,
the constitutional monarchy part only really
dates from 1688 and the 'Glorious Revolution'.
(Dutchman turns up with army and says 'Cheers,
I'll be king now' and parliament says 'ok, but
subject to these conditions', and the Dutchman
says 'ok, deal'). This was followed by the 1689
Bill of Rights.
Very few people in Britain are actually
fascinated with the royal family other than in
the way that they are fascinated by Eastenders
(soap opera) stars' offscreen antics.
A great example of this is the insane media land-grab over Princess Diana's death. Hundreds of thousands of people die in traffic accidents each year - why was hers so deserving of three whole months of media coverage, weeping, wailing, and moaning?
Princess Diana occupied a similar part of
the British consciousness as Jackie Kennedy in
the USA. Imagine if she'd been killed in a
car wreck in Paris in 1968 with
Onassis.
It could be useful. Imagine in 2 years time when
noone wants an Xbox any more. They could be
collected, Win CE installed, and provided with
a Windows server using Microsoft's thin client
software and used in many ways. E.g. in classrooms,
in the developing world, etc. Provided Microsoft's
generosity could be prevailed upon to waive CE
licensing fees, that is.
Of course, in theory, Linux could also be used
on both client and server to achieve the same end.
The Roman system was not free market in a way
we would recognise today. It was heavily
dependent on patronage and an oligarchy in
the Republican years. People of merit could
rise, but under the Republic this was only
really possible if you were a member of the
right families. Things changed considerably
under the imperial system, going through
several phases before ending in feudalism
in the later imperial period.
Postscript - assuming that it can run on cheap
hardware. Linux thin clients have the advantage
that in theory it can run on generic x86 hardware
cast off from something else (performance issues
notwithstanding).
There are untapped markets, however in two high
profile instances (Brazil, and China) they have
chosen to go open source.
There are also a lot of markets that software
with any significant initial cost and that may
require powerful hardware that cannot yet tap.
In the developing world a low software cost system
based on a server with thin clients makes the best
of second hard hardware, and admin costs. Microsoft would do well to have effective and cheap products ready
to tap into the thin client market. Maybe a
low footprint (Windows CE?) version of Windows and
a link up with the likes of Citrix?
They aren't updating their product line except in superficial ways
The big concern would be that Longhorn is quite
a way off, and with UserLinux, and 2.6.0 (finally
some decent Linux scheduling!) due to bear fruit
before then, there is a chance that the thunder may
be stolen from Longhorn, at least in the corporate space.
For the home consumer, though, Windows is still
going to be the premier product. It provides access
to digital media playing and editing tools, and
games in a way that Linux doesn't since software
creators of those products do not really target
Linux. I see a fairly bright future for the
media center versions of Windows, and XP for
gaming, and probably onwards into Longhorn.
Linux is also still too hard to install
packages for, although the likes of Lindows
(in packaging apt-get) and Ximian's Red Carpet
are improving matters. To break fully into the
consumer market the issues with digital media,
the DMCA, games, and software installation and
UserLinux really need to be solved. Plus it needs
to be able to run a lot of old MS software people
have bought. There is a way to go.
If space is at a premium then using an existing
display system (your PC) makes sense. Or alternatively if you want to do DVR it makes sense to have a capture card.
The tilting train (APT) is apparently due to make
a comeback. As ever with the UK rail system the
problem wasn't so much the technology as the lack
of preparedness to fund to solving the problems.
Other nations (e.g. French, Japanese) are prepared
to fund the system, and have faster, smoother, cleaner trains as a result.
Millions of threads are only worthwhile if the algorithm is sufficiently parallel. With medium level languages such as C it is easy to create code that obscures the parallelism. Thus a new technical computing language could have a role.
Even if the algorithm is parallel it may not scale well under all architectures. Communication between elements can be a killer which is why shared memory machines are useful as the architecture for SMP also makes for a fast communication system (lf an expensive one)
What you seem to be suggesting is something best served by risc, communication channels from large SMP machines and better languages and compilers, plus SMP functionality for critical sections
There are several issues with regard
to current programming techniques and
grid computing for HPC. Some include:
Legacy code - both user code and 3rd
party libraries such as NAG.
Matching OSes. Java alleviates this
to some extent at the expense of performance .
Also not all JVMs are equal. If you can use
more resources then slower, less efficient
execution isn't such a problem. I.e. a
balance between ease of use and code
efficiency. Good java code helps!
Matching executables and dynamic
libraries. Static compilation helps.
Matching system capabilities for
additional tools, such as MPI, PVM etc
Licensing
Data replication, transfer, etc
Java isn't a bad way to offer the
capability to run your code on many platforms, but it
is easy to write slow code that really doesn't
match the HPC speed requirement, although
some do use it for HPC. Faster bytecode
or JVMs that do ecen better at optimising
bytecode would be a help, but I am not
sure if there is enough algorithmic information
left in the bytecode to allow the best
optimisations on all architectures. Perhaps
this is where the new initiative is aimed?
An alternative route is to publish
capabilities for processing via web or grid
service type mechanisms and then use
brokers and discovery services. This would
work well for widely used production codes,
e.g. charm, fluent, etc
What I would prefer to this is a version of Evolution for Windows so I can use a consistent
client across various platforms. Currently I am
using mozilla, but it's a fairly clunky mail
reader. Evolution feels very nice, but I'd have
to run it on Linux box and use Exceed if I was
booted in windows, and then it is a case of
finding a Linux box that can see email saved
to local disk (as opposed to just on an IMAP
server).
Additionally (and I don't think this is
present yet) the ability for Evolution to read
Outlook information. This would put Evolution
at the mercy of Microsoft changing formats.
The integration between servers and Ximian
is interesting, though, if where you works
runs Microsoft Outlook servers.
I suppose really what I want to see is
the ability to synch my PDA and appointments
in PocketPC, PalmOS, or whatever, to a calendering
and email system that will work on whatever OS
my work PC happens to be booted into at the time.
Oh, and publish any business-related appointments
to a web page so people who need to contact me can track my whearabouts. From the end user perspective it is the functionality that is the important thing. SynCE is getting closer,
but it isn't there yet. Novell - take notice
and work on this!
Ooops - in picking out one contribution each I didn't mean to give the impression that the US only contributed trucks, I was just noting that the USSR didn't fight without US material help. As noted in one of my previous posts, the USA also contributed masses of troops (and airmen) and many other things besides.
Yes. Everyone contributed. People can wave penises about over who won it more than anyone else, but many nations contributed. The UK helped win by holding out and providing a base. The Polish and Czech pilots were invaluable in the Battle of Britain. The Greeks and British delaying the Italians in the Balkans delayed Barbarossa. US trucks and planes were instrumental in helping to keep the USSR going. The USSR contributed a lot of human resources. Norweigan heroes helped destroy
any chance of the Germans developing atomic weapons. The French resistance and Free French made a vital contribution too. All round a group effort to a noble end.
KDE and GNOME are now mature enough that
they can both do the job very well, and are
sufficiently configurable that a company can
meld them to their preferred look and feel.
At work GNOME is the default, at home I've
tended to use KDE. I used to prefer KDE, but
now I am pretty agnostic about the desktops.
Nothing clunky like CDE, please!
What is needed is that whichever desktop be
robust - e.g. the clipboard always works.
GNOME does have an advantage in some decent
industry backing. That could be converted into
extra coding effort, or quality assurance. That
final polish could make a lot of difference, and
if GNOME is the way to go to get that polish, then
go with GNOME.
Some KDE apps are nice, though - I wouldn't want
to lose those - e.g. kdebug, k3b, which I love
seems to me that nasa has TWO probes that are to reach mars in january. instead of a single one like the ESA. so they haven't lost the edge yet
I don't see the need for any nationalism about it. I am happy to see my country sending something
into space (other than beaming Eastenders to any aliens that happen to be passing), but the important
thing is to increase the sum of scientific knowledge, not to play games about whose willy
is biggest. I don't the scientists are playing
such games. They probably all meet up at
conferences and get excited about discovering
more about Mars rather than worry whose nation
is sending the probe. Sure, I am sure they want
to compete to be on the team, but all the teams
are likely to be fairly multinational anyway.
And as for the European theatre, I suppose Monty would have run circles around Rommel just the same without the American landings in North Africa. Right. So much for El Alamein. The only victories Britain managed without American help was the sinking of a few Nazi battleships-- Graf Spee and Bismark-- early in the war.
The whole point of being allied is to help each
other and avoid the need to do things alone!
United we stand, etc. At the Normandy landings
50% of the troops landing were from the USA,
the other 50% were from the commonwealth,
and from other nations who had lost their
countries to the Germans. The balance tipped
in the favour of US numbers from June 1944
onwards.
By yourselves you had great success at Dunkirk, Norway, the Balkans, Greece, Crete and Singapore.
Early in the war the UK was on the defensive
in the same way that the USA was in, say,
the Philipines. In the same way that MacArthur
eventually returned to the Philipines, the
UK also ultimately took part in victories
against the Germans and Japanese. To be
partisan about it is pretty silly.
Thanks for all your British help in winning the war in the Pacific theatre of WW2, you ungrateful asshole! Yup, your imperial subjects in Singapore sure loved the bang-up job of defence you managed there when you were so handily beating Adolf all by yourself. And where were you in the Pacific after 1942? Commonwealth doesn't count.
Fighting in places like India and Burma, and
in 1945, bombing Japan from carriers.
Slashdot Mirror
Could someone please explain to me the British fetish for its Monarchy ? The government is now a constitutional democracy, so why is there so much homage paid to the archaic traditions and figureheads of the past?
I'm English and I can't explain it. Mind you, the constitutional monarchy part only really dates from 1688 and the 'Glorious Revolution'. (Dutchman turns up with army and says 'Cheers, I'll be king now' and parliament says 'ok, but subject to these conditions', and the Dutchman says 'ok, deal'). This was followed by the 1689 Bill of Rights.
Very few people in Britain are actually fascinated with the royal family other than in the way that they are fascinated by Eastenders (soap opera) stars' offscreen antics.
A great example of this is the insane media land-grab over Princess Diana's death. Hundreds of thousands of people die in traffic accidents each year - why was hers so deserving of three whole months of media coverage, weeping, wailing, and moaning?
Princess Diana occupied a similar part of the British consciousness as Jackie Kennedy in the USA. Imagine if she'd been killed in a car wreck in Paris in 1968 with Onassis.
CERN is in Switzerland but isn't Swiss.
It could be useful. Imagine in 2 years time when noone wants an Xbox any more. They could be collected, Win CE installed, and provided with a Windows server using Microsoft's thin client software and used in many ways. E.g. in classrooms, in the developing world, etc. Provided Microsoft's generosity could be prevailed upon to waive CE licensing fees, that is.
Of course, in theory, Linux could also be used on both client and server to achieve the same end.
The Roman system was not free market in a way we would recognise today. It was heavily dependent on patronage and an oligarchy in the Republican years. People of merit could rise, but under the Republic this was only really possible if you were a member of the right families. Things changed considerably under the imperial system, going through several phases before ending in feudalism in the later imperial period.
Postscript - assuming that it can run on cheap hardware. Linux thin clients have the advantage that in theory it can run on generic x86 hardware cast off from something else (performance issues notwithstanding).
Looks to be exactly what I suggested was needed.
There are untapped markets, however in two high profile instances (Brazil, and China) they have chosen to go open source.
There are also a lot of markets that software with any significant initial cost and that may require powerful hardware that cannot yet tap. In the developing world a low software cost system based on a server with thin clients makes the best of second hard hardware, and admin costs. Microsoft would do well to have effective and cheap products ready to tap into the thin client market. Maybe a low footprint (Windows CE?) version of Windows and a link up with the likes of Citrix?
The big concern would be that Longhorn is quite a way off, and with UserLinux, and 2.6.0 (finally some decent Linux scheduling!) due to bear fruit before then, there is a chance that the thunder may be stolen from Longhorn, at least in the corporate space.
For the home consumer, though, Windows is still going to be the premier product. It provides access to digital media playing and editing tools, and games in a way that Linux doesn't since software creators of those products do not really target Linux. I see a fairly bright future for the media center versions of Windows, and XP for gaming, and probably onwards into Longhorn.
Linux is also still too hard to install packages for, although the likes of Lindows (in packaging apt-get) and Ximian's Red Carpet are improving matters. To break fully into the consumer market the issues with digital media, the DMCA, games, and software installation and UserLinux really need to be solved. Plus it needs to be able to run a lot of old MS software people have bought. There is a way to go.
Or the Chinese government, which also creates a distribution, AFAIK.
Here, here for Zope. With CMF and Plone on top it's pretty easy to use, and mostly reliable, with just the odd SQL hiccup now and again.
What about Xenix? And MS does have a licence from SCO.
If space is at a premium then using an existing display system (your PC) makes sense. Or alternatively if you want to do DVR it makes sense to have a capture card.
The tilting train (APT) is apparently due to make a comeback. As ever with the UK rail system the problem wasn't so much the technology as the lack of preparedness to fund to solving the problems. Other nations (e.g. French, Japanese) are prepared to fund the system, and have faster, smoother, cleaner trains as a result.
Millions of threads are only
worthwhile if the algorithm
is sufficiently parallel. With
medium level languages such
as C it is easy to create code
that obscures the parallelism.
Thus a new technical computing
language could have a role.
Even if the algorithm is
parallel it may not scale
well under all architectures.
Communication between
elements can be a killer which
is why shared memory
machines are useful as the
architecture for SMP also makes
for a fast communication
system (lf an expensive one)
What you seem to be
suggesting is something best
served by risc, communication
channels from large SMP
machines and better
languages and compilers, plus
SMP functionality for critical
sections
Its a fair amount of work.
There are several issues with regard to current programming techniques and grid computing for HPC. Some include:
Java isn't a bad way to offer the capability to run your code on many platforms, but it is easy to write slow code that really doesn't match the HPC speed requirement, although some do use it for HPC. Faster bytecode or JVMs that do ecen better at optimising bytecode would be a help, but I am not sure if there is enough algorithmic information left in the bytecode to allow the best optimisations on all architectures. Perhaps this is where the new initiative is aimed?
An alternative route is to publish capabilities for processing via web or grid service type mechanisms and then use brokers and discovery services. This would work well for widely used production codes, e.g. charm, fluent, etc
What I would prefer to this is a version of Evolution for Windows so I can use a consistent client across various platforms. Currently I am using mozilla, but it's a fairly clunky mail reader. Evolution feels very nice, but I'd have to run it on Linux box and use Exceed if I was booted in windows, and then it is a case of finding a Linux box that can see email saved to local disk (as opposed to just on an IMAP server).
Additionally (and I don't think this is present yet) the ability for Evolution to read Outlook information. This would put Evolution at the mercy of Microsoft changing formats. The integration between servers and Ximian is interesting, though, if where you works runs Microsoft Outlook servers.
I suppose really what I want to see is the ability to synch my PDA and appointments in PocketPC, PalmOS, or whatever, to a calendering and email system that will work on whatever OS my work PC happens to be booted into at the time. Oh, and publish any business-related appointments to a web page so people who need to contact me can track my whearabouts. From the end user perspective it is the functionality that is the important thing. SynCE is getting closer, but it isn't there yet. Novell - take notice and work on this!
Threaded email? It's hardly new. Many email clients can already do it.
Ooops - in picking out one contribution each I didn't mean to give the impression that the US only contributed trucks, I was just noting that the USSR didn't fight without US material help. As noted in one of my previous posts, the USA also contributed masses of troops (and airmen) and many other things besides.
Yes. Everyone contributed. People can wave penises about over who won it more than anyone else, but many nations contributed. The UK helped win by holding out and providing a base. The Polish and Czech pilots were invaluable in the Battle of Britain. The Greeks and British delaying the Italians in the Balkans delayed Barbarossa. US trucks and planes were instrumental in helping to keep the USSR going. The USSR contributed a lot of human resources. Norweigan heroes helped destroy any chance of the Germans developing atomic weapons. The French resistance and Free French made a vital contribution too. All round a group effort to a noble end.
KDE and GNOME are now mature enough that they can both do the job very well, and are sufficiently configurable that a company can meld them to their preferred look and feel. At work GNOME is the default, at home I've tended to use KDE. I used to prefer KDE, but now I am pretty agnostic about the desktops. Nothing clunky like CDE, please!
What is needed is that whichever desktop be robust - e.g. the clipboard always works.
GNOME does have an advantage in some decent industry backing. That could be converted into extra coding effort, or quality assurance. That final polish could make a lot of difference, and if GNOME is the way to go to get that polish, then go with GNOME.
Some KDE apps are nice, though - I wouldn't want to lose those - e.g. kdebug, k3b, which I love
"I don't the scientists are playing such games" should read "I doubt the scientists are playing such games"
seems to me that nasa has TWO probes that are to reach mars in january. instead of a single one like the ESA. so they haven't lost the edge yet
I don't see the need for any nationalism about it. I am happy to see my country sending something into space (other than beaming Eastenders to any aliens that happen to be passing), but the important thing is to increase the sum of scientific knowledge, not to play games about whose willy is biggest. I don't the scientists are playing such games. They probably all meet up at conferences and get excited about discovering more about Mars rather than worry whose nation is sending the probe. Sure, I am sure they want to compete to be on the team, but all the teams are likely to be fairly multinational anyway.
And as for the European theatre, I suppose Monty would have run circles around Rommel just the same without the American landings in North Africa. Right. So much for El Alamein. The only victories Britain managed without American help was the sinking of a few Nazi battleships-- Graf Spee and Bismark-- early in the war.
The whole point of being allied is to help each other and avoid the need to do things alone! United we stand, etc. At the Normandy landings 50% of the troops landing were from the USA, the other 50% were from the commonwealth, and from other nations who had lost their countries to the Germans. The balance tipped in the favour of US numbers from June 1944 onwards.
By yourselves you had great success at Dunkirk, Norway, the Balkans, Greece, Crete and Singapore.
Early in the war the UK was on the defensive in the same way that the USA was in, say, the Philipines. In the same way that MacArthur eventually returned to the Philipines, the UK also ultimately took part in victories against the Germans and Japanese. To be partisan about it is pretty silly.
Thanks for all your British help in winning the war in the Pacific theatre of WW2, you ungrateful asshole! Yup, your imperial subjects in Singapore sure loved the bang-up job of defence you managed there when you were so handily beating Adolf all by yourself. And where were you in the Pacific after 1942? Commonwealth doesn't count.
Fighting in places like India and Burma, and in 1945, bombing Japan from carriers.
The Mersey? Now I have visions of Harry Enfield's Scousers going to 'that Mars'!