My pricepoint, considering that I'd need a separate, "real" computer, would be around $500-$600. And it would need to have a (quiet) keyboard - it's just so much faster to type than to scribble. drawing diagrams on the screen would be useful, though.
There's a major difference in price/performance between a stationary comp, a laptop, and a tablet. A laptop today has a price/performance that is a lot closer to desktops than ever before (especially when you specify a good quality LCD screen for your desktop), and the absolute performance (and quality/feel of things like the kayboard and screen) is good enough to use it as your only computer. I have only a laptop today and am very happy with it. A new desktop just didn't have the price advantage for me not to get a laptop.
A tablet, on the other hand, is very expensive and generally underpowered. Also, there is a form-factor problem - a tablet needs to be smallish to make it comfortable to use in its tablet configuration, but this precludes the use of a large (>15") screen and keyboard. Also, the screen being touch sensitive tends to impose a resolution constraint on the screen I am not willing to sacrifice.
A tablet generally is seen as a satellite to your "main" computer, but I really prefer having my whole desktop with me, rather than having to use a separate machine when away from my desk. If I really feel the need for a satellite, I'd rather go for a PDA with a keyboard, such as a Zaurus, and be able to have it along in my pocket.
I meant batteries (though using a capacitor would arguably be 'direct' storage) - poor choice of words. A battery doesn't approach the energy density of hydrogen, though, and they also lose their charge over time, faster than you'd have slow leaking from the hydrogen tank.
The size, effect and top speed is quite understandable. In Europe, those are the limits for a scooter that you are allowed to drive at the age of 15 and without a driver's license. That speed is also the normal speed for city traffic, and the way many european cities are organized, there is no problem driving such a machine to and from work, for example.
Use the energy from the solar array to extract hydrogen. That's what the personal refilling system is for, really.
The benefit of hydrogen over direct electricity is that it is easier to store compactly, and you do not incur the energy losses associated with storing electricitly directly.
The Hindenburg was actually designed for helium, not hydrogen. Due to an embargo on the sale of helium to Germany at the time, they decided to try hydrogen as a substitute. Of course, it thus lacked some safety features that would otherwise have been given with that choice. Since the Hindenburg was a major PR thingy for Nazi Germany, it was decided that it would be safe anough anyway.
Just another example of how PR-based wish fulfillment is trumped by reality...
Exactly. Notice that I said "copyright holders". And yes, that would be essentially impossible. Even if someone got a brain hemorraghe and wanted to change the license, it would mean chasing down every single contributor to the current kernel and get their permission.
The GPL would mean everything in that case. As the GPL is not valid for code that isn't GPL:able, so the rights granted according to GPL would be immediately voided. No amount of licensing from SCO would allow anybody but the copyright holders to use those versions of the kernel.
What would be needed is a new kernel release with either an exception to GPL allowing any SCO code under its license, or without any of the offending code. No points for being able to guess which one it would be.
So no matter what, SCO is not going to see any money from Linux users from this. Of course, the way this farce has been going, this whole issue is pretty much moot.
But of course the same thing can be said of GPS. How quickly can a European country selectively turn off GPS if they need to? Can in fact Europe depend on GPS not being turned off against them in a conflict?
Exchange "GPS" with "Galileo" and ask yourself if the US military would accept relying on a system over which they would not have control.
Well, we [i]don't[/i] trust your...ehh...bovine managerial posteriors.
See it this way: if the only system in the world was Galileo, under sole and total control of Europe, would you feel comfortable building your military navigation capability on it? If it was run by, say Canada? I didn't think so. So why would you expect other countries to accept such a dependancy?
Ironically, it was stalled because countries wanted to contribute _more_ than their fair share of the money required. Higher proportion of the cost == more of the contracts to that country.
But, basically, you shouldn't need to fix a problem like that. I - and lots lof ofther people - avoid any Java user-space apps simply because deploying them is a mess. That they tend to be slow and not fit in with the rest of the desktop is just adding insult to injury.
Or a 'joke' RFID-reader that will report random rfid numbers as stolen...
Re:Conclusion
on
Hijacking .NET
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Yep. But (as Srinivasan writes in Advanced Perl Programming), making a closure like that will generate a new piece of code for each instance. Not a problem if the code snippets are reasonably small and the number of instances aren't huge, but something to bear in mind anyway.
I haven't actually read Conway - maybe I should.
Re:Conclusion
on
Hijacking .NET
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I thought so too at first, but I believe it's not really the same thing here. Neither Perl nor C stuff depends on this encapsulation for any security stuff. For instance, Perl has sandboxing through taint checking and the safe module, and they do not assume that the potentially malicious code cannot access private members. Indeed, the filosophy in Perl is quite different - you are free to access any member function you want, or even 'private' data; it is assumed, though, that you know what you're doing in that case and won't come crying if things break for you as a result.
That's where the technology buyers become important. When deciding on a particular platform, the PHB's may have a great deal to say about what vendor to use, but it's the tech people (the CTO, if the company is large enough to have one) that determines the basic capabilities of the proposed system. With a stated checkbox-item to use only published W3C standards where applicable, for instance, the buyers can greatly influence what technologies their vendors will support. Some vendor-specific formats nonwithstanding, this is pretty much what has happened in most areas of information technology.
Or rather, you could, but it'd be almost just as easy to do as writing for both toolkits without it - ie. not at all. You still need to work with the widgets in your code (at least defining callbacks), and thus you'll need separate codepaths. Also, you'd need to include stuff for both toolkits, which means that the user will need to have both installed even if they use only one of them.
What you could do is have that choice at compile-time. Write the backend completely toolkit-independent, then have two frontends, using the glade file (so they always are in sync, UI-wise) and including the backend stuff. At compile time, it is determined which of them (or both) to build.
At our lab we have thought a lot about that. At any point in time, there is specialized hardware that can outperform (sometimes greatly) a general CPU. It can take the form of an accessible GPU, using signal processors, or even specialized vector processing units. On the horizon we start seeing FPGA-based systems for creating specialized computing units on the fly.
We have found, however, that as long as your system is a one-off creation, or to be used in a limited number of instantiations, it typically does not pay to use the stuff. The problem really is that, good as the solutions may be, it takes quite a bit of time to get up to speed with them. It can take upwards of six months to really understand a particular signal processor well enough to really utilize it well and to reformulate your problem in a way that is suitable for implementation using your special hardware. And by that time general computers have become cheaper and faster, and (if it's not a real-time application) you could have spent those six months letting a slower machine work it out.
A good reason for specialized hardware is when you produce the system in huge quantities; the benefits of the hardware is then used to decrease manufacturing cost, rather than increase performance.
Graphics cards are an interesting special case. You really need separate hardware for it in the first place, so the step towards producing better specialized hardware is not nearly as large as when you think about operations that today are performed by the host CPU - the hardware needs to be produced anyway, so why not improve on it? Just about all other specialized hardware have been implemented within the host CPU, rather than as discrete components - we have sort-of-vector processing, math processing and so on, but they're right on the motherchip, rather than add-on cards.
Of course, I would not be the least surprised if cd-media is included in the european directive on electronics trash (I'm too lazy to confirm at the moment). This means you need to dispose of it 'properly' - and the store is legally obliged to take care of any cd:s you bring them. In the abscence of a collection system for these (and other electronics), you end up getting the worthless cd:s back to the store anyway. And yes, the member states are free to impose a recycling charge on these if the stores and/or manufacturers can't show that they are collecting a sufficient proportion of them./Janne
Re:What use is AI without an operating platform
on
AI Going Nowhere?
·
· Score: 1
Sure. Problem is, you do need the platform from _somewhere_. People have gradually come to realize that it is necessary to embody research system in one way or another, as the interaction between the system and its surroundings is just too important - and sensitive - a factor to ignore or fake.
The problem is, the "research robots" that are available out there are pretty expensive, not all that great quality, and still need to be tweaked for a particular application. And in the wonderful world of university research, money is expensive and gradstudent time is cheap. Having someone spend six months building something is not an upfront cost, while spending $15000 on a prebuilt robot platform is.
One premise of tests like this (we have something roughly analoguous in Sweden) is that they more or less directly test your reading comprehension, numbers reasoning, language ability and other skill sets that are directly useful and related to your ability to handle university studies. The test here is Sweden has been shown to correlate very well with success in university studies later on.
So, there are courses, books and private tutoring programs to improve those abilities. So what? Does it reallly matter _how_ you acquire those skills, as long as you have them? Does it matter whether someone is good at picking out the relevant bits (or faulty premises) from a paper because they're naturally talented at it, or because they've practiced hard at doing it? In either case, they will have good use for that skill in school (and, arguably, in life).
I don't think anybody have ever claimed these tests measure innate ability; they claim they are a decent measure of how well you are expected to do in higher education. Well, being able and motivated to compensate for lower talent by extra work is certainly as good a characteristic as being able to get good scores without trying.
Rather, unsolicited "bulk" email. I don't care if the mail is selling Viagra, pitching a political candidate or asking me to please help save the Wales - it's not addressed specifically to me, and it's not wanted.
Look what happened when the US added protective tariffs on steel. Other stelmaking countries now have the right to impose tariffs of equal amount on american-made goods. Tariffs are a sucker's game - everybody loses.
Meanwhile, it turns out that the US loses more jobs due to the increase in steel prices than it saves by keeping inefficient steel mills in business.
"To boldly Slashdot where nobody has Slashdotted before."
While network infrastructure will be working at lower levels, there will of course never be any kind of interactivity - expect new legal fun and games as the need to cache and bulk send stuff to local mirrors collides with steadily more draconian IP laws.
Slashdot Mirror
My pricepoint, considering that I'd need a separate, "real" computer, would be around $500-$600. And it would need to have a (quiet) keyboard - it's just so much faster to type than to scribble. drawing diagrams on the screen would be useful, though.
There's a major difference in price/performance between a stationary comp, a laptop, and a tablet. A laptop today has a price/performance that is a lot closer to desktops than ever before (especially when you specify a good quality LCD screen for your desktop), and the absolute performance (and quality/feel of things like the kayboard and screen) is good enough to use it as your only computer. I have only a laptop today and am very happy with it. A new desktop just didn't have the price advantage for me not to get a laptop.
A tablet, on the other hand, is very expensive and generally underpowered. Also, there is a form-factor problem - a tablet needs to be smallish to make it comfortable to use in its tablet configuration, but this precludes the use of a large (>15") screen and keyboard. Also, the screen being touch sensitive tends to impose a resolution constraint on the screen I am not willing to sacrifice.
A tablet generally is seen as a satellite to your "main" computer, but I really prefer having my whole desktop with me, rather than having to use a separate machine when away from my desk. If I really feel the need for a satellite, I'd rather go for a PDA with a keyboard, such as a Zaurus, and be able to have it along in my pocket.
I meant batteries (though using a capacitor would arguably be 'direct' storage) - poor choice of words. A battery doesn't approach the energy density of hydrogen, though, and they also lose their charge over time, faster than you'd have slow leaking from the hydrogen tank.
The size, effect and top speed is quite understandable. In Europe, those are the limits for a scooter that you are allowed to drive at the age of 15 and without a driver's license. That speed is also the normal speed for city traffic, and the way many european cities are organized, there is no problem driving such a machine to and from work, for example.
Use the energy from the solar array to extract hydrogen. That's what the personal refilling system is for, really.
The benefit of hydrogen over direct electricity is that it is easier to store compactly, and you do not incur the energy losses associated with storing electricitly directly.
The Hindenburg was actually designed for helium, not hydrogen. Due to an embargo on the sale of helium to Germany at the time, they decided to try hydrogen as a substitute. Of course, it thus lacked some safety features that would otherwise have been given with that choice. Since the Hindenburg was a major PR thingy for Nazi Germany, it was decided that it would be safe anough anyway.
Just another example of how PR-based wish fulfillment is trumped by reality...
Exactly. Notice that I said "copyright holders". And yes, that would be essentially impossible. Even if someone got a brain hemorraghe and wanted to change the license, it would mean chasing down every single contributor to the current kernel and get their permission.
The GPL would mean everything in that case. As the GPL is not valid for code that isn't GPL:able, so the rights granted according to GPL would be immediately voided. No amount of licensing from SCO would allow anybody but the copyright holders to use those versions of the kernel.
What would be needed is a new kernel release with either an exception to GPL allowing any SCO code under its license, or without any of the offending code. No points for being able to guess which one it would be.
So no matter what, SCO is not going to see any money from Linux users from this. Of course, the way this farce has been going, this whole issue is pretty much moot.
But of course the same thing can be said of GPS. How quickly can a European country selectively turn off GPS if they need to? Can in fact Europe depend on GPS not being turned off against them in a conflict?
Exchange "GPS" with "Galileo" and ask yourself if the US military would accept relying on a system over which they would not have control.
Well, we [i]don't[/i] trust your ...ehh ...bovine managerial posteriors.
See it this way: if the only system in the world was Galileo, under sole and total control of Europe, would you feel comfortable building your military navigation capability on it? If it was run by, say Canada? I didn't think so. So why would you expect other countries to accept such a dependancy?
Ironically, it was stalled because countries wanted to contribute _more_ than their fair share of the money required. Higher proportion of the cost == more of the contracts to that country.
Glad it's resolved, anyhow.
But, basically, you shouldn't need to fix a problem like that. I - and lots lof ofther people - avoid any Java user-space apps simply because deploying them is a mess. That they tend to be slow and not fit in with the rest of the desktop is just adding insult to injury.
Or a 'joke' RFID-reader that will report random rfid numbers as stolen...
Yep. But (as Srinivasan writes in Advanced Perl Programming), making a closure like that will generate a new piece of code for each instance. Not a problem if the code snippets are reasonably small and the number of instances aren't huge, but something to bear in mind anyway.
I haven't actually read Conway - maybe I should.
I thought so too at first, but I believe it's not really the same thing here. Neither Perl nor C stuff depends on this encapsulation for any security stuff. For instance, Perl has sandboxing through taint checking and the safe module, and they do not assume that the potentially malicious code cannot access private members. Indeed, the filosophy in Perl is quite different - you are free to access any member function you want, or even 'private' data; it is assumed, though, that you know what you're doing in that case and won't come crying if things break for you as a result.
That's where the technology buyers become important. When deciding on a particular platform, the PHB's may have a great deal to say about what vendor to use, but it's the tech people (the CTO, if the company is large enough to have one) that determines the basic capabilities of the proposed system. With a stated checkbox-item to use only published W3C standards where applicable, for instance, the buyers can greatly influence what technologies their vendors will support. Some vendor-specific formats nonwithstanding, this is pretty much what has happened in most areas of information technology.
Vote with your money, in other words.
Well, no.
Or rather, you could, but it'd be almost just as easy to do as writing for both toolkits without it - ie. not at all. You still need to work with the widgets in your code (at least defining callbacks), and thus you'll need separate codepaths. Also, you'd need to include stuff for both toolkits, which means that the user will need to have both installed even if they use only one of them.
What you could do is have that choice at compile-time. Write the backend completely toolkit-independent, then have two frontends, using the glade file (so they always are in sync, UI-wise) and including the backend stuff. At compile time, it is determined which of them (or both) to build.
At our lab we have thought a lot about that. At any point in time, there is specialized hardware that can outperform (sometimes greatly) a general CPU. It can take the form of an accessible GPU, using signal processors, or even specialized vector processing units. On the horizon we start seeing FPGA-based systems for creating specialized computing units on the fly.
We have found, however, that as long as your system is a one-off creation, or to be used in a limited number of instantiations, it typically does not pay to use the stuff. The problem really is that, good as the solutions may be, it takes quite a bit of time to get up to speed with them. It can take upwards of six months to really understand a particular signal processor well enough to really utilize it well and to reformulate your problem in a way that is suitable for implementation using your special hardware. And by that time general computers have become cheaper and faster, and (if it's not a real-time application) you could have spent those six months letting a slower machine work it out.
A good reason for specialized hardware is when you produce the system in huge quantities; the benefits of the hardware is then used to decrease manufacturing cost, rather than increase performance.
Graphics cards are an interesting special case. You really need separate hardware for it in the first place, so the step towards producing better specialized hardware is not nearly as large as when you think about operations that today are performed by the host CPU - the hardware needs to be produced anyway, so why not improve on it? Just about all other specialized hardware have been implemented within the host CPU, rather than as discrete components - we have sort-of-vector processing, math processing and so on, but they're right on the motherchip, rather than add-on cards.
Of course, I would not be the least surprised if cd-media is included in the european directive on electronics trash (I'm too lazy to confirm at the moment). This means you need to dispose of it 'properly' - and the store is legally obliged to take care of any cd:s you bring them. In the abscence of a collection system for these (and other electronics), you end up getting the worthless cd:s back to the store anyway. And yes, the member states are free to impose a recycling charge on these if the stores and/or manufacturers can't show that they are collecting a sufficient proportion of them. /Janne
Sure. Problem is, you do need the platform from _somewhere_. People have gradually come to realize that it is necessary to embody research system in one way or another, as the interaction between the system and its surroundings is just too important - and sensitive - a factor to ignore or fake.
The problem is, the "research robots" that are available out there are pretty expensive, not all that great quality, and still need to be tweaked for a particular application. And in the wonderful world of university research, money is expensive and gradstudent time is cheap. Having someone spend six months building something is not an upfront cost, while spending $15000 on a prebuilt robot platform is.
One premise of tests like this (we have something roughly analoguous in Sweden) is that they more or less directly test your reading comprehension, numbers reasoning, language ability and other skill sets that are directly useful and related to your ability to handle university studies. The test here is Sweden has been shown to correlate very well with success in university studies later on.
So, there are courses, books and private tutoring programs to improve those abilities. So what? Does it reallly matter _how_ you acquire those skills, as long as you have them? Does it matter whether someone is good at picking out the relevant bits (or faulty premises) from a paper because they're naturally talented at it, or because they've practiced hard at doing it? In either case, they will have good use for that skill in school (and, arguably, in life).
I don't think anybody have ever claimed these tests measure innate ability; they claim they are a decent measure of how well you are expected to do in higher education. Well, being able and motivated to compensate for lower talent by extra work is certainly as good a characteristic as being able to get good scores without trying.
Nope, I meant Wales. There's still hundreds of the critters in the sea, but only one Wales left.
Rather, unsolicited "bulk" email. I don't care if the mail is selling Viagra, pitching a political candidate or asking me to please help save the Wales - it's not addressed specifically to me, and it's not wanted.
Look what happened when the US added protective tariffs on steel. Other stelmaking countries now have the right to impose tariffs of equal amount on american-made goods. Tariffs are a sucker's game - everybody loses.
Meanwhile, it turns out that the US loses more jobs due to the increase in steel prices than it saves by keeping inefficient steel mills in business.
"To boldly Slashdot where nobody has Slashdotted before."
While network infrastructure will be working at lower levels, there will of course never be any kind of interactivity - expect new legal fun and games as the need to cache and bulk send stuff to local mirrors collides with steadily more draconian IP laws.