Just a little perfectionist twiddle: I won't argue complexity but there are animals with _much_ bigger genomes than humans. Like orders of magnitude bigger.
On the contrary, I don't think this would help much at all. While many files have identical chunks of data these are very unlikely to line up perfectly with block size.
As an example, say I have two identical text files of a large number of blocks. At the beginning these could be just the same set of links to the same set of blocks. But if I add one character, say thirty lines into the file ("oops, typed print instead of printf again") none of the later blocks will be indentical anymore. So I think very little space would end up being saved.
Of course, if you could get away with variable block sizes that might help, but then you're stuck with the insanely difficult problem of how to break up a file so that you get the best match with existing blocks. No thanks.
As I see it the general problem here is the inner-ear based sense of acceleration. We feel it when walking, riding an elevator, falling, turning a corner in a car, etc. When the visual sense of place and the inner-ear sense of acceleration are in conflict, most people feel disoriented, sometimes to the point of nausea or vomiting. In constant-speed walking, the acceleration perceived is largely up-down, except during the first and last steps. Perhaps an appartus with a wide range of movement could duplicate both the up-down acceleration (a simple matter of "bobbing") and the initial and final accelerations, each of which would be followed by a gradual (enough not to be noticed) acceleration in the opposite direction, to ensure an eventual return to center. My gut feeling estimate is that to be "believable" a machine of this design would have to have a diameter of about ten meters. Big and expensive, but perhaps doable.
> Seems to me that the user could wear some sort > of shoe with a relatively slippery sole and be > placed inside the bottom third (give or take) of > a sphere made of plastic or some suitably > slippery substance. > > The idea is that the user "walks" forward, but > in reality only climbs a bit up one side > of the sphere, only to fall back down to the > center as gravity takes its toll.
Problem here, as with many of these thoughts, is that humans have an innate sense of acceleration (through the inner ear). Walking up the side of a sphere would lead to alternating acceleration forward and backward, in opposition to the expected alternating acceleration up and down (as during walking at a constant speed). And as is well documented, where the acceleration sense is in opposition to the position sense (visual), the result is nauseau.
> The reason simulating walking is dificult is > that we have been doing it most of our lives, > and consequentaly notice what is wrong.
I'd say that's _half_ the reason. The other half is that because we've been doing it (walking) for most of our lives, we have a hard time approaching the process objectively.
This is not about a program composing music that "sounds like a human wrote it" but _playing_ music that sounds more like a human than a machine. Or that sounds like a _lot_ of humans... apparently it does symphonies as well.
#1-- Why does this have to benefit Linux in order to be worthwhile? I don't recall this site being a Linux site; it's a "news for nerds" site that addresses technology issues. Not everything here will be about Linux.
#2-- Just because you get an API does not mean you have legal rights to do whatever you want with them. I am not at liberty to disclose arrangements we have made with Novell regarding APIs for NetWare, but suffice it to say that we do not own these APIs nor can we do just any ol' thing with them. Novell has more to do with these things than you seem to acknowledge; it's their property, after all, not ours.
#3-- I prefer not to discuss Caldera's lawsuit in public (not that I can speak with much authority on it because it's being handled in different "Caldera" from ours), but suffice it to say this lawsuit is not frivolous, and even if Linux will not benefit from it, that does not make it a worthless lawsuit.
#4-- The maintenance program only applies to our high end products. Currently, the only high end server product we offer is OpenLinux Standard 1.2. OpenLinux 1.3 is a retail product and, for the time being, is being used as the maintenance vehicle for keeping OpenLinux Standard 1.2 up to date (none of the commercial offerings in Standard 1.2 have been updated beyond the NetWare client/admin utilities, and they are now included in OpenLinux 1.3). This is why the maintenance program still says it covers OpenLinux Standard 1.2. 1.3 customers can not purchase maintenance because maintenance is not meant for the retail product.
#5-- The Q1 maintenance CD -- OpenLinux 1.3.1 -- has been out for a short while and is in the hands of maintenance customers. If you have not received your copy, I would suggest you contact our sales department and see what the problem may be. The maintenance program is definitely not being neglected.
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Just a little perfectionist twiddle: I won't argue complexity but there are animals with _much_ bigger genomes than humans. Like orders of magnitude bigger.
On the contrary, I don't think this would help much at all. While many files have identical chunks of data these are very unlikely to line up perfectly with block size.
As an example, say I have two identical text files of a large number of blocks. At the beginning these could be just the same set of links to the same set of blocks. But if I add one character, say thirty lines into the file ("oops, typed print instead of printf again") none of the later blocks will be indentical anymore. So I think very little space would end up being saved.
Of course, if you could get away with variable block sizes that might help, but then you're stuck with the insanely difficult problem of how to break up a file so that you get the best match with existing blocks. No thanks.
As I see it the general problem here is the inner-ear based sense of acceleration. We feel it when walking, riding an elevator, falling, turning a corner in a car, etc. When the visual sense of place and the inner-ear sense of acceleration are in conflict, most people feel disoriented, sometimes to the point of nausea or vomiting.
In constant-speed walking, the acceleration perceived is largely up-down, except during the first and last steps. Perhaps an appartus with a wide range of movement could duplicate both the up-down acceleration (a simple matter of "bobbing") and the initial and final accelerations, each of which would be followed by a gradual (enough not to be noticed) acceleration in the opposite direction, to ensure an eventual return to center. My gut feeling estimate is that to be "believable" a machine of this design would have to have a diameter of about ten meters. Big and expensive, but perhaps doable.
rat
> Seems to me that the user could wear some sort
> of shoe with a relatively slippery sole and be
> placed inside the bottom third (give or take) of
> a sphere made of plastic or some suitably
> slippery substance.
>
> The idea is that the user "walks" forward, but
> in reality only climbs a bit up one side
> of the sphere, only to fall back down to the
> center as gravity takes its toll.
Problem here, as with many of these thoughts, is that humans have an innate sense of acceleration (through the inner ear). Walking up the side of a sphere would lead to alternating acceleration forward and backward, in opposition to the expected alternating acceleration up and down (as during walking at a constant speed). And as is well documented, where the acceleration sense is in opposition to the position sense (visual), the result is nauseau.
rat
> The reason simulating walking is dificult is
> that we have been doing it most of our lives,
> and consequentaly notice what is wrong.
I'd say that's _half_ the reason. The other half is that because we've been doing it (walking) for most of our lives, we have a hard time approaching the process objectively.
This is not about a program composing music that "sounds like a human wrote it" but _playing_ music that sounds more like a human than a machine. Or that sounds like a _lot_ of humans... apparently it does symphonies as well.
#1-- Why does this have to benefit Linux in order to be worthwhile? I don't recall this site being a Linux site; it's a "news for nerds" site that addresses technology issues. Not everything here will be about Linux.
#2-- Just because you get an API does not mean you have legal rights to do whatever you want with them. I am not at liberty to disclose arrangements we have made with Novell regarding APIs for NetWare, but suffice it to say that we do not own these APIs nor can we do just any ol' thing with them. Novell has more to do with these things than you seem to acknowledge; it's their property, after all, not ours.
#3-- I prefer not to discuss Caldera's lawsuit in public (not that I can speak with much authority on it because it's being handled in different "Caldera" from ours), but suffice it to say this lawsuit is not frivolous, and even if Linux will not benefit from it, that does not make it a worthless lawsuit.
#4-- The maintenance program only applies to our high end products. Currently, the only high end server product we offer is OpenLinux Standard 1.2. OpenLinux 1.3 is a retail product and, for the time being, is being used as the maintenance vehicle for keeping OpenLinux Standard 1.2 up to date (none of the commercial offerings in Standard 1.2 have been updated beyond the NetWare client/admin utilities, and they are now included in OpenLinux 1.3). This is why the maintenance program still says it covers OpenLinux Standard 1.2. 1.3 customers can not purchase maintenance because maintenance is not meant for the retail product.
#5-- The Q1 maintenance CD -- OpenLinux 1.3.1 -- has been out for a short while and is in the hands of maintenance customers. If you have not received your copy, I would suggest you contact our sales department and see what the problem may be. The maintenance program is definitely not being neglected.
You have your opinion. I think you're wrong.
Sorry, nothing personal.
What brought this up? You see "Linux" and the knee jerk reaction is "trash Caldera and SuSE"?
Erik Ratcliffe
Caldera Systems, Inc.