Based on that evidence, we have to assume that, like me he is the proud owner of one and only one computer. You are not allowed to distort the facts to fit the solution you use/prefer.
I agree, I think using network sharing is currently, and foreseeably, the only way to go. The reason is basically that even if you have similar drivers for each operating system, at the end of the day you are going to have different code managing the same bits and bytes, which is essentially opening a potential can of worms. Now, I *have* used the ext2 drivers on Windows and OS X and they _do_ work, but I still feel far more comfortable using networking.
So to the above list of Samba and NFS, I'd like to add SSHFS (which works through FUSE) to the list. I've been using it to mount my school's home folder, which is hosted on an Apple Xdrive, on my Linux machine. It's great because I have the exact same Desktop folder on my Linux machine as when I log into one of the Macs. Unfortunately it's not necessarily a viable option for Windows right now, since I think FUSE hasn't been ported yet.
Anyways, I'd go as far as to say that it's worth is getting a cheap small computer to manager your harddrive and just leave it on all the time, plugged into your router. Frankly I wish they'd sell something like that already bundled, instead of these USB/firewire drivers. I guess it's what this is: NSLU2
So far most of the comments on this story have been about the pros and cons of helping MS with their bandwidth. There have even been a couple talking about some technical differences. But for me, the biggest difference is none of that. The coolest thing about BitTorrent is that it is a known, open protocol. What this means is that there are something like 10 to 20 clients out there you can download, so we end up with great programs like Azureus and uTorrent. Of course I haven't read much about this new program from MS, but I imagine they won't be releasing the source code for it. (I may be wrong of course!) What this means is that to use their shiny new protocol, you have to use THEIR software. You will have _no_ choice, and there will be _no_ room for developing new features. I find this terribly limiting compared to what can be accomplished with something open and popular like BitTorrent. What will you do if the protocol is very efficient and useful, and yet you are forced to use a crap client that you don't like? Reverse engineer it? That's a pain in the ass compared to having a working, open protocol that is well-documented and there are several open-source solutions to reference. And I won't even begin to discuss the likelihood of seeing an OS X or Linux version of their client...
I think I'll be sticking to BT unless something better comes along that actually has a useful (i.e., open) license. One wonders about the motivation for developing this when they could have just used BT to distribute their patches and downloads. Is it just NIH, or something more?
Xen - the Linux kernel supports code allowing it to be run as a guest underneath the Xen kernel, all through software. Linux's support for Xen does not make Linux a virtualization platform, only a GUEST for the Xen kernel which sits at Ring-0. (though a "dom0" Linux system can interact intimately with the Xen kernel, it actually sits at Ring-1). I should note that the Xen kernel also supports hardware virtualized domains, though this is unrelated to the patches to Linux.
I'm not too familiar with all these virtualization solutions, but this struck me as being somewhat reminiscent of how RTLinux worked for Linux 2.4. I haven't really needed hard RT since the preemptive scheduling in 2.6, but I was wondering if some of this virtualization stuff has been used to implement hard real-time?
(In RTLinux, the Linux kernel ran at a lower priority than your RT code --- this is distinctly different from the soft RT that can be achieved with a high-priority user-mode process in 2.6, despite that fact that you can basically achieve millisecond timing that way.)
What you suggest is yet another XML mess. Embedding SVG in code is pointless; SVGs are resources. Also, UML is not the silver bullet that will replace programming languages; its just not nearly as powerful. C++ metaprogramming and generic programming with UML? Lisp magic with UML? System programming with UML? Erlang-style threadlets with UML?
Wow, I guess I wasn't very clear in my post because that's not at all what I meant. I was referring to commenting code in a clear way using appropriate diagrams instead of having to embed crappy ASCII art. I didn't say anything about metaprogramming. Sorry you misinterpreted what I wrote.
Anyways if you'll re-read, you'll understand that I wasn't completely advocating the idea, as I discussed some drawbacks as well. I feel it's always worth discussing interesting ideas, even if they inadvertently insult high-minded people like yourself.
That also brings to mind something that I've been thinking for a while.. wouldn't it be nice to just ditch monospace fonts for programming? If layout was done more intelligently, we could get away with using nice proportional fonts. Basically, as far as I can see, monospace is used mainly for tabbing and indenting stuff, which could easily be done automatically or with mark-up. ASCII diagrams could be replaced...
If an XML format were used to represent code, we could embed SVG right into the code, for example, or perhaps some kind of format for describing UML diagrams. A simple preprocessor could be used to generate C- or Java- code for the compiler. I think there may very well be a case for this.
Of course, there's also something to be said for being able to just edit a text file, independent of which editor you choose. If I'm going to require a specific editor for this new XML-formatted code, it had better be Emacs! Or Vim! Or...
Maybe the half-assed answer is to just allow embedding of mark-up codes, but have them appear in comments. The source would be a valid java or C file, but the comments may contain additional information which would appear properly using the right program.
Decisions on what to support would be difficult.. for example, I'd greatly prefer support for LateX equations over MathML, but of course the would break the idea of using XML-based formats. Aargh.. too much to think about.
Actually since the virtual surfaces are modeled in software, it all depends on the parametric model you are using. So, with the appropriate model, you can modify an object's feeling of "stiffness", or make it elastically deformable, change its texture, etc. Just like how 3D graphics can have objects with different textures, bump maps, and physical behaviour.
In response to this story, I had a look at the synaptics driver in Linux. According to my dmesg output, the touchpad on my HP does indeed have the flag set for "SYN_CAP_MULTIFINGER", which I assume means it can report the positions of multiple touches.
Running "synclient -m 10" however reports a constant "0000000" under the "multi" field.
Anyone know how to properly access the multitouch data provided by the Linux synaptics driver?
I just didn't realize they had been planning on achieving that goal by getting a bunch of OSS coders to do all their work for them for free.
I see that I got modded troll for this comment. Is that not what they did? It's merely a statement of fact, I didn't make any judgment call here.. in fact, in the sentence following it I discussed how actually that may be the best way they could have approached the situation anyways. Silly mods.
That said.. it occurred to me that, just like any other "standard" supported by a company, one has to be careful in employing it and depending on it. MS could easily make incompatible changes at any time in the future to the Windows implementation, creating a non-stop game of tag for the Moonlight developers. Remember what MS did to HTML? It will be even easier to "embrace and extend" for MS on their _own_ standard. It would be much better if there were an open standard for this sort of media. SVG comes close, but I have yet to see a fast, dependable, and standardized implementation, and Flash, unlike SVG, supports much more than just vector graphics.
Right, so MS had promised from the start that Silverlight would have a Linux version. I just didn't realize they had been planning on achieving that goal by getting a bunch of OSS coders to do all their work for them for free. Oh well, probably better this way, since it might remain capital-F Free. What's the Moonlight license, anyway? If this _is_ a "FREE" implementation of Silverlight it really will start to look like a nicer alternative to the poorly-supported, closed-source Flash for Linux.
The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us.
There is one blaringly huge difference with "scientific concensus" vs. other forms of "one permitted truth". EVIDENCE. It's amazing what leaps in logic people will use to justify ignorance.
Mafiaa's influence is only by proxy through the US Government. It's their weight that has pushed (re: bullied) Canada into starting to adopt more draconian laws.
While ATI/AMD is working steadfast in addressing all of these issues and further enhancing their level of Linux support, many of their customers do not realize all of the work that goes into these drivers.
Whatever. They don't need to do any work. All they need to do is open up the specs, and people will do all the work for them. People aren't bitching that the drivers don't work, people are bitching because they aren't allowed to improve them.
There's a whole community out there willing to do all the software work from scratch, but they don't have the resources to create the hardware. The hardware developers somehow see this need to provide the software themselves, instead of taking advantage of the community, but then go and do a shoddy job of it. That's why people are annoyed by the whole thing. It could be so much better, with very little effort from ATI, but they steadfastly refuse to play nice, forcing developers to resort to reverse engineering. Same goes to Nvidia by the way, but at least they seem to be a bit more competent in Linux/X.org driver development.
This whole argument is just a big excuse. We don't want excuses, we want some damn drivers.
--- someone who's been buying Nvidia since he realized that ATI doesn't work as well on Linux.
I was just copying down a quote from an article I was reading, and I realized that my typing skills haven't really been up to scratch, even though I spend hours and hours on the computer every day. For programming and general writing, I spend a lot more time thinking than actually writing, plenty of time to fix typing mistakes. Rarely do I ever just copy something directly, but this time I happened to be putting a long block quote into my document.
It got me thinking.. secretaries used to be hired just based on their typing skills. Speed & accuracy. I remember when I took a typing class in high school the teacher made us cover the keyboard so we couldn't look at it while we were typing, and we especially weren't allowed to use the delete key so she could mark us on how many errors we made.
But it's funny, that's so backward, of course. Since typewriters are no longer used, your typing speed _includes_ the time it takes to hit the delete key and fix what you did wrong. You time further increases if you have to look at the screen and then find your place in the text. So typing speed is now the only thing that counts...
Now add into that the fact that the days of the boss dictating memos to the secretary are mostly gone, and typing is really a skill that no longer matters. It certainly helps in day-to-day computer tasks, but it's no longer a make or break skill for IT and office people.
Or Lyx! I've been using it to write my thesis and it's fantastic. A tad hard to customize, but usually I find if you have to customize you're probably doing something wrong. In cases where you do need custom output formatting it's probably not the right tool for the job. But for paper/thesis and letter writing, nothing beats it.
Unfortunately these office suite scripts are often used for things like disk access to import data.
And that, of course, is almost directly related to the fact that the MS file formats are closed. With an open format like ODF, scripts for importing data aren't critical, since it's quite easy instead for a program to export it in the proper format, or to write an external script or program to transform data into ODF format. After all, it's XML.
Unfortunately MS has trained industry to rely on scripting to do basic things that should be done in other ways, just for the sake of not having to divulge file format details.
But in any case, I agree with the opinion expressed elsewhere in the comments that scripting isn't inherently bad, but it should be limited in ability by default. If a company needs unprotected scripting so badly, I don't see why their IT department can't just deploy it with the correct defaults.
If you can milk old stuff without end, why should you create new stuff?
If the old stuff still sells, then the market spoke: they prefer old stuff over new stuff.
Way to not answer his statement. The appropriate response, purely in the context of this thread (whether I agree with GP or not), is: What new stuff are you referring to??
How can the market "speak" if they have nothing to compare?
Now, as for the GP, I don't agree simply because it's a fundamental property of human nature that we will always be creating "new stuff". However, "new stuff" is, as a rule, always in reference to "old stuff", so if copyright has the power to restrict this "reference", then copyright is doing something wrong. Of course, traditionally Fair Use covers this problem, but in the brave new digital world, "reference" is often more literal than copyright holders are comfortable with, and therein lies the real problem, and IMHO, the real reason that copyright should NOT be extended indefinitely: that "old stuff" copyright holders will never get with the program and learn to encourage re-use and re-cycling of ideas in the digital medium.
(Of course that's not strictly true.. I'm sure there are plenty of examples of oldschool musicians and artists who are blown away by the concept of remixes and are loving every minute of it, but there are enough cases of the opposite to make my point.)
Slashdot Mirror
Sure I can, this is Slashdot.
I agree, I think using network sharing is currently, and foreseeably, the only way to go. The reason is basically that even if you have similar drivers for each operating system, at the end of the day you are going to have different code managing the same bits and bytes, which is essentially opening a potential can of worms. Now, I *have* used the ext2 drivers on Windows and OS X and they _do_ work, but I still feel far more comfortable using networking.
So to the above list of Samba and NFS, I'd like to add SSHFS (which works through FUSE) to the list. I've been using it to mount my school's home folder, which is hosted on an Apple Xdrive, on my Linux machine. It's great because I have the exact same Desktop folder on my Linux machine as when I log into one of the Macs. Unfortunately it's not necessarily a viable option for Windows right now, since I think FUSE hasn't been ported yet.
Anyways, I'd go as far as to say that it's worth is getting a cheap small computer to manager your harddrive and just leave it on all the time, plugged into your router. Frankly I wish they'd sell something like that already bundled, instead of these USB/firewire drivers. I guess it's what this is: NSLU2
So far most of the comments on this story have been about the pros and cons of helping MS with their bandwidth. There have even been a couple talking about some technical differences. But for me, the biggest difference is none of that. The coolest thing about BitTorrent is that it is a known, open protocol. What this means is that there are something like 10 to 20 clients out there you can download, so we end up with great programs like Azureus and uTorrent. Of course I haven't read much about this new program from MS, but I imagine they won't be releasing the source code for it. (I may be wrong of course!) What this means is that to use their shiny new protocol, you have to use THEIR software. You will have _no_ choice, and there will be _no_ room for developing new features. I find this terribly limiting compared to what can be accomplished with something open and popular like BitTorrent. What will you do if the protocol is very efficient and useful, and yet you are forced to use a crap client that you don't like? Reverse engineer it? That's a pain in the ass compared to having a working, open protocol that is well-documented and there are several open-source solutions to reference. And I won't even begin to discuss the likelihood of seeing an OS X or Linux version of their client...
I think I'll be sticking to BT unless something better comes along that actually has a useful (i.e., open) license. One wonders about the motivation for developing this when they could have just used BT to distribute their patches and downloads. Is it just NIH, or something more?
I'm not too familiar with all these virtualization solutions, but this struck me as being somewhat reminiscent of how RTLinux worked for Linux 2.4. I haven't really needed hard RT since the preemptive scheduling in 2.6, but I was wondering if some of this virtualization stuff has been used to implement hard real-time?
(In RTLinux, the Linux kernel ran at a lower priority than your RT code --- this is distinctly different from the soft RT that can be achieved with a high-priority user-mode process in 2.6, despite that fact that you can basically achieve millisecond timing that way.)
I wish *someone* would mod you up, because it's one of about 2 or 3 posts in this whole discussion that is actually insightful.
Wow, I guess I wasn't very clear in my post because that's not at all what I meant.
I was referring to commenting code in a clear way using appropriate diagrams instead of having to embed crappy ASCII art.
I didn't say anything about metaprogramming. Sorry you misinterpreted what I wrote.
Anyways if you'll re-read, you'll understand that I wasn't completely advocating the idea, as I discussed some drawbacks as well. I feel it's always worth discussing interesting ideas, even if they inadvertently insult high-minded people like yourself.
That also brings to mind something that I've been thinking for a while.. wouldn't it be nice to just ditch monospace fonts for programming? If layout was done more intelligently, we could get away with using nice proportional fonts. Basically, as far as I can see, monospace is used mainly for tabbing and indenting stuff, which could easily be done automatically or with mark-up. ASCII diagrams could be replaced...
If an XML format were used to represent code, we could embed SVG right into the code, for example, or perhaps some kind of format for describing UML diagrams. A simple preprocessor could be used to generate C- or Java- code for the compiler. I think there may very well be a case for this.
Of course, there's also something to be said for being able to just edit a text file, independent of which editor you choose. If I'm going to require a specific editor for this new XML-formatted code, it had better be Emacs! Or Vim! Or...
Maybe the half-assed answer is to just allow embedding of mark-up codes, but have them appear in comments. The source would be a valid java or C file, but the comments may contain additional information which would appear properly using the right program.
Decisions on what to support would be difficult.. for example, I'd greatly prefer support for LateX equations over MathML, but of course the would break the idea of using XML-based formats. Aargh.. too much to think about.
The story is basically describing http://www.halfbakery.com
Warning: One can waste whole hours of one's life at a time on that site.
Actually since the virtual surfaces are modeled in software, it all depends on the parametric model you are using. So, with the appropriate model, you can modify an object's feeling of "stiffness", or make it elastically deformable, change its texture, etc. Just like how 3D graphics can have objects with different textures, bump maps, and physical behaviour.
In response to this story, I had a look at the synaptics driver in Linux.
According to my dmesg output, the touchpad on my HP does indeed have the flag set for "SYN_CAP_MULTIFINGER", which I assume means it can report the positions of multiple touches.
Running "synclient -m 10" however reports a constant "0000000" under the "multi" field.
Anyone know how to properly access the multitouch data provided by the Linux synaptics driver?
I see that I got modded troll for this comment. Is that not what they did?
It's merely a statement of fact, I didn't make any judgment call here.. in fact, in the sentence following it I discussed how actually that may be the best way they could have approached the situation anyways. Silly mods.
That said.. it occurred to me that, just like any other "standard" supported by a company, one has to be careful in employing it and depending on it. MS could easily make incompatible changes at any time in the future to the Windows implementation, creating a non-stop game of tag for the Moonlight developers. Remember what MS did to HTML? It will be even easier to "embrace and extend" for MS on their _own_ standard. It would be much better if there were an open standard for this sort of media. SVG comes close, but I have yet to see a fast, dependable, and standardized implementation, and Flash, unlike SVG, supports much more than just vector graphics.
Right, so MS had promised from the start that Silverlight would have a Linux version.
I just didn't realize they had been planning on achieving that goal by getting a bunch of OSS coders to do all their work for them for free.
Oh well, probably better this way, since it might remain capital-F Free. What's the Moonlight license, anyway?
If this _is_ a "FREE" implementation of Silverlight it really will start to look like a nicer alternative to the poorly-supported, closed-source Flash for Linux.
There is one blaringly huge difference with "scientific concensus" vs. other forms of "one permitted truth". EVIDENCE.
It's amazing what leaps in logic people will use to justify ignorance.
Sorry for my ignorance, but at least isn't there a way to use ext3 partitions for your data?
Maybe not. I'd be surprised if it hasn't been ported yet.
and Arnold Schwarzenegger with his giant biceps.
Yes.
Whatever. They don't need to do any work. All they need to do is open up the specs, and people will do all the work for them. People aren't bitching that the drivers don't work, people are bitching because they aren't allowed to improve them.
There's a whole community out there willing to do all the software work from scratch, but they don't have the resources to create the hardware. The hardware developers somehow see this need to provide the software themselves, instead of taking advantage of the community, but then go and do a shoddy job of it. That's why people are annoyed by the whole thing. It could be so much better, with very little effort from ATI, but they steadfastly refuse to play nice, forcing developers to resort to reverse engineering. Same goes to Nvidia by the way, but at least they seem to be a bit more competent in Linux/X.org driver development.
This whole argument is just a big excuse. We don't want excuses, we want some damn drivers.
--- someone who's been buying Nvidia since he realized that ATI doesn't work as well on Linux.
firewall schmirewall, I can't wait to see what "wrong" things people do with this.. a Linux machine on a USB stick? For 180$? Awesome.
Interesting technique you have.
Case in point.
I was just copying down a quote from an article I was reading, and I realized that my typing skills haven't really been up to scratch, even though I spend hours and hours on the computer every day. For programming and general writing, I spend a lot more time thinking than actually writing, plenty of time to fix typing mistakes. Rarely do I ever just copy something directly, but this time I happened to be putting a long block quote into my document.
It got me thinking.. secretaries used to be hired just based on their typing skills. Speed & accuracy. I remember when I took a typing class in high school the teacher made us cover the keyboard so we couldn't look at it while we were typing, and we especially weren't allowed to use the delete key so she could mark us on how many errors we made.
But it's funny, that's so backward, of course. Since typewriters are no longer used, your typing speed _includes_ the time it takes to hit the delete key and fix what you did wrong. You time further increases if you have to look at the screen and then find your place in the text. So typing speed is now the only thing that counts...
Now add into that the fact that the days of the boss dictating memos to the secretary are mostly gone, and typing is really a skill that no longer matters. It certainly helps in day-to-day computer tasks, but it's no longer a make or break skill for IT and office people.
Or Lyx! I've been using it to write my thesis and it's fantastic. A tad hard to customize, but usually I find if you have to customize you're probably doing something wrong. In cases where you do need custom output formatting it's probably not the right tool for the job. But for paper/thesis and letter writing, nothing beats it.
Well that doesn't require scripting, now does it? Dumbass.
And that, of course, is almost directly related to the fact that the MS file formats are closed. With an open format like ODF, scripts for importing data aren't critical, since it's quite easy instead for a program to export it in the proper format, or to write an external script or program to transform data into ODF format. After all, it's XML.
Unfortunately MS has trained industry to rely on scripting to do basic things that should be done in other ways, just for the sake of not having to divulge file format details.
But in any case, I agree with the opinion expressed elsewhere in the comments that scripting isn't inherently bad, but it should be limited in ability by default. If a company needs unprotected scripting so badly, I don't see why their IT department can't just deploy it with the correct defaults.
Way to not answer his statement. The appropriate response, purely in the context of this thread (whether I agree with GP or not), is: What new stuff are you referring to??
How can the market "speak" if they have nothing to compare?
Now, as for the GP, I don't agree simply because it's a fundamental property of human nature that we will always be creating "new stuff". However, "new stuff" is, as a rule, always in reference to "old stuff", so if copyright has the power to restrict this "reference", then copyright is doing something wrong. Of course, traditionally Fair Use covers this problem, but in the brave new digital world, "reference" is often more literal than copyright holders are comfortable with, and therein lies the real problem, and IMHO, the real reason that copyright should NOT be extended indefinitely: that "old stuff" copyright holders will never get with the program and learn to encourage re-use and re-cycling of ideas in the digital medium.
(Of course that's not strictly true.. I'm sure there are plenty of examples of oldschool musicians and artists who are blown away by the concept of remixes and are loving every minute of it, but there are enough cases of the opposite to make my point.)