Re:Ada was designed for multiple CPUs
on
The Return of Ada
·
· Score: 1
"we could do it in C" is kinda what started this topic. Just because some of the popular languages have some synchronization (which is compiler and/or OS dependent, by the way) doesn't mean that the compiler will be helping you to check your intent at those places, or even if you're using sync where necessary. I don't remember Ada well enough to say it knew when synchronized access to data was necessary, but I suspect it did (or could).
As for everything ending up as machine language, well, that's just shorthand for dynamic wiring configurations made possible by transistors and gates... We can reducto ad absurdem, but that isn't relevent to the comments in any way. But, I can at least mention that around 1987 there was a company called Rational Ada (or something like that, they were in Mountain View, CA) that had an Ada hardware platform that did dynamic type and range checking in parallel with execution. So on their platform, even the ML was 'Ada' in that it had strong type and range rules.
FWIW, I am now a C programmer, and have been for the past 24 years. The USAF sent me to Ada class, and it looked "neat" but my department had no access to a fully validated compiler nor hardware to run any of those that were just starting to become available. So I never got to do anything "real" with it. Just playing with toy implementations like GNAT that weren't validated. (Remember, this was in the late '80s -- GNAT might be validated now, I don't know.)
Ada was designed for multiple CPUs
on
The Return of Ada
·
· Score: 1
When I was in the USAF (1984-88) I was sent to Ada training. When I finished, we were given an exemption, allowing our system to remain in C. However, one particular feature of Ada seems more suited to current hardware than other languages: it was designed to allow many computers/CPUs to communicate via the rendezvous. I don't believe that C/C++, Pascal/Delphi, or any of the most commonly used languages can say that. (I'm sure someone knows of another language that does, but I suspect it isn't used very much when compared to the others.)
Couple that with the concept that, "if Ada will compile (and link) your application it will do what you asked it to do," it seems to me that Ada may have simply been 20 years or so ahead of its time. (smile)
Here's what I tell my nieces and nephews:
Use Wikipedia to get some ideas of things that you might want to research about a topic. *DO NOT* under any circumstances assume that what you find there to be true and/or factual.
Sure, they might get lucky, but they might also hit a page recently updated with bad info just to win a bet...
In my mind, I still have difficulty separating Wikipedia and an old Saturday Night Live skit: The "Common Knowledge" game show, hosted by Steve Martin. Common knowledge seems to me to be the very most fundamental definition of the data at Wikipedia.
Conceptually, I like a white (or just a bit off white) background. Practically, I've not yet owned a computer monitor that wasn't back-lighted, which makes any background color (other than black) way too much like staring at a light bulb. Since I write code all day, I find it most comfortable to use many colors on a black background for my primary tools. Secondary tools, like word processors, help systems, web browsers, etc. still have the default bright background. I find that the contrast actually helps with my particular vision problems (difficulty with contrast and focus). I also have a window beside my screens and look out often to focus on distant objects in the Florida sun (more brightness to contend with).
Within the code editing environment, I (and my co-workers, we took a vote) seem to be able to distinguish more color variations with a black background than with white. Since we like syntax coloring, this allows more different colors for different syntactical elements. But there's nothing what-so-ever scientific about my study. Just twenty-four years of experience.
Even though I think there are too many generalizations on this topic, I'm going to join in...
Games that require more thought and consideration than they do fast-twitch muscle and hand-eye coordination are still perfect for the PC. They may not be the biggest sellers but, they also require far less graphic muscle yet often require as much or more CPU muscle. I cannot imagine trying to play games that require actual thinking and complex interaction on a console (well, maybe if it had a good keyboard and mouse to use as game controllers). But I believe that text-oriented games (along the lines of Jeopardy, Trivial Pursuit, possibly even Scrabble and Monopoly) would be reduced to boring and moronic multiple choice things. On the other hand, if the same kind of effort was put into language processing for those games as is put into increasing frame rate a tiny bit on others, they could be quite enjoyable for people more coordinated in thought than in finger twitches. And then there's always chess. How is a multi-core PC less suitable for a chess program than an XBox or Playstation or Nintendo? Do shiny, realistic looking pieces make the game play better?
The companies building PC games optimized for next year's (or some year after that) graphic hardware (like ID once was) are obviously only targeting people with the thickest wallets (and people willing to slog along with poor performance/limited features). They aren't planning on selling many copies when the hardware finally becomes affordable because, by then, their game is often obsolete. So naturally they will declare the PC a bad platform for them, because, with their lead times, they're hoping to have their software ready for the best stuff available when it hits the market. But even if they succeed, few people can (or will) afford to get it until the prices come down -- which typically happens when something new has supplanted it. On the other hand, with the game platforms, they have a relatively static target that starts better than PC hardware, but slowly falls farther and farther behind the PC's leading edge until, after several years, a new, improved model is finally issued.
So it seems to me that a more honest statement isn't that the PC is bad for gaming or that the hardware sucks or any of that stuff. Instead, it should be said that due to the immense difficulty of crafting good (or at least reasonablly performing) code for all the possible variations, the PC is not an economically viable platform for graphics-intensive games to pursue. I believe that it is all about profits, and that is not to say good or bad, just what is. The largest computer "game" companies aren't about making good games, they are about making games that will sell as many copies as possible to the fast-twitch crowd, because they're the ones most likely to blow $50 (each) on game after game. The companies don't (in general) ever want a truly good game, because one of those would be endlessly replayable and that would cut into their bottom line!
This 20 year old idea was used many, many times in the various Star Trek shows, starting with Next Generation. They used large flat, touchable displays embedded in desks and console and often would set a pad computer on a desk/console to transfer some data to/from it. Theirs may not have been actual, functional computers at the time, but the ideas seem almost exactly the same to me. Of course, the idea is probably even older and from something I didn't read or see, but I see nothing in Microsoft's offering that I didn't see in Trek's. Hopefully this means they cannot patent the concept...
We are not working against some sort of impending carbon countdown doomsday clock to doom and oblivion. We're just making the climate slowly, but measurably and somewhat predictably, worse, over the coming decades.
While my personal belief tends towards the skeptical side, I think it only fair to point out that, since the climate is so complex, there is a possibility (however slim it may be) that we may be slowly, measurably approaching an as yet unknown tipping point in climate. If we reach such a tipping point and suddenly start experiencing much more pronounced changes than we are now, then the alarmists will have been correct.
And yes, I used the word "belief" intentionally, because not being a scientist myself, I must admit it comes down to faith more than actual knowledge on my part. Not a completely blind faith, mind you, mine has been swayed by years of exposure to various skeptical views of the subject. And often I'm swayed more by the calm, rational sounding (to me, at least) tone of the skeptics vs the "chicken little" tone that I perceive from the other side.
There was an interesting (to me at least) short story written at least 10 years ago that used this as a major plot point. The story had two guys writing security packages for a system. In the story, the "pattern of typing" security was secretly layered over the strong password system, and when the bad/compromised developer tried to use someone else's password to get it, he was logged into a similar system that contained fake data instead. I'm only including details in case someone else read it and can remember the author and/or title... My gray matter is failing me on those points.
How do movies like "12 Monkeys", "Brazil", "Dark City", "Donnie Darko", "Outbreak", "The Abyss", and others fit in to this theory?
Also, how do movies that had some action mixed with many interesting ideas like "The Matrix" and "V for Vendetta" fit in?
And what about TV movies/series? Like the "Alien Nation" flicks, series such as "Dead Like Me" and "The X Files".
And anyway, before anyone plames Lucas, don't forget the sweaty, unthinking masses that vote with their ticket dollars. Hollywood will generally invest in whatever will get the largest part of the great unwashed horde to part with their money. Teach them to think and read and not only will the movies be better, but likely, so will everything else...
Until then, enjoy "American Idol", "Survivor", "Wife Swap", etc...
You know, I think I've read most of these posts before, many years ago. Well, at least the same templates were used back then. Remember when we had RWARS over whether emacs was the worst editor ever made or if, in fact, it was even an editor? Change a few words here and there and voila! You've transformed the discussion into the current GW "debate" with no more (or less) sense or (in) valid opinions from (or perceived by) either side. Welcome to history repeating itself.
Can you name one climatologist who disagrees with that statement?
I've read the some of the scientists that worked on the recent IPCC report are saying that the summaries provided to the public and the press show the opposite conclusion to their detailed reports. That means at least some of what we're hearing about that report is just plain wrong.
But, for some names how about these? (The first few don't have the word "climatologist" attached to their names, but they all work in the climate/meterology field)
Richard Tol received his PhD in Economics from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He is Michael Otto Professor of Sustainability and Global Change at Hamburg University, director of the Centre for Marine and Atmospheric Science, principal researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije Universiteit, and Adjunct Professor at the Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a board member of the Centre for Marine and Climate Research, the International Max Planck Research Schools of Earth Systems Modelling and Maritime Affairs, and the European Forum on Integrated Environmental Assessment. He is an editor of Energy Economics, an associate editor of Environmental and Resource Economics, and a member of the editorial board of Environmental Science and Policy and Integrated Assessment.
Christopher Landsea received his doctoral degree in atmospheric science from Colorado State University. A research meteorologist at the Atlantic Oceanic and Meteorological Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, he was chair of the American Meteorological Society's committee on tropical meteorology and tropical cyclones and a recipient of the American Meteorological Society's Banner I. Miller Award for the "best contribution to the science of hurricane and tropical weather forecasting." He is a frequent contributor to leading journals, including Science, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Journal of Climate, and Nature.
Duncan Wingham was educated at Leeds and Bath Universities where he gained a B.Sc. and PhD. in Physics. He was appointed to a chair in the Department of Space and Climate Physics in 1996, and to head of the Department of Earth Sciences in October, 2005. Prof. Wingham is a member of the National Environmental Research Council's Science and Technology Board and Earth Observation Experts Group. He is a director of the NERC Centre for Polar Observation & Modeling and principal scientist of the European Space Agency CryoSat Satellite Mission, the first ESA Earth Sciences satellite selected through open, scientific competition.
Plus a few guys who the term "climatologist" directly attached to their names: Patrick J. Michaels, John Christie, and David R. Legates. There are probably more, but I only had about ten minutes to search with Google...
Actually, Global Warming might be a very good thing. Since we're going to run out of fossil fuels in the no-to-distant future, Global Warming will mean that folks in the higher latitudes won't need to worry about freezing when there's no more oil or electricity to heat their homes in the winter. Heck, maybe winter will be demoted to a long "early fall."
Perhaps this was their plan all along...
I see the recent IPCC report mentioned often, but I wonder how many folks that refer to it have only actually heard about it through the news or even actually read the summary. I wonder because at least 7-8 of the scientists that wrote the detailed reports have complained that the IPCC official summaries and press releases show the opposite conclusion from the detailed reports. In other words, at least some (if not much) of the actual science behind the IPCC report apparently was unable to find any definite correlation between humankind's effects and climate. That doesn't mean that anyone thinks current pollution levels should continue, or even that the Earth isn't getting warmer right now. One interesting series of articles about those scientists is at http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=2 2003a0d-37cc-4399-8bcc-39cd20bed2f6&k=0
Personally, I'm suspicious of the global warming industry because of some of the funding issues I've read about (but don't have references handy, sorry). For one, the funding rate went up by a factor of about 100 after global warming was announced around the time of Pres. Regan. Also, it seems that anyone who attempts to publish any research contrary to popular views has their funding cut (and some have lost their jobs completely). To me, that sounds like an organization that wants to stay alive at any cost, rather than one interested in real science. Especially since the funding seems to be tied to producing proof that, rather than determining if, Man is responsible for global warming.
From some of the comments and the description of the product, it sounds like a true boon to folks trying to target specific points within a compound they cannot enter. For example, naughty folks might be able to quite accurately mark targets using a photo taken using a know object/position in the foreground with the target in the distance. I suppose these folks could also be contractors, but it is likely they'll be building craters rather than nice warm, safe buildings. I'm sure someone must've said this before, but I missed it when I scanned the comments.
Much of our SPAM comes from our secondary MX handler. In fact, for a two week period I monitored all of the mail that came from ther secondary MX (our volume isn't huge) and discovered that every single message was SPAM. If our server had gone down, this likely would not be true, but under normal operation we don't receive anything from the other MX that is NOT SPAM. I've always suspected that SPAM sites send directly to the second (or subsequent) MX directly in order to avoid some of the black lists and whatnot, since everyone accepts mail from their other mail exchangers. To me, this solution sounds like it would do more to slow the delivery of email (potentially creating more copies for "them" to look at) than it would to do anything to block SPAM.
If Microsoft's patch will cause Windows XP (or Vista) to show the WRONG time for files saved near the DST change dates/times in years past, then it is NOT A FIX. This DST change has very, very deep effects on every single program that processes ANY dates/times before 2007 in the US. Program that went back before the current DST settings have already dealt with this (or decided to be wrong), but for those of us with no data older than Windows itself, we've never had to worry about this...until now.
For example, a power company wants to compare the power usage trend for, say, 5-6pm (when a large portion of people get out of and home from work) during late March for the years 2005-2008. If their software doesn't know to account for two different DST rules, then two of those years will be comparing the wrong hour of the day. And, FWIW, I chose this example specifically because it lends itself much more to local time than to UTC.
So, to patch this correctly, Windows will need to know which set of [at least two] DST rules to use (based on the year) when translating ANY time from 'system' (i.e. UTC) to 'local'. I don't see that happening, so I don't think that even the XP and Vista users will have a working OS, at least in the sense of correct time translation from UTC to local in the USA.
The may not be "pushing" but by making almost impossible to see the content of email messages on the Yahoo mail site, they've effectively forced me to use IE (well, IE Tab in FireFox, but still...) in order to read the mail that comes to that account. And both FireFox 1.5 and 2.0 have the same rendering problem with Yahoo mail, at least for me. When I contacted support, I've been told (more than once) that my questions is important and will be answered as soon as possible -- which is NOT apparently within 30 days of posting a question about total unusability of their service. But "pushing" me to use IE? No, I wouldn't say that. After all, I can just not use Yahoo at all, right?
This is a wonderful idea that I've been hearing variations of for many, many years. I don't think it any more likely for software than I do for books, however. It is conceivable that someday authors would create a "new" book by selecting sentences, paragraphs and maybe even chapters from existing books and just adding a bit of "glue" to connect them. In fact, this has probably already been done. But was it any good? I doubt it.
As for object re-use, I can never forget one of my programming instructors saying, "Don't reinvent the wheel." But despite using that phrase all the time, he was never able to explain why we have so many different types of wheels, with more being added all the time. How can anyone truly believe that something as complex as software will ever be so perfectly encapsulated? Heck, we aren't even doing it with simple objects like houses or cars, though, maybe, someday, there will only be one standard set of car (or house) parts that are used. Total uniformity would certainly ease maintenance, although the aethstetic aspects may suffer.
For a computer example, how about something fairly fundamental, like a vehicle guidance system... Changing a few parameters and adding a little glue code should be the most that is needed for the softwear to drive a car, fly a plane, navigate a submarine, roll a segway, or travel to Mars, right? After all, all of those things deal with the same inputs (mass, gravity, inertia, direction, velocity, etc.) don't they? I expect that if such a chunk of software is written it will be massively outweighed by the "glue" code required to support it on each particular device.
But I'm a pessimist and a Doubting Thomas who probably should have been born in Missouri...
How in the world can anyone believe a totally made up number like an average age of 8yrs old for a child's ages when they get their first cell phone? I can only assume that is the average of all children between the ages of 7 and 9 who actually received cell phones. Otherwise, there must be an awfully large number of 1yr olds with phones in order to balance out the (obviously to any thinking person) number of teenagers with the things. Personally, I'd be much more inclined to believe a number like 11yrs, and that only if we limit the definite of "child" to someone who has yet to reach their teens AND only include the kids who actually have phones (any child without one would count as an age over 12, in my scheme).
Also, I've yet to see a situation where a child would need a phone over something simpler (cheaper and less flexible, too) like a two-way radio.
Go see "An Inconvenient Truth" while you're at it.
For balance you might want to check out the books "Kicking the Sacred Cow" by James P Hogan and "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton. Better yet, go read some of their reference material as both have nice bibliographies, too. There was also an interesting piece about the movie you mention linked on/. recently, you might want to start there for a different perspective on the topic (it is short and to the point) at http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/harris061206.h tm
For my part, I believe that the global warming we hear about constantly is a tool being used by the powers that be (pretty much like "State of Fear" explains). However, that doesn't preclude the possibility that there is some actual warming going on, too. And that warming definitely has a cause. And we may or may not be contributing to it, but I'm not arrogant enough to assume that humanity yet has the power (or sense?) to truly affect global change.
Remember, we don't want to overreact like people did 400-500 years ago and cause another little ice age, do we? (For those who haven't though it out, I believe that was caused by the sudden increase in the number of ships sailing westward to the New World at that time. All those hulls affected the warm ocean currents that once heated Europe and also their sails altered some of the wind patterns driving those currents. It only ended when non-wind powered vessels became the norm. [smile]
I regularly use XP/MCE to record StarGate and DrWho on SciFi channel with no problem. A few weeks ago, Media Center stopped recording the first half of the DrWho season finale about 30 minutes into the episode. XP/MCE logged a reason of:
Doctor Who was not recorded. Recording of this content is prohibited by the content provider.
So far, that was the only episode this has happened with, but XP/MCE flatly refused to record the episode on any of its repeat airings, citing the same reason. Since then, XP/MCE has recorded the second half episode and some repeats without a problem. I'm wondering if this might've been a test of the infamous broadcast flag or if there's something worse afoot in the part of Microsoft that is beholden to the Hollywood Nazis.
Try Opera. All of the other browsers I've seen could learn from Opera's page scaling. The graphics and (I think) absolute pixel sizes given on a page are scale automatically based on the relative font size selected, producing a nice, clean zoomed page. Yeah, sometimes graphics get a bit pixellated, but they're often overused anyway.
Anyway, Opera is the only browser I've seen that even scales the parts that are 'fixed size' elsewhere. Like the left/right menu columns here, which stay the same width when the font size changes. In Opera, those column widths adjust, too.
I was bored by the time I got to the actual test, but I clicked through, just to see what came at the end. I positioned the mouse where it would be over both the 'Start' and the 'Up' buttons so I could keep clicking without listening or looking. I'm 44 and managed to score a little better than average for my age group. Not sure what that actually says about the test, but it just didn't seem right to me. Oh well.
Slashdot Mirror
"we could do it in C" is kinda what started this topic. Just because some of the popular languages have some synchronization (which is compiler and/or OS dependent, by the way) doesn't mean that the compiler will be helping you to check your intent at those places, or even if you're using sync where necessary. I don't remember Ada well enough to say it knew when synchronized access to data was necessary, but I suspect it did (or could).
As for everything ending up as machine language, well, that's just shorthand for dynamic wiring configurations made possible by transistors and gates... We can reducto ad absurdem, but that isn't relevent to the comments in any way. But, I can at least mention that around 1987 there was a company called Rational Ada (or something like that, they were in Mountain View, CA) that had an Ada hardware platform that did dynamic type and range checking in parallel with execution. So on their platform, even the ML was 'Ada' in that it had strong type and range rules.
FWIW, I am now a C programmer, and have been for the past 24 years. The USAF sent me to Ada class, and it looked "neat" but my department had no access to a fully validated compiler nor hardware to run any of those that were just starting to become available. So I never got to do anything "real" with it. Just playing with toy implementations like GNAT that weren't validated. (Remember, this was in the late '80s -- GNAT might be validated now, I don't know.)
When I was in the USAF (1984-88) I was sent to Ada training. When I finished, we were given an exemption, allowing our system to remain in C. However, one particular feature of Ada seems more suited to current hardware than other languages: it was designed to allow many computers/CPUs to communicate via the rendezvous. I don't believe that C/C++, Pascal/Delphi, or any of the most commonly used languages can say that. (I'm sure someone knows of another language that does, but I suspect it isn't used very much when compared to the others.)
Couple that with the concept that, "if Ada will compile (and link) your application it will do what you asked it to do," it seems to me that Ada may have simply been 20 years or so ahead of its time. (smile)
Here's what I tell my nieces and nephews: Use Wikipedia to get some ideas of things that you might want to research about a topic. *DO NOT* under any circumstances assume that what you find there to be true and/or factual. Sure, they might get lucky, but they might also hit a page recently updated with bad info just to win a bet...
In my mind, I still have difficulty separating Wikipedia and an old Saturday Night Live skit: The "Common Knowledge" game show, hosted by Steve Martin. Common knowledge seems to me to be the very most fundamental definition of the data at Wikipedia.
Conceptually, I like a white (or just a bit off white) background. Practically, I've not yet owned a computer monitor that wasn't back-lighted, which makes any background color (other than black) way too much like staring at a light bulb. Since I write code all day, I find it most comfortable to use many colors on a black background for my primary tools. Secondary tools, like word processors, help systems, web browsers, etc. still have the default bright background. I find that the contrast actually helps with my particular vision problems (difficulty with contrast and focus). I also have a window beside my screens and look out often to focus on distant objects in the Florida sun (more brightness to contend with).
Within the code editing environment, I (and my co-workers, we took a vote) seem to be able to distinguish more color variations with a black background than with white. Since we like syntax coloring, this allows more different colors for different syntactical elements. But there's nothing what-so-ever scientific about my study. Just twenty-four years of experience.
Even though I think there are too many generalizations on this topic, I'm going to join in...
Games that require more thought and consideration than they do fast-twitch muscle and hand-eye coordination are still perfect for the PC. They may not be the biggest sellers but, they also require far less graphic muscle yet often require as much or more CPU muscle. I cannot imagine trying to play games that require actual thinking and complex interaction on a console (well, maybe if it had a good keyboard and mouse to use as game controllers). But I believe that text-oriented games (along the lines of Jeopardy, Trivial Pursuit, possibly even Scrabble and Monopoly) would be reduced to boring and moronic multiple choice things. On the other hand, if the same kind of effort was put into language processing for those games as is put into increasing frame rate a tiny bit on others, they could be quite enjoyable for people more coordinated in thought than in finger twitches. And then there's always chess. How is a multi-core PC less suitable for a chess program than an XBox or Playstation or Nintendo? Do shiny, realistic looking pieces make the game play better?
The companies building PC games optimized for next year's (or some year after that) graphic hardware (like ID once was) are obviously only targeting people with the thickest wallets (and people willing to slog along with poor performance/limited features). They aren't planning on selling many copies when the hardware finally becomes affordable because, by then, their game is often obsolete. So naturally they will declare the PC a bad platform for them, because, with their lead times, they're hoping to have their software ready for the best stuff available when it hits the market. But even if they succeed, few people can (or will) afford to get it until the prices come down -- which typically happens when something new has supplanted it. On the other hand, with the game platforms, they have a relatively static target that starts better than PC hardware, but slowly falls farther and farther behind the PC's leading edge until, after several years, a new, improved model is finally issued.
So it seems to me that a more honest statement isn't that the PC is bad for gaming or that the hardware sucks or any of that stuff. Instead, it should be said that due to the immense difficulty of crafting good (or at least reasonablly performing) code for all the possible variations, the PC is not an economically viable platform for graphics-intensive games to pursue. I believe that it is all about profits, and that is not to say good or bad, just what is. The largest computer "game" companies aren't about making good games, they are about making games that will sell as many copies as possible to the fast-twitch crowd, because they're the ones most likely to blow $50 (each) on game after game. The companies don't (in general) ever want a truly good game, because one of those would be endlessly replayable and that would cut into their bottom line!
This 20 year old idea was used many, many times in the various Star Trek shows, starting with Next Generation. They used large flat, touchable displays embedded in desks and console and often would set a pad computer on a desk/console to transfer some data to/from it. Theirs may not have been actual, functional computers at the time, but the ideas seem almost exactly the same to me. Of course, the idea is probably even older and from something I didn't read or see, but I see nothing in Microsoft's offering that I didn't see in Trek's. Hopefully this means they cannot patent the concept...
While my personal belief tends towards the skeptical side, I think it only fair to point out that, since the climate is so complex, there is a possibility (however slim it may be) that we may be slowly, measurably approaching an as yet unknown tipping point in climate. If we reach such a tipping point and suddenly start experiencing much more pronounced changes than we are now, then the alarmists will have been correct.
And yes, I used the word "belief" intentionally, because not being a scientist myself, I must admit it comes down to faith more than actual knowledge on my part. Not a completely blind faith, mind you, mine has been swayed by years of exposure to various skeptical views of the subject. And often I'm swayed more by the calm, rational sounding (to me, at least) tone of the skeptics vs the "chicken little" tone that I perceive from the other side.
There was an interesting (to me at least) short story written at least 10 years ago that used this as a major plot point. The story had two guys writing security packages for a system. In the story, the "pattern of typing" security was secretly layered over the strong password system, and when the bad/compromised developer tried to use someone else's password to get it, he was logged into a similar system that contained fake data instead. I'm only including details in case someone else read it and can remember the author and/or title... My gray matter is failing me on those points.
How do movies like "12 Monkeys", "Brazil", "Dark City", "Donnie Darko", "Outbreak", "The Abyss", and others fit in to this theory?
Also, how do movies that had some action mixed with many interesting ideas like "The Matrix" and "V for Vendetta" fit in?
And what about TV movies/series? Like the "Alien Nation" flicks, series such as "Dead Like Me" and "The X Files".
And anyway, before anyone plames Lucas, don't forget the sweaty, unthinking masses that vote with their ticket dollars. Hollywood will generally invest in whatever will get the largest part of the great unwashed horde to part with their money. Teach them to think and read and not only will the movies be better, but likely, so will everything else...
Until then, enjoy "American Idol", "Survivor", "Wife Swap", etc...
You know, I think I've read most of these posts before, many years ago. Well, at least the same templates were used back then. Remember when we had RWARS over whether emacs was the worst editor ever made or if, in fact, it was even an editor? Change a few words here and there and voila! You've transformed the discussion into the current GW "debate" with no more (or less) sense or (in) valid opinions from (or perceived by) either side. Welcome to history repeating itself.
I've read the some of the scientists that worked on the recent IPCC report are saying that the summaries provided to the public and the press show the opposite conclusion to their detailed reports. That means at least some of what we're hearing about that report is just plain wrong.
But, for some names how about these? (The first few don't have the word "climatologist" attached to their names, but they all work in the climate/meterology field)
Richard Tol received his PhD in Economics from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He is Michael Otto Professor of Sustainability and Global Change at Hamburg University, director of the Centre for Marine and Atmospheric Science, principal researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije Universiteit, and Adjunct Professor at the Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a board member of the Centre for Marine and Climate Research, the International Max Planck Research Schools of Earth Systems Modelling and Maritime Affairs, and the European Forum on Integrated Environmental Assessment. He is an editor of Energy Economics, an associate editor of Environmental and Resource Economics, and a member of the editorial board of Environmental Science and Policy and Integrated Assessment.
Christopher Landsea received his doctoral degree in atmospheric science from Colorado State University. A research meteorologist at the Atlantic Oceanic and Meteorological Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, he was chair of the American Meteorological Society's committee on tropical meteorology and tropical cyclones and a recipient of the American Meteorological Society's Banner I. Miller Award for the "best contribution to the science of hurricane and tropical weather forecasting." He is a frequent contributor to leading journals, including Science, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Journal of Climate, and Nature.
Duncan Wingham was educated at Leeds and Bath Universities where he gained a B.Sc. and PhD. in Physics. He was appointed to a chair in the Department of Space and Climate Physics in 1996, and to head of the Department of Earth Sciences in October, 2005. Prof. Wingham is a member of the National Environmental Research Council's Science and Technology Board and Earth Observation Experts Group. He is a director of the NERC Centre for Polar Observation & Modeling and principal scientist of the European Space Agency CryoSat Satellite Mission, the first ESA Earth Sciences satellite selected through open, scientific competition.
Plus a few guys who the term "climatologist" directly attached to their names: Patrick J. Michaels, John Christie, and David R. Legates. There are probably more, but I only had about ten minutes to search with Google...
Actually, Global Warming might be a very good thing. Since we're going to run out of fossil fuels in the no-to-distant future, Global Warming will mean that folks in the higher latitudes won't need to worry about freezing when there's no more oil or electricity to heat their homes in the winter. Heck, maybe winter will be demoted to a long "early fall." Perhaps this was their plan all along...
The original article mentions Mars as having global warming, but scientists are also reporting that Jupiter http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060504_red_j r.html, Triton http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1998/triton-0715.htm l and Pluto
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/pluto_warmin g_021009.html may also be warming up. Coincidence again?
I see the recent IPCC report mentioned often, but I wonder how many folks that refer to it have only actually heard about it through the news or even actually read the summary. I wonder because at least 7-8 of the scientists that wrote the detailed reports have complained that the IPCC official summaries and press releases show the opposite conclusion from the detailed reports. In other words, at least some (if not much) of the actual science behind the IPCC report apparently was unable to find any definite correlation between humankind's effects and climate. That doesn't mean that anyone thinks current pollution levels should continue, or even that the Earth isn't getting warmer right now. One interesting series of articles about those scientists is at http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=2 2003a0d-37cc-4399-8bcc-39cd20bed2f6&k=0
Personally, I'm suspicious of the global warming industry because of some of the funding issues I've read about (but don't have references handy, sorry). For one, the funding rate went up by a factor of about 100 after global warming was announced around the time of Pres. Regan. Also, it seems that anyone who attempts to publish any research contrary to popular views has their funding cut (and some have lost their jobs completely). To me, that sounds like an organization that wants to stay alive at any cost, rather than one interested in real science. Especially since the funding seems to be tied to producing proof that, rather than determining if, Man is responsible for global warming.
From some of the comments and the description of the product, it sounds like a true boon to folks trying to target specific points within a compound they cannot enter. For example, naughty folks might be able to quite accurately mark targets using a photo taken using a know object/position in the foreground with the target in the distance. I suppose these folks could also be contractors, but it is likely they'll be building craters rather than nice warm, safe buildings. I'm sure someone must've said this before, but I missed it when I scanned the comments.
Much of our SPAM comes from our secondary MX handler. In fact, for a two week period I monitored all of the mail that came from ther secondary MX (our volume isn't huge) and discovered that every single message was SPAM. If our server had gone down, this likely would not be true, but under normal operation we don't receive anything from the other MX that is NOT SPAM. I've always suspected that SPAM sites send directly to the second (or subsequent) MX directly in order to avoid some of the black lists and whatnot, since everyone accepts mail from their other mail exchangers. To me, this solution sounds like it would do more to slow the delivery of email (potentially creating more copies for "them" to look at) than it would to do anything to block SPAM.
If Microsoft's patch will cause Windows XP (or Vista) to show the WRONG time for files saved near the DST change dates/times in years past, then it is NOT A FIX. This DST change has very, very deep effects on every single program that processes ANY dates/times before 2007 in the US. Program that went back before the current DST settings have already dealt with this (or decided to be wrong), but for those of us with no data older than Windows itself, we've never had to worry about this...until now.
For example, a power company wants to compare the power usage trend for, say, 5-6pm (when a large portion of people get out of and home from work) during late March for the years 2005-2008. If their software doesn't know to account for two different DST rules, then two of those years will be comparing the wrong hour of the day. And, FWIW, I chose this example specifically because it lends itself much more to local time than to UTC.
So, to patch this correctly, Windows will need to know which set of [at least two] DST rules to use (based on the year) when translating ANY time from 'system' (i.e. UTC) to 'local'. I don't see that happening, so I don't think that even the XP and Vista users will have a working OS, at least in the sense of correct time translation from UTC to local in the USA.
The may not be "pushing" but by making almost impossible to see the content of email messages on the Yahoo mail site, they've effectively forced me to use IE (well, IE Tab in FireFox, but still...) in order to read the mail that comes to that account. And both FireFox 1.5 and 2.0 have the same rendering problem with Yahoo mail, at least for me. When I contacted support, I've been told (more than once) that my questions is important and will be answered as soon as possible -- which is NOT apparently within 30 days of posting a question about total unusability of their service. But "pushing" me to use IE? No, I wouldn't say that. After all, I can just not use Yahoo at all, right?
This is a wonderful idea that I've been hearing variations of for many, many years. I don't think it any more likely for software than I do for books, however. It is conceivable that someday authors would create a "new" book by selecting sentences, paragraphs and maybe even chapters from existing books and just adding a bit of "glue" to connect them. In fact, this has probably already been done. But was it any good? I doubt it.
As for object re-use, I can never forget one of my programming instructors saying, "Don't reinvent the wheel." But despite using that phrase all the time, he was never able to explain why we have so many different types of wheels, with more being added all the time. How can anyone truly believe that something as complex as software will ever be so perfectly encapsulated? Heck, we aren't even doing it with simple objects like houses or cars, though, maybe, someday, there will only be one standard set of car (or house) parts that are used. Total uniformity would certainly ease maintenance, although the aethstetic aspects may suffer.
For a computer example, how about something fairly fundamental, like a vehicle guidance system... Changing a few parameters and adding a little glue code should be the most that is needed for the softwear to drive a car, fly a plane, navigate a submarine, roll a segway, or travel to Mars, right? After all, all of those things deal with the same inputs (mass, gravity, inertia, direction, velocity, etc.) don't they? I expect that if such a chunk of software is written it will be massively outweighed by the "glue" code required to support it on each particular device.
But I'm a pessimist and a Doubting Thomas who probably should have been born in Missouri...
How in the world can anyone believe a totally made up number like an average age of 8yrs old for a child's ages when they get their first cell phone? I can only assume that is the average of all children between the ages of 7 and 9 who actually received cell phones. Otherwise, there must be an awfully large number of 1yr olds with phones in order to balance out the (obviously to any thinking person) number of teenagers with the things. Personally, I'd be much more inclined to believe a number like 11yrs, and that only if we limit the definite of "child" to someone who has yet to reach their teens AND only include the kids who actually have phones (any child without one would count as an age over 12, in my scheme).
Also, I've yet to see a situation where a child would need a phone over something simpler (cheaper and less flexible, too) like a two-way radio.
For balance you might want to check out the books "Kicking the Sacred Cow" by James P Hogan and "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton. Better yet, go read some of their reference material as both have nice bibliographies, too. There was also an interesting piece about the movie you mention linked on /. recently, you might want to start there for a different perspective on the topic (it is short and to the point) at http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/harris061206.h tm
For my part, I believe that the global warming we hear about constantly is a tool being used by the powers that be (pretty much like "State of Fear" explains). However, that doesn't preclude the possibility that there is some actual warming going on, too. And that warming definitely has a cause. And we may or may not be contributing to it, but I'm not arrogant enough to assume that humanity yet has the power (or sense?) to truly affect global change.
Remember, we don't want to overreact like people did 400-500 years ago and cause another little ice age, do we? (For those who haven't though it out, I believe that was caused by the sudden increase in the number of ships sailing westward to the New World at that time. All those hulls affected the warm ocean currents that once heated Europe and also their sails altered some of the wind patterns driving those currents. It only ended when non-wind powered vessels became the norm. [smile]
XP/MCE == Windows XP / Media Center Edition
It includes DVR software that understands the dual tuner that came with my computer, among other things.
I regularly use XP/MCE to record StarGate and DrWho on SciFi channel with no problem. A few weeks ago, Media Center stopped recording the first half of the DrWho season finale about 30 minutes into the episode. XP/MCE logged a reason of:
So far, that was the only episode this has happened with, but XP/MCE flatly refused to record the episode on any of its repeat airings, citing the same reason. Since then, XP/MCE has recorded the second half episode and some repeats without a problem. I'm wondering if this might've been a test of the infamous broadcast flag or if there's something worse afoot in the part of Microsoft that is beholden to the Hollywood Nazis.
Try Opera. All of the other browsers I've seen could learn from Opera's page scaling. The graphics and (I think) absolute pixel sizes given on a page are scale automatically based on the relative font size selected, producing a nice, clean zoomed page. Yeah, sometimes graphics get a bit pixellated, but they're often overused anyway. Anyway, Opera is the only browser I've seen that even scales the parts that are 'fixed size' elsewhere. Like the left/right menu columns here, which stay the same width when the font size changes. In Opera, those column widths adjust, too.
I was bored by the time I got to the actual test, but I clicked through, just to see what came at the end. I positioned the mouse where it would be over both the 'Start' and the 'Up' buttons so I could keep clicking without listening or looking. I'm 44 and managed to score a little better than average for my age group. Not sure what that actually says about the test, but it just didn't seem right to me. Oh well.