True, that. While I'm out imagining things, I'd rather imagine a world where computer crackers aren't attacking my networks, and people stop making errors. "And no religion, too." -- John Lennon
At this rate, I'm never going to be able to meet my old goal of using my CPU as a stove, or even a hot plate. I had high hopes for 3dfx, or possibly even nVidia... And I guess there's always intel.
I get hungry at work, damn it.
-Puk
Rather than surround lights...
on
Surround Lights
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· Score: 2
I'd rather have the image of the game projected directly on my retina, a la this article. Combine that with good lighting models, and an eye tracking system, and you can do anything you can do with room lighting and more.
Of course, room lighting is much more technologically (and financially) feasible right now, but I can dream, right?
Not to mention the fact that no one is being productive during these paid vacations, so they won't be generating any revenue, directly or indirectly. Maybe those of the 38,000 who aren't being forced to vacate (so to speak) will get something done, but it seems like this is going to lower their burn rate a little and lower their productivity a lot.
I wondered what the real point of this was when my friend's (unnamed) company did this, and I wonder now.
Actually, no. If I recall correctly, DOOM used a (more or less) strictly peer-to-peer model, where each node was responsible for keeping track of everything.
I'm sorry, you're correct. Wish there was a way to retract posts here.:) Moderate my first one down.
What's silly is that they actually are going to waste money trying to pursue this. Didn't doom use this same architecture (arguably not in 3d, but that's just an obvious extension). Or the plethora of doom clones? I know I was playing these before 1996. If I thought harder, I could probably even come up with WAY older 2d games which used the same basic architecture.
Also note on the linked patents on that page -- someone was nice enough to patent video games in the year 2000. w00t.
Why does it usually imply corporate control? Why can't some open-OS based piece of hardware with completely free (in both senses) software give us convergent tools? Why not have the hardware open too?
I can build a reasonably open (yes, it relies on corporations for chips, etc, but there are limits) system which does a whole LOT of this stuff right now. Of course, it'd be big, unweildy, expensive, and incomplete, but those are the things time has shown itself to be good at fixing. Why do I need to rely on corporations? I can buy a Rio, or build an equivalent on my own right now. I think this will be true of the next steps of evolution as well.
With regards to 2, it will be very difficult (especially in uncontrolled conditions such as on a boat) to detect intruders in software. If you have a closed room you want to monitor, you might get away with it.
That's exactly what I was talking about. Motion detection software isn't the very difficult part (no insult implied to the writers of such software -- it can be done well or badly). But it's very difficult to make it work usefully unless you have a fairly stable background. In a closed control room, it could work, but pointing out to sea, it would have a hard time, especially with a host of "valid" moving objects such as other ships being present.
Note that optical logic gates are not completely new. Check out section 5.9.3.3, "The NOLM [Non-Linear Optical Loop Mirror] as a Logic Gate", in IBM's redbook "Understanding Optical Communications".
Also note that they have not created optical logic gates in this article, but optical transistors. However, if they are truly analagous to electrical transistors, then they can be put together to make logic gates. I have no knowledge of which technology is more appropriate (if either) for making large scale optical "integrated circuits".
Incidentally, I definitely recommend that (free as in beer) book to anyone looking for a overview of optics and optical networking for the technical non-optical-engineer. It's a couple of years and old, and so a couple of years out of date, but still accurate in most ways.
1) Do you want to use this to notice if someone is stealing your stuff, or catch pictures of whoever stole your stuff?
2) Are you planning on remotely watching this all day (or having someone watch it), or do you want it to auto-detect thieves and take action only then?
3) Can you afford to have your cell phone connected 24/7?
With regards to 1, it won't be useful for catching anyone. With regards to 2, it will be very difficult (especially in uncontrolled conditions such as on a boat) to detect intruders in software. If you have a closed room you want to monitor, you might get away with it. 3 is related to 2 -- if you want it to transmit the data live, it's gonna cost a bundle. If you want it to call only if you're being robbed, you have a very difficult (possibly impossible) software problem on your hands.
-Puk
p.s. You could always put the webcam up on a web page and have people "Click HERE if I'm being robbed!":)
Zilly said Thursday he agreed with 2TheMart attorneys that ``rights to speak anonymously are not unlimited.'' But he said the company's reasons for wanting the names were not sufficient, saying the firm made no direct claim against the users, except for ``innuendo'' they had manipulated the stock.
This appears to imply that if they wanted to charge the users with some sort of criminal conduct, they would reveal the names. Being semi-anonymous doesn't give people the right (or the ability) to break the law. I'm not implying they did, but if they were being charged, the authorities will do their best to discover their identities, and, if (as in this case) they are known, they will release them -- no matter how much "right to anonymous speech" people think they have. The reason they weren't released is because the judge wasn't convinced the need for their names was great enough, and they weren't being charged with anything, but simply used as evidence.
This is very similar to this article from Slashdot in March. This is another form of "holey fiber" making use of photonic bandgap effects.
It's not identical is application or results, but it's similar and another use of the same basic idea, so the earlier article and posts should make good reading. The article that prompted the previous story doesn't mention the photonic band gap, but this paper from the researcher discussed in the article does.
what makes Jabber the not-so-best candidate is lack of users. Users are what make something the facto standard, and even though Jabber may not be proprietary like the others, unless they figure out a way to increase their user base (preferably at the expense of the others'), they will not become the de facto standard.
Whether they become an official standard is a different issue -- maybe that's what they meant. Whether that will help them is another issue still.
I'm confused. This story even has a link to another, essentially identical slashdot story, excatly two weeks ago. You can't even claim ignorance. Um?
-Puk
April 16: Plastic Man asks: "I am writing a paper on how other countries' governments are handling the internet including censorship, the quality and availability of ISPs, the deployment of broadband infrastructure, and the general levels of involvement by government in the making of such policies. Specifically, how much content different governments allow to reach their respective peoples, and how they choose what that content will be. Where can I find reports on end users' experiences in attempting to 'get online' in their home country? Any personal experience in making and especially enforcing these policies will be extremely helpful." So which countries have agreeable Internet policies, and which impose draconican restrictions on online communications? Firsthand reports especially appreciated, since these are the sorts of things which might otherwise go unheard.
April 2: Panthro asks: "I am writing a paper on how other countries are handling the internet, including censoring, broadband infrastructure deployment, ISP availability and quality, and general involvement levels of governments in the delivery of content to their constituents. Any personal experience involving the creation or enforcing of such policies would be very helpful." It's always wise to know what internet policies are being enforced out there, if only to know what's been decided on by others, which policies you might want to implement and which ones you might want to avoid implementing at any cost.
Re:UDDI is Nazi technology [verging on off-topic..
on
Why UDDI Will Work
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· Score: 2
Godwin's Law notwithstanding, that's just silly. I fully believe in the "never forget" aspect of remembering the Holocoust and fighting to avoid another one, but holding a corporation responsible for things done by the management of that corporation in a particular country, 50 years ago by not dealing with them in any way now is ridiculous.
Do you think that all Germans for the rest of human history should be punished? That we should never deal with them?
How about America, which was the home of the evil IBM corporation?
Remembering is one thing, but there is only so far you can punish groups for things done by tangentially related people far in the past.
I'm curious -- what fraction of MacOS X does this comprise? Before I go and DL and try it -- if you install it, what sort of system do you get? I see from the Darwin page that it's the BSD/Mach basis for MacOS X. Do you basically get a BSD operating system without the MacOS X interface? Does it have all the changed directory structures/user management/etc (not saying they're bad) of MacOS X?
I'd read it in the release notes, but the "released" link won't let in. Any summary/link would be appreciated.
I'm guessing that you don't come from an embedded background. I generally prefer development on UNIX-based systems, but there are a number of reasons to use an embedded MS OS. I'd say that the top two are:
I'm not mainly from an embedded background, but I do have some history in embedded systems. But mostly I take this from the people I work with who are excellent embedded systems designers, and who cringe if you even joke about using a MS OS in our system. Mind you, as everyone has pointed out, it is very application dependent -- it just doesn't make sense for ours, while it does make sense for others.
1. Tons of developers know the platforms. If you're an MS development shop, it's easier to do embedded development if you stick with the familiar.
Fair enough. But very few desktop MS dev shops go towards embedded (afaik), and plenty of other embedded OSes support C compilers many of the POSIX standards for libraries, and so can be used by anyone with a unix programming history, and a lot of people with a Windows history. But true -- if you're doing an embedded system and have a history with MS, it may turn out to be the best choice.
2. There are many choices of embedded platforms that license MS OSs. Just look at how many MSDOS-based embedded platforms there are:
I actually didn't know about this. It's very interesting, and I'll have to explore it more. Are these use in computationally-intensive systems (set-top boxes, etc.), or mostly simpler/cheaper ones (microwaves, etc.)?
As for embedded systems with a GUI, MS is actually the clear market-share winner. AT&T set-top boxes embed CE, as do devices from Hitachi, Samsung, Siemens, etc. How many embedded UNIX-based systems with a GUI do you know?
I agreed with this.:) I was saying GUI was a valid reason to choose an MS OS.
The good news is that Open Source looks like it's poised to open up market for embedded OS development.
True, it depends on your application. I don't deny that. I also don't count the XBox, since that's a Microsoft embedded system.:) But it's a good point (as is the one about not needing an OS).
But for the record, yes, I know what POSIX is. Or at least I believe I do -- I'm often wrong about just about everything. It's a set of (or, really, a set of sets of, since there are multiple POSIX standards) programming interfaces/APIs. They exist for many languages and purposes.
I was referring to their various C standards for things like file I/O, networking, and threading. I know several of the above-mentioned OSes are compliant with the relevant POSIX standards, meaning that you can program large parts of them in C using the same calls you would on POSIX-compliant unix systems.
I hope that made sense.
-Puk
p.s. Posting at 1 since I don't think anyone else cares about this.
The government always outsources tasks, since they've shown that they're not much good at anything to begin with. Outsourcing intelligence is the next logical step -- you saw what happened with China when they tried to do it themselves (yes, that's half-joking).
I can't wait till they start outsourcing legislation and the judiciary. Maybe something useful will get done for once. On the other hand, you saw what happened when they out-sourced the prison system. fear
Unless my embedded system has a GUI (e.g.: a PDA), why would I _ever_ use a Microsoft operating system? There are plenty of other good choices out there, including (as mentioned above), but not limited to, VxWorks, OSE, various BSDs, some Linux distributions, LynxOS, and a whole bunch of others.
Most of these are (by reputation) faster, more reliable, and more stable, with more embedded-type features such as real-time scheduling and cross-platform support.
Unless I need a nice GUI on my system (and I'm pretty sure GUI-based embedded applications are only a small fraction of the embedded market), I might as well go with one of these. Whether Open Source or commercial win, I don't know, but MS doesn't even seem to be a contender.
Oh, and regardless of open source, many of the commercial vendors (some mentioned above) support open standards such as POSIX, making even more interoperability possible. How about WinCE? Hmmm...
I actually feel slightly bad about posting that, mostly because if you browse highest first, it shows up at the top. It's funny, and it seems accurate, too -- but it's quite possible that this person genuinely was interested in opinions on how to do this.
If I knew anything about PR and Marketing, I would gladly post some tips. If you have any, please do.
Slashdot Mirror
True, that. While I'm out imagining things, I'd rather imagine a world where computer crackers aren't attacking my networks, and people stop making errors. "And no religion, too." -- John Lennon
-Puk
At this rate, I'm never going to be able to meet my old goal of using my CPU as a stove, or even a hot plate. I had high hopes for 3dfx, or possibly even nVidia... And I guess there's always intel.
I get hungry at work, damn it.
-Puk
I'd rather have the image of the game projected directly on my retina, a la this article. Combine that with good lighting models, and an eye tracking system, and you can do anything you can do with room lighting and more.
Of course, room lighting is much more technologically (and financially) feasible right now, but I can dream, right?
-Puk
Not to mention the fact that no one is being productive during these paid vacations, so they won't be generating any revenue, directly or indirectly. Maybe those of the 38,000 who aren't being forced to vacate (so to speak) will get something done, but it seems like this is going to lower their burn rate a little and lower their productivity a lot.
I wondered what the real point of this was when my friend's (unnamed) company did this, and I wonder now.
-Puk
Actually, no. If I recall correctly, DOOM used a (more or less) strictly peer-to-peer model, where each node was responsible for keeping track of everything.
:) Moderate my first one down.
I'm sorry, you're correct. Wish there was a way to retract posts here.
-Puk
What's silly is that they actually are going to waste money trying to pursue this. Didn't doom use this same architecture (arguably not in 3d, but that's just an obvious extension). Or the plethora of doom clones? I know I was playing these before 1996. If I thought harder, I could probably even come up with WAY older 2d games which used the same basic architecture.
Also note on the linked patents on that page -- someone was nice enough to patent video games in the year 2000. w00t.
-Puk
Why does it usually imply corporate control? Why can't some open-OS based piece of hardware with completely free (in both senses) software give us convergent tools? Why not have the hardware open too?
I can build a reasonably open (yes, it relies on corporations for chips, etc, but there are limits) system which does a whole LOT of this stuff right now. Of course, it'd be big, unweildy, expensive, and incomplete, but those are the things time has shown itself to be good at fixing. Why do I need to rely on corporations? I can buy a Rio, or build an equivalent on my own right now. I think this will be true of the next steps of evolution as well.
-Puk
From my comment:
With regards to 2, it will be very difficult (especially in uncontrolled conditions such as on a boat) to detect intruders in software. If you have a closed room you want to monitor, you might get away with it.
That's exactly what I was talking about. Motion detection software isn't the very difficult part (no insult implied to the writers of such software -- it can be done well or badly). But it's very difficult to make it work usefully unless you have a fairly stable background. In a closed control room, it could work, but pointing out to sea, it would have a hard time, especially with a host of "valid" moving objects such as other ships being present.
-Puk
Note that optical logic gates are not completely new. Check out section 5.9.3.3, "The NOLM [Non-Linear Optical Loop Mirror] as a Logic Gate", in IBM's redbook "Understanding Optical Communications".
Also note that they have not created optical logic gates in this article, but optical transistors. However, if they are truly analagous to electrical transistors, then they can be put together to make logic gates. I have no knowledge of which technology is more appropriate (if either) for making large scale optical "integrated circuits".
Incidentally, I definitely recommend that (free as in beer) book to anyone looking for a overview of optics and optical networking for the technical non-optical-engineer. It's a couple of years and old, and so a couple of years out of date, but still accurate in most ways.
-Puk
1) Do you want to use this to notice if someone is stealing your stuff, or catch pictures of whoever stole your stuff?
:)
2) Are you planning on remotely watching this all day (or having someone watch it), or do you want it to auto-detect thieves and take action only then?
3) Can you afford to have your cell phone connected 24/7?
With regards to 1, it won't be useful for catching anyone. With regards to 2, it will be very difficult (especially in uncontrolled conditions such as on a boat) to detect intruders in software. If you have a closed room you want to monitor, you might get away with it. 3 is related to 2 -- if you want it to transmit the data live, it's gonna cost a bundle. If you want it to call only if you're being robbed, you have a very difficult (possibly impossible) software problem on your hands.
-Puk
p.s. You could always put the webcam up on a web page and have people "Click HERE if I'm being robbed!"
Am I the only one who misread the story title "IT" as "it"? I thought maybe the Americans for Purity had gotten a Slashdot story. :P Scary.
-Puk
Zilly said Thursday he agreed with 2TheMart attorneys that ``rights to speak anonymously are not unlimited.'' But he said the company's reasons for wanting the names were not sufficient, saying the firm made no direct claim against the users, except for ``innuendo'' they had manipulated the stock.
This appears to imply that if they wanted to charge the users with some sort of criminal conduct, they would reveal the names. Being semi-anonymous doesn't give people the right (or the ability) to break the law. I'm not implying they did, but if they were being charged, the authorities will do their best to discover their identities, and, if (as in this case) they are known, they will release them -- no matter how much "right to anonymous speech" people think they have. The reason they weren't released is because the judge wasn't convinced the need for their names was great enough, and they weren't being charged with anything, but simply used as evidence.
-Puk
This is very similar to this article from Slashdot in March. This is another form of "holey fiber" making use of photonic bandgap effects.
It's not identical is application or results, but it's similar and another use of the same basic idea, so the earlier article and posts should make good reading. The article that prompted the previous story doesn't mention the photonic band gap, but this paper from the researcher discussed in the article does.
-Puk
Truly. New verbs abound. How can I Ximian, and what does it mean to GNOME? The second one sounds vaguely kinky...
-Puk
what makes Jabber the not-so-best candidate is lack of users. Users are what make something the facto standard, and even though Jabber may not be proprietary like the others, unless they figure out a way to increase their user base (preferably at the expense of the others'), they will not become the de facto standard.
Whether they become an official standard is a different issue -- maybe that's what they meant. Whether that will help them is another issue still.
-Puk
I'm confused. This story even has a link to another, essentially identical slashdot story, excatly two weeks ago. You can't even claim ignorance. Um?
-Puk
April 16: Plastic Man asks: "I am writing a paper on how other countries' governments are handling the internet including censorship, the quality and availability of ISPs, the deployment of broadband infrastructure, and the general levels of involvement by government in the making of such policies. Specifically, how much content different governments allow to reach their respective peoples, and how they choose what that content will be. Where can I find reports on end users' experiences in attempting to 'get online' in their home country? Any personal experience in making and especially enforcing these policies will be extremely helpful." So which countries have agreeable Internet policies, and which impose draconican restrictions on online communications? Firsthand reports especially appreciated, since these are the sorts of things which might otherwise go unheard.
April 2: Panthro asks: "I am writing a paper on how other countries are handling the internet, including censoring, broadband infrastructure deployment, ISP availability and quality, and general involvement levels of governments in the delivery of content to their constituents. Any personal experience involving the creation or enforcing of such policies would be very helpful." It's always wise to know what internet policies are being enforced out there, if only to know what's been decided on by others, which policies you might want to implement and which ones you might want to avoid implementing at any cost.
Godwin's Law notwithstanding, that's just silly. I fully believe in the "never forget" aspect of remembering the Holocoust and fighting to avoid another one, but holding a corporation responsible for things done by the management of that corporation in a particular country, 50 years ago by not dealing with them in any way now is ridiculous.
Do you think that all Germans for the rest of human history should be punished? That we should never deal with them?
How about America, which was the home of the evil IBM corporation?
Remembering is one thing, but there is only so far you can punish groups for things done by tangentially related people far in the past.
-Puk the Jew
Roaming the city talking to yourself all day, that is. People have been doing it for years. I usually give them my spare change as I walk by...
-Puk
I'm curious -- what fraction of MacOS X does this comprise? Before I go and DL and try it -- if you install it, what sort of system do you get? I see from the Darwin page that it's the BSD/Mach basis for MacOS X. Do you basically get a BSD operating system without the MacOS X interface? Does it have all the changed directory structures/user management/etc (not saying they're bad) of MacOS X?
I'd read it in the release notes, but the "released" link won't let in. Any summary/link would be appreciated.
-Puk
I'm guessing that you don't come from an embedded background. I generally prefer development on UNIX-based systems, but there are a number of reasons to use an embedded MS OS. I'd say that the top two are:
:) I was saying GUI was a valid reason to choose an MS OS.
I'm not mainly from an embedded background, but I do have some history in embedded systems. But mostly I take this from the people I work with who are excellent embedded systems designers, and who cringe if you even joke about using a MS OS in our system. Mind you, as everyone has pointed out, it is very application dependent -- it just doesn't make sense for ours, while it does make sense for others.
1. Tons of developers know the platforms. If you're an MS development shop, it's easier to do embedded development if you stick with the familiar.
Fair enough. But very few desktop MS dev shops go towards embedded (afaik), and plenty of other embedded OSes support C compilers many of the POSIX standards for libraries, and so can be used by anyone with a unix programming history, and a lot of people with a Windows history. But true -- if you're doing an embedded system and have a history with MS, it may turn out to be the best choice.
2. There are many choices of embedded platforms that license MS OSs. Just look at how many MSDOS-based embedded platforms there are:
I actually didn't know about this. It's very interesting, and I'll have to explore it more. Are these use in computationally-intensive systems (set-top boxes, etc.), or mostly simpler/cheaper ones (microwaves, etc.)?
As for embedded systems with a GUI, MS is actually the clear market-share winner. AT&T set-top boxes embed CE, as do devices from Hitachi, Samsung, Siemens, etc. How many embedded UNIX-based systems with a GUI do you know?
I agreed with this.
The good news is that Open Source looks like it's poised to open up market for embedded OS development.
Fair enough.
-Puk
True, it depends on your application. I don't deny that. I also don't count the XBox, since that's a Microsoft embedded system. :) But it's a good point (as is the one about not needing an OS).
But for the record, yes, I know what POSIX is. Or at least I believe I do -- I'm often wrong about just about everything. It's a set of (or, really, a set of sets of, since there are multiple POSIX standards) programming interfaces/APIs. They exist for many languages and purposes.
I was referring to their various C standards for things like file I/O, networking, and threading. I know several of the above-mentioned OSes are compliant with the relevant POSIX standards, meaning that you can program large parts of them in C using the same calls you would on POSIX-compliant unix systems.
I hope that made sense.
-Puk
p.s. Posting at 1 since I don't think anyone else cares about this.
The government always outsources tasks, since they've shown that they're not much good at anything to begin with. Outsourcing intelligence is the next logical step -- you saw what happened with China when they tried to do it themselves (yes, that's half-joking).
I can't wait till they start outsourcing legislation and the judiciary. Maybe something useful will get done for once. On the other hand, you saw what happened when they out-sourced the prison system. fear
-Puk
Unless my embedded system has a GUI (e.g.: a PDA), why would I _ever_ use a Microsoft operating system? There are plenty of other good choices out there, including (as mentioned above), but not limited to, VxWorks, OSE, various BSDs, some Linux distributions, LynxOS, and a whole bunch of others.
Most of these are (by reputation) faster, more reliable, and more stable, with more embedded-type features such as real-time scheduling and cross-platform support.
Unless I need a nice GUI on my system (and I'm pretty sure GUI-based embedded applications are only a small fraction of the embedded market), I might as well go with one of these. Whether Open Source or commercial win, I don't know, but MS doesn't even seem to be a contender.
Oh, and regardless of open source, many of the commercial vendors (some mentioned above) support open standards such as POSIX, making even more interoperability possible. How about WinCE? Hmmm...
-Puk
I actually feel slightly bad about posting that, mostly because if you browse highest first, it shows up at the top. It's funny, and it seems accurate, too -- but it's quite possible that this person genuinely was interested in opinions on how to do this.
If I knew anything about PR and Marketing, I would gladly post some tips. If you have any, please do.
-Puk
Submit a story to slashdot!
-Puk