1> You have a friend who is stuck somewhere, and needs money to get home.
2> You have a credit card.
3> You might loan them the use of the credit card because of their emergency.
So - if fair use is giving a free copy of something to a friend, I'd have to ask: is every stranger you meet on the internet a friend? Would you loan them your credit card?
I didn't think so. Scale makes all the diffence in the world. Most, if not all of the laws around this sort of thing were written when the ability to duplicate and distribute media was a time-consuming process. Now that it's not - new laws need to be written. Jerks who are currently taking advantage of the situation will only make it worse for all of us.
While riding the train home from work - the following thought occurred to me...
I frequently use my laptop as an MP3 player. It's located securely in my bag - operating in low power mode, with just the wire of my ear-bud headphones coming out. It's great - when I get a new CD (I'm using Win2K at work) I drop it in and automatically copy it to my hdd.
However, it struck me that there was a flaw. I can't easily hit a "next track" button or see my playlists. However, wouldn't a bluetooth equipped palm/visor etc. be able to manage that?
Esentially it serves as a proxy UI for the media player of your choice. But, take that a bit further - why not leave the "heavy" computing equiment and comms in your bag (say 3 - 5 pounds worth) and have a stripped down "x terminal" type hand-held?
One of the largest problems plaguing RTS games is the unlimited production of forces, which leads to no attempt to conserve forces... Although most games seem to incorporate some mechanism of advancement for troop unit rating - there is little incentive to conserve those forces or retreat.
Additionally, the typical reason for this problem is relatively unlimited resources - endless iron mines, endless forests, endless supplies of people... All of these things are finite.
Additionally the scope of most supposed RTS games is largely truly tactical in scope. Yes, there is resource management - but can anyone here really claim that Warcraft 1 or 2 or Starcraft battles occur on maps of "strategic" scale? You have one base of production usually, and the metaphore that gets modeled is largely one of a tactical engagement. The units "produced" largely resemble the pattern of reinforcements arriving at the theatre of conflict.
my bachelor's degree in CS essentially followed the following pattern:
Start off working on small, toy problems - how to sort things, how to read mouse input - basic low-level stuff. This was done individually, and each student submitted their homework and lab work seperately. Discussion wasn't forbidden - but you were expected to try to solve these problems on your own. In classes of no more than 20 students the professor had a good handle on things.
Later, you worked up to larger projects - still working largely singly - but learning to work with existing code libraries. Some computer related classes started to involve some team work in terms of doing studies and presentations.
In your last 3 semesters teamwork was more stressed, with 3 large, group projects, one per semester. Teams of 4 to 5 students working on a software system each.
I think that this pattern worked pretty well. You do sort of have to get the cheesy basics down first, as it will accelerate your pace of work when you team up.
food for thought. Sometimes closed is best, at least for the initial development of a project / product. When you look at some of the current opensource projects out there, a good many of them came out of small teams of people working in a largely closed fashion until they had achieved a certain critical mass.
Some advantages of closed development (at least initially):
1> Clarity of Vision -
You all know the saying about how a Camel is a Horse designed by commitee...
2> Consistency of Implementation -
Because only one or just a few people are working on this implementation details will likely be more consistent. Ideally the source code (not that we have access to it) should look like it was written by one programmer.
3> Ease of Refactoring and Deprecation -
Because the source is only at Rebol Technologies, they have the freedom to refactor the source more easily - eliminating inconsistencies, gaining in optimization, and clarity. They can also more easily deprecate features and functions that were either poorly implemented, or not well thought out.
Opensource, despite it's manifold benefits doesn't tend to foster any of these 3 goals.
1> Clarity of Vision is sacrificed unless there is a leader who makes (in the eyes of some of the community) arbitrary decisions. e.g. Linus, and Guido.
2> Consistency of Implementation is generally not even well achieved on small commercial teams. In the world of open source, in order to do similar tasks, you might use a "for" loop, I might use a "while" loop, and still another will use a "do while". Not that this matters that much, but it can make understanding of the source more difficult than it needs to be.
3> Ease of refactoring and Deprecation is generally sacrificed in OSS projects. Once the source is available people will build code around it. You will then have trouble refactoring the code base, and deprecating interfaces - cause it could break existing code. The freedom that is afforded the end user of OSS, in turn can be used to restrict the freedom of the original coders.
I'm not saying either way is particularly bad - there is a place for both. Of course, as someone posted earlier about taking off the glasses I was reminded of the following saying:
"When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."
Opensource is the answer to a lot of things - just not everything.
Free software will suffer even more in a poor economic cycle. Because it will be harder to make ends meet, programmers will have less spare time. Those with more spare time (i.e. laid off) will likely find themselves looking for non-programming jobs, or are programmers who could have only contributed minimally anyway.
Free software was popular while the times were good. Now comes the real test, now that the days are no longer sunny, we'll see how much progress is made on the Free software front.
As the Ethernet adapter is about to be released (1/3/2001 according to EB) I had the thought that the DreamCast could make for a very low-cost NC.
Think about it, someone has ported Linux to it - just get that and X11 running on it, and you've got the NC that Oracle is trying to foist on people. Either that, or use WinCE - the WebTV browser (3.0 is due out with the Ethernet adapter) is OK for basic stuff. You could almost start to sell this thing into the same space as the Audrey from 3Com.
Not to sound like an MS booster, but I've thought the Gov. should butt out of the whole thing from the beginning - especially as far as a break up goes. A breakup of MS would be bad for a lot of reasons.
1> US Economy. Despite their monopoly status, MS has been good for the US of A.
2> Global Economy. Again despite the monopoly they've been good for foreign economy.
Notes on 1 & 2. Sure, they have stifled competition, but they have also provided a standard base for companies to base their software on. Buggy though it be. The MS OS has become much like the electric service, or phone company - but they are the utility that runs most of today's desktops like it or not.
I should think that more people would be ticked off by the impudence of the USG to interfere in a company w/o regard to the rather global effects it may have.
3> Will make MS OS less stable than it already is.
You think there are problems now? Just wait till it all gets split up. Sure, Open Source claims not to have the problems, cause you can just look at the source and fix it. But, in my experience, 9 out of 10 times a software install on Windows just works. That's what the end user wants. They don't want to have to futz about with RPMs, and getting the 5 or 6 that they need to get things running. Right now OSS is about where MS was in terms of libraries back with Win95 was just out. Between Win3.1, 95, NT 3.51, and NT 4.0, there were so many flavors of dlls running around, it was a PITA. Kinda like the CLIB problems and other versioning issues on Linux today.
4> Interoperability will decrease. That is the greatest strength of the Winblows platform. The fact that all the apps work pretty well together. It's what, despite the crashes, and bugs, allows people to get stuff done.
Such as it is, at times I think OSS, and all the Zulu's rattling their spears on shields for MSes downfall miss the point. The end user is what matters. And cruddy tho it be, MS meets those needs - handily.
This breakup will have far reaching effects that won't be positive.
My solution would have been simply to mandate a peer review council. The Gov. could step out at that point, and not waste tax dollars.
This would force a certain level of cooperation amongst the providers of software, which has become an increasingly important resource in the day-to-day business of typical companies - from the largest to the smallest.
I sort of envisioned that companies like Sun, RedHat, AOL, MS, Oracle, etc. would commit a resource (or 2 or 3 or 4) to this council. When new products are introduced by the companies, they have to put the API up for review. I really don't usually care too much what goes on under the hood (more on that later) - just so long as the interfaces work as advertised. Members (the direct resources commited to this task) would sign NDAs, and have full access to the source code to verify the stability of the API.
If for instance in the source, they find that there are 5 or 6 methods on an object that don't seem to be documented, they can raise this issue. It could be that the methods are reserved for future use, and contain incomplete code. Perfectly legitimate reasons. Within a month or so, the entire "council" could simply vote on whether the API up for review was produced in good faith.
While I support Open Source, I also support a company being able to make a buck off of software. I don't think software should necessarily be "free" (as in beer). And, since I remain unconvinced that people will not simply steal source code if the source is opened to a commercial product, but remain firmly convinced that people are without conscience in matters of money - It's are hard proposition for a corporation to even open the source up to a purchaser even for $$$.
However, I feel that it is vitally important that software be able to work together, and that no artificial walls be erected. Thus, the API, and your right that it be complete, is very important. Especially if you've paid for information that you believe to be complete.
Breakup of MS would be bad. Bad for the consumer, bad for the US economy, and bad for the world economy. Sometimes, dealing with the open source movement is like dealing with people who can't see the forest for the trees.
I used to loath MS. DOS and Win3.1 simply stank. They were terrible. As an "old Skool" Amiga user, I distained the MS OS, and hardware as inferior junk. Heck I even considered the Mac superior.
However, I will say this. It is undeniable that Microsoft has had a positive effect on Computing. It is thru almost their exclusive effort that every serious business puts a PC on almost every desk. Having used their development tools (Visual Studio, etc) I can say that that portion of their business and platform - ROCKS.
If you still want to use VI and GCC, feel free. And for all the people who say that their (MSs) docs suck. Have a look at MSDN. When I'm coding in Visual (C++, Basic, etc) good documentation for almost the entire OSes API is just clicks away.
I'm sorry if I sound like a MS booster - but quite frankly - qualitatively for out of the box experience, and end-user consistency, MS is wayyy ahead of Linux. Linux is great, I've got it at home running a mail server, web server, PHP, and MySQL. All of that software is FREE - which is why I use it. OTOH - installing IIS, and SQL Server on NT or W2K is easier than building, configuring, and installing apache, php, mysql, etc. Just my opinion, mind you.
I think the most important thing that needs to come out of this whole ruling is the following:
Full disclosure of APIs. No more hiding stuff, and playing dirty to keep it so Mircrosoft stuff works fine with Microsoft stuff, but has mysterious problems with everything else.
That's it. That's all. No huge government agency to oversee anything. The gov. should mandate the creation of a "peer council" - a non-govenment body, that is somewhat self organized. The council would consist of verious players throughout the software industry - RedHat, Sun, AOL, Oracle, Corel, and Microsoft. They would be responsible for peer review of the API specifications that are released. While these specs might not be public domain, and may even be reviewed under NDA by the council members - it would give everyone a chance to say - hey, you "forgot" to document this "feature".
Or something similar. I just think it's important that we keep government out of this, and let the APIs be reviewed by the people who are capable of doing it, and who can make a difference - and make sure that MS (and others) aren't introducing artificial barriers to making various products interwork.
Perhaps it's a simple rewrite of a local web-proxy software piece that periodically updates it's definitions from an open website containing a list of sites you might want to block and why. Basically open rating of web sites content.
Also make a feedback mechanism so that end users - as they come accross new sites they might want to filter - can upload site definitions. That way the database of content management is self maintaining.
I would call this a "content manager" as opposed to censorware. It gives end users the tools they need to filter out things they don't want to see. Parents can use this to control their kids web experience.
Sure - it's crude - if they go to altavista, and search for p0rn - then they'll see a page of links with maybe some offensive text. However, they'll likely be unable to follow any of those links.
But, I think the whole point was to make this work on large projects. But, what you really end up doing, is setting very short milestones, and checking early and often. And that actually works pretty well in a number of cases - slap together a framework and use stubs and "mock-ups" and show it to the client frequently.
Basically this is a slight modification on RAD (Rapid Application Design). Which works well - sometimes.
I was involved in a RAD (although I'm not sure it was really "rapid") project for about 1.5 years. We used SQL Server, NT, Lotus Notes, ReplicAction, Replix FAX, VBScript, JScript, and HTML. I worked on all parts of it (a small team of 3 software types), and was the only engineer who managed to stay on board thru the whole thing!
First I started with LotusScript and all the Domino classes, and building forms in Notes. Then, ReplicAction, and SQL stuff was added in, and then we added the FAX stuff, and then I got roped into doing some custom interface work with some OLE DLLs getting Notes to talk to a custom financials system, and then writing HTML pages with ASP to handle reporting on the SQL backend pieces - and launch Crystal Reports web server pages...
I understand all of these technologies very well now. In fact I was (am) the only person who understands all the pieces and how they play together in the particlar context of the system that was built. I only wish that there was someone who would have rotated in, and lightened my load, learned the system...
admittedly the punishment does seem a bit steep for the crime. However, there are a couple of aspects of this that need to be considered:
1> You've got to send a message now, that that kind of behavior will not be tolerated. It needs to be made clear that it is illegal, and you will be punished _severely_ if caught. This helps deter repeat offenders - and occasionally inspires more offenders who are irate about how big brother came down hard on some fool who broke the law.
2> Equating it to real world breaking, entering and vandalism is perfectly correct. Think about it, if I break into egg-head or buy.com - that is there only store-front. They are completely virtual, they have no real-world stores. If you vandalize, or crack the system to get yourself some cool stuff - that is just as bad as real life. To continue operating under the apprehension that virtual == not real means that online businesses, and citizens are always second class, and not necessarily afforded the same rights as their IRL counterparts.
When you say there is no physical threat, I think you severely underestimate the possibilities. Much of this depends on what kind of system I break into - but the possibility exists for theft and larceny on a grand scale. Those crimes are punishable by long prison terms, and large fines. Poking around government sites, and grabbing info from them, and confidential corporate information can result in some very serious physical threats. You may unknowingly be threatening hundreds or thousands of people's livelyhoods, or revealing information which leads directly to physical action being taken by certain individuals....
In this case - none of that occured. But you've denied the fact that it could have.
3> When you read the article, they mention that he broke into several sites - and he's being punished with a $36,000 fine. If you figure around 5K damages to each site that's not unreasonable - as it represents the damages caused by lost functionality during the time the sites were vandalized, and the cost of restoring from backup - and probably a week of some engineers time to patch the security hole. Personally, I think the prison term of 15 months is enough, and would forgo the fine - but don't even imagine that 36K is _unreasonable_.
I must admit to being only passingly familiar with the cult of Scientology. I do know that it's the brain child of recently deceased Sci-fi author L. Ron Hubbard. However, actions like this certainly make them seem like that have a hidden adgenda. IIRC, Dianetics bears more than a passing resemblance to Eugenics.
1> Are they a "religion" under US law? If so, are they exempt from taxes? Do they enjoy all the other side benefits that other organized religions do in the USA?
The statement that:
"Since when do religions have trademarks?" really strikes an interesting note. If a religion can have a trademark, they are behaving awfully business like. If they do win a case like this, and manage to sue for damages, do they get to keep the money _tax-free_? I sure as hell hope not. Of course that'd be just the thing those crack-smokers are looking for.
I ahve to say - in PC Chips defense, I picked up a barebones system with one of their Mobos in it - built in Sound (Yamaha OPL3), Graphics (SiS530), Network (DaviCom 9802) and Modem (don't care, not using it). And guess what? Mandrake 6.1 installed fine on it. The only problem was the network driver... However, I contacted the author at DaviCom, and got an updated version the next day (the version on their web site only ran under 2.0 kernels).
Yeah - the graphics aren't the fastest (as a result of it being a UMA) - but it runs OK, and should make for a nice little backup machine... Heck I am even considering putting one together for my mom - but since I am pretty sure the modem is a WinModem, it might not be suitable.
In short their M599LMRT is fine for a low end terminal capable of web browsing, email, word processing, etc. And that's about 90% of what most people do anyway. It's a "Super Socket 7" motherboard capable of running a 100MHz FSB. They make similar mobos for Slot1 and Socket370.
Oh - and this is the hardware behind most of the $199 - $399 PCs out there that come with Windows98 and can be had "for free" with the purchase of 3 years of internet service. Wouldn't you rather see Linux being sold on those systems so that people wouldn't be paying the MS tax?
I see a lot of support from the rest of the/.ers for Goldstein. But I think Palmer raised the point eloquently when he asked if it would be ok for someone to enter your home, look thru your stuff, and then leave - all w/o your permission (or even possibly, knowledge).
Goldstein is still a child at heart. He's curious. And, I have the feeling that because every thing is 'lectronic, it's not quite real to him.
Until people realize that you can indeed "trespass" on "Virtual Real Estate", and accord the same rights to it as exists IRL, the "Netizen" will always be a second class citizen. Goldsteins way of thinking keeps us that way.
I don't think curiousity should be punished - but some people have to learn to respect other peoples boundaries. It really doens't matter what your motive is, or that you won't do anything damaging with what you learned. If someone puts up a big red sign that says "Do Not Enter" - that should be enough.
How is an online store any different from a real life one? If I go to the store at the mall, toward the rear there is a door. It's marked "Employees Only". If I go thru, I'm trespassing. It doesn't matter that I'm not taking anything, or doing anything harmful. (while one may debate the merits of whether or not land can be owned, and whether anyone can restrict any one else from accessing it - that is neither here nor there, things are the way they are) If I go to an online store, and start nosing around the back-end of it, is that so different than me going thru an employees only door?
Like I said, Until people respect online resources in the same ways that they respect the analogs that exist in real life, the online "world" will forever remain a fantasy-land.
I felt that I should post as I have seen alot about PHP, and Perl (and some other Unix) solutions. Plus, I've seen a lot of knocks on ColdFusion because it's not open source - just because it's not open source doesn't mean it's bad... And, just because it's open source doesn't mean you'll have the expertise to fix it if something is wrong with it.
Those disclaimers aside - I have used PHP3, Perl, ASP, and CF extensively, if not exhaustively. The metaphore of embedding code into a page is the superior one for most applications - with the exception of when you need to do an involved server side process. All of these technologies support both means of processing - by hook or crook.
Cold Fusion does have several niceties that are not easily found (i.e. built into) the other solutions. First and formost the CF FORM tag. One of the nicest things about Cold Fusion is it's ability to generate client side Javascript automagically (you do have to give it some direction). The CF FORM tag allows for near automatic generation of JavaScript that will perform client side verification of field contents.
Unless I'm missing the obvious neither ASP, or PHP, or Perl allow for this easily. Yes there are tools and IDEs that leverage those technologies to enable this - but with Cold Fusion - if you know the markup tags, you can still use a plain old text editor to create pages - which when processed automatically send the appropriate HTML to the client depending on the type of client - and Javascript that handles a lot of stuff.
Having said all that - I don't particularly view CF as a "programming language" - it's a markup system. It does have several programming like features - and is extensible in that you can create add-ons and tags that leverage them - but it's not a programming language in the Perl, PHP, ASP (VBScript/JScript) tradition.
In short, if you need to do substantive additional processing to data retrieved from a database, you're better off with Perl, PHP, or ASP. On the other hand, ColdFusion comes with some very nice Java based applets that it can leverage on the client side.
In short, they are all pretty good technologies, each has strengths and weaknesses. I wouldn't switch based on any "cool factor" if you have significant investment in Cold Fusion, and IIS. If you need to expand those capabilities, I would suggest you use ASP - as it's built into IIS. No matter what a lot of people say, it's fairly stable - a lot of sites use it successfully, and seem to have just as few problems as/. - which uses Perl on Linux.
- Porter
4 GFLOPs, 3x Faster than A PIII, etc - selectivism
on
Apple announces the G4
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· Score: 1
OK - I'll be the first to admit it. In many ways the x86 platform is not the most elegant in the world. Looking back at various historical chips from both Motorola and Intel, Moto's get my vote everytime - their implementation is simply better. Don't fool yourself - the "G4" is a Motorola chip, why Apple insists on their own naming convention, I don't know. In any event, this is the new PPC with Altivec instructions. They are simply SIMD instructions for both floating point, and integer operations. A first for the PPC family of chips - the x86 has had these since MMX (in integer form) and with AMD's 3D-Now! instuctions on the K6-2 (for floating point), and later with Intel's own SSE instructions for the Pentium III. Oooh 128bit registers able to operate on multiple 32bit values. Ahhh vector processing like super computers do. Damn - Apple's buyers must be stupid. Yeah - it's true, but it's not revolutionary - and other CPUs were there first. Gotta love all those Cray references in there. OK - so their theoretical maximum thru-put is 4 GFLOPs - what they aren't telling you is that is on single precision floating point instructions. There are 2 Altivec instruction units, and if each is maximally processing a bunch of 32 bit values, You can mulitply the MHz of the chip by 8 (500MHz * 8 = 4000) to see the Millions of Floating point instructions it can do. Guess what The AMD Athlon has the same setup. 2 3D-Now! execution capable units - and these chips run faster, up to 650MHz, so theoretical maximum for one of them is 650*8 = 5200 Millions of Floating Point Instructions - or 5.2 GFLOPs. Yeah the new PPC is a good chip, and it's internal architecture is cleaner than just about any x86 chip on the market. But hey - don't let Apple's marketing hype fool ya. - Porter
lets all just think about this for a moment. Maybe I'm being simpleminded, but in order to effectively monitor all the traffic on the Internet today, wouldn't you have to have an equal amount of computing power in aggregate to that which is generating the traffic?
Lets just say (hypothetically) that the total combined bandwidth usage on the internet today is 100 Terabytes daily (in the USA). This traffic is generated by a billion computers being online at once, all transferring files, exchanging mail, etc. Wouldn't it take a system (distributed or centralized) of equal processing power to effectively monitor this?
Unless we're talking simplistic monitoring, where some widget is snapped onto the major switches, and whenever it sees some keywords, it generates a signal that computer X exchanged a restricted word with computer Y. But - come on, even that would require immense devotion of computing power (effectively a system that mirrors the power of the switch itself) and it wouldn't even be logging the traffic...
Maybe I'm just being stupid - or overly optimistic. Someone let me know if my hypothesis is correct - that in order to monitor a system that has the complexity of the Internet - one effectively must duplicate the level of resources currently on the internet.
Are you on crack? Have you ever been to Boston? A grid? San Fran was one of the first cities built in the USA that used the "grid system" Manhattan was rebuilt in that fashion as well. Boston has never been rebuilt - they just filled in the harbor and added more cow paths.
Silicon Valley isn't the only place that has high prices on real-estate:
Boston is climbing that ladder too. Right now, the average price per square foot of office space in Boston is higher than Manhattan's. That's saying something. The average 1 bedroom rental is around $800/mo. A lot of this is due to the abolishment of rent control, and the "gentrification" of various neighborhoods.
The prices of homes in the Boston area (all the way out to Rt 128, which encircles the greater Boston area) seem to be at a minimum $300,000. While this in no way compares to the situation in Silicon Valley (a single floor ranch that an older couple sold, went for 2.1 Million), it is indicative of a series of related problems...
1> The sale price of a house is an almost purely fictional value. Think about it - I mean, I know "land appreciates in value" - but does the house as well? Almost anything else you buy depreciates over time. Granted, land is in finite supply - thus it's value will increase as the demand for it increases - but the house on that land should really depreciate, unless it is substancially improved.
2> This increase in price stems from a vested interest on the part of two parties - the owner, and the real-estate agent responsible for selling the property. Keep in mind that the agent gets a percentage cut of the sale price! So, of course they want to sell it for as much as possible.
3> Like the stock market, the real estate market is so over inflated it's incredible. Essentially they are creating money out of nothing. There hasn't been enough of a tangible change in that property to justify it's suddenly increased value. However, when the property changes hands again, the goal is of course to sell it for even more! Thus further inflating it's price without regard to it's actual concrete value.
4> We are, in the age of "information" and as such, we are often concerned more with increasing the value of things rather than the actual worth of things. By value, I mean percieved dollar worth of something. By worth, I mean the tangible concrete value of something.
Look at Microsoft - they are worth over $500 billion - the next closest company is GE, and they are only $300 billion or so. If you liquidated MS - would their assets in any way come close to $500 billion? I know that value is based on their possible future earnings (ignore any possibility of an OS revolution here for a moment) - but do you really think that 5 years from now they'd be worth 500 billion in assets?
Sorry for the rant - but this is something I feel pretty strongly about. The housing situation in some parts of the country is merely a symptom of how far out of whack we've become. Just because someone will pay it doesn't mean you should take it.
Sure, I know "it's another scripting language" - but consider that it has support for currency built into it. I don't really see that any where in Perl. Oh yeah, and date arithmetic too.
It's really nothing like C or C++, so I'd suggest that all the nay-sayers who've been saying that it is, take a look at it for real. Considering that it's a 150Kb download it really shouldn't take that long... Oh yeah there's another difference from most "modern" scripting environments, it's small. Yeah - you get all that good stuff in a very tiny package.
So, far, after extensive experience with NNTP and HTTP via Perl, I would have to say that Rebol is much much simpler to use, and leverage for a person who just wants to get stuff done.
An example from their documentation:
; A simple database persons: [ "Moe Howard" CEO "Three Stooges Ltd." moe@threestooges.com "Larry Fine" Manager "Dept. of Knuckleheads" larry@kheads.gov "Curly Howard" Mascot "Wise Guys Club" curly@wiseguys.org ] ; The fields of the database as words: facts: [name title company email]
; The format used to print the info: text: [name "of" company "is at" email]
; The loop that prints the database: use facts [forskip persons 4 [ set facts persons print text ] ]
Would generate the following: Moe Howard of Three Stooges Ltd. is at moe@stooges.com ... etc.
I think that it will be nice to see this happening. Hopefully, they can reduce the price somewhat on them though; all I'd need would be a single CPU 21264 system. Unfortunately, a lot of people are right - just buy 5 Intel based systems and with distributed processing, you have the same horsepower or more. Of course, you also have the added overhead of maintaining a distributed system, and the added space and electricity usage of each additional system...
Oh yeah - and to the 466MHz, Intel has finally caught up poster... Please keep in mind that MHz is mostly an irrelevant number when comparing chips from two different families. As an example - say I could overclock a 286 to 2000MHz - do you think it would run things faster than a Pentium II at 300MHz? I didn't think so. When dealing with chips of vastly different architectures, comparing MHz to MHz is mostly an excersize in futility.
I say this, because a 466MHz 21264 will beat a P-II at that speed any day of the week, even on Sundays. Heck - even looking at the PPC 750 - at similar clock speeds they beat the P-II. Essentially both the Alpha and PPC chips make much better use of their clock cycles than just about any x86 chip on the market.
Oh - and I don't think Bob Young is being terribly negative in his comments about the Alpha. But, the article did make one major faux pas - indicating that software would be hard to get compiled for the Alpha platform... Uh - OpenSource, and lots of Linux Distros come with lots of it - there are more than enough OpenSource utilities and apps on most distros that if one cannot compile up a good set of them on a Linux box running on an Alpha - I'd be suprised.
I've been looking over some of the specs that have been released at the playstation-europe site in PDF format on the Playstation2. All in all, I'm sure it will be very impressive hardware.
1> Uses a graphic chip with integrated DRAM and Logic... Much like IBMs recent announcements this really does enhance performance. However, as the Graphics Processor (Graphics Synthesizer) only has 4MB of RAM, I think the 46GB/s internal bandwidth it's got ain't worth kaka.
2> Uses RAMBUS technology for the main CPU to achieve 4.3GB/s access to system RAM. That's pretty cool, and is a lot faster than my current system's PC100 RAM. However, keep in mind that I think Intel owns the company that designed RamBus, and several PC makers and CPU makers are adopting it for PCs.
So - yeah, they talk a good storm in terms of performance, and it really will be a good performer - but nowhere near the maximums and peak performances they are talking about. Yeah - it'll render 12 million polys/sec with z buffer, alphablending, and textures - if those polys only cover 48 pixels of screen area each - and all the data for them fits in that 4MB RAM of the graphics chip.... How many PC games even fit in that limit now - I think Unreal uses on the order of 200MBs of textures per level for texture maps, and light maps....
just had to comment that Cringley made some factual errors in his article...
"... when AMD introduces its K6-3 chip."
Umm what does he mean, "when"? It's out, and has been since Monday last week! Of course, Pricewatch has had prices for the P-III for over a month - a chip that isn't out yet. Yet, it took them two days to get pricing for the K6-III up...
"Besides, there isn't any software that yet supports those 70 extra P-III instructions,"
Yeah - Direct X 6.1, Dragon's Naturally Speaking, PhotoShop 5, that's no support at all. While I realize that it's thin support on a platform most of us revile, it is support.
"and there probably won't be for months or years, a la Intel's thinly supported MMX instructions or AMD's even more thinly supported 3D-Now. So wait a few months, let the AMD chip appear, then see what happens to prices."
Umm - MMX is actually pretty well supported. And, some people curse it because it impacts FPU performance which has become somewhat more important with the advent of games like Quake. A large number of video encoders/decoders under the Windows platform actually make extensive use of MMX instructions.
Oh - and 3D-Now! even more thinly supported than SSE! Come on! It's been out since June 1998, and has a number of (mostly multimedia and game) applications that support it. In addition MetroWerks CodeWarrior supports it directly.
Wait a few months for the AMD chip...? The K6-III which I assume he's still talking about, because there is no mention of the K7, is already out!!!
Why is it so hard to get accurate, factual reporting on technical topics in mainstream media?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually - it's not the same thing at all.
Consider the following proposition:
1> You have a friend who is stuck somewhere, and needs money to get home.
2> You have a credit card.
3> You might loan them the use of the credit card because of their emergency.
So - if fair use is giving a free copy of something to a friend, I'd have to ask: is every stranger you meet on the internet a friend? Would you loan them your credit card?
I didn't think so. Scale makes all the diffence in the world. Most, if not all of the laws around this sort of thing were written when the ability to duplicate and distribute media was a time-consuming process. Now that it's not - new laws need to be written. Jerks who are currently taking advantage of the situation will only make it worse for all of us.
While riding the train home from work - the following thought occurred to me...
I frequently use my laptop as an MP3 player. It's located securely in my bag - operating in low power mode, with just the wire of my ear-bud headphones coming out. It's great - when I get a new CD (I'm using Win2K at work) I drop it in and automatically copy it to my hdd.
However, it struck me that there was a flaw. I can't easily hit a "next track" button or see my playlists. However, wouldn't a bluetooth equipped palm/visor etc. be able to manage that?
Esentially it serves as a proxy UI for the media player of your choice. But, take that a bit further - why not leave the "heavy" computing equiment and comms in your bag (say 3 - 5 pounds worth) and have a stripped down "x terminal" type hand-held?
- Woodie
Some thoughts to ponder...
One of the largest problems plaguing RTS games is the unlimited production of forces, which leads to no attempt to conserve forces... Although most games seem to incorporate some mechanism of advancement for troop unit rating - there is little incentive to conserve those forces or retreat.
Additionally, the typical reason for this problem is relatively unlimited resources - endless iron mines, endless forests, endless supplies of people... All of these things are finite.
Additionally the scope of most supposed RTS games is largely truly tactical in scope. Yes, there is resource management - but can anyone here really claim that Warcraft 1 or 2 or Starcraft battles occur on maps of "strategic" scale? You have one base of production usually, and the metaphore that gets modeled is largely one of a tactical engagement. The units "produced" largely resemble the pattern of reinforcements arriving at the theatre of conflict.
- Porter
Hi -
my bachelor's degree in CS essentially followed the following pattern:
Start off working on small, toy problems - how to sort things, how to read mouse input - basic low-level stuff. This was done individually, and each student submitted their homework and lab work seperately. Discussion wasn't forbidden - but you were expected to try to solve these problems on your own. In classes of no more than 20 students the professor had a good handle on things.
Later, you worked up to larger projects - still working largely singly - but learning to work with existing code libraries. Some computer related classes started to involve some team work in terms of doing studies and presentations.
In your last 3 semesters teamwork was more stressed, with 3 large, group projects, one per semester. Teams of 4 to 5 students working on a software system each.
I think that this pattern worked pretty well. You do sort of have to get the cheesy basics down first, as it will accelerate your pace of work when you team up.
My $0.02
Hey -
food for thought. Sometimes closed is best, at least for the initial development of a project / product. When you look at some of the current opensource projects out there, a good many of them came out of small teams of people working in a largely closed fashion until they had achieved a certain critical mass.
Some advantages of closed development (at least initially):
1> Clarity of Vision -
You all know the saying about how a Camel is a Horse designed by commitee...
2> Consistency of Implementation -
Because only one or just a few people are working on this implementation details will likely be more consistent. Ideally the source code (not that we have access to it) should look like it was written by one programmer.
3> Ease of Refactoring and Deprecation -
Because the source is only at Rebol Technologies, they have the freedom to refactor the source more easily - eliminating inconsistencies, gaining in optimization, and clarity. They can also more easily deprecate features and functions that were either poorly implemented, or not well thought out.
Opensource, despite it's manifold benefits doesn't tend to foster any of these 3 goals.
1> Clarity of Vision is sacrificed unless there is a leader who makes (in the eyes of some of the community) arbitrary decisions. e.g. Linus, and Guido.
2> Consistency of Implementation is generally not even well achieved on small commercial teams. In the world of open source, in order to do similar tasks, you might use a "for" loop, I might use a "while" loop, and still another will use a "do while". Not that this matters that much, but it can make understanding of the source more difficult than it needs to be.
3> Ease of refactoring and Deprecation is generally sacrificed in OSS projects. Once the source is available people will build code around it. You will then have trouble refactoring the code base, and deprecating interfaces - cause it could break existing code. The freedom that is afforded the end user of OSS, in turn can be used to restrict the freedom of the original coders.
I'm not saying either way is particularly bad - there is a place for both. Of course, as someone posted earlier about taking off the glasses I was reminded of the following saying:
"When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."
Opensource is the answer to a lot of things - just not everything.
- Porter Woodward
Actually,
Free software will suffer even more in a poor economic cycle. Because it will be harder to make ends meet, programmers will have less spare time. Those with more spare time (i.e. laid off) will likely find themselves looking for non-programming jobs, or are programmers who could have only contributed minimally anyway.
Free software was popular while the times were good. Now comes the real test, now that the days are no longer sunny, we'll see how much progress is made on the Free software front.
- Woodie
Just a quick note -
As the Ethernet adapter is about to be released (1/3/2001 according to EB) I had the thought that the DreamCast could make for a very low-cost NC.
Think about it, someone has ported Linux to it - just get that and X11 running on it, and you've got the NC that Oracle is trying to foist on people. Either that, or use WinCE - the WebTV browser (3.0 is due out with the Ethernet adapter) is OK for basic stuff. You could almost start to sell this thing into the same space as the Audrey from 3Com.
More releases don't necessarily mean better releases...
Not to sound like an MS booster, but I've thought the Gov. should butt out of the whole thing from the beginning - especially as far as a break up goes. A breakup of MS would be bad for a lot of reasons.
1> US Economy. Despite their monopoly status, MS has been good for the US of A.
2> Global Economy. Again despite the monopoly they've been good for foreign economy.
Notes on 1 & 2. Sure, they have stifled competition, but they have also provided a standard base for companies to base their software on. Buggy though it be. The MS OS has become much like the electric service, or phone company - but they are the utility that runs most of today's desktops like it or not.
I should think that more people would be ticked off by the impudence of the USG to interfere in a company w/o regard to the rather global effects it may have.
3> Will make MS OS less stable than it already is.
You think there are problems now? Just wait till it all gets split up. Sure, Open Source claims not to have the problems, cause you can just look at the source and fix it. But, in my experience, 9 out of 10 times a software install on Windows just works. That's what the end user wants. They don't want to have to futz about with RPMs, and getting the 5 or 6 that they need to get things running. Right now OSS is about where MS was in terms of libraries back with Win95 was just out. Between Win3.1, 95, NT 3.51, and NT 4.0, there were so many flavors of dlls running around, it was a PITA. Kinda like the CLIB problems and other versioning issues on Linux today.
4> Interoperability will decrease. That is the greatest strength of the Winblows platform. The fact that all the apps work pretty well together. It's what, despite the crashes, and bugs, allows people to get stuff done.
Such as it is, at times I think OSS, and all the Zulu's rattling their spears on shields for MSes downfall miss the point. The end user is what matters. And cruddy tho it be, MS meets those needs - handily.
This breakup will have far reaching effects that won't be positive.
My solution would have been simply to mandate a peer review council. The Gov. could step out at that point, and not waste tax dollars.
This would force a certain level of cooperation amongst the providers of software, which has become an increasingly important resource in the day-to-day business of typical companies - from the largest to the smallest.
I sort of envisioned that companies like Sun, RedHat, AOL, MS, Oracle, etc. would commit a resource (or 2 or 3 or 4) to this council. When new products are introduced by the companies, they have to put the API up for review. I really don't usually care too much what goes on under the hood (more on that later) - just so long as the interfaces work as advertised. Members (the direct resources commited to this task) would sign NDAs, and have full access to the source code to verify the stability of the API.
If for instance in the source, they find that there are 5 or 6 methods on an object that don't seem to be documented, they can raise this issue. It could be that the methods are reserved for future use, and contain incomplete code. Perfectly legitimate reasons. Within a month or so, the entire "council" could simply vote on whether the API up for review was produced in good faith.
While I support Open Source, I also support a company being able to make a buck off of software. I don't think software should necessarily be "free" (as in beer). And, since I remain unconvinced that people will not simply steal source code if the source is opened to a commercial product, but remain firmly convinced that people are without conscience in matters of money - It's are hard proposition for a corporation to even open the source up to a purchaser even for $$$.
However, I feel that it is vitally important that software be able to work together, and that no artificial walls be erected. Thus, the API, and your right that it be complete, is very important. Especially if you've paid for information that you believe to be complete.
- Woodie
I'm sorry, I just have to throw my $0.02 in.
Breakup of MS would be bad. Bad for the consumer, bad for the US economy, and bad for the world economy. Sometimes, dealing with the open source movement is like dealing with people who can't see the forest for the trees.
I used to loath MS. DOS and Win3.1 simply stank. They were terrible. As an "old Skool" Amiga user, I distained the MS OS, and hardware as inferior junk. Heck I even considered the Mac superior.
However, I will say this. It is undeniable that Microsoft has had a positive effect on Computing. It is thru almost their exclusive effort that every serious business puts a PC on almost every desk. Having used their development tools (Visual Studio, etc) I can say that that portion of their business and platform - ROCKS.
If you still want to use VI and GCC, feel free. And for all the people who say that their (MSs) docs suck. Have a look at MSDN. When I'm coding in Visual (C++, Basic, etc) good documentation for almost the entire OSes API is just clicks away.
I'm sorry if I sound like a MS booster - but quite frankly - qualitatively for out of the box experience, and end-user consistency, MS is wayyy ahead of Linux. Linux is great, I've got it at home running a mail server, web server, PHP, and MySQL. All of that software is FREE - which is why I use it. OTOH - installing IIS, and SQL Server on NT or W2K is easier than building, configuring, and installing apache, php, mysql, etc. Just my opinion, mind you.
I think the most important thing that needs to come out of this whole ruling is the following:
Full disclosure of APIs. No more hiding stuff, and playing dirty to keep it so Mircrosoft stuff works fine with Microsoft stuff, but has mysterious problems with everything else.
That's it. That's all. No huge government agency to oversee anything. The gov. should mandate the creation of a "peer council" - a non-govenment body, that is somewhat self organized. The council would consist of verious players throughout the software industry - RedHat, Sun, AOL, Oracle, Corel, and Microsoft. They would be responsible for peer review of the API specifications that are released. While these specs might not be public domain, and may even be reviewed under NDA by the council members - it would give everyone a chance to say - hey, you "forgot" to document this "feature".
Or something similar. I just think it's important that we keep government out of this, and let the APIs be reviewed by the people who are capable of doing it, and who can make a difference - and make sure that MS (and others) aren't introducing artificial barriers to making various products interwork.
Hey -
this is an open source system opportunity!
Perhaps it's a simple rewrite of a local web-proxy software piece that periodically updates it's definitions from an open website containing a list of sites you might want to block and why. Basically open rating of web sites content.
Also make a feedback mechanism so that end users - as they come accross new sites they might want to filter - can upload site definitions. That way the database of content management is self maintaining.
I would call this a "content manager" as opposed to censorware. It gives end users the tools they need to filter out things they don't want to see. Parents can use this to control their kids web experience.
Sure - it's crude - if they go to altavista, and search for p0rn - then they'll see a page of links with maybe some offensive text. However, they'll likely be unable to follow any of those links.
Just a thought.
- Porter
Hmm,
But, I think the whole point was to make this work on large projects. But, what you really end up doing, is setting very short milestones, and checking early and often. And that actually works pretty well in a number of cases - slap together a framework and use stubs and "mock-ups" and show it to the client frequently.
Basically this is a slight modification on RAD (Rapid Application Design). Which works well - sometimes.
I was involved in a RAD (although I'm not sure it was really "rapid") project for about 1.5 years. We used SQL Server, NT, Lotus Notes, ReplicAction, Replix FAX, VBScript, JScript, and HTML. I worked on all parts of it (a small team of 3 software types), and was the only engineer who managed to stay on board thru the whole thing!
First I started with LotusScript and all the Domino classes, and building forms in Notes. Then, ReplicAction, and SQL stuff was added in, and then we added the FAX stuff, and then I got roped into doing some custom interface work with some OLE DLLs getting Notes to talk to a custom financials system, and then writing HTML pages with ASP to handle reporting on the SQL backend pieces - and launch Crystal Reports web server pages...
I understand all of these technologies very well now. In fact I was (am) the only person who understands all the pieces and how they play together in the particlar context of the system that was built. I only wish that there was someone who would have rotated in, and lightened my load, learned the system...
Hmm -
admittedly the punishment does seem a bit steep for the crime. However, there are a couple of aspects of this that need to be considered:
1> You've got to send a message now, that that kind of behavior will not be tolerated. It needs to be made clear that it is illegal, and you will be punished _severely_ if caught. This helps deter repeat offenders - and occasionally inspires more offenders who are irate about how big brother came down hard on some fool who broke the law.
2> Equating it to real world breaking, entering and vandalism is perfectly correct. Think about it, if I break into egg-head or buy.com - that is there only store-front. They are completely virtual, they have no real-world stores. If you vandalize, or crack the system to get yourself some cool stuff - that is just as bad as real life. To continue operating under the apprehension that virtual == not real means that online businesses, and citizens are always second class, and not necessarily afforded the same rights as their IRL counterparts.
When you say there is no physical threat, I think you severely underestimate the possibilities. Much of this depends on what kind of system I break into - but the possibility exists for theft and larceny on a grand scale. Those crimes are punishable by long prison terms, and large fines. Poking around government sites, and grabbing info from them, and confidential corporate information can result in some very serious physical threats. You may unknowingly be threatening hundreds or thousands of people's livelyhoods, or revealing information which leads directly to physical action being taken by certain individuals....
In this case - none of that occured. But you've denied the fact that it could have.
3> When you read the article, they mention that he broke into several sites - and he's being punished with a $36,000 fine. If you figure around 5K damages to each site that's not unreasonable - as it represents the damages caused by lost functionality during the time the sites were vandalized, and the cost of restoring from backup - and probably a week of some engineers time to patch the security hole. Personally, I think the prison term of 15 months is enough, and would forgo the fine - but don't even imagine that 36K is _unreasonable_.
- PW
Hmm,
I must admit to being only passingly familiar with the cult of Scientology. I do know that it's the brain child of recently deceased Sci-fi author L. Ron Hubbard. However, actions like this certainly make them seem like that have a hidden adgenda. IIRC, Dianetics bears more than a passing resemblance to Eugenics.
1> Are they a "religion" under US law? If so, are they exempt from taxes? Do they enjoy all the other side benefits that other organized religions do in the USA?
The statement that:
"Since when do religions have trademarks?" really strikes an interesting note. If a religion can have a trademark, they are behaving awfully business like. If they do win a case like this, and manage to sue for damages, do they get to keep the money _tax-free_? I sure as hell hope not. Of course that'd be just the thing those crack-smokers are looking for.
- Porter
Hey -
I ahve to say - in PC Chips defense, I picked up a barebones system with one of their Mobos in it - built in Sound (Yamaha OPL3), Graphics (SiS530), Network (DaviCom 9802) and Modem (don't care, not using it). And guess what? Mandrake 6.1 installed fine on it. The only problem was the network driver... However, I contacted the author at DaviCom, and got an updated version the next day (the version on their web site only ran under 2.0 kernels).
Yeah - the graphics aren't the fastest (as a result of it being a UMA) - but it runs OK, and should make for a nice little backup machine... Heck I am even considering putting one together for my mom - but since I am pretty sure the modem is a WinModem, it might not be suitable.
In short their M599LMRT is fine for a low end terminal capable of web browsing, email, word processing, etc. And that's about 90% of what most people do anyway. It's a "Super Socket 7" motherboard capable of running a 100MHz FSB. They make similar mobos for Slot1 and Socket370.
Oh - and this is the hardware behind most of the $199 - $399 PCs out there that come with Windows98 and can be had "for free" with the purchase of 3 years of internet service. Wouldn't you rather see Linux being sold on those systems so that people wouldn't be paying the MS tax?
- Porter
I see a lot of support from the rest of the
Goldstein is still a child at heart. He's curious. And, I have the feeling that because every thing is 'lectronic, it's not quite real to him.
Until people realize that you can indeed "trespass" on "Virtual Real Estate", and accord the same rights to it as exists IRL, the "Netizen" will always be a second class citizen. Goldsteins way of thinking keeps us that way.
I don't think curiousity should be punished - but some people have to learn to respect other peoples boundaries. It really doens't matter what your motive is, or that you won't do anything damaging with what you learned. If someone puts up a big red sign that says "Do Not Enter" - that should be enough.
How is an online store any different from a real life one? If I go to the store at the mall, toward the rear there is a door. It's marked "Employees Only". If I go thru, I'm trespassing. It doesn't matter that I'm not taking anything, or doing anything harmful. (while one may debate the merits of whether or not land can be owned, and whether anyone can restrict any one else from accessing it - that is neither here nor there, things are the way they are) If I go to an online store, and start nosing around the back-end of it, is that so different than me going thru an employees only door?
Like I said, Until people respect online resources in the same ways that they respect the analogs that exist in real life, the online "world" will forever remain a fantasy-land.
- Porter
I felt that I should post as I have seen alot about PHP, and Perl (and some other Unix) solutions. Plus, I've seen a lot of knocks on ColdFusion because it's not open source - just because it's not open source doesn't mean it's bad... And, just because it's open source doesn't mean you'll have the expertise to fix it if something is wrong with it.
/. - which uses Perl on Linux.
Those disclaimers aside - I have used PHP3, Perl, ASP, and CF extensively, if not exhaustively. The metaphore of embedding code into a page is the superior one for most applications - with the exception of when you need to do an involved server side process. All of these technologies support both means of processing - by hook or crook.
Cold Fusion does have several niceties that are not easily found (i.e. built into) the other solutions. First and formost the CF FORM tag. One of the nicest things about Cold Fusion is it's ability to generate client side Javascript automagically (you do have to give it some direction). The CF FORM tag allows for near automatic generation of JavaScript that will perform client side verification of field contents.
Unless I'm missing the obvious neither ASP, or PHP, or Perl allow for this easily. Yes there are tools and IDEs that leverage those technologies to enable this - but with Cold Fusion - if you know the markup tags, you can still use a plain old text editor to create pages - which when processed automatically send the appropriate HTML to the client depending on the type of client - and Javascript that handles a lot of stuff.
Having said all that - I don't particularly view CF as a "programming language" - it's a markup system. It does have several programming like features - and is extensible in that you can create add-ons and tags that leverage them - but it's not a programming language in the Perl, PHP, ASP (VBScript/JScript) tradition.
In short, if you need to do substantive additional processing to data retrieved from a database, you're better off with Perl, PHP, or ASP. On the other hand, ColdFusion comes with some very nice Java based applets that it can leverage on the client side.
In short, they are all pretty good technologies, each has strengths and weaknesses. I wouldn't switch based on any "cool factor" if you have significant investment in Cold Fusion, and IIS. If you need to expand those capabilities, I would suggest you use ASP - as it's built into IIS. No matter what a lot of people say, it's fairly stable - a lot of sites use it successfully, and seem to have just as few problems as
- Porter
OK - I'll be the first to admit it. In many ways the x86 platform is not the most elegant in the world. Looking back at various historical chips from both Motorola and Intel, Moto's get my vote everytime - their implementation is simply better. Don't fool yourself - the "G4" is a Motorola chip, why Apple insists on their own naming convention, I don't know. In any event, this is the new PPC with Altivec instructions. They are simply SIMD instructions for both floating point, and integer operations. A first for the PPC family of chips - the x86 has had these since MMX (in integer form) and with AMD's 3D-Now! instuctions on the K6-2 (for floating point), and later with Intel's own SSE instructions for the Pentium III. Oooh 128bit registers able to operate on multiple 32bit values. Ahhh vector processing like super computers do. Damn - Apple's buyers must be stupid. Yeah - it's true, but it's not revolutionary - and other CPUs were there first. Gotta love all those Cray references in there. OK - so their theoretical maximum thru-put is 4 GFLOPs - what they aren't telling you is that is on single precision floating point instructions. There are 2 Altivec instruction units, and if each is maximally processing a bunch of 32 bit values, You can mulitply the MHz of the chip by 8 (500MHz * 8 = 4000) to see the Millions of Floating point instructions it can do. Guess what The AMD Athlon has the same setup. 2 3D-Now! execution capable units - and these chips run faster, up to 650MHz, so theoretical maximum for one of them is 650*8 = 5200 Millions of Floating Point Instructions - or 5.2 GFLOPs. Yeah the new PPC is a good chip, and it's internal architecture is cleaner than just about any x86 chip on the market. But hey - don't let Apple's marketing hype fool ya. - Porter
Hey -
lets all just think about this for a moment. Maybe I'm being simpleminded, but in order to effectively monitor all the traffic on the Internet today, wouldn't you have to have an equal amount of computing power in aggregate to that which is generating the traffic?
Lets just say (hypothetically) that the total combined bandwidth usage on the internet today is 100 Terabytes daily (in the USA). This traffic is generated by a billion computers being online at once, all transferring files, exchanging mail, etc. Wouldn't it take a system (distributed or centralized) of equal processing power to effectively monitor this?
Unless we're talking simplistic monitoring, where some widget is snapped onto the major switches, and whenever it sees some keywords, it generates a signal that computer X exchanged a restricted word with computer Y. But - come on, even that would require immense devotion of computing power (effectively a system that mirrors the power of the switch itself) and it wouldn't even be logging the traffic...
Maybe I'm just being stupid - or overly optimistic. Someone let me know if my hypothesis is correct - that in order to monitor a system that has the complexity of the Internet - one effectively must duplicate the level of resources currently on the internet.
- PW
Are you on crack? Have you ever been to Boston? A grid? San Fran was one of the first cities built in the USA that used the "grid system" Manhattan was rebuilt in that fashion as well. Boston has never been rebuilt - they just filled in the harbor and added more cow paths.
Hey -
Silicon Valley isn't the only place that has high prices on real-estate:
Boston is climbing that ladder too. Right now, the average price per square foot of office space in Boston is higher than Manhattan's. That's saying something. The average 1 bedroom rental is around $800/mo. A lot of this is due to the abolishment of rent control, and the "gentrification" of various neighborhoods.
The prices of homes in the Boston area (all the way out to Rt 128, which encircles the greater Boston area) seem to be at a minimum $300,000. While this in no way compares to the situation in Silicon Valley (a single floor ranch that an older couple sold, went for 2.1 Million), it is indicative of a series of related problems...
1> The sale price of a house is an almost purely fictional value. Think about it - I mean, I know "land appreciates in value" - but does the house as well? Almost anything else you buy depreciates over time. Granted, land is in finite supply - thus it's value will increase as the demand for it increases - but the house on that land should really depreciate, unless it is substancially improved.
2> This increase in price stems from a vested interest on the part of two parties - the owner, and the real-estate agent responsible for selling the property. Keep in mind that the agent gets a percentage cut of the sale price! So, of course they want to sell it for as much as possible.
3> Like the stock market, the real estate market is so over inflated it's incredible. Essentially they are creating money out of nothing. There hasn't been enough of a tangible change in that property to justify it's suddenly increased value. However, when the property changes hands again, the goal is of course to sell it for even more! Thus further inflating it's price without regard to it's actual concrete value.
4> We are, in the age of "information" and as such, we are often concerned more with increasing the value of things rather than the actual worth of things. By value, I mean percieved dollar worth of something. By worth, I mean the tangible concrete value of something.
Look at Microsoft - they are worth over $500 billion - the next closest company is GE, and they are only $300 billion or so. If you liquidated MS - would their assets in any way come close to $500 billion? I know that value is based on their possible future earnings (ignore any possibility of an OS revolution here for a moment) - but do you really think that 5 years from now they'd be worth 500 billion in assets?
Sorry for the rant - but this is something I feel pretty strongly about. The housing situation in some parts of the country is merely a symptom of how far out of whack we've become. Just because someone will pay it doesn't mean you should take it.
- Woodie
Rebols really pretty cool.
Sure, I know "it's another scripting language" - but consider that it has support for currency built into it. I don't really see that any where in Perl. Oh yeah, and date arithmetic too.
It's really nothing like C or C++, so I'd suggest that all the nay-sayers who've been saying that it is, take a look at it for real. Considering that it's a 150Kb download it really shouldn't take that long... Oh yeah there's another difference from most "modern" scripting environments, it's small. Yeah - you get all that good stuff in a very tiny package.
So, far, after extensive experience with NNTP and HTTP via Perl, I would have to say that Rebol is much much simpler to use, and leverage for a person who just wants to get stuff done.
An example from their documentation:
; A simple database
persons: [
"Moe Howard" CEO "Three Stooges Ltd." moe@threestooges.com
"Larry Fine" Manager "Dept. of Knuckleheads" larry@kheads.gov
"Curly Howard" Mascot "Wise Guys Club" curly@wiseguys.org
]
; The fields of the database as words:
facts: [name title company email]
; The format used to print the info:
text: [name "of" company "is at" email]
; The loop that prints the database:
use facts [forskip persons 4 [
set facts persons
print text
]
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Would generate the following:
Moe Howard of Three Stooges Ltd. is at moe@stooges.com
... etc.
- Woodie
Hey,
I think that it will be nice to see this happening. Hopefully, they can reduce the price somewhat on them though; all I'd need would be a single CPU 21264 system. Unfortunately, a lot of people are right - just buy 5 Intel based systems and with distributed processing, you have the same horsepower or more. Of course, you also have the added overhead of maintaining a distributed system, and the added space and electricity usage of each additional system...
Oh yeah - and to the 466MHz, Intel has finally caught up poster... Please keep in mind that MHz is mostly an irrelevant number when comparing chips from two different families. As an example - say I could overclock a 286 to 2000MHz - do you think it would run things faster than a Pentium II at 300MHz? I didn't think so. When dealing with chips of vastly different architectures, comparing MHz to MHz is mostly an excersize in futility.
I say this, because a 466MHz 21264 will beat a P-II at that speed any day of the week, even on Sundays. Heck - even looking at the PPC 750 - at similar clock speeds they beat the P-II. Essentially both the Alpha and PPC chips make much better use of their clock cycles than just about any x86 chip on the market.
Oh - and I don't think Bob Young is being terribly negative in his comments about the Alpha. But, the article did make one major faux pas - indicating that software would be hard to get compiled for the Alpha platform... Uh - OpenSource, and lots of Linux Distros come with lots of it - there are more than enough OpenSource utilities and apps on most distros that if one cannot compile up a good set of them on a Linux box running on an Alpha - I'd be suprised.
- Porter Woodward
Hey,
I've been looking over some of the specs that have been released at the playstation-europe site in PDF format on the Playstation2. All in all, I'm sure it will be very impressive hardware.
1> Uses a graphic chip with integrated DRAM and Logic... Much like IBMs recent announcements this really does enhance performance. However, as the Graphics Processor (Graphics Synthesizer) only has 4MB of RAM, I think the 46GB/s internal bandwidth it's got ain't worth kaka.
2> Uses RAMBUS technology for the main CPU to achieve 4.3GB/s access to system RAM. That's pretty cool, and is a lot faster than my current system's PC100 RAM. However, keep in mind that I think Intel owns the company that designed RamBus, and several PC makers and CPU makers are adopting it for PCs.
So - yeah, they talk a good storm in terms of performance, and it really will be a good performer - but nowhere near the maximums and peak performances they are talking about. Yeah - it'll render 12 million polys/sec with z buffer, alphablending, and textures - if those polys only cover 48 pixels of screen area each - and all the data for them fits in that 4MB RAM of the graphics chip.... How many PC games even fit in that limit now - I think Unreal uses on the order of 200MBs of textures per level for texture maps, and light maps....
So yeah - it's a Sony FUD campaign.
- porter
Hey,
just had to comment that Cringley made some factual errors in his article...
"... when AMD introduces its K6-3 chip."
Umm what does he mean, "when"? It's out, and has been since Monday last week! Of course, Pricewatch has had prices for the P-III for over a month - a chip that isn't out yet. Yet, it took them two days to get pricing for the K6-III up...
"Besides, there isn't any software that yet
supports those 70 extra P-III instructions,"
Yeah - Direct X 6.1, Dragon's Naturally Speaking, PhotoShop 5, that's no support at all. While I realize that it's thin support on a platform most of us revile, it is support.
"and there probably won't be for months or years,
a la Intel's thinly supported MMX instructions or AMD's even more thinly supported 3D-Now. So wait a few months, let the AMD chip appear, then see what happens to prices."
Umm - MMX is actually pretty well supported. And, some people curse it because it impacts FPU performance which has become somewhat more important with the advent of games like Quake. A large number of video encoders/decoders under the Windows platform actually make extensive use of MMX instructions.
Oh - and 3D-Now! even more thinly supported than SSE! Come on! It's been out since June 1998, and has a number of (mostly multimedia and game) applications that support it. In addition MetroWerks CodeWarrior supports it directly.
Wait a few months for the AMD chip...? The K6-III which I assume he's still talking about, because there is no mention of the K7, is already out!!!
Why is it so hard to get accurate, factual reporting on technical topics in mainstream media?
- Porter