My understanding is that pure carbon things sublimate into CO2 over time (including diamonds) when exposed to oxygen.
I don't disagree that this might happen, but isn't this usually called oxidation and not sublimation? Sublimation refers to a state change (always C), and oxidation is a chemical reaction (C to CO2). If oxidation happens quickly enough, I heard it is called "burning"...
(ducks)
At any rate, you are partially correct in that diamond oxidation depends on sublimation occurring:
The basic idea is that CISC/RISC architectures rely on storing intermediate data in registers (or in main memory on old skool CISC). EDGE bypasses registers: the output of one instruction is fed directly to the input of the next. No need to do register allocation while compiling. I'm still reading the PDF, this sounds like a really neat idea, though.
The only question is, will this be so much better than existing ISA's to eventually replace them? -- even if only for specific applications like high-performance computing.
On the cell processor, local memory is similar to a cache, but is not "transparently" managed by the CPU. Rather, the software must explicitly say what it wants to have in the local memory.
I'm a meetup.com organizer, I just got an (bulk) email today from the CEO suggesting they might be partering/being bought by a major media organization.
Quite a coincidence this is being announced on the same day.
Well, after reading the comment you posted on this article, and I thought to myself, "how right he is... the web is a documents platform, therefore we should only do things we do with documents: read them". Now, I don't know how people could be so dumb, but some people have suggested we could do things like having discussion forums; doing online banking; interactively looking at maps; or even shopping online... and I think these people are fools! The parent poster is right, and all we should be doing on the web is reading documents
Indeed, as the parent poster may have suggested... imagine the security problems with online banking. Surely, this is a web application which will never come to pass.
The cost of living is lower than in the US, but not 40% lower. You will likely earn less (after taxes) in Toronto than San Jose.
Also, the country is pretty big, with big differences in cost of living. I hear Halifax is quite cheap, but Vancouver or Toronto are a bit expensive (but probably still cheaper than NYC or the Bay Area, though).
I don't think this patents and copyrights are a big issue in this case.
Many poor countries simply ignore patents and copyrights. Why? Their economies are usually heavy on agriculture, natural resources or low-tech manufacturing, and not so much in knowledge industries. There simply isn't enough supply to warrant having the laws, and in many countries the demand is low enough that it is simply not worthwhile for first world firms to push the issue too hard.
There is one important caveat to this: sometimes demand for some patented product does skyrocket for whatever reason. One case in point is with AIDS drugs: there is an AIDS epidemic right now in Africa. Don't underestimate how bad it is: the word epidemic is so over used, I don't think it properly describes how widespread AIDS is in some countries. The first world manufacturers only wanted to sell at ridiculously high prices, considering how poor these countries are. Their insistance became moot when an Indian drug manufacturer agreed to sell AIDS drugs closer to the actual cost of manufacturing. The first world firms have since softened their position.
The situation may change as poor countries develop, but then it will probably happen only because they will have a domestic industry to protect (think India in 20 years).
First, the National Post is noted for having a right-wing bias in its editorial section.
Second, the piece in the National Post was written by an Earth Sciences professor of a University famously known as "last chance U": Carleton has one of the lowest admission standards in the province of Ontario, which tends to be correlated with the quality of faculty they tend to attract. They have a couple of good programs (such as journalism) but I can't say if the earth science department is very good or not, nor can I speak for the competence of the article's author.
Third, as other posters have mentioned, the paper wasn't published by people who necessarily understand anything about climate - the work was done by an economist and an "independant consultant". I'm not saying that you need a PhD in earth sciences or meterology to contribute to the debate, but on the other hand, I'd like some reassurances they neither they nor the editors of the journal (how to put this?)... have pointy-hair.
On the matter of the journal, I think it is a bit of a stretch to say they are "respected". As another poster mentioned, their website implies a slight bias to the warming naysayers crowd, and they are more or less touting this paper for publicity in a manner which verges on editorializing. Respectable journals don't do that.
Finally, having read some things about the global warming debate, I think looking at historical warming data is interesting, but it might even turn out to be a sideline. What we know without a doubt is that CO_2 concentrations are rising exponentially, and that CO_2 is trapping solar energy. The question of the global warming debate (better expressed, perhaps, as the greenhouse gas debate) isn't "is it happening", but rather, "what will be the outcome", "how soon will we see the outcomes", and "what do we need to do to guard against the outcomes".
SO... I think there is a *massive* misunderstanding of what Ellison is trying to say.
> If so, then can you imagine everyone not needing software?
OK. Can you imagine everyone not needing salt and spices in their food? No? Now, make the leap - can you imagine the spice trade as a booming business minting new millionaries seemingly without end? Is that last statement too much?
I hope so -- the spice trade is relatively unimportant in grand economic terms, but it was not this way in the 15th-17th centuries.
Similarily, there will always be a software industry. But will it command the imagination of a nation? Or will people look to, say, nanotechnology or biotechnology for the next big boom?
Also, I think Ellison stressed Silicon Valley as well.
In the 1960's and 70's, led by Shockley, then Fairchild and then finally Intel, Silicon Valley was a thriving centre for chip making. Then chip making became commoditized and by the late 70's - early 80's, Silicon Valley was in a bust due to Japanese competition.
But it bounced back.
Then, in the 80's, defence R+D and PC software rose to promenance.
Only to bust in the 90's.
Finally, in the late 90's, there was the great internet boom......which is now an internet bust.
So the real question isn't, "software, wherefore art thou?", but really, will the next economic revolution (and yes, the Internet revolution will go down in the history books as matching the industrial revolutions) again be due soley to software? Or will it be something else? And, will the next revolution be centered in Silicon Valley? Or will it be somewhere else?
Don't think it must be in Silicon Valley - after all, the Internet revolution didn't happen in Manchester and Glasgow - don't expect the center of yesterday's revolution to be the center of tomorrow's.
Essentially, if all of the H1B visas were revoked, you could have jobs for all of the unemployed tech workers.
Is debatable. You can't compare a graduate from India Institute of Technology to an unemployed MCSE. But that isn't my main point... what I have issue with is:
Back when Henry Ford was starting to build cars... he also gave [workers] wages far above what was normal for the day and age... [because] it was in his long term interest to pay his workers well
I'm not sure where you read this, but from all accounts I've heard, Henry Ford *tried* to pay his workers low wages.
But they all quit.
After less than a month on the job.
Assembly line work was so bad compared to the other work available at that time, Ford just couldn't keep workers. I'm not talking about one or two people leaving after a couple weeks - I mean EVERYONE - the total employee turnover rate was a couple hundred percent as year. The situation was so bad that it was worth it to pay higher wages just to keep people around.
He paid higher wages because it was in his short-term interest.
Higher fees are not a solution. They just raise the stakes, so companies will try even harder to win patents.
This may be the case if price of a patent application is the biggest cost the company has to pay. You could argue this is the situation software companies face, but how is this anything more than a minor annoyance to say, drug companies, who sometimes have to pay billions of dollars to get their (patented) drugs to market?
Even if the cost of getting a patent examined is the biggest, another poster (Planesdragon) notes how your logic is flawed - you're confusing payoff (revenue) with price (costs).
These "reforms" will serve only to line the bureaucrats' pockets with the blood of the independent inventor.
This might be a valid point - it depends how big the fees are. Looking at the article, they mention $1250. Using words like blood for what seems like a modest amount of money does seem a bit harsh.
This may come out against independent inventors, as you suggest, but I think the idea of one inventor working alone is a bit of a myth. At some point in time, if the idea is really good, you'd need to start a company to market it. And if you can't raise $1250 for a patent application, you wouldn't be able to pay two employees for a week.
* The company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization are projected to be $6.5 million in 2002
Translation: At the current rate of profit, it will take over a hundred years to make up the initial investment. Ouch.
This isn't profit. This is EBITDA. Profit comes once you account for interest, taxes, deprication and amortization.
But according to those numbers, this company is profitable.
No, the company is losing money. When a company files for bankruptcy protection, it means it cannot pay interest to its creditors. It doesn't have enough cash to cover its financial obligations.
[I] "registered this name because I am Canadian and want to develop a Canadian business directory"
It's a good thing this guy didn't capitalize the "am" in "I am Canadian". For "I Am Canadian" is a trademark owned by Molson, and this poor chap would be sued for even using that sentence as a defence!
First, I don't think the parent is flamebait. I think the author is truely and honestly lost.
because it has a truly horrific history
Before talking about history, I suggest you learn some. Pretty much all religions had a horrific history.
Other religions like Christianity, Judaism, [more religions] allow for secular coexistance and equal rights.
They do TODAY. Christians slaughtered Jews and Muslims during the Inquisition. Jews slaughtered the Cananites in the early history of Isreal.
Now, read This essay. One of the author's points is that the Protestant Reformation brought Christianity into the modern age. Perhaps Islam, a much younger religion, is going through the same phase now. They key point is: don't compare Islam today against Christianity or Judaism today and extrapolate backwards. If you want to know what happened in the past, actually read about what happened in the past.
They may shake their fists in anger, but they don't kill you for insulting or denegrating their religion.
Almost all other religions have done this in the past. Read the essay and find out how different sects of Christians did this to one another. Read your history.
Now, get outside the West and do that in Saudi Arabia...Before you die, try to take a bet on where the AK-47 rounds are flying from that kill you.
You have an extremely perverted world view. Once you're done reading the history books, TRAVEL a bit. Geez. Most of the planet's population is peaceful and friendly. Only the violent bits get reported on CNN. That doesn't mean the rest of the planet is like it is on CNN. If you actually TRAVELLED to some Muslim countries, you might be able to think more coherently!
Everone who has ever owned a computer and his brother have a Windows license. A competitive upgrade from Windows makes no sense. The base price already includes a competitive upgrade from Windows. Perhaps a competitive upgrade from OTHER versions of Unix might make more sense. RedHat REALLY competes with other versions of Unix, whereas people WISH it competed with Windows.
But I think your idea is slightly different - the "competitive" part means you only get $$ if you give up a copy of Windows.
Hellooooo Chewbacca!
First, Linux is not ready to completely 100% replace Windows for most people. The few who can switch probably have already. End gain: nada. But wait, there's more! Where does RedHat get the money to pay everyone's Windows tax? Hmmm... let's see:
1) Get the money from Venture Capitalists Ya! RedHat gives everyone their Windows tax back, and then makes the money back on advertising! I'm sure the VC's will back it!
2) Subtract it from the cost of a RedHat distribution Right-O. RedHat is already losing money selling CD's and support, how about losing even MORE money? And since CD's and support are money-losing ventures, they can make the money of off advertising. Yay!
3) Get the Money from Microsoft
This idea makes the most sense. Since Microsoft is already collecting the "Windows Tax", of course they'll have the money to give the Windows Tax back to people! I'll write my letter to Steve Ballmer today!
This is an interesting perspective, and it may explain the power law effect in commercial sites.
However, the power law also holds true for non e-commerce related sites. I.e. yahoo, google, etc. In effect, you're arguing the example ("amazon") rather than the actual theory.
I keep repeating this on various boards - if Sun was serious about getting Java to the masses, they'd carpet bomb the hell out of the US with CDs ala AOL with the latest JVM for multiple platforms. That they DON'T do this speaks volumes
Actually, AOL spent billions of dollars shipping out the CD's, and they had a way to quickly make money off them: charge $x for dial-up access.
Sun could spend billions of dollars shipping out Java CD's, but how will they make money from this platform? There are three ways: 1) make money from licensing the platform implementation (i.e. like a Windows license fee) 2) make money from add-on software (i.e. like Office over windows) 3) make money from hardware.
The thing is, they can't make money from #1 they've already licensed JVM's for dirt cheap. Spending billions won't give them any real advantage over IBM or Dell on #3. That is one reason why Sun is losing marketshare to both.
Then there is #2. But this doesn't make sense unless Sun already has software that people are willing to spend money on.
And since their blitz campaign will cost billions, they better have software that people will spend billions on.
They just don't have this. That's why they don't blitz.
You really have to think about how things came to be this bad. Way back in the old 3.x days, if MS would have tried to pull something like this in the licensing, the OEM's would have told them to take a flying leap and installed OS2.
No, this is incorrect. If you remember, the current anti-trust trial was preceeded by the DoJ trying to enforce a 1994 consent decree. This consent decree was created because Microsoft was using illegal tactics to compete against OS/2 in "the old 3.x days".
Is it the drug dealer's fault for selling crack, or is it the addicts fault for trying it?
Bad analogy. Everyone is better off with a standard OS ABI (be it a de facto standard, like DOS/Windows, or a de jure standard like POSIX). There wasn't really a standard microcomputer ABI in the early 80's. CP/M came close, but the biggest microcomputer vendors (Apple, Commodore, Atari) didn't support it as standard equipment. DOS (and then Windows) arose because people needed a standard ABI. It isn't the OEM's fault that the owner of the standard is willing to break the law to protect their profits.
(NB: because there are people who always complain when I call "Windows" a standard: please note the different between an "open standard" and a "standard" and also the difference between a "de jure" standard and a "de facto" standard).
I'm no Microsoft apologist, but come on people, make up your minds
And I think there, my friend, you have inadvertintly stumbled on to the reason why the ``Slashdot'' viewpoint seems to be incoherent: it's not a single person's views.
You have no idea what you're talking about. All modern languages are Turing-complete, most are self-hosting or at least have compilers written in other "modern" languages such as SML or Haskell, and often compile straight to assembly. I have no idea where you get the impressed that NONE of these languages are self-hosted.
Moreover, the language the original poster was talking about - SML - offers a number of abstractions that simply aren't there in C. In comparision, C is the one with missing functionality. This is why the SML version of the code was so much smaller.
You may lose some speed by going to a higher level, but for 80% of the code out there, a 20% slowdown doesn't even register on today's processors. The time you save coding, moreover, gives you more time to optimize your algorithms.
1) Getting a root exploit and not knowing about it. 2) Getting a DOS attack, and having a log file say exactly how the attack was occuring (because SSH was logging all the errors into a file).
Hmm... maybe number 2 isn't a panacea or placebo, but maybe it is better than you're making it out;)
I'm doing a PhD in natural language processing, a branch of AI. I nearly laughed out loud when I saw that he predicts real-time translation by 2005. My second reaction was to think that my girlfriend might be out of a job (she's a translator), but then I started laughing again. The other AI predictions are almost as bad.
But let's concentrate on translation. You've used babelfish, right? Well, babelfish uses SYSTRAN's software underneath. SYSTRAN has been developing their stuff since the 60's. That's right, the laughably bad translations you get from Babelfish is the result of over 30 years of engineering effort. What big change is going to happen in 3 years?
Well, fortunately for the machine translation people, there have been some advances in the past few years. In the early 90's, a group at IBM suggested using statistical methods for translation, and only now are these methods coming into vogue amoung AI researchers. Sadly, they still can't outperform what SYSTRAN has done. Don't get me wrong - the IBM stuff was a breakthrough. Moreover, there will be incremental improvements over the next few yeas, but without another breakthrough, you'll be able to do SOMETHING in real time, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it "translation"
As for the other AI targets... well, for example, how the hell will Barbie get an AI if Mattel is spending $0 on AI research? Hmmm... it seems like this guy is spewing rather than making predictions based on researched and **EDUCATED** guesses.
> Really, what is the use with giving the price to something which is already a standard ?
So the prize committee don't have to make a "political" judgement. Even 10 years ago, OO languages were still "up-and-coming", and it wasn't clear that they would strongly influence the field. Since that time, C++ has been standardized; in MFC and OpenStep, the two most widely used desktop operating systems have an OO API; Java has been introduced and became widely popular; structured systems analysis techniques have been extended to objects by Rummelhart and Booch; and OO databases have been popularized.
Why is making a risky decision a bad thing to do? The problem is if the prize committee "guesses" wrong. They pick a winner who develops a technology that ultimately isn't of much use. This degrades the stature of the award. This might be one of the reasons the Nobel prize is also quite conservative, as another poster mentions.
On one hand, having a sucky job is not so good... on the other hand, as one of the temps points out, you can't have better conditions without unions. One of the sad facts of life is there is a positive correlation between union membership and higher unemployment.
Unfortunately, there's a trade-off between good working conditions and having work at all. In Europe, the population chose to have better working conditions, by voting for left-of-center governments. In the US, the population chose to decrease the power of unions and have more jobs, by continually voting for right-of-center governments.
Slashdot Mirror
My understanding is that pure carbon things sublimate into CO2 over time (including diamonds) when exposed to oxygen.
I don't disagree that this might happen, but isn't this usually called oxidation and not sublimation? Sublimation refers to a state change (always C), and oxidation is a chemical reaction (C to CO2). If oxidation happens quickly enough, I heard it is called "burning"...
(ducks)
At any rate, you are partially correct in that diamond oxidation depends on sublimation occurring:
http://acs.omnibooksonline.com/data/papers/2001_6.2.pdf
But you may need to heat it to 350 degrees C for this to happen at a noticeable rate:
http://www.mdu.edu.tw/Chinese/pdf/mdu01c-2-09.pdf
The link has NO information.
The PDF here: has more information about EDGE.
The basic idea is that CISC/RISC architectures rely on storing intermediate data in registers (or in main memory on old skool CISC). EDGE bypasses registers: the output of one instruction is fed directly to the input of the next. No need to do register allocation while compiling. I'm still reading the PDF, this sounds like a really neat idea, though.
The only question is, will this be so much better than existing ISA's to eventually replace them? -- even if only for specific applications like high-performance computing.
On the cell processor, local memory is similar to a cache, but is not "transparently" managed by the CPU. Rather, the software must explicitly say what it wants to have in the local memory.
I'm a meetup.com organizer, I just got an (bulk) email today from the CEO suggesting they might be partering/being bought by a major media organization.
Quite a coincidence this is being announced on the same day.
Well, after reading the comment you posted on this article, and I thought to myself, "how right he is... the web is a documents platform, therefore we should only do things we do with documents: read them". Now, I don't know how people could be so dumb, but some people have suggested we could do things like having discussion forums; doing online banking; interactively looking at maps; or even shopping online... and I think these people are fools! The parent poster is right, and all we should be doing on the web is reading documents
Indeed, as the parent poster may have suggested... imagine the security problems with online banking. Surely, this is a web application which will never come to pass.
The cost of living is lower than in the US, but not 40% lower. You will likely earn less (after taxes) in Toronto than San Jose.
Also, the country is pretty big, with big differences in cost of living. I hear Halifax is quite cheap, but Vancouver or Toronto are a bit expensive (but probably still cheaper than NYC or the Bay Area, though).
I don't think this patents and copyrights are a big issue in this case.
Many poor countries simply ignore patents and copyrights. Why? Their economies are usually heavy on agriculture, natural resources or low-tech manufacturing, and not so much in knowledge industries. There simply isn't enough supply to warrant having the laws, and in many countries the demand is low enough that it is simply not worthwhile for first world firms to push the issue too hard.
There is one important caveat to this: sometimes demand for some patented product does skyrocket for whatever reason. One case in point is with AIDS drugs: there is an AIDS epidemic right now in Africa. Don't underestimate how bad it is: the word epidemic is so over used, I don't think it properly describes how widespread AIDS is in some countries. The first world manufacturers only wanted to sell at ridiculously high prices, considering how poor these countries are. Their insistance became moot when an Indian drug manufacturer agreed to sell AIDS drugs closer to the actual cost of manufacturing. The first world firms have since softened their position.
The situation may change as poor countries develop, but then it will probably happen only because they will have a domestic industry to protect (think India in 20 years).
As I Canadian, I want to add a few comments.
First, the National Post is noted for having a right-wing bias in its editorial section.
Second, the piece in the National Post was written by an Earth Sciences professor of a University famously known as "last chance U": Carleton has one of the lowest admission standards in the province of Ontario, which tends to be correlated with the quality of faculty they tend to attract. They have a couple of good programs (such as journalism) but I can't say if the earth science department is very good or not, nor can I speak for the competence of the article's author.
Third, as other posters have mentioned, the paper wasn't published by people who necessarily understand anything about climate - the work was done by an economist and an "independant consultant". I'm not saying that you need a PhD in earth sciences or meterology to contribute to the debate, but on the other hand, I'd like some reassurances they neither they nor the editors of the journal (how to put this?)... have pointy-hair.
On the matter of the journal, I think it is a bit of a stretch to say they are "respected". As another poster mentioned, their website implies a slight bias to the warming naysayers crowd, and they are more or less touting this paper for publicity in a manner which verges on editorializing. Respectable journals don't do that.
Finally, having read some things about the global warming debate, I think looking at historical warming data is interesting, but it might even turn out to be a sideline. What we know without a doubt is that CO_2 concentrations are rising exponentially, and that CO_2 is trapping solar energy. The question of the global warming debate (better expressed, perhaps, as the greenhouse gas debate) isn't "is it happening", but rather, "what will be the outcome", "how soon will we see the outcomes", and "what do we need to do to guard against the outcomes".
SO... I think there is a *massive* misunderstanding of what Ellison is trying to say.
...which is now an internet bust.
> If so, then can you imagine everyone not needing software?
OK. Can you imagine everyone not needing salt and spices in their food? No? Now, make the leap - can you imagine the spice trade as a booming business minting new millionaries seemingly without end? Is that last statement too much?
I hope so -- the spice trade is relatively unimportant in grand economic terms, but it was not this way in the 15th-17th centuries.
Similarily, there will always be a software industry. But will it command the imagination of a nation? Or will people look to, say, nanotechnology or biotechnology for the next big boom?
Also, I think Ellison stressed Silicon Valley as well.
In the 1960's and 70's, led by Shockley, then Fairchild and then finally Intel, Silicon Valley was a thriving centre for chip making. Then chip making became commoditized and by the late 70's - early 80's, Silicon Valley was in a bust due to Japanese competition.
But it bounced back.
Then, in the 80's, defence R+D and PC software rose to promenance.
Only to bust in the 90's.
Finally, in the late 90's, there was the great internet boom...
So the real question isn't, "software, wherefore art thou?", but really, will the next economic revolution (and yes, the Internet revolution will go down in the history books as matching the industrial revolutions) again be due soley to software? Or will it be something else? And, will the next revolution be centered in Silicon Valley? Or will it be somewhere else?
Don't think it must be in Silicon Valley - after all, the Internet revolution didn't happen in Manchester and Glasgow - don't expect the center of yesterday's revolution to be the center of tomorrow's.
Your first point:
... he also gave [workers] wages far above what was normal for the day and age... [because] it was in his long term interest to pay his workers well
Essentially, if all of the H1B visas were revoked, you could have jobs for all of the unemployed tech workers.
Is debatable. You can't compare a graduate from India Institute of Technology to an unemployed MCSE. But that isn't my main point... what I have issue with is:
Back when Henry Ford was starting to build cars
I'm not sure where you read this, but from all accounts I've heard, Henry Ford *tried* to pay his workers low wages.
But they all quit.
After less than a month on the job.
Assembly line work was so bad compared to the other work available at that time, Ford just couldn't keep workers. I'm not talking about one or two people leaving after a couple weeks - I mean EVERYONE - the total employee turnover rate was a couple hundred percent as year. The situation was so bad that it was worth it to pay higher wages just to keep people around.
He paid higher wages because it was in his short-term interest.
Higher fees are not a solution. They just raise the stakes, so companies will try even harder to win patents.
This may be the case if price of a patent application is the biggest cost the company has to pay. You could argue this is the situation software companies face, but how is this anything more than a minor annoyance to say, drug companies, who sometimes have to pay billions of dollars to get their (patented) drugs to market?
Even if the cost of getting a patent examined is the biggest, another poster (Planesdragon) notes how your logic is flawed - you're confusing payoff (revenue) with price (costs).
These "reforms" will serve only to line the bureaucrats' pockets with the blood of the independent inventor.
This might be a valid point - it depends how big the fees are. Looking at the article, they mention $1250. Using words like blood for what seems like a modest amount of money does seem a bit harsh.
This may come out against independent inventors, as you suggest, but I think the idea of one inventor working alone is a bit of a myth. At some point in time, if the idea is really good, you'd need to start a company to market it. And if you can't raise $1250 for a patent application, you wouldn't be able to pay two employees for a week.
* The company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization are projected to be $6.5 million in 2002
Translation: At the current rate of profit, it will take over a hundred years to make up the initial investment. Ouch.
This isn't profit. This is EBITDA. Profit comes once you account for interest, taxes, deprication and amortization.
But according to those numbers, this company is profitable.
No, the company is losing money. When a company files for bankruptcy protection, it means it cannot pay interest to its creditors. It doesn't have enough cash to cover its financial obligations.
[I] "registered this name because I am Canadian and want to develop a Canadian business directory"
It's a good thing this guy didn't capitalize the "am" in "I am Canadian". For "I Am Canadian" is a trademark owned by Molson, and this poor chap would be sued for even using that sentence as a defence!
First, I don't think the parent is flamebait. I think the author is truely and honestly lost.
because it has a truly horrific history
Before talking about history, I suggest you learn some. Pretty much all religions had a horrific history.
Other religions like Christianity, Judaism, [more religions] allow for secular coexistance and equal rights.
They do TODAY. Christians slaughtered Jews and Muslims during the Inquisition. Jews slaughtered the Cananites in the early history of Isreal.
Now, read This essay. One of the author's points is that the Protestant Reformation brought Christianity into the modern age. Perhaps Islam, a much younger religion, is going through the same phase now. They key point is: don't compare Islam today against Christianity or Judaism today and extrapolate backwards. If you want to know what happened in the past, actually read about what happened in the past.
They may shake their fists in anger, but they don't kill you for insulting or denegrating their religion.
Almost all other religions have done this in the past. Read the essay and find out how different sects of Christians did this to one another. Read your history.
Now, get outside the West and do that in Saudi Arabia...Before you die, try to take a bet on where the AK-47 rounds are flying from that kill you.
You have an extremely perverted world view. Once you're done reading the history books, TRAVEL a bit. Geez. Most of the planet's population is peaceful and friendly. Only the violent bits get reported on CNN. That doesn't mean the rest of the planet is like it is on CNN. If you actually TRAVELLED to some Muslim countries, you might be able to think more coherently!
It's the Chewbacca Defence! It makes no sense!
Everone who has ever owned a computer and his brother have a Windows license. A competitive upgrade from Windows makes no sense. The base price already includes a competitive upgrade from Windows. Perhaps a competitive upgrade from OTHER versions of Unix might make more sense. RedHat REALLY competes with other versions of Unix, whereas people WISH it competed with Windows.
But I think your idea is slightly different - the "competitive" part means you only get $$ if you give up a copy of Windows.
Hellooooo Chewbacca!
First, Linux is not ready to completely 100% replace Windows for most people. The few who can switch probably have already. End gain: nada. But wait, there's more! Where does RedHat get the money to pay everyone's Windows tax? Hmmm... let's see:
1) Get the money from Venture Capitalists
Ya! RedHat gives everyone their Windows tax back, and then makes the money back on advertising! I'm sure the VC's will back it!
2) Subtract it from the cost of a RedHat distribution
Right-O. RedHat is already losing money selling CD's and support, how about losing even MORE money? And since CD's and support are money-losing ventures, they can make the money of off advertising. Yay!
3) Get the Money from Microsoft
This idea makes the most sense. Since Microsoft is already collecting the "Windows Tax", of course they'll have the money to give the Windows Tax back to people! I'll write my letter to Steve Ballmer today!
This is an interesting perspective, and it may explain the power law effect in commercial sites.
However, the power law also holds true for non e-commerce related sites. I.e. yahoo, google, etc. In effect, you're arguing the example ("amazon") rather than the actual theory.
I keep repeating this on various boards - if Sun was serious about getting Java to the masses, they'd carpet bomb the hell out of the US with CDs ala AOL with the latest JVM for multiple platforms. That they DON'T do this speaks volumes
Actually, AOL spent billions of dollars shipping out the CD's, and they had a way to quickly make money off them: charge $x for dial-up access.
Sun could spend billions of dollars shipping out Java CD's, but how will they make money from this platform? There are three ways: 1) make money from licensing the platform implementation (i.e. like a Windows license fee) 2) make money from add-on software (i.e. like Office over windows) 3) make money from hardware.
The thing is, they can't make money from #1 they've already licensed JVM's for dirt cheap. Spending billions won't give them any real advantage over IBM or Dell on #3. That is one reason why Sun is losing marketshare to both.
Then there is #2. But this doesn't make sense unless Sun already has software that people are willing to spend money on.
And since their blitz campaign will cost billions, they better have software that people will spend billions on.
They just don't have this. That's why they don't blitz.
You really have to think about how things came to be this bad. Way back in the old 3.x days, if MS would have tried to pull something like this in the licensing, the OEM's would have told them to take a flying leap and installed OS2.
No, this is incorrect. If you remember, the current anti-trust trial was preceeded by the DoJ trying to enforce a 1994 consent decree. This consent decree was created because Microsoft was using illegal tactics to compete against OS/2 in "the old 3.x days".
Is it the drug dealer's fault for selling crack, or is it the addicts fault for trying it?
Bad analogy. Everyone is better off with a standard OS ABI (be it a de facto standard, like DOS/Windows, or a de jure standard like POSIX). There wasn't really a standard microcomputer ABI in the early 80's. CP/M came close, but the biggest microcomputer vendors (Apple, Commodore, Atari) didn't support it as standard equipment. DOS (and then Windows) arose because people needed a standard ABI. It isn't the OEM's fault that the owner of the standard is willing to break the law to protect their profits.
(NB: because there are people who always complain when I call "Windows" a standard: please note the different between an "open standard" and a "standard" and also the difference between a "de jure" standard and a "de facto" standard).
I'm no Microsoft apologist, but come on people, make up your minds
And I think there, my friend, you have inadvertintly stumbled on to the reason why the ``Slashdot'' viewpoint seems to be incoherent: it's not a single person's views.
Sir,
You have no idea what you're talking about. All modern languages are Turing-complete, most are self-hosting or at least have compilers written in other "modern" languages such as SML or Haskell, and often compile straight to assembly. I have no idea where you get the impressed that NONE of these languages are self-hosted.
Moreover, the language the original poster was talking about - SML - offers a number of abstractions that simply aren't there in C. In comparision, C is the one with missing functionality. This is why the SML version of the code was so much smaller.
You may lose some speed by going to a higher level, but for 80% of the code out there, a 20% slowdown doesn't even register on today's processors. The time you save coding, moreover, gives you more time to optimize your algorithms.
Right. You have two choices:
;)
1) Getting a root exploit and not knowing about it.
2) Getting a DOS attack, and having a log file say exactly how the attack was occuring (because SSH was logging all the errors into a file).
Hmm... maybe number 2 isn't a panacea or placebo, but maybe it is better than you're making it out
In languages without pointers, assuming there are no compiler bugs, there will be no heap corruption.
In languages with array bounds checking, assuming there are no compiler bugs, there will be no undetected buffer overflows.
The original poster was saying, with a good enough language, there are certain classes of bugs you don't have to worry about.
I'm doing a PhD in natural language processing, a branch of AI. I nearly laughed out loud when I saw that he predicts real-time translation by 2005. My second reaction was to think that my girlfriend might be out of a job (she's a translator), but then I started laughing again. The other AI predictions are almost as bad.
But let's concentrate on translation. You've used babelfish, right? Well, babelfish uses SYSTRAN's software underneath. SYSTRAN has been developing their stuff since the 60's. That's right, the laughably bad translations you get from Babelfish is the result of over 30 years of engineering effort. What big change is going to happen in 3 years?
Well, fortunately for the machine translation people, there have been some advances in the past few years. In the early 90's, a group at IBM suggested using statistical methods for translation, and only now are these methods coming into vogue amoung AI researchers. Sadly, they still can't outperform what SYSTRAN has done. Don't get me wrong - the IBM stuff was a breakthrough. Moreover, there will be incremental improvements over the next few yeas, but without another breakthrough, you'll be able to do SOMETHING in real time, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it "translation"
As for the other AI targets... well, for example, how the hell will Barbie get an AI if Mattel is spending $0 on AI research? Hmmm... it seems like this guy is spewing rather than making predictions based on researched and **EDUCATED** guesses.
> Really, what is the use with giving the price to something which is already a standard ?
So the prize committee don't have to make a "political" judgement. Even 10 years ago, OO languages were still "up-and-coming", and it wasn't clear that they would strongly influence the field. Since that time, C++ has been standardized; in MFC and OpenStep, the two most widely used desktop operating systems have an OO API; Java has been introduced and became widely popular; structured systems analysis techniques have been extended to objects by Rummelhart and Booch; and OO databases have been popularized.
Why is making a risky decision a bad thing to do? The problem is if the prize committee "guesses" wrong. They pick a winner who develops a technology that ultimately isn't of much use. This degrades the stature of the award. This might be one of the reasons the Nobel prize is also quite conservative, as another poster mentions.
On one hand, having a sucky job is not so good... on the other hand, as one of the temps points out, you can't have better conditions without unions. One of the sad facts of life is there is a positive correlation between union membership and higher unemployment.
Unfortunately, there's a trade-off between good working conditions and having work at all. In Europe, the population chose to have better working conditions, by voting for left-of-center governments. In the US, the population chose to decrease the power of unions and have more jobs, by continually voting for right-of-center governments.