Porting code to other platforms often helps expose bugs, such as where a programmer assumed that a pointer will always fit in an int, or that a machine word is always an int. The reason that Windows XP took so long to port to AMD64/EM64T is presumably because there were a *lot* of those sorts of assumptions made in the Windows codebase.
All I care about is: will they make suspend/hibernate work on their hardware? Nothing else matters as much on a laptop, but I have never yet seen it running without any problems on any Linux laptop. (I know some people have it running "flawlessly", but I've never seen it, and not having it working makes a laptop much less useful...)
compare = identify similarities and differences. contrast = identify differences.
And of course ((A and B) and B) === (A and B).
So "compare and contrast" === "compare".
Please, Americans, stop using these two words in that combination. You are being completely redundant in the sense of B, and it illustrates your inability to think about the meaning of the phrases you are using when you actually use them, because you were taught to "compare and contrast" things in school. The rest of the English speaking world just says "compare".
This is not probably something he should be sued over. Bittorrent Search could actually be used by the feds to combat piracy, by discovering where illegal torrents are located. (Should Xerox PARC employees be sued over inventing the ethernet, because it is now used to traffick illegal warez?)
A different but related moral question, which may not have the same answer: should anybody that writes file sharing software feel bad when their code is used to share nasty stuff?
I have been working on a dynamic application in Javascript, and have run into a problem that I haven't seen a solution to anywhere.
When animating something, it seems that modifications to the DOM are non-blocking, unless the previous changes to the DOM are still being layed-out, in which case the whole javascript engine (in fact the whole browser) ceases to redraw anything until the layout engine is idle again.
What this means is that setInterval(fn,delay) causes the browser to lockup if any frame of animation takes longer than (delay) ms. setTimeout(fn,delay) called after the animation frame to schedule the next frame of animation doesn't work either, because DOM changes don't block on page layout completion.
Any ideas of how to fix this?
Re:Satellite images from Google Maps
on
Tinfoil Hat House
·
· Score: 1
It was a joke.. Ever looked at Area 51, or biological weapons research facilities, or other classified regions in Google Maps? They're often grayed out...
I thought it would be cool to see if you could see the aluminum panels from space using Google Maps. However, the entire area around the D'Souza's neighbors' house is greyed out in both the satellite maps and the roadmaps. Weird.
You *do* want OOo 2.0 -- it is dramatically better than 1.x in many, many ways that don't require java.
I recommend trying the packages in the "fedora development" RPMs (what will become FC4). They are very usable today. Some things you'll notice immediately are dramatically improved startup time, better file format support, overall higher polish, filled-in feature gaps.
The pieces you'll miss by not having Java are covered in other posts. Briefly: wizards, and the new database frontend (Access clone). You probably don't need them.
Sun won't open their JDK -- but the JCP for Java 5 allows for open implementations. I know about Harmony, but IBM JDK is already done. Is there anything holding IBM back from opening their JDK?
I noticed Bruno Souza of Brasil is involved. He had already set up a project to produce something like this in a group called SOUJava. There are also some people from ClassPath and GCJ involved. Does that mean code will be reused and relicensed from those projects, or is everything being done from scratch? Do they have an expected timeline? The Java standard libraries are HUGE.
What right do Microsoft have to interfere with public policy? The fact that a large company can have *any* effect on policymaking on Capitol Hill seems to be worse than non-separation of church and state. This appears to be a breakdown of public procedure to me.
There is one really big problem with this -- insufficient stereo separation for the distances covered. from the distance at which a satellite orbits, you would have to either separate the cameras by a significant distance (probably several hundred meters, I haven't done the math), or have a super-super-high-res CCD to actually have *any* real measurable difference between the images captured by both cameras. Subpixel analysis will yield some differences due to stereo separation, but the depth resolution of this system can't be good unless they can get the cameras further apart than is possible on most satellites.
You raise some good points. "Finished" is so subjective... See the links in my reply to my original post though -- I found the details about the programmer and the program he developed.
OK, I found the details. The programmer's name is James Kent and the program was called GigAssembler. This program allowed the public consortium to complete their draft of the genome 3 days before Celera (which is of course debated by Celera, who said they finished their draft a day before that, but both groups announced jointly):
Does anyone remember the story of the hacker that actually wrote the code that cracked the genome sequencing problem? He is the unsung hero of this whole private vs. public debacle. He wrote a 10,000 line C program to do the sequencing in "rafts" and "contigs" in the space of a few days -- and had to ice his wrists from all the work... it was because of his brilliant work that the race went from being a 20-year thing to a 3-year thing, and of course nobody knows his name. (And I've forgotten it.)
(a) Same hash: easy. (b) Same hash and size: much harder. (c) Same hash and size, and same hash using a second, entirely different hashing algorithm, for arbitrary data: Virtually impossible.
They would need more computers than those available in the world, for a time longer than the lifetime of the earth, to do (c) for enough files to cause a problems. And in general there is no solution that will create simultaneous collisions in two different hash algorithms for arbitrary data of arbitrary size.
They would do better to flood the networks with files of the same name, with different sizes and hashes -- that way finding the right hash is going to be difficult (it becomes a SNR problem).
I have been wondering lately, when Sun do open up Java a little more (which process has begun by making some subtle changes to the license of Java-1.5 to allow re-implementation), presumably they'll use the CDDL or something. Hopefully they will simultaneously submit Java to the EMCA or other standards body.
Anyway, my question: Why doesn't IBM just take their own Java implementation, put it under the (L)GPL, modify the language slightly in a backwards-compatible way (like C# only backwards-compatible with Java), and then release *that* to a standards body under a new name (with no reference to Java, as was the case when C# came out, in order to eliminate the need to claim compatibility to use the name), and release all their ex-Java tools under the GPL?
IBM is much more likely to do that than Sun, and we wouldn't have to worry about the CDDL ramifications.
I remember seeing an episode on "That's Incredible" in the 80s in which Moller was about to release this to the public, as the most earth-changing invention ever...
Dear JimAtAdobe -- Nice to see Adobe is actually listening to the community! Now that I know who one of you is, I want to say that Acrobat Reader 7 for Linux is awesome -- thanks for investing the time and effort in creating it. Very much appreciated. I've installed it on all machines I have administrator rights on.
They use more Open Source pieces than any technology I think I've ever seen in a single supposedly-commercial package. Granted not all licenses require re-disclosure of modified source, but check out "Patent and Legal Notices" from "Help->About Acrobat Reader 7.0" -- unbelievable! I just wish they said exactly what they borrowed in each case. Do the authors of the OSS s/w they used know it was used?
The described project looks at things from an anthropological timescale. You can also look for ancestors on a genealogical timescale using DNA (depending on the mutation rate of the DNA). The Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation are building a huge database to enable genealogists to locate ancestors based on their DNA.
Slashdot Mirror
Porting code to other platforms often helps expose bugs, such as where a programmer assumed that a pointer will always fit in an int, or that a machine word is always an int. The reason that Windows XP took so long to port to AMD64/EM64T is presumably because there were a *lot* of those sorts of assumptions made in the Windows codebase.
All I care about is: will they make suspend/hibernate work on their hardware? Nothing else matters as much on a laptop, but I have never yet seen it running without any problems on any Linux laptop. (I know some people have it running "flawlessly", but I've never seen it, and not having it working makes a laptop much less useful...)
compare = identify similarities and differences.
contrast = identify differences.
And of course ((A and B) and B) === (A and B).
So "compare and contrast" === "compare".
Please, Americans, stop using these two words in that combination. You are being completely redundant in the sense of B, and it illustrates your inability to think about the meaning of the phrases you are using when you actually use them, because you were taught to "compare and contrast" things in school. The rest of the English speaking world just says "compare".
This is not probably something he should be sued over. Bittorrent Search could actually be used by the feds to combat piracy, by discovering where illegal torrents are located. (Should Xerox PARC employees be sued over inventing the ethernet, because it is now used to traffick illegal warez?)
A different but related moral question, which may not have the same answer: should anybody that writes file sharing software feel bad when their code is used to share nasty stuff?
I have been working on a dynamic application in Javascript, and have run into a problem that I haven't seen a solution to anywhere.
When animating something, it seems that modifications to the DOM are non-blocking, unless the previous changes to the DOM are still being layed-out, in which case the whole javascript engine (in fact the whole browser) ceases to redraw anything until the layout engine is idle again.
What this means is that setInterval(fn,delay) causes the browser to lockup if any frame of animation takes longer than (delay) ms. setTimeout(fn,delay) called after the animation frame to schedule the next frame of animation doesn't work either, because DOM changes don't block on page layout completion.
Any ideas of how to fix this?
It was a joke.. Ever looked at Area 51, or biological weapons research facilities, or other classified regions in Google Maps? They're often grayed out...
I thought it would be cool to see if you could see the aluminum panels from space using Google Maps. However, the entire area around the D'Souza's neighbors' house is greyed out in both the satellite maps and the roadmaps. Weird.
You *do* want OOo 2.0 -- it is dramatically better than 1.x in many, many ways that don't require java. I recommend trying the packages in the "fedora development" RPMs (what will become FC4). They are very usable today. Some things you'll notice immediately are dramatically improved startup time, better file format support, overall higher polish, filled-in feature gaps. The pieces you'll miss by not having Java are covered in other posts. Briefly: wizards, and the new database frontend (Access clone). You probably don't need them.
Sun won't open their JDK -- but the JCP for Java 5 allows for open implementations. I know about Harmony, but IBM JDK is already done. Is there anything holding IBM back from opening their JDK?
Eclectic -- the most overused, misused, differently-understood, stupid word in the English language. Boycott it for your good.
I noticed Bruno Souza of Brasil is involved. He had already set up a project to produce something like this in a group called SOUJava. There are also some people from ClassPath and GCJ involved. Does that mean code will be reused and relicensed from those projects, or is everything being done from scratch? Do they have an expected timeline? The Java standard libraries are HUGE.
What right do Microsoft have to interfere with public policy? The fact that a large company can have *any* effect on policymaking on Capitol Hill seems to be worse than non-separation of church and state. This appears to be a breakdown of public procedure to me.
There is one really big problem with this -- insufficient stereo separation for the distances covered. from the distance at which a satellite orbits, you would have to either separate the cameras by a significant distance (probably several hundred meters, I haven't done the math), or have a super-super-high-res CCD to actually have *any* real measurable difference between the images captured by both cameras. Subpixel analysis will yield some differences due to stereo separation, but the depth resolution of this system can't be good unless they can get the cameras further apart than is possible on most satellites.
You raise some good points. "Finished" is so subjective... See the links in my reply to my original post though -- I found the details about the programmer and the program he developed.
OK, I found the details. The programmer's name is James Kent and the program was called GigAssembler. This program allowed the public consortium to complete their draft of the genome 3 days before Celera (which is of course debated by Celera, who said they finished their draft a day before that, but both groups announced jointly):
PDF article
Google HTMLized Version of the PDF
Old Slashdot article
Does anyone remember the story of the hacker that actually wrote the code that cracked the genome sequencing problem? He is the unsung hero of this whole private vs. public debacle. He wrote a 10,000 line C program to do the sequencing in "rafts" and "contigs" in the space of a few days -- and had to ice his wrists from all the work... it was because of his brilliant work that the race went from being a 20-year thing to a 3-year thing, and of course nobody knows his name. (And I've forgotten it.)
Right. When XP-heads tell you not to comment your code because it's not Xtreme, tell them they're wrong.
(a) Same hash: easy.
(b) Same hash and size: much harder.
(c) Same hash and size, and same hash using a second, entirely different hashing algorithm, for arbitrary data: Virtually impossible.
They would need more computers than those available in the world, for a time longer than the lifetime of the earth, to do (c) for enough files to cause a problems. And in general there is no solution that will create simultaneous collisions in two different hash algorithms for arbitrary data of arbitrary size.
They would do better to flood the networks with files of the same name, with different sizes and hashes -- that way finding the right hash is going to be difficult (it becomes a SNR problem).
I have been wondering lately, when Sun do open up Java a little more (which process has begun by making some subtle changes to the license of Java-1.5 to allow re-implementation), presumably they'll use the CDDL or something. Hopefully they will simultaneously submit Java to the EMCA or other standards body.
Anyway, my question: Why doesn't IBM just take their own Java implementation, put it under the (L)GPL, modify the language slightly in a backwards-compatible way (like C# only backwards-compatible with Java), and then release *that* to a standards body under a new name (with no reference to Java, as was the case when C# came out, in order to eliminate the need to claim compatibility to use the name), and release all their ex-Java tools under the GPL?
IBM is much more likely to do that than Sun, and we wouldn't have to worry about the CDDL ramifications.
We need Open Java for the GNU/Linux desktop.
I remember seeing an episode on "That's Incredible" in the 80s in which Moller was about to release this to the public, as the most earth-changing invention ever...
Dear JimAtAdobe -- Nice to see Adobe is actually listening to the community! Now that I know who one of you is, I want to say that Acrobat Reader 7 for Linux is awesome -- thanks for investing the time and effort in creating it. Very much appreciated. I've installed it on all machines I have administrator rights on.
They use more Open Source pieces than any technology I think I've ever seen in a single supposedly-commercial package. Granted not all licenses require re-disclosure of modified source, but check out "Patent and Legal Notices" from "Help->About Acrobat Reader 7.0" -- unbelievable! I just wish they said exactly what they borrowed in each case. Do the authors of the OSS s/w they used know it was used?
It also now has a build number of 2 (7.0.0-2 rather than 7.0.0-1). You might want to upgrade, just in case.
Another project accomplishing similar objectives: the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation.
The described project looks at things from an anthropological timescale. You can also look for ancestors on a genealogical timescale using DNA (depending on the mutation rate of the DNA). The Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation are building a huge database to enable genealogists to locate ancestors based on their DNA.