Does this create problems for Dawkins' "the gene is the unit of selection" theory? If there is such a nonlinear relationship between genotype and phenotype, how is it possible to ascribe evolutionarily desireable or undesireable qualities to any/particular/ gene? The best we might hope for is that perhaps small subsets of genes have predictable qualities. If "fitness" must be assigned to the/combinations/, we may be talking about such large numbers, that such a theory has almost no predictive capability whatsoever. Such a theory is merely tautological.
I just saw OS X today. It blew chunks. Brightly colored pulsating translucent chunks to be sure, but chunks none the less. It crapped out on a dual G4 running no more than the provided email client, a xterm, and bbedit. I'm talking 10's of seconds to regain control of the screen.
I completely agree with you. Let's forget about theory and examine how well things really work.
You say you'd like to see how Mac OS X performs? I've seen how Mac OS X performs. On a dual G4, no less. Lots of shiny objects on the screen. I saw that dual G4 slow to a crawl running nothing more complicated than an email client. It sucked eggs beautifully.
What's your point? That Linus, because of his hard-earned status as a programmer extraordinare, should not comment on other people's programs? What crap. Linus should say whatever he damn well pleases. And I'm sure he will.
I can understand why people might not want their physical location tracked. But as many have already pointed out, if you don't want your location identified, there are lots of ways to hide it.
Let's not let paranoia blind us to the fact that in some situations this could be useful. Forget about the restaraunt trying to beep your cell-phone. Turn the tables, and put yourself in control. Wouldn't you perhaps like to know if there is any good chinese food nearby? Perhaps you'd like to find your stolen laptop? There are many types of queries I can think of in which location would be a useful attribute.
How would this be done? Dunno. What does Akamai do to locate the nearest caching server? Perhaps that technology would be relevant. (Probably also patented).
There's no reason to fear this type of technology. The only thing to fear would be the *imposition* of this type of technology.
I was thinking I was going to buy a PS2 sometime, but now I've changed my mind. I'm not going to give my money to a company that forcibly tethers me to their corporate headquarters.
Pushing the most pixels is not the only game in town.
You say there's a guarantee that "If the Oracle database is setup and properly configured, YOU WILL NOT LOSE ANY DATA."
Really? Does anyone have a link or any other info about this? What is the exact guarantee?
I've always thought that liability would be a good product to sell in the free software marketplace. I never thought that it was a very insightful or original idea, but I never knew of anyone actually selling such a thing.
I'm going to have to eat part of another post I made if this is true... Oh well.
I see lots of comments like "you don't just pay for the database, you pay for the people behind it" etc.
What is that supposed to mean? Does that mean that if you have problems with your database, Oracle will dress up their best monkeys in suits and jet them to your office to charette until your problems are solved? Bzzzt, wrong. That' more money - either per incident, or per service contract.
Do you recieve uptime guarantees? Performance guarantees? "We won't muck up your accounting data" guarantees? Don't think so. Their licensing terms are so chock-a-block full of "we're not responsible, don't sue us if something goes wrong" legalese that I'd be surprised if they ever paid out a penny.
I'm not saying that guarantees of this sort make any sense. I just can't understand what people are talking about when they say Oracle stands behind their products. Only to the extent you pay them they do. Which is fine. But how is this any different than, say, contracting with Great Bridge to support your PostgreSQL installation (to pick an example)?
You get the name, pure and simple. Oh, and you get Larry some jet fuel so he can buzz San Jose in his $38 million Gulfstream V. Hey, it's your money.
I mean no disrespect to the excellent staff at Oracle. But as a consumer, you need to ask yourself what you're really paying for.
"Access SQL is a hybrid SQL. It differs considerably from each of the SQL standards and doesn't completely support any of the ANSI SQL standards."
This also holds true for every other RDBMS out there. Name one database that implements the complete ANSI SQL92 specification, without adding extensions to that specification. Nevermind SQL3.
(And no wonder. Have you ever tried to get your hands on the actual standards?)
This is not a defense of Microsoft or Access, by the way. Let's just not resort to the FUD tactics we malign in others.
---
That said, my love for free software notwithstanding, I must say that there are things you can easily do with a GUI interface that are difficult to achieve within the page-based metaphor of current web form design. The problem is that you have to pick a GUI, and that tends to constrain you to a particular environment. Web based form designs, on the other hand, can be deployed almost universally.
I find this dilemma very frustrating. Hopefully HTML (or derivitives) will someday offer a richer language for describing form-based interface layout and behaviour.
I like Nintendo. Always liked their games. Now I'm an old fart and want to GPL everything. But that's a different issue.
But read what Mr. Yamauchi says:
"If the software was the same no matter which system you buy, then the only point we'd be able to sell on is price."
Umm, there is one other point. Horsepower. Which is what Mr. Yamauchi has been disparaging for the entire rest of the article.
This doesn't bode well for Nintendo. Nintendo lives in a world where being distracted by shiny objects is the object. And he's trying to say that distractions don't necessarily need to be so shiny.
Maybe he's right. There's more to entertainment than pixel power. But this is more than a tacit acknowledement that Nintendo's pixel power might not match that of their competitors. And guess what, if the gaming software industry produces for more than one platform, then hardware manufacturers will have to compete on more than just price.
That's a good point. How would a software license be relevant if MS just implemented and tweaked a spec?
This is rather troubling, however. The GPL is really no defense of an 'embrace and extend' strategy targeting any other open specification. TCP, IP, XML, LDAP, SVG, HTML, and on and on - they are all vulnerable, no? Witness incompatible browser 'features' as regards HTML rendering.
But that doesn't obviate the importance of the GPL. Quite the contrary; it emphasises the necessity of finding a way to apply the spirit of the GPL to this type of situation. A copyright that says something like 'if you implement this specification, you must not extend it, and you must publish your implementation.'
Does anything like this exist? Would copyright law support such a thing?
Imagine little snippets of unix cli like 'rm', 'mv', 'awk', and so on to be akin to genes. Atomic components that can be combined in endless variety to form all manner of little scriptlets to perform an endless variety of tasks. Combined completely randomly, of course, you'd get garbage. Apply a little bit of selection pressure, though, and what do you get?
I often like to think of the world of programming (from humble shell scripts to obscure assembly constructs) as an ecology. We all continually adapt and combine our little text constructs to produce new forms, some good, some bad. Rinse, lather, repeat.
The problem I have with GUI's is that I just don't see how they can easily mirror this important process of continual refinement and renewal. They're just too clunky. For example, I can show you a trick, like
for i in `find . -iname "*.php"`; \
do perl -pi -e "s|.*ddate.*||;" $i; \
done
and you can easily adapt and reuse this idea in ways I would never guess. Is there any kind of analogue to this type of rapid sharing of adaptable information in the GUI world? If so, please clue me in, because I don't see it.
One thing that always bugs me about the the graphics chip industry is that they only talk about simple measures like polygons per second. Polygons per second of what? You can render a billion phong shaded polygons per second, and you're still going to have awful plastic looking surfaces and unrealistic, difficult to illuminate building interiors. There's more to graphics rendering than polygons and OpenGL. We have a long way to go before chips replace software for high quality photorealism. A chip that accelerated high fidelity ray-traced radiosity solutions, now _that_ would be cool.
I must admit, for a brief second I interpreted the headline to mean that Apple was going to make something that looked like a squash. And I wasn't even very surprised.
Isn't OS X going to support NFS? So perhaps that is also an option. Although for the reasons I already mentioned, I would seriously consider rethinking your true objectives.
Ditch the Macs. Or ditch the PC's. There aren't any applications in any category (CAD might require PC's) that can't be found on both platforms. Tell the OS bigots in your office to take a hike, and _really_ solve your problem.
File sharing is only the beginning. Then you have to worry about font matching. And document conversion. And printing. Ad nauseum.
The problem here is not file sharing. It's OS bigotry. Supporting two disparate platforms that can both do the same thing is nothing but extra work and an aggravation. Your job is to support the mission of your company, not to molly coddle individual computer users and all of their predjudices and phobias. Solve that problem and you'll be all set.
Whatever you do, make sure you garner the support of management, though. Who, I understand, are often the ones causing problems in the first place. Sigh.
Meaningful performance comparisons
on
OS X on x86?
·
· Score: 3
One interesting thing about this would be that it would remove the OS as a major consideration when doing performance comparisons. I know, I know, compilers and all that. But it would indeed bring the two hardware platforms a greater degree of parity on the OS front.
So if Photoshop runs twice as fast on one platform as the other, it would be harder to say things like "this performance comparison is meaningless because it doesn't take into consideration this or that OS characteristic".
Oh, sure, there will always be reasons to dispute head to head comparisons. But they would certainly be more fun.
That said, I will still never run OSX. I find the philosophy behind the free software movement more compelling than a few more whiz-bang features and eye candy.
If Apples revenue does truly derive from hardware, and their hardware is superior, then they should GPL everything they do.
Slashdot Mirror
"Interesting"?! "Funny" maybe. A new category for "Chock Full of Nuts" might be in order.
Does this create problems for Dawkins' "the gene is the unit of selection" theory? If there is such a nonlinear relationship between genotype and phenotype, how is it possible to ascribe evolutionarily desireable or undesireable qualities to any /particular/ gene? The best we might hope for is that perhaps small subsets of genes have predictable qualities. If "fitness" must be assigned to the /combinations/, we may be talking about such large numbers, that such a theory has almost no predictive capability whatsoever. Such a theory is merely tautological.
But IANAEB (I Am Not An Evolutionary Biologist).
I just saw OS X today. It blew chunks. Brightly colored pulsating translucent chunks to be sure, but chunks none the less. It crapped out on a dual G4 running no more than the provided email client, a xterm, and bbedit. I'm talking 10's of seconds to regain control of the screen.
I completely agree with you. Let's forget about theory and examine how well things really work.
You say you'd like to see how Mac OS X performs? I've seen how Mac OS X performs. On a dual G4, no less. Lots of shiny objects on the screen. I saw that dual G4 slow to a crawl running nothing more complicated than an email client. It sucked eggs beautifully.
What's your point? That Linus, because of his hard-earned status as a programmer extraordinare, should not comment on other people's programs? What crap. Linus should say whatever he damn well pleases. And I'm sure he will.
I can understand why people might not want their physical location tracked. But as many have already pointed out, if you don't want your location identified, there are lots of ways to hide it.
Let's not let paranoia blind us to the fact that in some situations this could be useful. Forget about the restaraunt trying to beep your cell-phone. Turn the tables, and put yourself in control. Wouldn't you perhaps like to know if there is any good chinese food nearby? Perhaps you'd like to find your stolen laptop? There are many types of queries I can think of in which location would be a useful attribute.
How would this be done? Dunno. What does Akamai do to locate the nearest caching server? Perhaps that technology would be relevant. (Probably also patented).
There's no reason to fear this type of technology. The only thing to fear would be the *imposition* of this type of technology.
I was thinking I was going to buy a PS2 sometime, but now I've changed my mind. I'm not going to give my money to a company that forcibly tethers me to their corporate headquarters.
Pushing the most pixels is not the only game in town.
You say there's a guarantee that "If the Oracle database is setup and properly configured, YOU WILL NOT LOSE ANY DATA."
Really? Does anyone have a link or any other info about this? What is the exact guarantee?
I've always thought that liability would be a good product to sell in the free software marketplace. I never thought that it was a very insightful or original idea, but I never knew of anyone actually selling such a thing.
I'm going to have to eat part of another post I made if this is true... Oh well.
I see lots of comments like "you don't just pay for the database, you pay for the people behind it" etc.
What is that supposed to mean? Does that mean that if you have problems with your database, Oracle will dress up their best monkeys in suits and jet them to your office to charette until your problems are solved? Bzzzt, wrong. That' more money - either per incident, or per service contract.
Do you recieve uptime guarantees? Performance guarantees? "We won't muck up your accounting data" guarantees? Don't think so. Their licensing terms are so chock-a-block full of "we're not responsible, don't sue us if something goes wrong" legalese that I'd be surprised if they ever paid out a penny.
I'm not saying that guarantees of this sort make any sense. I just can't understand what people are talking about when they say Oracle stands behind their products. Only to the extent you pay them they do. Which is fine. But how is this any different than, say, contracting with Great Bridge to support your PostgreSQL installation (to pick an example)?
You get the name, pure and simple. Oh, and you get Larry some jet fuel so he can buzz San Jose in his $38 million Gulfstream V. Hey, it's your money.
I mean no disrespect to the excellent staff at Oracle. But as a consumer, you need to ask yourself what you're really paying for.
"Access SQL is a hybrid SQL. It differs considerably from each of the SQL standards and doesn't completely support any of the ANSI SQL standards."
This also holds true for every other RDBMS out there. Name one database that implements the complete ANSI SQL92 specification, without adding extensions to that specification. Nevermind SQL3.
(And no wonder. Have you ever tried to get your hands on the actual standards?)
This is not a defense of Microsoft or Access, by the way. Let's just not resort to the FUD tactics we malign in others.
---
That said, my love for free software notwithstanding, I must say that there are things you can easily do with a GUI interface that are difficult to achieve within the page-based metaphor of current web form design. The problem is that you have to pick a GUI, and that tends to constrain you to a particular environment. Web based form designs, on the other hand, can be deployed almost universally.
I find this dilemma very frustrating. Hopefully HTML (or derivitives) will someday offer a richer language for describing form-based interface layout and behaviour.
I like Nintendo. Always liked their games. Now I'm an old fart and want to GPL everything. But that's a different issue.
But read what Mr. Yamauchi says:
"If the software was the same no matter which system you buy, then the only point we'd be able to sell on is price."
Umm, there is one other point. Horsepower. Which is what Mr. Yamauchi has been disparaging for the entire rest of the article.
This doesn't bode well for Nintendo. Nintendo lives in a world where being distracted by shiny objects is the object. And he's trying to say that distractions don't necessarily need to be so shiny.
Maybe he's right. There's more to entertainment than pixel power. But this is more than a tacit acknowledement that Nintendo's pixel power might not match that of their competitors. And guess what, if the gaming software industry produces for more than one platform, then hardware manufacturers will have to compete on more than just price.
A Qt version? Oh shit, I've already started downloading. This stupid game affected my grade point average...
Excellent.
That's a good point. How would a software license be relevant if MS just implemented and tweaked a spec?
This is rather troubling, however. The GPL is really no defense of an 'embrace and extend' strategy targeting any other open specification. TCP, IP, XML, LDAP, SVG, HTML, and on and on - they are all vulnerable, no? Witness incompatible browser 'features' as regards HTML rendering.
But that doesn't obviate the importance of the GPL. Quite the contrary; it emphasises the necessity of finding a way to apply the spirit of the GPL to this type of situation. A copyright that says something like 'if you implement this specification, you must not extend it, and you must publish your implementation.'
Does anything like this exist? Would copyright law support such a thing?
What's the difference between Bill Joy and Allchin, then? Are these guys buddies now? A la "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"...
Because a $10 trillion market cap isn't enough motivation.
GUI's are like mules. All GUI's have been born of text; but they, in and of themselves, cannot reproduce.
I'm sleep deprived and a little buzzed, so...
Imagine little snippets of unix cli like 'rm', 'mv', 'awk', and so on to be akin to genes. Atomic components that can be combined in endless variety to form all manner of little scriptlets to perform an endless variety of tasks. Combined completely randomly, of course, you'd get garbage. Apply a little bit of selection pressure, though, and what do you get?
I often like to think of the world of programming (from humble shell scripts to obscure assembly constructs) as an ecology. We all continually adapt and combine our little text constructs to produce new forms, some good, some bad. Rinse, lather, repeat.
The problem I have with GUI's is that I just don't see how they can easily mirror this important process of continual refinement and renewal. They're just too clunky. For example, I can show you a trick, like
for i in `find . -iname "*.php"`; \
do perl -pi -e "s|.*ddate.*||;" $i; \
done
and you can easily adapt and reuse this idea in ways I would never guess. Is there any kind of analogue to this type of rapid sharing of adaptable information in the GUI world? If so, please clue me in, because I don't see it.
One thing that always bugs me about the the graphics chip industry is that they only talk about simple measures like polygons per second. Polygons per second of what? You can render a billion phong shaded polygons per second, and you're still going to have awful plastic looking surfaces and unrealistic, difficult to illuminate building interiors. There's more to graphics rendering than polygons and OpenGL. We have a long way to go before chips replace software for high quality photorealism. A chip that accelerated high fidelity ray-traced radiosity solutions, now _that_ would be cool.
I hope they have some extra asteroids laying around when they do this.
"Oops, our calculations were off a wee bit there. Anything we can do to correct this? Nope. Oh well..."
I must admit, for a brief second I interpreted the headline to mean that Apple was going to make something that looked like a squash. And I wasn't even very surprised.
Isn't OS X going to support NFS? So perhaps that is also an option. Although for the reasons I already mentioned, I would seriously consider rethinking your true objectives.
Ditch the Macs. Or ditch the PC's. There aren't any applications in any category (CAD might require PC's) that can't be found on both platforms. Tell the OS bigots in your office to take a hike, and _really_ solve your problem.
File sharing is only the beginning. Then you have to worry about font matching. And document conversion. And printing. Ad nauseum.
The problem here is not file sharing. It's OS bigotry. Supporting two disparate platforms that can both do the same thing is nothing but extra work and an aggravation. Your job is to support the mission of your company, not to molly coddle individual computer users and all of their predjudices and phobias. Solve that problem and you'll be all set.
Whatever you do, make sure you garner the support of management, though. Who, I understand, are often the ones causing problems in the first place. Sigh.
One interesting thing about this would be that it would remove the OS as a major consideration when doing performance comparisons. I know, I know, compilers and all that. But it would indeed bring the two hardware platforms a greater degree of parity on the OS front.
So if Photoshop runs twice as fast on one platform as the other, it would be harder to say things like "this performance comparison is meaningless because it doesn't take into consideration this or that OS characteristic".
Oh, sure, there will always be reasons to dispute head to head comparisons. But they would certainly be more fun.
That said, I will still never run OSX. I find the philosophy behind the free software movement more compelling than a few more whiz-bang features and eye candy.
If Apples revenue does truly derive from hardware, and their hardware is superior, then they should GPL everything they do.
"After all, it's unlikely that unix will be the research OS of choice for decades or centuries - it will have to give up at some point."
It's also unlikely that autocatalytic sets of amino acids will rule the biosphere for decades or centuries or millenia or billions of years...
UNIX is not a crystal. It changes. It adapts and evolves. It's not just a four letter word, kiddo.