The compiler most people here probably use is GCC, which already uses a general-purpose IL to compile a range of very different high-level langauges.
You've got a point there. However, GNU C and related compilers plugged a big hole (free compilers are badly needed), so I wouldn't consider the trade-off (cost of development vs. performance) a bad one.
What I'm saying is not that it won't in some cases be useful to opt for generality rather than optimization for a particular platform (esp. if it helps to develop new compilers that wouldn't otherwise have been possible), but that it would be wrong for major software vendors to abandon language-specific intermediate languages (which, IMHO, have shown to result in better performance) in favour of a general-purpose IL that is touted the "next big thing". I'm all for advances in compiler research (general IL are somewhat out of fashion already though), so I'd be glad if this helped produce better compilers, but my guess is that it'll result in reduced costs, fewer jobs and worse performance at a higher price for the end-user. It'd be a much saner thing to improve GCC until the approach can be shown to have advantages for the rest of us (over the existing commercial compilers by the same companies)...
Because a well-designed intermediate language will help optimization
All good compilers already use well-designed intermediate languages. A general intermediate language that aims to be equally suitable for many high level languages will most likely be inferior to the best intermediate language for a particular high level language.
The other benefits of using an IL are manifold. New languages can be implemented without having to write a compiler for each platform.
Great. Just what we need - another of those braindead technological "advances" like human-readable data interchange formats that makes life easier for a few developers (simpler, cheaper compiler development) and harder for millions of users (worse performance). Frankly, the only advantage for the rest of us I can think of would be the higher probability of the resulting tools being mostly bug-free.
Since Freenet is in theory resistant to DDoS attacks, it could be used for such a purpose. It would also give that project more publicity (which it really deserves).
Every time the RIAA does this they lose hundreds of customers and sales. I hope they keep it up cause at the rate their going they'll be gone in a few years
Hardly. All they're trying to accomplish is: 1) make people "steal" more, 2) form the public opinion that everyone is doing so, 3) thus get the governments to introduce more sales-independent taxes and fees on CD recordables, -burners, mp3 players etc. (already very popular in Europe) and live happily and wealthily ever after.
If it doesn't work out, well, they can still sell their crap at (illegaly) inflated prices and keep sueing people who are spreading and promoting independent music through P2P networks.
With the currently available gadgets, there are already useful solutions for the following tasks:
Carrying data around (a few MB's: USB-Sticks or CF/SD/MMC-Cards; large amounts: iPods and similar devices)
navigation, communication/telephony, PDA, mobile gaming, mp3, digital photography (a large variety of separate or integrated devices exist)
So what is there left to do, apart from the obvious miniaturization/integration, better UIs etc.?
protection of your data (encryption and safety/backups for all your personal information/data); ideally, the data on your PDA etc. would be synchronized transparently and continuously with some safe storage area, over the 'net, so that it wouldn't hurt you much if you lost your PDA.
authentication, secure access to your information (a password and a proper design of your gadgets should suffice, perhaps complemented by a fingerprint reader)
I don't think that another integrated device that offers 50% of the desired functionality is particularly innovative. I'd rather see more efforts to combine existing solutions in order to solve the remaining issues listed above in a useful manner (bluetooth is a good step in this direction, because it takes care of interoperability). So, if you want to be innovative, build me a persistent network storage that can be used by my GSM phone, my mp3 player, my PDA and perhaps my digicam to store all my data in a safe and secure manner without manual intervention (whenever it is modified, through an available network link or otherwise GSM).
Read about it here...
Nothing ever came close;-) (even though I spent many hours on games like Master of Magic, Ultima IV, Space Quest I-III, Phantasie I-III and more recently, Morrowind, they all offered much less immersion than AR).
Lets see. The "war" against Iraq might kill a couple hundred people that are civilians. However, about 10 years ago Sadam killed over a thousand of HIS OWN PEOPLE!
For a quick math lesson: 500 is LESS than 1000. So we're attempting to help give them freedom for a cheaper price than they've already paid. Not bad, if you ask me.
The U.N. estimates the death toll from the bombings and their consequences to be in the order of 500.000. This is approximately the number of Iraqi children who have died because of the U.N. sanctions since 1991 (others report higher numbers. Read about it here).
So, before you attempt to justify the bombings, think again. Do you know what the main difference between the European's (esp. the Germans') and the USA's citizens attitude is? The Europeans know that in many cases, a just cause isn't as just as the leaders say and blindly obeying orders is *not* a good excuse for killing people. We learned that during WW2 and thereafter. Apparently, you guys in the U.S. have never learned that lesson.
After watching this I felt awful that the people of Iraq have who have had to endure fear for so long and I felt I was fortunate to be an American.
Aw, you're such a nice guy. The poor people in Iraq are so grateful that people like you support the bombings in which many of them will get killed and the others will have to endure greater fear than ever.
I have only read it quickly, but there seems to be no mention of the way PepperCoin will charge the customers. Since the PepperCoins' value is transferred from PepperCoin to the merchant and this transaction is "optimized", the other transaction (PepperCoin <=> customer) is important. It seems to me that this would only(?) work with a pre-paid amount (otherwise the customer would have to purchase frequently enough to be charged for several transactions at once), so the claim from the article: Letting consumers buy hit music recordings for a buck or less, without charging $10 a month in subscription fees, could be just the thing to ignite the micropayment market. is questionable.
This is exactly why content-based filters will never work: the professional spammer will take the time and run his e-mail through filters until he gets a good result (a negative answer). The non-spammer will not take the time to test his e-mail with all the spam-filters. Therefore, it is very likely that legitimate content will be filtered and professionally composed spam e-mails will not. So IMHO, Spam-Assassin and all the other content-based spam-filters are completely useless.
The RIAA knows that today, independent artists can reach a large audience without depending on the RIAA - by publishing music on the Web and on P2P networks
Therefore, they need to get away from the traditional revenue streams (i.e. selling CDs) and find revenue streams that don't depend on the demand they are (still) able to create through their marketing channels but which artists no longer need in order to be successful. This is exactly what they're trying to do, with the ultimate goal being a "tax" on anything vaguely related to music.
Amazon pays so much in affiliate fees that they can have all the bandwidth they like from us... I've seen much worse crawlers, from german search engines to broken proxies doing 10 hits/second on dynamic pages to stupid windows users who wanted to make our (very dynamic) website available for offline browsing. If you can't take a few 1000 hits/day because your CGIs are so slow, then what is your site doing on the web anyway?;-)
Slashdot Mirror
works every time for me *cough* ...
You've got a point there. However, GNU C and related compilers plugged a big hole (free compilers are badly needed), so I wouldn't consider the trade-off (cost of development vs. performance) a bad one.
What I'm saying is not that it won't in some cases be useful to opt for generality rather than optimization for a particular platform (esp. if it helps to develop new compilers that wouldn't otherwise have been possible), but that it would be wrong for major software vendors to abandon language-specific intermediate languages (which, IMHO, have shown to result in better performance) in favour of a general-purpose IL that is touted the "next big thing". I'm all for advances in compiler research (general IL are somewhat out of fashion already though), so I'd be glad if this helped produce better compilers, but my guess is that it'll result in reduced costs, fewer jobs and worse performance at a higher price for the end-user. It'd be a much saner thing to improve GCC until the approach can be shown to have advantages for the rest of us (over the existing commercial compilers by the same companies)...
All good compilers already use well-designed intermediate languages. A general intermediate language that aims to be equally suitable for many high level languages will most likely be inferior to the best intermediate language for a particular high level language.
The other benefits of using an IL are manifold. New languages can be implemented without having to write a compiler for each platform.
Great. Just what we need - another of those braindead technological "advances" like human-readable data interchange formats that makes life easier for a few developers (simpler, cheaper compiler development) and harder for millions of users (worse performance). Frankly, the only advantage for the rest of us I can think of would be the higher probability of the resulting tools being mostly bug-free.
select column from table order by column asc (desc) limit 1;
Here's an (abbreviated) article (German!): http://www.heise.de/ct/03/22/146/
-lj
There is a difference, you know...
For Christ's sake, what do those programmers eat?? With a few thousand Dollars, I can eat for a year or longer...
Hardly. All they're trying to accomplish is: 1) make people "steal" more, 2) form the public opinion that everyone is doing so, 3) thus get the governments to introduce more sales-independent taxes and fees on CD recordables, -burners, mp3 players etc. (already very popular in Europe) and live happily and wealthily ever after.
If it doesn't work out, well, they can still sell their crap at (illegaly) inflated prices and keep sueing people who are spreading and promoting independent music through P2P networks.
It only has a 50ms refresh rate though - not suitable for games or movies.
Well, that Debian developer might want to take a look at this .
-LJ
[crawling the web since '97 to gather pricing information - check out geizhals.net]
- Carrying data around (a few MB's: USB-Sticks or CF/SD/MMC-Cards; large amounts: iPods and similar devices)
- navigation, communication/telephony, PDA, mobile gaming, mp3, digital photography (a large variety of separate or integrated devices exist)
So what is there left to do, apart from the obvious miniaturization/integration, better UIs etc.?- protection of your data (encryption and safety/backups for all your personal information/data); ideally, the data on your PDA etc. would be synchronized transparently and continuously with some safe storage area, over the 'net, so that it wouldn't hurt you much if you lost your PDA.
- authentication, secure access to your information (a password and a proper design of your gadgets should suffice, perhaps complemented by a fingerprint reader)
I don't think that another integrated device that offers 50% of the desired functionality is particularly innovative. I'd rather see more efforts to combine existing solutions in order to solve the remaining issues listed above in a useful manner (bluetooth is a good step in this direction, because it takes care of interoperability). So, if you want to be innovative, build me a persistent network storage that can be used by my GSM phone, my mp3 player, my PDA and perhaps my digicam to store all my data in a safe and secure manner without manual intervention (whenever it is modified, through an available network link or otherwise GSM).Read about it here ...
Nothing ever came close ;-) (even though I spent many hours on games like Master of Magic, Ultima IV, Space Quest I-III, Phantasie I-III and more recently, Morrowind, they all offered much less immersion than AR).
The U.N. estimates the death toll from the bombings and their consequences to be in the order of 500.000. This is approximately the number of Iraqi children who have died because of the U.N. sanctions since 1991 (others report higher numbers. Read about it here).
So, before you attempt to justify the bombings, think again. Do you know what the main difference between the European's (esp. the Germans') and the USA's citizens attitude is? The Europeans know that in many cases, a just cause isn't as just as the leaders say and blindly obeying orders is *not* a good excuse for killing people. We learned that during WW2 and thereafter. Apparently, you guys in the U.S. have never learned that lesson.
Aw, you're such a nice guy. The poor people in Iraq are so grateful that people like you support the bombings in which many of them will get killed and the others will have to endure greater fear than ever.
Stupid asshole.
I bet it has many job openings right now... Visit interesting places, meet interesting people, and kill them :-/
This isn't "flamebait". These are my honest feelings, I'm afraid of travelling to the USA, although I would like to attend the conference.
Please hold such conferences in countries where "free" still means "free".
Dubya the Terrorist Hunter would be appropriate, I think.
I have only read it quickly, but there seems to be no mention of the way PepperCoin will charge the customers. Since the PepperCoins' value is transferred from PepperCoin to the merchant and this transaction is "optimized", the other transaction (PepperCoin <=> customer) is important. It seems to me that this would only(?) work with a pre-paid amount (otherwise the customer would have to purchase frequently enough to be charged for several transactions at once), so the claim from the article: Letting consumers buy hit music recordings for a buck or less, without charging $10 a month in subscription fees, could be just the thing to ignite the micropayment market. is questionable.
This is exactly why content-based filters will never work: the professional spammer will take the time and run his e-mail through filters until he gets a good result (a negative answer). The non-spammer will not take the time to test his e-mail with all the spam-filters. Therefore, it is very likely that legitimate content will be filtered and professionally composed spam e-mails will not. So IMHO, Spam-Assassin and all the other content-based spam-filters are completely useless.
No, actually this is extremely clever, because:
AMAZING! Still doesn't sort headers properly when you change mailboxes etc. etc. ...
Amazon pays so much in affiliate fees that they can have all the bandwidth they like from us ... I've seen much worse crawlers, from german search engines to broken proxies doing 10 hits/second on dynamic pages to stupid windows users who wanted to make our (very dynamic) website available for offline browsing. If you can't take a few 1000 hits/day because your CGIs are so slow, then what is your site doing on the web anyway? ;-)