which is why we should replace closed/proprietary cellular networks with open wifi access. rather than putting artificial limits on technology to suit the telecom industry's outdated business model, we should be doing away with these restrictive business models as they are quickly becoming a technological anachronism.
it just doesn't make sense to maintain a bunch of redundant specialized communications networks that are wholly owned and tightly controlled by a handful of telecoms who continually ream the public with extortionate rates and arbitrary penalties. what we should instead be doing is laying out more fiber to increase FttN/FttH penetration (and catch up to Europe, Russia, Japan, South Korea, etc. in broadband speeds/pricing), and then roll out municipal WiFi/WiMax networks, replacing cell towers with open wireless access points. and with ubiquitous wireless internet access, VoIP handsets can be developed that aren't crippled by cellphone carriers, don't have roaming charges, and don't charge you for sending or receiving text messages.
the internet is a public network that's been established with open standards and is suited for all types of digital communications, whether it's text, audio/voice, video, or just binary data. and unlike with cellular networks, you don't need any kind of carrier approval to design/sell hardware that connects to the internet. as a result, anyone and everyone is free to develop new applications using the network. that is one of the main reasons for the internet's rapid growth and unparalleled usefulness. cellular networks, OTOH, by their closed/proprietary nature actually impede the development of new applications & technologies. just compare the innovation and technological progress achieved using the internet over the past decade with the limited progress achieved by cellular networks in the same time span.
LINPACK was just optimize for the shared-memory architectures that were once popular, whereas LAPACK is optimized to exploit (using Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms) the cache-based architectures used in modern supercomputers.
no, the funny thing is you're comparing some lame remote administration application with hardware/BIOS-based security features. you might as well install netbus/Back Orifice 2000/sub7 on your computer for all the good it'll do you. all the thief has to do is take out the laptop hard drive and mount it onto another system and they've bypassed this "cutting-edge" security program developed for government use in the "War on Terror" (yes, that's an actual line used by the makers of that software).
while the Lenovo and Intel security schemes have their limits, at least they provide real security when used by security conscious (and technically competent) users, which is what they seem to be aimed at. the LaptopCop program OTOH is targeted at naive, technologically illiterate idiots. this is apparent in the complete lack of any technical details about their security measures, their inexplicable neglect of standard security practices (like full disk encryption), and their dubious/nonsensical claims that anyone with the slightest understanding of technology would be able to see through (like their claim that WiFi-based geolocation is more accurate than GPS).
um, an infant is both sentient and sapient. a more apt comparison would be terminating the life of a person who has suffered brain death, as brain dead individuals demonstrate about the same level of brain activity as a human embryo up to the ~23rd week of gestation.
it appears you ability to extrapolate logic is extremely wanting. perhaps it has atrophied from disuse?
i don't know about CUDA, but when Microsoft discusses the number of "processors" a single instance of their OS supports they are generally referring to logical processors, which they define as: # of physical processors * # of cores * # of threads
that's why Microsoft claims Windows 7 will scale up to 256 processors. in reality that's 64 physical processors * 2 cores * 2 threads, or 32 physical processors * 4 cores * 2 threads, etc.
how would data parallelism negatively affect a test that is designed to measure a system's performance in supercomputing applications--a field which is dominated by problems which involve processing extremely large data sets?
if vector processors do in fact perform poorly on LINPACK benchmarks then that would mean LINPACK performance is not a good indicator of real-world performance, but that clearly isn't the case as vector processors consistently perform quite well in LINPACK suite measurements.
vector processing began in the field of supercomputing, which during the 1980's and 1990's were essentially the exclusive realm of vector processors. it wasn't until companies, to save money, started designing & building supercomputers using commodity processors (P4s, Opterons, etc.) that general-purpose scalar CPUs began to replace specialized vector processors in high-performance computing. but now companies like Cray and IBM are starting to realize that this change was a mistake.
even in commodity computing the momentum is shifting away from general-purpose scalar CPUs towards specialized vector coprocessors like GPUs, DSPs, array processors, stream processors, etc. when you're dealing with things like scientific modeling, economic modeling, engineering calculations, etc. you need to crunch large data sets using the same operation; this is best done in parallel using SIMD. using specialized vector processors (and instruction sets) you can run these applications far more efficiently than you could using a scalar processor running at much higher clock speeds. the only downside is that you lose the advantage of using commodity hardware that's cheap because of their high volume production. but if companies like Adobe start developing their applications to employ vector/stream coprocessors, then that will boost the adoption of these vector processors in the commodity computing market, which will increase production volume and lower manufacturing costs.
this may not be the ideal fix, but one solution is to get something like Tab Mix Plus, which allows you to restore all tabs AND windows. it also lets you merge all of your browser windows and move tabs between windows more easily. but all you really need to do is remember/restore opened tabs and windows to get the behavior you're talking about.
that's why it's hypocritical to oppose abortion to protect a nondescript clump of cells without any observable sign of sentience, much less sapience, while one continues to support the slaughter of clearly sentient animals such as chickens, cows, pigs, lambs, etc.
it makes even less sense to support capital punishment while claiming to be pro-life and calling the use of emergency contraceptives "murder." an embryo doesn't have any more sentience than a plant. nerve endings/pathways don't even fully form until the 28th week of gestation, precluding the possibility of experiencing pain (or any other sensation) before the 27th week of gestation. so how can one justify terminating the life of a human being (especially knowing the justice system is far from infallible) when it is presumably wrong to terminate the life of an embryo which has no capacity for pain or conscious thought?
and the only connection between anonymity and abortion is that Esther Dyson is wrong about both of them. though anonymity can sometimes facilitate rude behavior, it's not the cause of it, and it certainly doesn't a make everyone behave rudely (just as a lack of anonymity doesn't prevent rude behavior). besides, anonymity is just an extension of personal privacy; and like privacy, there are different levels of anonymity. signing an e-mail or forum post with your full name doesn't really eliminate anonymity completely. and signing a message with an e-mail address or pseudonym still isn't completely anonymous. so should everyone's address, photo, and phone number be attached to every message in order to qualify as no-longer anonymous?
most people have a natural tendency to be cordial and sociable regardless of whether they have "anonymity" or not. it's just an evolutionary adaptation. we're social creatures, and being able to co-exist and cooperate with others is an integral part of our survival. only those with sociopathic tendencies would intentionally be rude to others just because they have some semblance of anonymity. so there's no reason for anonymity to be discouraged.
likewise, abortion shouldn't be something to be held against a someone for having. the cultural stigma that still surrounds abortion is a vestige of the religious fundamentalism that dominated our culture in the past. there's no good reason to look down on someone for making the responsible decision to not have a child when they're not ready. it's really no one else's business, and making women/teenage girls feel ashamed of making a personal choice about their body is really just continuing the persecution that women/girls were subjected to in decades past.
frankly, i'm already tempted to give Chrome a try. i recently updated to FF3, and despite disabling/uninstalling over half of my Firefox extensions, the browser UI still locks up randomly for no apparent reason (it's quite annoying to be typing something and then have the browser suddenly stop responding)--something which FF2, for all of its flaws, never exhibited.
though, FF3 does load up a little bit faster (though I'm not sure if that's because of the new codebase or because a bunch of my extensions were disabled due to incompatibility), and opening new browser windows doesn't take nearly as long as it did before (3 seconds as opposed to 15~20 seconds). also, the tag support in the bookmark manager is a huge plus.
Google also offers a variety of other web services besides search. and most Google Apps services have complex enough interfaces to make cross-browser compatibility a major hassle, i imagine.
as for StarOffice/OpenOffice, i think it's important to first understand why Sun purchased StarOffice:
The number one reason why Sun bought StarDivision in 1999 was because, at the time, Sun had something approaching forty-two thousand employees. Pretty much every one of them had to have both a Unix workstation and a Windows laptop. And it was cheaper to go buy a company that could make a Solaris and Linux desktop productivity suite than it was to buy forty-two thousand licenses from Microsoft. (Simon Phipps, Sun, LUGradio podcast.)
offering StarOffice as a free download (for personal use) was a great way to promote their office suite and did not conflict with their original goal. then perhaps following in the footsteps of Netscape with Mozilla, Sun opened the source code for StarOffice, creating OpenOffice. this further boosted the popularity of StarOffice/OpenOffice (which/. no doubt had a hand in) and also accelerated the development of the StarOffice code base by enlisting the help of the open source community.
Sun then adds proprietary components to snapshots of the OpenOffice code base to develop StarOffice. these proprietary components include:
Several font metric compatible Unicode TrueType fonts containing bitmap representations for better appearance at smaller font sizes
Twelve Western fonts (including Andale Sans, Arial Narrow, Arial Black, Broadway, Garamond, Imprint MT Shadow, Kidprint, Palace Script, Sheffield) and seven Asian language fonts (including support for the Hong Kong Supplementary character set)
Adabas D database
StarOffice-only templates and sample documents
A large clip art gallery
Sorting functionality for Asian versions
File import filters for additional older word-processing formats (including EBCDIC, DisplayWrite, MultiMate, PFS Write, WordStar, WordStar 2000, and XyWrite (conversion filters licensed from MasterSoft))
A different spell checker (note that OpenOffice.org includes a spell checker as well) and thesaurus
StarOffice Configuration Manager
Macro Converter for converting Microsoft Office VBA macros to StarOffice Basic
so by contributing to OpenOffice, Sun is still just contributing to StarOffice. funding both projects allows them to have the best of both worlds, and doesn't really cost them anything extra. they gain the benefits of an active open source development community, and they also get to keep a proprietary office suite to sell, in which they can include components they're unable to include in OO.org.
where did you get that idea? the word "desktop" doesn't even appear in the article.
besides, if Windows 2000 is considered a desktop OS, then why not Solaris? UIUC has entire labs full of Sun/Solaris desktop PCs, and I'm sure other schools have them as well. have you even used Solaris before?
Several days ago, two files containing Microsoft source code began circulating on the Internet. One contains a majority of the NT4 source code: this is not discussed here. The other contains a fraction of the Windows 2000 source code, reportedly about 15% of the total. This includes some networking code including winsock and inet; as well as some shell code. Some other familiar items include the event log, and some of the default screensavers.
well, part of the reason it's broken is because we have career politicians/lawyers/corporate executives running everything. i think one of the smartest moves made by India as a society was to elect a scientist as president. and while that may never happen in the U.S., having science-related cabinet positions filled by scientists is the next best thing.
in itself this may not fix all of the problems inherent to our political system, but it will at least put people who have some intelligence & integrity in positions of power. also, by putting policy decisions in the hands of scientists/academics rather than conventional politicians, you introduce the possibility of change/reform for the first time. otherwise, if every government official fits the same mold of the archetypal politician you're just setting yourself up for more of the same.
the idea that someone needs to be a career politician who knows how to "play political games" in order to be a good politician is patently false. you might need to be experienced in making backroom deals, giving kickbacks, pandering to interest groups, etc. in order to sleaze your way up to the top in politics, but if someone is simply being appointed straight to the top, then that clearly isn't requisite anymore. and in this case it would indeed be better to appoint a non-politician who hasn't been corrupted by years of being in Washington (and political fund-raising) and will not compromise their morals so easily.
i'm generally against media censorship, but i think certain sites should just be banned from/. submissions, The Sun being one of them. if i ever need, or wanted, to read their stories I'll just go to the checkout aisle at the grocery store.
i'm guessing the narrow textbox was a design decision made to accommodate iPhone users? why the/. seems to think iPhone users would be interested in commenting on Idle more than any of the other sections I have no idea...
i wish the developers of Aedis Eclipse: Generation of Chaos would have implemented these type of psychology hacks, or perhaps the problem is just that they use wau too much randomness, which really undermines the strategy element in a strategy RPG.
Aedis Eclipse is different from other Strategy RPGs in that each of your party members is actually a captain commanding a set of units (from 10 to 30, depending on your rank). when you engage in a battle, you basically just choose a starting formation, which affects your stat modifiers, and then decide whether to charge/attack, wait (let the enemy come to you), or run/retreat (if you initiated the battle). once you've made your choices, you're basically just left to watch the battle play out on its own. and that can be really frustrating when your ranged units don't attack the enemy's melee units until they're close enough to hit you, or when your captain is just walking in circles while his/her units are getting slaughtered by the opposing captain.
i would chalk it all up to bad AI, except that the enemy's AI seems to have no problem behaving the way they're supposed to--they don't stand around doing nothing, and their ranged units actually initiate attacks as soon as they have targets in range. this means quite often the player can go into a battle with a superior force comprised of much stronger units and still get decimated by the computer.
i can understand the need to add randomness/luck to a game, but it should not be implemented in a way that impairs the AI--for instance, using luck to determine whether a unit will attack the enemy or stand there like an idiot. deliberately using dumb AI algorithms to add an element of luck to a game just creates really frustrating gameplay.
that part did seem rather awkward. it doesn't help that the article tries to play up the capabilities of the robot.
"She is always happy to clean the house for "husband" Le, help with his accounts or get him a drink.
right... how does she get him a drink or clean the house without being able to walk? i don't see any wheels attached to her in any of the photos. typical media sensationalism...
this story seems to be more hype than substance. it's just a creepy nerd who's added speakers and some actuators to his Real Doll(tm). i don't see any technology demonstrated here that hasn't already existed in some form or another in various children's toys from the 80's and 90's.
i mean, does/. really have nothing better to put up on the front page than fluff pieces from The Sun? this kind of tripe might impress technologically illiterate housewives, but it doesn't belong on a site purportedly aimed at nerds.
i don't think he ever said $15 was high priced. he's simply referring to the "more complex" software referred to in the letter using the author's own terminology. and if you look at the graph in TFA, $15 is relatively high priced for the average App Store application.
and what is a "high" price is largely relative. while $100 might be a high price for a stick of gum, it wouldn't be a high price for a Ferrari. so whether a price is high or not depends on the value of the product. games for other handheld consoles might start at $15-20, but they're also much more complex and thus more costly to make.
i'm not saying that there aren't games for the iPhone worth $20~30, or games for the PSP worth much less, but the vast majority of games for the iPhone simply do not justify a price higher than $10 IMO. they might still be fun games, but so far Flash games that are freely available on the internet. so it's unreasonable to charge PSP prices for iPhone titles.
i think a lot of Apple's policies are despicable too, but are you seriously complaining that they remove a $1000 application that does absolutely nothing useful?
sure, Apple could have sit by and watch their loyal customers get scammed out of a thousand dollars with a single click (and collect their cut on each sale), but they'd probably have a lot of pissed off customers and attract even more bad press.
this isn't like their intentionally creating firmware updates that brick unlocked iPhones. nor is this like their forcing developers to sign NDAs in order to suppress information about App Store rejections. this isn't even the same as their rejecting applications that might compete with their own products. this is one of the few instances (perhaps the only instance) of Apple actually protecting consumer interests in regards to the iPhone rather than screwing over their customers to protect their own interests.
if you're going to talk about Apple exploiting hardworking developers, at least pick a better example (for instance, an application that actually does something--anything--useful).
i think i saw something like that in a BBC or NatGeo documentary. they had clips of birds mimicking the sound of car alarms, construction vehicles, and chainsaws with an amazing degree of likeness. but the birds in these clips were living in the jungle or rain forest. i've heard any birds mimicking artificial noises in person.
i wonder if that's the bird equivalent of whistling/humming a tune that's stuck in your heard.
you need to work on your reading skills. the prisoners aren't being put through just 16 hours of loud music and 4 hours of silence.
prisoners are being locked up without due process and subjected to physical and psychological torture for weeks, months, or even years. sensory deprivation is known to cause psychosis and potentially permanent damage to an individual. and as if the psychological abuse wasn't enough, the prisoners are also being held in stress positions meant to cause pain and/or injury to detainees for up to 2 days at a time.
and even if you have no concern for due process and human rights, torture has been proven to be a very poor way of obtaining accurate information. people will confess to crimes they didn't commit while subjected to torture. so what makes you think that "intelligence" gathered through torture would be of any value?
absolutely. i think this is another idea sorta like Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. basically, it's a gimmick that was likely thought up by marketing execs during a board meeting rather than a useful technology born of real innovation by engineers or developers.
you can usually tell when this is the case because the product/service will be designed primarily around serving the commercial interests of the businesses selling/offering it rather than the consumers who are supposed to purchase/use it. so with BD/HD-DVD you have a new media format that provides only marginal improvements in image/sound quality to consumers, but is crammed full of "features" (like DRM, region codes, and online ads) that are only there to serve movie studios and other content producers. HD media really just seems like it was created mainly to get people to purchase the same titles again rather than to confer any real benefit to the consumer.
likewise, a 3D shopping mall doesn't seem to serve any practical purpose to consumers. it might make sense to businesses as a way to attract consumers using a "Virtual Reality" store, but aside from the novelty (which will wear off eventually) there's really no reason for consumers to use a virtual store rather than a normal e-commerce site. this is the kind of technology we can use less of. what we can use more of are places like the old Bell Labs, where true research takes precedence over immediate profits and marketing gimmicks.
yes, i think the situation at each school is different--at the college level, at least. at UIUC we mostly had Sun/Solaris (technically not FOSS, i know) machines for CS students, though i think we may have had Windows machines in the library. i imagine any university with a robust CS program would have some Unix/Linux systems available to students.
however, most primary schools, junior highs and high schools seem to use Macs or Windows PCs. it's really unfortunate too. if anything, public schools should promote the use of FOSS as it doesn't impose a financial burden on students/parents. the school themselves would save a lot of money too by not having to pay for software licenses, not having to subscribe to AV software, and generally having less malware-related maintenance to do.
i also think that public institutions should remain vendor-neutral whenever possible, and that means not promoting a particular company's commercial software. which is why it's so vital for public schools and government agencies to use open standards & formats.
lastly, exposing students to the idea of FOSS is also beneficial in and of itself. it encourages a spirit of generosity, altruism and community, in addition to fostering openness, cooperation & collaboration. plus, FOSS developers are excellent role-models. not only do they possess and demonstrate the above virtues, but they're also driven by a true passion for programming, which is the reason they donate their time to open source projects. i think that's a positive attitude worth cultivating in students. whether a student decides to pursue a career in open or closed-source development (or any other type of career for that matter), they should be encouraged to follow their interests and do something that they truly enjoy and believe in rather than being motivated purely by financial gain.
and most of those students will drop out of the class and/or change their major by the end of the semester. so why waste the time/tuition money of the students who have demonstrated initiative in their own academic career?
if i took college level music theory course for music majors i wouldn't expect the instructor to waste everyone else's time to teach me what major and minor scales are.
besides, i think one of the most common problems in modern education (at least here in the U.S.) is the habit of instructors to underestimate their students. as a consequence they spend far more time than they need to going over really rudimentary or trivial information at a snail's pace, boring their students in the process and turning them off of the subject being taught. and because they aren't being challenged, the students end up not putting as much effort into the course, and so their grades may drop, which just reinforces the instructor's preconception of the material being too difficult and that he/she needs to slow down the pace of the course. worse yet, if educators keep selling their students short, the students might even begin to internalize this attitude, which can negatively impact their performance as well.
it's always better to give students a challenge and have them struggle a little with material that's a little bit beyond them rather than have them become bored or complacent with material that's beneath them and not learn anything at all because they've simply lost interest.
BASIC would be good for a first programming course in junior high or high school, but definitely not in college. frankly, if you're a CS major you should already have played around in some turing complete programming language or another prior to your first college CS course. things like variables, arrays, input/output, basic control structures, etc. should already be familiar enough to the student so that when he starts his first college-level programming course, the instructor should only have to briefly review these concepts in the first 2-3 days of class and be done with it.
Such a gross ownership disparity creates such a lopsided competitive advantage for a single company that it utterly distorts the marketplace.
Tate (Clear Channel) on expanding their network of more than 1200 terrestrial radio stations:
the FCC should be focusing its attention on how to ensure the continued vitality of free radio by moving forward on its review of reasonable relaxation of the local ownership rules.
Translation: satellite radio monopoly = bad! terrestrial radio monopoly = good!
Slashdot Mirror
which is why we should replace closed/proprietary cellular networks with open wifi access. rather than putting artificial limits on technology to suit the telecom industry's outdated business model, we should be doing away with these restrictive business models as they are quickly becoming a technological anachronism.
it just doesn't make sense to maintain a bunch of redundant specialized communications networks that are wholly owned and tightly controlled by a handful of telecoms who continually ream the public with extortionate rates and arbitrary penalties. what we should instead be doing is laying out more fiber to increase FttN/FttH penetration (and catch up to Europe, Russia, Japan, South Korea, etc. in broadband speeds/pricing), and then roll out municipal WiFi/WiMax networks, replacing cell towers with open wireless access points. and with ubiquitous wireless internet access, VoIP handsets can be developed that aren't crippled by cellphone carriers, don't have roaming charges, and don't charge you for sending or receiving text messages.
the internet is a public network that's been established with open standards and is suited for all types of digital communications, whether it's text, audio/voice, video, or just binary data. and unlike with cellular networks, you don't need any kind of carrier approval to design/sell hardware that connects to the internet. as a result, anyone and everyone is free to develop new applications using the network. that is one of the main reasons for the internet's rapid growth and unparalleled usefulness. cellular networks, OTOH, by their closed/proprietary nature actually impede the development of new applications & technologies. just compare the innovation and technological progress achieved using the internet over the past decade with the limited progress achieved by cellular networks in the same time span.
LAPACK may be the successor to LINPACK, but they were both written for vector processors (PDF).
LINPACK was just optimize for the shared-memory architectures that were once popular, whereas LAPACK is optimized to exploit (using Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms) the cache-based architectures used in modern supercomputers.
no, the funny thing is you're comparing some lame remote administration application with hardware/BIOS-based security features. you might as well install netbus/Back Orifice 2000/sub7 on your computer for all the good it'll do you. all the thief has to do is take out the laptop hard drive and mount it onto another system and they've bypassed this "cutting-edge" security program developed for government use in the "War on Terror" (yes, that's an actual line used by the makers of that software).
while the Lenovo and Intel security schemes have their limits, at least they provide real security when used by security conscious (and technically competent) users, which is what they seem to be aimed at. the LaptopCop program OTOH is targeted at naive, technologically illiterate idiots. this is apparent in the complete lack of any technical details about their security measures, their inexplicable neglect of standard security practices (like full disk encryption), and their dubious/nonsensical claims that anyone with the slightest understanding of technology would be able to see through (like their claim that WiFi-based geolocation is more accurate than GPS).
um, an infant is both sentient and sapient. a more apt comparison would be terminating the life of a person who has suffered brain death, as brain dead individuals demonstrate about the same level of brain activity as a human embryo up to the ~23rd week of gestation.
it appears you ability to extrapolate logic is extremely wanting. perhaps it has atrophied from disuse?
i don't know about CUDA, but when Microsoft discusses the number of "processors" a single instance of their OS supports they are generally referring to logical processors, which they define as:
# of physical processors * # of cores * # of threads
that's why Microsoft claims Windows 7 will scale up to 256 processors. in reality that's 64 physical processors * 2 cores * 2 threads, or 32 physical processors * 4 cores * 2 threads, etc.
how would data parallelism negatively affect a test that is designed to measure a system's performance in supercomputing applications--a field which is dominated by problems which involve processing extremely large data sets?
if vector processors do in fact perform poorly on LINPACK benchmarks then that would mean LINPACK performance is not a good indicator of real-world performance, but that clearly isn't the case as vector processors consistently perform quite well in LINPACK suite measurements.
vector processing began in the field of supercomputing, which during the 1980's and 1990's were essentially the exclusive realm of vector processors. it wasn't until companies, to save money, started designing & building supercomputers using commodity processors (P4s, Opterons, etc.) that general-purpose scalar CPUs began to replace specialized vector processors in high-performance computing. but now companies like Cray and IBM are starting to realize that this change was a mistake.
even in commodity computing the momentum is shifting away from general-purpose scalar CPUs towards specialized vector coprocessors like GPUs, DSPs, array processors, stream processors, etc. when you're dealing with things like scientific modeling, economic modeling, engineering calculations, etc. you need to crunch large data sets using the same operation; this is best done in parallel using SIMD. using specialized vector processors (and instruction sets) you can run these applications far more efficiently than you could using a scalar processor running at much higher clock speeds. the only downside is that you lose the advantage of using commodity hardware that's cheap because of their high volume production. but if companies like Adobe start developing their applications to employ vector/stream coprocessors, then that will boost the adoption of these vector processors in the commodity computing market, which will increase production volume and lower manufacturing costs.
this may not be the ideal fix, but one solution is to get something like Tab Mix Plus, which allows you to restore all tabs AND windows. it also lets you merge all of your browser windows and move tabs between windows more easily. but all you really need to do is remember/restore opened tabs and windows to get the behavior you're talking about.
that's why it's hypocritical to oppose abortion to protect a nondescript clump of cells without any observable sign of sentience, much less sapience, while one continues to support the slaughter of clearly sentient animals such as chickens, cows, pigs, lambs, etc.
it makes even less sense to support capital punishment while claiming to be pro-life and calling the use of emergency contraceptives "murder." an embryo doesn't have any more sentience than a plant. nerve endings/pathways don't even fully form until the 28th week of gestation, precluding the possibility of experiencing pain (or any other sensation) before the 27th week of gestation. so how can one justify terminating the life of a human being (especially knowing the justice system is far from infallible) when it is presumably wrong to terminate the life of an embryo which has no capacity for pain or conscious thought?
and the only connection between anonymity and abortion is that Esther Dyson is wrong about both of them. though anonymity can sometimes facilitate rude behavior, it's not the cause of it, and it certainly doesn't a make everyone behave rudely (just as a lack of anonymity doesn't prevent rude behavior). besides, anonymity is just an extension of personal privacy; and like privacy, there are different levels of anonymity. signing an e-mail or forum post with your full name doesn't really eliminate anonymity completely. and signing a message with an e-mail address or pseudonym still isn't completely anonymous. so should everyone's address, photo, and phone number be attached to every message in order to qualify as no-longer anonymous?
most people have a natural tendency to be cordial and sociable regardless of whether they have "anonymity" or not. it's just an evolutionary adaptation. we're social creatures, and being able to co-exist and cooperate with others is an integral part of our survival. only those with sociopathic tendencies would intentionally be rude to others just because they have some semblance of anonymity. so there's no reason for anonymity to be discouraged.
likewise, abortion shouldn't be something to be held against a someone for having. the cultural stigma that still surrounds abortion is a vestige of the religious fundamentalism that dominated our culture in the past. there's no good reason to look down on someone for making the responsible decision to not have a child when they're not ready. it's really no one else's business, and making women/teenage girls feel ashamed of making a personal choice about their body is really just continuing the persecution that women/girls were subjected to in decades past.
frankly, i'm already tempted to give Chrome a try. i recently updated to FF3, and despite disabling/uninstalling over half of my Firefox extensions, the browser UI still locks up randomly for no apparent reason (it's quite annoying to be typing something and then have the browser suddenly stop responding)--something which FF2, for all of its flaws, never exhibited.
though, FF3 does load up a little bit faster (though I'm not sure if that's because of the new codebase or because a bunch of my extensions were disabled due to incompatibility), and opening new browser windows doesn't take nearly as long as it did before (3 seconds as opposed to 15~20 seconds). also, the tag support in the bookmark manager is a huge plus.
Google also offers a variety of other web services besides search. and most Google Apps services have complex enough interfaces to make cross-browser compatibility a major hassle, i imagine.
as for StarOffice/OpenOffice, i think it's important to first understand why Sun purchased StarOffice:
offering StarOffice as a free download (for personal use) was a great way to promote their office suite and did not conflict with their original goal. then perhaps following in the footsteps of Netscape with Mozilla, Sun opened the source code for StarOffice, creating OpenOffice. this further boosted the popularity of StarOffice/OpenOffice (which /. no doubt had a hand in) and also accelerated the development of the StarOffice code base by enlisting the help of the open source community.
Sun then adds proprietary components to snapshots of the OpenOffice code base to develop StarOffice. these proprietary components include:
so by contributing to OpenOffice, Sun is still just contributing to StarOffice. funding both projects allows them to have the best of both worlds, and doesn't really cost them anything extra. they gain the benefits of an active open source development community, and they also get to keep a proprietary office suite to sell, in which they can include components they're unable to include in OO.org.
where did you get that idea? the word "desktop" doesn't even appear in the article.
besides, if Windows 2000 is considered a desktop OS, then why not Solaris? UIUC has entire labs full of Sun/Solaris desktop PCs, and I'm sure other schools have them as well. have you even used Solaris before?
only 15% of the source code:
well, part of the reason it's broken is because we have career politicians/lawyers/corporate executives running everything. i think one of the smartest moves made by India as a society was to elect a scientist as president. and while that may never happen in the U.S., having science-related cabinet positions filled by scientists is the next best thing.
in itself this may not fix all of the problems inherent to our political system, but it will at least put people who have some intelligence & integrity in positions of power. also, by putting policy decisions in the hands of scientists/academics rather than conventional politicians, you introduce the possibility of change/reform for the first time. otherwise, if every government official fits the same mold of the archetypal politician you're just setting yourself up for more of the same.
the idea that someone needs to be a career politician who knows how to "play political games" in order to be a good politician is patently false. you might need to be experienced in making backroom deals, giving kickbacks, pandering to interest groups, etc. in order to sleaze your way up to the top in politics, but if someone is simply being appointed straight to the top, then that clearly isn't requisite anymore. and in this case it would indeed be better to appoint a non-politician who hasn't been corrupted by years of being in Washington (and political fund-raising) and will not compromise their morals so easily.
i'm generally against media censorship, but i think certain sites should just be banned from /. submissions, The Sun being one of them. if i ever need, or wanted, to read their stories I'll just go to the checkout aisle at the grocery store.
i'm guessing the narrow textbox was a design decision made to accommodate iPhone users? why the /. seems to think iPhone users would be interested in commenting on Idle more than any of the other sections I have no idea...
i wish the developers of Aedis Eclipse: Generation of Chaos would have implemented these type of psychology hacks, or perhaps the problem is just that they use wau too much randomness, which really undermines the strategy element in a strategy RPG.
Aedis Eclipse is different from other Strategy RPGs in that each of your party members is actually a captain commanding a set of units (from 10 to 30, depending on your rank). when you engage in a battle, you basically just choose a starting formation, which affects your stat modifiers, and then decide whether to charge/attack, wait (let the enemy come to you), or run/retreat (if you initiated the battle). once you've made your choices, you're basically just left to watch the battle play out on its own. and that can be really frustrating when your ranged units don't attack the enemy's melee units until they're close enough to hit you, or when your captain is just walking in circles while his/her units are getting slaughtered by the opposing captain.
i would chalk it all up to bad AI, except that the enemy's AI seems to have no problem behaving the way they're supposed to--they don't stand around doing nothing, and their ranged units actually initiate attacks as soon as they have targets in range. this means quite often the player can go into a battle with a superior force comprised of much stronger units and still get decimated by the computer.
i can understand the need to add randomness/luck to a game, but it should not be implemented in a way that impairs the AI--for instance, using luck to determine whether a unit will attack the enemy or stand there like an idiot. deliberately using dumb AI algorithms to add an element of luck to a game just creates really frustrating gameplay.
that part did seem rather awkward. it doesn't help that the article tries to play up the capabilities of the robot.
right... how does she get him a drink or clean the house without being able to walk? i don't see any wheels attached to her in any of the photos. typical media sensationalism...
this story seems to be more hype than substance. it's just a creepy nerd who's added speakers and some actuators to his Real Doll(tm). i don't see any technology demonstrated here that hasn't already existed in some form or another in various children's toys from the 80's and 90's.
i mean, does /. really have nothing better to put up on the front page than fluff pieces from The Sun? this kind of tripe might impress technologically illiterate housewives, but it doesn't belong on a site purportedly aimed at nerds.
i don't think he ever said $15 was high priced. he's simply referring to the "more complex" software referred to in the letter using the author's own terminology. and if you look at the graph in TFA, $15 is relatively high priced for the average App Store application.
and what is a "high" price is largely relative. while $100 might be a high price for a stick of gum, it wouldn't be a high price for a Ferrari. so whether a price is high or not depends on the value of the product. games for other handheld consoles might start at $15-20, but they're also much more complex and thus more costly to make.
just because $30 is a reasonable price for titles like: Mobile Suit Gundam SEED: Rengou vs. Z.A.F.T., Burnout Legends, Killzone: Liberation or Warhammer 40k: Squad Command does not mean it's a reasonable price for the average iPhone game.
i'm not saying that there aren't games for the iPhone worth $20~30, or games for the PSP worth much less, but the vast majority of games for the iPhone simply do not justify a price higher than $10 IMO. they might still be fun games, but so far Flash games that are freely available on the internet. so it's unreasonable to charge PSP prices for iPhone titles.
i think a lot of Apple's policies are despicable too, but are you seriously complaining that they remove a $1000 application that does absolutely nothing useful?
sure, Apple could have sit by and watch their loyal customers get scammed out of a thousand dollars with a single click (and collect their cut on each sale), but they'd probably have a lot of pissed off customers and attract even more bad press.
this isn't like their intentionally creating firmware updates that brick unlocked iPhones. nor is this like their forcing developers to sign NDAs in order to suppress information about App Store rejections. this isn't even the same as their rejecting applications that might compete with their own products. this is one of the few instances (perhaps the only instance) of Apple actually protecting consumer interests in regards to the iPhone rather than screwing over their customers to protect their own interests.
if you're going to talk about Apple exploiting hardworking developers, at least pick a better example (for instance, an application that actually does something--anything--useful).
i think i saw something like that in a BBC or NatGeo documentary. they had clips of birds mimicking the sound of car alarms, construction vehicles, and chainsaws with an amazing degree of likeness. but the birds in these clips were living in the jungle or rain forest. i've heard any birds mimicking artificial noises in person.
i wonder if that's the bird equivalent of whistling/humming a tune that's stuck in your heard.
you need to work on your reading skills. the prisoners aren't being put through just 16 hours of loud music and 4 hours of silence.
prisoners are being locked up without due process and subjected to physical and psychological torture for weeks, months, or even years. sensory deprivation is known to cause psychosis and potentially permanent damage to an individual. and as if the psychological abuse wasn't enough, the prisoners are also being held in stress positions meant to cause pain and/or injury to detainees for up to 2 days at a time.
and even if you have no concern for due process and human rights, torture has been proven to be a very poor way of obtaining accurate information. people will confess to crimes they didn't commit while subjected to torture. so what makes you think that "intelligence" gathered through torture would be of any value?
absolutely. i think this is another idea sorta like Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. basically, it's a gimmick that was likely thought up by marketing execs during a board meeting rather than a useful technology born of real innovation by engineers or developers.
you can usually tell when this is the case because the product/service will be designed primarily around serving the commercial interests of the businesses selling/offering it rather than the consumers who are supposed to purchase/use it. so with BD/HD-DVD you have a new media format that provides only marginal improvements in image/sound quality to consumers, but is crammed full of "features" (like DRM, region codes, and online ads) that are only there to serve movie studios and other content producers. HD media really just seems like it was created mainly to get people to purchase the same titles again rather than to confer any real benefit to the consumer.
likewise, a 3D shopping mall doesn't seem to serve any practical purpose to consumers. it might make sense to businesses as a way to attract consumers using a "Virtual Reality" store, but aside from the novelty (which will wear off eventually) there's really no reason for consumers to use a virtual store rather than a normal e-commerce site. this is the kind of technology we can use less of. what we can use more of are places like the old Bell Labs, where true research takes precedence over immediate profits and marketing gimmicks.
yes, i think the situation at each school is different--at the college level, at least. at UIUC we mostly had Sun/Solaris (technically not FOSS, i know) machines for CS students, though i think we may have had Windows machines in the library. i imagine any university with a robust CS program would have some Unix/Linux systems available to students.
however, most primary schools, junior highs and high schools seem to use Macs or Windows PCs. it's really unfortunate too. if anything, public schools should promote the use of FOSS as it doesn't impose a financial burden on students/parents. the school themselves would save a lot of money too by not having to pay for software licenses, not having to subscribe to AV software, and generally having less malware-related maintenance to do.
i also think that public institutions should remain vendor-neutral whenever possible, and that means not promoting a particular company's commercial software. which is why it's so vital for public schools and government agencies to use open standards & formats.
lastly, exposing students to the idea of FOSS is also beneficial in and of itself. it encourages a spirit of generosity, altruism and community, in addition to fostering openness, cooperation & collaboration. plus, FOSS developers are excellent role-models. not only do they possess and demonstrate the above virtues, but they're also driven by a true passion for programming, which is the reason they donate their time to open source projects. i think that's a positive attitude worth cultivating in students. whether a student decides to pursue a career in open or closed-source development (or any other type of career for that matter), they should be encouraged to follow their interests and do something that they truly enjoy and believe in rather than being motivated purely by financial gain.
and most of those students will drop out of the class and/or change their major by the end of the semester. so why waste the time/tuition money of the students who have demonstrated initiative in their own academic career?
if i took college level music theory course for music majors i wouldn't expect the instructor to waste everyone else's time to teach me what major and minor scales are.
besides, i think one of the most common problems in modern education (at least here in the U.S.) is the habit of instructors to underestimate their students. as a consequence they spend far more time than they need to going over really rudimentary or trivial information at a snail's pace, boring their students in the process and turning them off of the subject being taught. and because they aren't being challenged, the students end up not putting as much effort into the course, and so their grades may drop, which just reinforces the instructor's preconception of the material being too difficult and that he/she needs to slow down the pace of the course. worse yet, if educators keep selling their students short, the students might even begin to internalize this attitude, which can negatively impact their performance as well.
it's always better to give students a challenge and have them struggle a little with material that's a little bit beyond them rather than have them become bored or complacent with material that's beneath them and not learn anything at all because they've simply lost interest.
BASIC would be good for a first programming course in junior high or high school, but definitely not in college. frankly, if you're a CS major you should already have played around in some turing complete programming language or another prior to your first college CS course. things like variables, arrays, input/output, basic control structures, etc. should already be familiar enough to the student so that when he starts his first college-level programming course, the instructor should only have to briefly review these concepts in the first 2-3 days of class and be done with it.
hey c'mon, that's not fair...
everyone knows Deborah Tate gets at least some of her talking points from Clear Channel.
Tate (Clear Channel) on the XM/Sirius merger:
Tate (Clear Channel) on expanding their network of more than 1200 terrestrial radio stations:
Translation:
satellite radio monopoly = bad!
terrestrial radio monopoly = good!