In particular, why would it happen at nearly free-fall speed, as if every column in the structure failed simultaneously? That's the thing that gets me. I would expect a much slower, more incremental collapse. Guess I have to go read TFR.
I don't agree. Once again, patent policy is being set by people who obviously don't understand the technology, and so, having lurched from one extreme to the other back in the 1980s, we're now going to lurch to a new extreme that is also not going to make sense. If you read TFA closely to the end, you'll see that somehow two connected computers constitutes a "particular machine", where one does not. This doesn't make any sense, and is going to result in an arbitrary selection of which patents are valid and which aren't.
I understand that many people feel that software patents are so broken they should be thrown out. I don't agree. I think the problem with software patents is that the PTO never has had adequate expertise concerning prior art in the industry, and largely as a consequence, the bar for obviousness has been set about two orders of magnitude too low.
I don't understand. Why shouldn't I be able to crop to any arbitrary aspect ratio? Even archaic `xv' does that. Okay, the use of the golden ratio specifically is a bit unusual, but so what??
I've used VNC routinely for this kind of purpose for years -- in fact, I do almost all my programming work using it. I have not found it to be a resource hog by any means. Just checking some of my VNC sessions now, resident memory use by the Xvnc process seems to stay between 20 and 60MB. At current memory prices, this is pretty much negligible (and I would assume you have plenty of DRAM on your compute box -- 8GB at least, yes?).
Others have mentioned SSH tunnelling -- I can assure you this is reliable; I've used it day in and day out for years.
Use Screen if you want, but personally I wouldn't even think twice about using VNC.
No mod points and you're already at +5 anyway, so let me put it more strongly: this is one of the best observations on the likely fate of the field I've ever heard, in 30 years of studying it.
There's really something called the "Wii Fit"?? I don't know if Nintendo execs are Honda fans, or if they just want parents to be able to say to each other, when their rugrat is throwing a temper tantrum cuz they took away the game console, "Oh, he's just having a Wii Fit".
I hate it when the halting problem is trotted out as "proof" that formal verification is impossible.
I do too. The Halting Problem doesn't show that you can never prove that a program terminates; it doesn't even show that you can't write a program that proves that some other programs terminate. All it shows is that you can't write a program that is guaranteed to always tell you (in finite time), for any other program, whether that program terminates.
I recently got a Nokia N810 "Internet Tablet", as they call it. It's pocket-sized, much smaller than an Eee for instance, and a little bigger than a Palm TX, but it has a 400 MHz TI OMAP CPU (an ARM with a DSP core glued on), an 800x480 screen, a very usable slide-out mini keyboard, and built-in Wi-Fi, all for $400 (street price). Oh, and it runs Linux. (It's not a cell phone, though it will do VOIP over the Wi-Fi.)
Battery life is excellent: several hours of active use, and several days at idle (you don't really turn it off, you just lock the touch screen and it goes into low-power mode). I recently used it to take notes at a seminar -- in 3 or 4 hours I don't think I used more than 1/3 of a charge.
The Web browser it comes with works very well. Some of the other software is a little rough (the email client doesn't work well in IMAP mode, for instance). It runs SSH and a VNC viewer. I don't know about Doom II, but it plays video pretty well (doesn't always keep up with the frame rate, but it's adequate for pr0n).
These things are all tradeoffs, of course, but I'm happy to take the mini keyboard and the small but hi-res display in exchange for a device that's just barely small enough to carry everywhere, clipped to my belt.
Um, you misunderstand. It isn't a phone at all, except that it will make VOIP calls over the WiFi. Maemo Linux is what it comes with out of the box.
If you really need data service outside WiFi range, and you also have a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone with data service, it will connect through the cell phone. (I haven't tried this.)
Look at it this way. You know this Asus Eee that is getting so much attention? The N810 has the potential to be almost as useful, but in 1/10 the volume and at 1/4 the weight. Spec comparison: the screen resolution is the same (800x480); the N810 has a 400MHz OMAP CPU (ARM with a DSP core tacked on), to the Eee's 800MHz Celeron; the N810 has 256MB memory, to the Eee's 512MB; both use removable flash cards for storage; and while the N810 has a thumb keyboard, the Eee's keyboard is said to be too small for touch-typing anyway (for an adult, at least). Oh, and the price is the same, $400.
Or, compare the N810 to the Oqo. The Oqo is much more powerful, but twice as large by volume, twice as heavy, and three times as expensive even for the base model.
Out of the box it has Wi-Fi, a very good Web browser, and a multimedia player. It accepts an 8GB MiniSDHC card, so it can be used much like an iPod Touch for music and video. Oh, and it has Xpdf for reading PDF files.
I also want it to replace my aging Palm Tungsten T3. Unfortunately the native PIM software for it is pretty minimal, but it does have a Palm emulator which is supposed to work pretty well (I haven't had a chance to try it yet).
So, that is, I also want to be able to do things like taking notes with it when I don't have my laptop handy. I have done this with the Palm, but the N810's thumb keyboard makes it more suitable. Also, the N810 can run a full-blown word processor (AbiWord is available for it, I think).
Very probably, but I don't know the details. You can find more info at the Maemo site.
What kind of documentation do they have on their APIs?
It runs an X server. I think most apps use (a variant of?) the GTK library. Again, check the Maemo site.
I don't know about the IRC channel, but there is an active forum site.
There's an alternative to the iPod Touch, anyway: the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. It's about the same size as the Touch but has a slide-out mini keyboard. It runs a pared-down Linux called Maemo. I just got one of these instead of a Touch because I wanted the keyboard, and I wanted a truly open platform (and I didn't want it to be a phone; it isn't).
Capsule review: the hardware design is brilliant. The software, though, is still rather rough. I'd love it if some of these people who are so eager to write code for the Touch, but are turned off by the SDK licensing (and the fact that Apple wants to control app distribution) would come over to the N810 instead. The N810 has real potential, much of which remains unrealized as yet.
My favorite, which I've used for years, is mint-green text (#x88FF88) on a dark blue background (#000060). I find it much more relaxing than green on black, for instance.
Black on white is the pits; I hate it. Of course, you can't get away from it these days. This is maybe the only thing I curse Xerox PARC for.
I'd like to think most of them are recycled. But the only time I've ever been to the county dump -- my wife and I were moving to a smaller place and had to get rid of a bunch of junk from the garage -- I saw people there plowing 48-inch fluorescent tubes into the ground with a backhoe. I was dumbfounded.
I recycle my CFLs at Orchard Supply Hardware (Santa Clara, CA).
From DJB's page, it appears that Randy Bush, the author of TFA, was part of the problem: Randy Bush shut down the ngtrans working group on 2002.08.14: ``It is time for ngtrans to declare victory... The combined v4/v6 network is no longer the future, it is today.''
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In particular, why would it happen at nearly free-fall speed, as if every column in the structure failed simultaneously? That's the thing that gets me. I would expect a much slower, more incremental collapse. Guess I have to go read TFR.
I don't agree. Once again, patent policy is being set by people who obviously don't understand the technology, and so, having lurched from one extreme to the other back in the 1980s, we're now going to lurch to a new extreme that is also not going to make sense. If you read TFA closely to the end, you'll see that somehow two connected computers constitutes a "particular machine", where one does not. This doesn't make any sense, and is going to result in an arbitrary selection of which patents are valid and which aren't.
I understand that many people feel that software patents are so broken they should be thrown out. I don't agree. I think the problem with software patents is that the PTO never has had adequate expertise concerning prior art in the industry, and largely as a consequence, the bar for obviousness has been set about two orders of magnitude too low.
I don't understand. Why shouldn't I be able to crop to any arbitrary aspect ratio? Even archaic `xv' does that. Okay, the use of the golden ratio specifically is a bit unusual, but so what??
I've used VNC routinely for this kind of purpose for years -- in fact, I do almost all my programming work using it. I have not found it to be a resource hog by any means. Just checking some of my VNC sessions now, resident memory use by the Xvnc process seems to stay between 20 and 60MB. At current memory prices, this is pretty much negligible (and I would assume you have plenty of DRAM on your compute box -- 8GB at least, yes?).
Others have mentioned SSH tunnelling -- I can assure you this is reliable; I've used it day in and day out for years.
Use Screen if you want, but personally I wouldn't even think twice about using VNC.
No mod points and you're already at +5 anyway, so let me put it more strongly: this is one of the best observations on the likely fate of the field I've ever heard, in 30 years of studying it.
Minimize entropy.
It sounds facetious, and it's certainly not simple to apply, but it's ultimately the one we always come back to.
Funny you should mention: Recaro makes an office chair. Awfully pricey, though.
Personally I've been lusting after a Neutral Posture 9000 with memory foam. If I had $900 to spend on a chair, this would be it.
That said, my 13-year-old Office Master is still in pretty good shape and has always been very comfortable -- actually therapeutic for my back.
What is the sound of the one head seeking?
No, it's not obtuse, it's obscure.
Obtuse is the antonym of acute. In geometry, an obtuse angle is one greater than 90 degrees. Metaphorically, an obtuse person is one who is not sharp.
Obscure, on the other hand, from the Latin word for "dark", means difficult to perceive or understand.
Ah, okay, thanks for the reply.
Nobody thought that was funny, huh? Oh well... I think this is my first post modded -1, Troll! Cool!
There's really something called the "Wii Fit"?? I don't know if Nintendo execs are Honda fans, or if they just want parents to be able to say to each other, when their rugrat is throwing a temper tantrum cuz they took away the game console, "Oh, he's just having a Wii Fit".
I do too. The Halting Problem doesn't show that you can never prove that a program terminates; it doesn't even show that you can't write a program that proves that some other programs terminate. All it shows is that you can't write a program that is guaranteed to always tell you (in finite time), for any other program, whether that program terminates.
I recently got a Nokia N810 "Internet Tablet", as they call it. It's pocket-sized, much smaller than an Eee for instance, and a little bigger than a Palm TX, but it has a 400 MHz TI OMAP CPU (an ARM with a DSP core glued on), an 800x480 screen, a very usable slide-out mini keyboard, and built-in Wi-Fi, all for $400 (street price). Oh, and it runs Linux. (It's not a cell phone, though it will do VOIP over the Wi-Fi.)
Battery life is excellent: several hours of active use, and several days at idle (you don't really turn it off, you just lock the touch screen and it goes into low-power mode). I recently used it to take notes at a seminar -- in 3 or 4 hours I don't think I used more than 1/3 of a charge.
The Web browser it comes with works very well. Some of the other software is a little rough (the email client doesn't work well in IMAP mode, for instance). It runs SSH and a VNC viewer. I don't know about Doom II, but it plays video pretty well (doesn't always keep up with the frame rate, but it's adequate for pr0n).
These things are all tradeoffs, of course, but I'm happy to take the mini keyboard and the small but hi-res display in exchange for a device that's just barely small enough to carry everywhere, clipped to my belt.
Um, you misunderstand. It isn't a phone at all, except that it will make VOIP calls over the WiFi. Maemo Linux is what it comes with out of the box.
If you really need data service outside WiFi range, and you also have a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone with data service, it will connect through the cell phone. (I haven't tried this.)
Look at it this way. You know this Asus Eee that is getting so much attention? The N810 has the potential to be almost as useful, but in 1/10 the volume and at 1/4 the weight. Spec comparison: the screen resolution is the same (800x480); the N810 has a 400MHz OMAP CPU (ARM with a DSP core tacked on), to the Eee's 800MHz Celeron; the N810 has 256MB memory, to the Eee's 512MB; both use removable flash cards for storage; and while the N810 has a thumb keyboard, the Eee's keyboard is said to be too small for touch-typing anyway (for an adult, at least). Oh, and the price is the same, $400.
Or, compare the N810 to the Oqo. The Oqo is much more powerful, but twice as large by volume, twice as heavy, and three times as expensive even for the base model.
Out of the box it has Wi-Fi, a very good Web browser, and a multimedia player. It accepts an 8GB MiniSDHC card, so it can be used much like an iPod Touch for music and video. Oh, and it has Xpdf for reading PDF files.
I also want it to replace my aging Palm Tungsten T3. Unfortunately the native PIM software for it is pretty minimal, but it does have a Palm emulator which is supposed to work pretty well (I haven't had a chance to try it yet).
So, that is, I also want to be able to do things like taking notes with it when I don't have my laptop handy. I have done this with the Palm, but the N810's thumb keyboard makes it more suitable. Also, the N810 can run a full-blown word processor (AbiWord is available for it, I think).
Can you compile your own kernel?
Very probably, but I don't know the details. You can find more info at the Maemo site.
What kind of documentation do they have on their APIs?
It runs an X server. I think most apps use (a variant of?) the GTK library. Again, check the Maemo site. I don't know about the IRC channel, but there is an active forum site.
There's an alternative to the iPod Touch, anyway: the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. It's about the same size as the Touch but has a slide-out mini keyboard. It runs a pared-down Linux called Maemo. I just got one of these instead of a Touch because I wanted the keyboard, and I wanted a truly open platform (and I didn't want it to be a phone; it isn't).
Capsule review: the hardware design is brilliant. The software, though, is still rather rough. I'd love it if some of these people who are so eager to write code for the Touch, but are turned off by the SDK licensing (and the fact that Apple wants to control app distribution) would come over to the N810 instead. The N810 has real potential, much of which remains unrealized as yet.
My favorite, which I've used for years, is mint-green text (#x88FF88) on a dark blue background (#000060). I find it much more relaxing than green on black, for instance.
Black on white is the pits; I hate it. Of course, you can't get away from it these days. This is maybe the only thing I curse Xerox PARC for.
I'd like to think most of them are recycled. But the only time I've ever been to the county dump -- my wife and I were moving to a smaller place and had to get rid of a bunch of junk from the garage -- I saw people there plowing 48-inch fluorescent tubes into the ground with a backhoe. I was dumbfounded.
I recycle my CFLs at Orchard Supply Hardware (Santa Clara, CA).
power generally increases at a rate of frequency^3
No, power is linear in clock frequency, and quadratic in voltage. References are easy to find on the Web; here's one.
why wasn't the back seat removed?
It's a CRX -- a two-seater. No back seat to remove.
From DJB's page, it appears that Randy Bush, the author of TFA, was part of the problem: Randy Bush shut down the ngtrans working group on 2002.08.14: ``It is time for ngtrans to declare victory ... The combined v4/v6 network is no longer the future, it is today.''