With WLAN, you really have to check which chipset you get before buying.
The state of WLAN cards today reminds me of the bad old days of Linux when you had to carefully look up the tech specs on every component you got to get Linux support.
The situation is complicated by the fact that different versions of the same model card from the same manufacturer may have completely different chipsets -- not all Belkin F5D7050 adapters are Ralink-based like my wife's is.
I understand why manufacturers do this -- if they've spent money marketing the WhizBang 5725, they don't want to have to blow more money marketing the WhizBang 5730. However, it's *damned* annoying when they change chipsets within a model number. Creative in particular came to my attention -- if you bought a SB Live Value, you could get anything in a vast range of hardware, with different ports and attachments.
One reason for the lackluster support on many chips is that apparently US companies are bound by FCC regulations not to allow the TX power on their adapters to be boosted beyond a certain threshold, so e.g. Intel releases a Linux driver with a binary-only firmware file. If you look at the installation info for some wireless hardware (802.11a, I think) it will even say only FCC-certified installers can install the card in a host device (because of concerns about improper installation causing harmful interference). So there is a certain point beyond which manufacturers may never go and the community will have to reverse engineer if they want those drivers to be fully open-source (and said drivers may be illegal to use in the US or other places).
Seriously, *screw* the FCC on this point. I understand why they want to do this, but it's totally ineffective. If someone wants to get an illegal signal booster, they are not hard to purchase, and it doesn't take much electronics experience to produce devices that violate FCC rules. This does create incredibly irritating situations for people who want to use wireless chipsets under Linux.
although Jeff Garzik has done a wonderful job of overall networking devices
Maybe it's just that I've paid more attention to Linux network people than other areas, but they are *machines*. I see Jeff Garzik's posts and work all the time, and Donald Becker produced one hell of a lot of code.
Remember that people can lose immunity to things too. You might be a nasty disease vector from the future, bringing revived bacteria from many years ago back into play.
I think if such a person were plopped into our modern day they would, after a degree of struggle, they'd be able to make sense of it.
The problem is that you're ignoring a lot of learning (and *unlearning* that will have to be done).
One of the largest tasks I can think of that a linguist could face is to be confronted with a totally unknown language with no Rosetta Stone and have to work it out from scratch. I think that it would be a staggering achievement for most linguists to be able to write "Created the first dictionary to translate to and from this language".
And yet nearly every person in the world has done this *as a child*. They started out with no common ground -- they can't think "Okay, what's 'rock' in this language?". They figured out not only the language but all the concepts that it attempts to express. Even the guy that pumps gas at the gas station did that. That's an amazing intellectual accomplishment.
How long does it take to learn to use a computer effectively? I mean, ground zero, a computer newbie to the level that an power user on Slashdot has? Three years? Four years? Surely at least that.
You've spent a lot of time learning all this. If you get frozen at age sixty, that is *sixty years* of learning and training that you've expended on building yourself. Sure, some things stay the same -- the laws of physics are probably going to remain the same, and throwing a ball in the future is probably going to be similar to doing so in the present. But language shifts quickly -- English from a few hundred years ago is totally incomprehensible to an English speaker today. All the locations and things that you've learned -- how to drive a car, etc -- are useless. And there's knowledge to be *unlearned*, as well -- maybe there are no toilets in the future. Maybe cooking knowledge is obsolete in the future because we have automated food production devices that everyone uses.
Maybe for a young child, this wouldn't be so drastic, but I think that it would be quite a shift for a senior citizen.
I mean, honestly, suppose Benjamin Franklin was around today. In his time, he was a learned man in many fields and a scientist, as well as a diplomat. But today, we've shot so far by him in the fields he student that he wouldn't have much more applicable knowledge than a teen would. Mathematics is still the same, but the ability to rapidly do arithmetic is no longer a crucial skill. You don't ride horses, you don't use an outhouse, we have childproof caps on medicine bottles. Our aesthetics have changed -- the comfortable styles that he grew up with will be gone, replaced by smooth, simple, artificial structures. His political knowledge would be out of date and useless. Social norms are quite different from his day. Heck, he didn't have *railroads* in his time. I'm sure that based on who he is and the fact that he was exceptional for his time, he'd find a way to get along...but I don't think that it would be all that easy. And the question really is -- would society be better off with an aging man with a good knowledge from 250 years ago, or someone who has learned from the start to live in current societyy.
I also wouldn't trust the cryo-storage companies. They plan to keep you frozen for, what, a hundred years? No company worries about anything one hundred years in the future. Four is usually pushing it. Nobody except for maybe your great-great-grandkids will have an interest in ensuring that you are safely revived.
This app shows why platform-optimized code will _always_ beat generic XP frameworks (Java/Python).
Neither Java or Python programs will run particularly quickly, this is true. However, it is *possible* to produce a fast cross-platform implementation -- it's just that no popular language is both fast and has a fast cross-platform runtime.
Native-compiled Java code isn't all that peppy either...
Or I can just take note from the editors of a certain tech-oriented website and continue on my merry, non-reaserching way:)
You know, if there's actually *demand* for validation, it would be *really easy* to "wrap" Slashdot. Create a website called ValidatedSlash or something like that, and keep a list of links to Slashdot stories that you've personally validated.
Not many of those are, IMHO, actually intended to squelch use of the car.
If 95% of the people on the road are using horses, which spooked when a loud (remember, automobiles weren't always the quiet things they are today), smelly thing comes tearing along down the road, in a democracy the one who has to go out of their way to accomodate the other guy is going to be the minority.
Today, you can't take a horse on a freeway. Is this intended to suppress use of the horse? No, it's just because in the event of an irresolvable conflict, the minority has to give way to the majority.
Some of these image sites need to combine databases. There must be dozens of various free-license image sites, and it's frusterating that there's no single search to index them all.
I don't believe that this is true. I remember reading something about how, while something like the Mona Lisa may not be copyrighted, photographs of the work are, and whoever owns that classic work can prevent anyone but one person from taking a picture of it.
Is this sort of thing better when it's taken by a kid who doesn't speak the language who's just left college and is doing the peace corps thing, and decides to donate all this holiday snaps to wikimedia(though the pics are lowish resolution and miscaptioned). Or should that kind of thing be done by AP or Reuters who employ (for example) someone in the refugee camp who knows what's going on. Or by independent foreign journalists with their own set of biases? Yeah, we should all adapt to the market, worse is better, etc. I'm watching people who are cross subsidising photography with other income sources eat away at my market, and I don't like it.
Well, here's the thing. If your photos are better-suited to someone's needs relative to how much you're charging, then they'll pay.
It may *be* that all people need are lowish-resolution pictures. [shrug]
I really wouldn't worry that much, though. The open-source software world has been going strong for a long time, and there's no shortage of software that still needs to be developed.
It does mean that maybe the world will wind up with fewer photographers if some are simply doing redundant work (if you need a picture of the Grand Canyon, for instance, it just doesn't make sense to have a system in which people are paying the 50,000th photographer to take *another* nice picture of the place) than it would have otherwise. Or maybe those photographers will be out producing more nice pictures that aren't redundant.
I get National Geographic. Its photographers are *excellent*. What if *all* publications could have National Geographic-class photos because of efficiency improvements in photography? I mean, I'd like that an awful lot.
Slashdot Mirror
With WLAN, you really have to check which chipset you get before buying.
The state of WLAN cards today reminds me of the bad old days of Linux when you had to carefully look up the tech specs on every component you got to get Linux support.
The situation is complicated by the fact that different versions of the same model card from the same manufacturer may have completely different chipsets -- not all Belkin F5D7050 adapters are Ralink-based like my wife's is.
I understand why manufacturers do this -- if they've spent money marketing the WhizBang 5725, they don't want to have to blow more money marketing the WhizBang 5730. However, it's *damned* annoying when they change chipsets within a model number. Creative in particular came to my attention -- if you bought a SB Live Value, you could get anything in a vast range of hardware, with different ports and attachments.
One reason for the lackluster support on many chips is that apparently US companies are bound by FCC regulations not to allow the TX power on their adapters to be boosted beyond a certain threshold, so e.g. Intel releases a Linux driver with a binary-only firmware file. If you look at the installation info for some wireless hardware (802.11a, I think) it will even say only FCC-certified installers can install the card in a host device (because of concerns about improper installation causing harmful interference). So there is a certain point beyond which manufacturers may never go and the community will have to reverse engineer if they want those drivers to be fully open-source (and said drivers may be illegal to use in the US or other places).
Seriously, *screw* the FCC on this point. I understand why they want to do this, but it's totally ineffective. If someone wants to get an illegal signal booster, they are not hard to purchase, and it doesn't take much electronics experience to produce devices that violate FCC rules. This does create incredibly irritating situations for people who want to use wireless chipsets under Linux.
although Jeff Garzik has done a wonderful job of overall networking devices
Maybe it's just that I've paid more attention to Linux network people than other areas, but they are *machines*. I see Jeff Garzik's posts and work all the time, and Donald Becker produced one hell of a lot of code.
wtf? Free protons (H+) or hydronium ions [CC] are the cause of acidity, not negative ions!
It takes two to tango.
I keep seeing random things every now and then from people who claim to have devices or processes to instantly age wine. This is not a new scam.
Why? It's called branding and is commonly done for the ignorant masses in just about every market segment.
:-)
Just look at the automobile market.
Remember that people can lose immunity to things too. You might be a nasty disease vector from the future, bringing revived bacteria from many years ago back into play.
I think if such a person were plopped into our modern day they would, after a degree of struggle, they'd be able to make sense of it.
The problem is that you're ignoring a lot of learning (and *unlearning* that will have to be done).
One of the largest tasks I can think of that a linguist could face is to be confronted with a totally unknown language with no Rosetta Stone and have to work it out from scratch. I think that it would be a staggering achievement for most linguists to be able to write "Created the first dictionary to translate to and from this language".
And yet nearly every person in the world has done this *as a child*. They started out with no common ground -- they can't think "Okay, what's 'rock' in this language?". They figured out not only the language but all the concepts that it attempts to express. Even the guy that pumps gas at the gas station did that. That's an amazing intellectual accomplishment.
How long does it take to learn to use a computer effectively? I mean, ground zero, a computer newbie to the level that an power user on Slashdot has? Three years? Four years? Surely at least that.
You've spent a lot of time learning all this. If you get frozen at age sixty, that is *sixty years* of learning and training that you've expended on building yourself. Sure, some things stay the same -- the laws of physics are probably going to remain the same, and throwing a ball in the future is probably going to be similar to doing so in the present. But language shifts quickly -- English from a few hundred years ago is totally incomprehensible to an English speaker today. All the locations and things that you've learned -- how to drive a car, etc -- are useless. And there's knowledge to be *unlearned*, as well -- maybe there are no toilets in the future. Maybe cooking knowledge is obsolete in the future because we have automated food production devices that everyone uses.
Maybe for a young child, this wouldn't be so drastic, but I think that it would be quite a shift for a senior citizen.
I mean, honestly, suppose Benjamin Franklin was around today. In his time, he was a learned man in many fields and a scientist, as well as a diplomat. But today, we've shot so far by him in the fields he student that he wouldn't have much more applicable knowledge than a teen would. Mathematics is still the same, but the ability to rapidly do arithmetic is no longer a crucial skill. You don't ride horses, you don't use an outhouse, we have childproof caps on medicine bottles. Our aesthetics have changed -- the comfortable styles that he grew up with will be gone, replaced by smooth, simple, artificial structures. His political knowledge would be out of date and useless. Social norms are quite different from his day. Heck, he didn't have *railroads* in his time. I'm sure that based on who he is and the fact that he was exceptional for his time, he'd find a way to get along...but I don't think that it would be all that easy. And the question really is -- would society be better off with an aging man with a good knowledge from 250 years ago, or someone who has learned from the start to live in current societyy.
I also wouldn't trust the cryo-storage companies. They plan to keep you frozen for, what, a hundred years? No company worries about anything one hundred years in the future. Four is usually pushing it. Nobody except for maybe your great-great-grandkids will have an interest in ensuring that you are safely revived.
I dunno. I'm pretty sure that sufficient physical torture will make you want to be dead.
Euthanasia was legal for most of human history in most of the world, but this fact didn't seem to result in mass suicides of the population.
This app shows why platform-optimized code will _always_ beat generic XP frameworks (Java/Python).
Neither Java or Python programs will run particularly quickly, this is true. However, it is *possible* to produce a fast cross-platform implementation -- it's just that no popular language is both fast and has a fast cross-platform runtime.
Native-compiled Java code isn't all that peppy either...
[Posted AC so I don't get a reputation for being complimentary to people]
It's kind of sad that we live in a world where we feel pressured not to give people well-deserved compliments.
I try to do so at work -- when someone does something deserving of a compliment, they get one.
Thank you for this post.
Or I can just take note from the editors of a certain tech-oriented website and continue on my merry, non-reaserching way :)
You know, if there's actually *demand* for validation, it would be *really easy* to "wrap" Slashdot. Create a website called ValidatedSlash or something like that, and keep a list of links to Slashdot stories that you've personally validated.
That's very interesting -- thank you. Yes, what I read was in a textbook that would have been published before 1999.
Magnatune is still up.
Not many of those are, IMHO, actually intended to squelch use of the car.
If 95% of the people on the road are using horses, which spooked when a loud (remember, automobiles weren't always the quiet things they are today), smelly thing comes tearing along down the road, in a democracy the one who has to go out of their way to accomodate the other guy is going to be the minority.
Today, you can't take a horse on a freeway. Is this intended to suppress use of the horse? No, it's just because in the event of an irresolvable conflict, the minority has to give way to the majority.
You too?
Yeah, Linksys pretty much makes a nice alternative to anything Belkin.
This might be more convenient than daisy-chaining USB hubs for that long run to the webcam in my bondage dungeon.
Even with the maximum number of USB hubs in a chain (5) and maximum cable length between each (5 meters), you still only have a 25 meter span.
Oh, great. I can just see the coming wave of Slashdot image links dwarfing goats.cx.
Hmm...maybe a Greasemonkey plugin that checks category for slashdot.org wikimedia entries...hmm...
Given the symbolism of the time, the swan is probably intended to represent virgin purity.
This site is run by paid editors, it is long past time they act like it.
But they do a good job. I enjoy reading Slashdot, hence they're doing okay.
Oh, yes -- your sentence is grammatically incorrect. You should have put a period or maybe a semicolon where you put the comma.
Some of these image sites need to combine databases. There must be dozens of various free-license image sites, and it's frusterating that there's no single search to index them all.
I don't believe that this is true. I remember reading something about how, while something like the Mona Lisa may not be copyrighted, photographs of the work are, and whoever owns that classic work can prevent anyone but one person from taking a picture of it.
Is this sort of thing better when it's taken by a kid who doesn't speak the language who's just left college and is doing the peace corps thing, and decides to donate all this holiday snaps to wikimedia(though the pics are lowish resolution and miscaptioned). Or should that kind of thing be done by AP or Reuters who employ (for example) someone in the refugee camp who knows what's going on. Or by independent foreign journalists with their own set of biases? Yeah, we should all adapt to the market, worse is better, etc. I'm watching people who are cross subsidising photography with other income sources eat away at my market, and I don't like it.
Well, here's the thing. If your photos are better-suited to someone's needs relative to how much you're charging, then they'll pay.
It may *be* that all people need are lowish-resolution pictures. [shrug]
I really wouldn't worry that much, though. The open-source software world has been going strong for a long time, and there's no shortage of software that still needs to be developed.
It does mean that maybe the world will wind up with fewer photographers if some are simply doing redundant work (if you need a picture of the Grand Canyon, for instance, it just doesn't make sense to have a system in which people are paying the 50,000th photographer to take *another* nice picture of the place) than it would have otherwise. Or maybe those photographers will be out producing more nice pictures that aren't redundant.
I get National Geographic. Its photographers are *excellent*. What if *all* publications could have National Geographic-class photos because of efficiency improvements in photography? I mean, I'd like that an awful lot.