Well, you can 'magically' get more CPU power - it is called buying the latest machine, just happens to be faster than last year's one. Which (coincidentally) everyone seems to have to do when they move to a new version of Windows...
That's like saying of the illuminated book 'industry' in 1499 that "the latest culprit accelerating the undoing of the reading business is free, legal printing presses".
The measure of an industry is not the size of its profits (except in the minds of those mythical entities called corporations). It is the extent to which it affects people's lives. I could argue that the recording industry actually diminished the social culture of music, because it meant people could listen to music without interacting with the performer. On the other hand, it did allow more people to enjoy music by the most gifted performers. As does radio. As does the internet.
1. Squatting allows the foot to be lifted more quickly when it needs to be repositioned.
2. It is hard to make a 'ligament' that can still apply significant torque when the joint is straight. Being able to lock the joint is an energy saving feature, probably not the most important of the criteria here.
3. In a knee straight position, the knee joint can only apply force in one direction. This means that the ankle joint has to be used in the other direction (and the moment arm of the ankle is longer, since it is further from the CoG). You could have double jointed knees - not very humanoid, but at least you could run backwards:-)
4. It means that vertical stresses are cushioned by joint movement, instead of having to be absorbed by the structure.
Parent makes an important point. This is especially relevant for companies that are writing customized software for a single client. You can use GPL and still keep the software secret from third parties. The GPL does not force distribution, it allows it.
It is FUD like that in the grandparent post that puts small companies off using the GPL (because they don't have in-house lawyers to wade through the scaremongering), and instead use restrictive 'contracts'. In turn, this means customers of these small companies are often left without control of source code for software that is vital to the customer's business.
---
I am not a lawyer, so yes, my advice does apply to your specific circumstances, but you would be foolish to take my word for it...
Fair comment, I let my mouth run off a bit there. Though they are both an attempt to layer an object oriented interface over the system, which still makes me wonder how the grandparent could imply that.NET can replace a native compiled language for writing an operating system.
You can't be serious - nearly every OS these days is written in C (with a few bits of assembler at the core). And the one viable alternative, C++, was pretty much confined to BeOS. Do think everyone just left their thinking caps at home the day they decided which language to write in? Fair swig of the whiskey. C was pretty much invented as a means of writing systems software. And you do realize that.NET is really just ActiveX by another name, smelling just as 'sweet'...
There is truth in your argument that third party additions to a browser pose a security problem, but you are comparing coffee and fish.
Plugins pose a security risk because you are running software from unknown sources as part of your browser. However, you don't need to install the plugins in order to enjoy the browser functionality.
Active X on the other hand was always intended to be integrate with web pages, which means that in many cases you would not even have been able to view the content without downloading a COM object of dubious origin. Fortunately this has largely failed, and most web content is still accessible without it (though there are a number of commercial services on the other hand that require Active X to work).
The better comparison with Active X is other dynamic web code, such as scripting languages like javascript, and of course Java, which have been used for similar purposes. There are clear differences, because Active X is running native code, and so is notoriously difficult to sandbox effectively. It is obviously a matter of degree; no system is fully secure. But whereas exploits of Active X tend to often be total (access to the host machine), exploits of systems such as javascript often revolve around more subtle issues such as masquerading.
I actually think there is merit in having internet distributable native code. But having said that, there are multiple issues. I don't think the solution is merely to improve the containment of the downloaded code (indeed, that only makes it harder for the plugin to do anything useful). The problem is one of trust: how do I know if the binary code is trustworthy (Microsoft rubberstamp certification just doesn't do it for me!); and why do most sites need Active X at all (shouldn't we just be trying to agree on some browser standards like video formats so that typical functionality can be built into the browser!).
reference from wikipedia:
J C Schuder. "Powering an artificial heart: Birth of the inductively coupled-radio frequency system in 1960". Artificial Organs. Vol 26, no 11, pp 909-915, 2002.
The Motorola 68000 had a much cleaner instruction set, with a flatter memory space (which would have avoided the 640k memory debacle in the early PCs). I remember that National Semiconductors also had a nice architecture (16000 series, became the 32000 series), which was even more RISC like.
Admittedly both of these CPUs were relatively new at the time. Another factor may have been the dominance of the Intel family amongst hobbyist computers of the time. Particularly if they were considering the possibility of porting CP/M from the 8080, it would have been easier to do so to the 8086/8088 than to the 68000 series.
Still, my feeling is that we would have moved to GUI based operating systems much sooner had we used a non-Intel CPUs (because of the flatter memory space and an instruction set more suited to graphics primitives), and would have had better compilers. It is no coincidence that Apple chose the 68000 and later the PowerPC. That isn't a criticism of the PC design team (who were very constrained by resources). Indeed, had IBM management expected how popular the PC would become, they may well have mandated the use of their inhouse processor (an predecessor to the PowerPC).
Slashdot Mirror
Well, you can 'magically' get more CPU power - it is called buying the latest machine, just happens to be faster than last year's one. Which (coincidentally) everyone seems to have to do when they move to a new version of Windows...
That's like saying of the illuminated book 'industry' in 1499 that "the latest culprit accelerating the undoing of the reading business is free, legal printing presses".
The measure of an industry is not the size of its profits (except in the minds of those mythical entities called corporations). It is the extent to which it affects people's lives. I could argue that the recording industry actually diminished the social culture of music, because it meant people could listen to music without interacting with the performer. On the other hand, it did allow more people to enjoy music by the most gifted performers. As does radio. As does the internet.
If you had as few degrees of joint freedom as this robot, you wouldn't look too graceful and efficient either...
1. Squatting allows the foot to be lifted more quickly when it needs to be repositioned.
2. It is hard to make a 'ligament' that can still apply significant torque when the joint is straight. Being able to lock the joint is an energy saving feature, probably not the most important of the criteria here.
3. In a knee straight position, the knee joint can only apply force in one direction. This means that the ankle joint has to be used in the other direction (and the moment arm of the ankle is longer, since it is further from the CoG). You could have double jointed knees - not very humanoid, but at least you could run backwards :-)
4. It means that vertical stresses are cushioned by joint movement, instead of having to be absorbed by the structure.
Parent makes an important point. This is especially relevant for companies that are writing customized software for a single client. You can use GPL and still keep the software secret from third parties. The GPL does not force distribution, it allows it.
It is FUD like that in the grandparent post that puts small companies off using the GPL (because they don't have in-house lawyers to wade through the scaremongering), and instead use restrictive 'contracts'. In turn, this means customers of these small companies are often left without control of source code for software that is vital to the customer's business.
---
I am not a lawyer, so yes, my advice does apply to your specific circumstances, but you would be foolish to take my word for it...
Fair comment, I let my mouth run off a bit there. Though they are both an attempt to layer an object oriented interface over the system, which still makes me wonder how the grandparent could imply that .NET can replace a native compiled language for writing an operating system.
I find your ideas intriguing, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
You can't be serious - nearly every OS these days is written in C (with a few bits of assembler at the core). And the one viable alternative, C++, was pretty much confined to BeOS. Do think everyone just left their thinking caps at home the day they decided which language to write in? Fair swig of the whiskey. C was pretty much invented as a means of writing systems software. And you do realize that .NET is really just ActiveX by another name, smelling just as 'sweet'...
There is truth in your argument that third party additions to a browser pose a security problem, but you are comparing coffee and fish.
Plugins pose a security risk because you are running software from unknown sources as part of your browser. However, you don't need to install the plugins in order to enjoy the browser functionality.
Active X on the other hand was always intended to be integrate with web pages, which means that in many cases you would not even have been able to view the content without downloading a COM object of dubious origin. Fortunately this has largely failed, and most web content is still accessible without it (though there are a number of commercial services on the other hand that require Active X to work).
The better comparison with Active X is other dynamic web code, such as scripting languages like javascript, and of course Java, which have been used for similar purposes. There are clear differences, because Active X is running native code, and so is notoriously difficult to sandbox effectively. It is obviously a matter of degree; no system is fully secure. But whereas exploits of Active X tend to often be total (access to the host machine), exploits of systems such as javascript often revolve around more subtle issues such as masquerading.
I actually think there is merit in having internet distributable native code. But having said that, there are multiple issues. I don't think the solution is merely to improve the containment of the downloaded code (indeed, that only makes it harder for the plugin to do anything useful). The problem is one of trust: how do I know if the binary code is trustworthy (Microsoft rubberstamp certification just doesn't do it for me!); and why do most sites need Active X at all (shouldn't we just be trying to agree on some browser standards like video formats so that typical functionality can be built into the browser!).
Oh don't eat me, I'm too little I am. Wait a bit until the second Billy Goat Gruff comes. He's much bigger.
And no, I've never used Vista. The grass on the hill over the other side is much lusher.
There's a few laptops with the same allergy as him - every time you switch on the wifi, the driver crashes.
Is this the same facebook that has third party ads that incorporate my exact age?
Just coincidence...
Ah, the wanton apostrophe. I am informed that seppuku is the honorable way to atone for your profligacy.
David Hasselhoff doesn't look nearly as cool as we remember him to be either...
yeah, that's the problem with learning systems like neural nets - it is hard to be sure which variations they are 'focusing' on - figure or ground.
I idly wonder if destroying Windows documentation would make much difference to understanding the code base :-)
- specmanship
Yeah, I'm still looking for the escape key on the harpsichord.
come to Australia - we love pommie whingers here :-)
reference from wikipedia:
J C Schuder. "Powering an artificial heart: Birth of the inductively coupled-radio frequency system in 1960". Artificial Organs. Vol 26, no 11, pp 909-915, 2002.
Wow, that's some firewall. Is this like some sort of asteroid based network?
He got a free laptop? Damn, amazon mechanical turk only paid me five cents for writing that blog entry...
The Motorola 68000 had a much cleaner instruction set, with a flatter memory space (which would have avoided the 640k memory debacle in the early PCs). I remember that National Semiconductors also had a nice architecture (16000 series, became the 32000 series), which was even more RISC like.
Admittedly both of these CPUs were relatively new at the time. Another factor may have been the dominance of the Intel family amongst hobbyist computers of the time. Particularly if they were considering the possibility of porting CP/M from the 8080, it would have been easier to do so to the 8086/8088 than to the 68000 series.
Still, my feeling is that we would have moved to GUI based operating systems much sooner had we used a non-Intel CPUs (because of the flatter memory space and an instruction set more suited to graphics primitives), and would have had better compilers. It is no coincidence that Apple chose the 68000 and later the PowerPC. That isn't a criticism of the PC design team (who were very constrained by resources). Indeed, had IBM management expected how popular the PC would become, they may well have mandated the use of their inhouse processor (an predecessor to the PowerPC).
> The US isn't going to strike first
Yeah, the US would be the last country in the world to drop an atom bomb on a city...
And now that bing has been slashdotted, it'll be back to throwing chairs around...