Look at it is this way: Yahoo is already using a relatively open, web-based strategy to make money. Meanwhile, Microsoft has poured hundeds of millions of dollars into MSN, first as a way of binding Windows-using Internet users to Windows even more tightly (which didn't make money), and then more recently, making steps of not requiring Windows to get interesting functionality (and that still might not make money). Seems to me Yahoo should go it alone, and if MSN's new strategy fails, just hire away the good engineers working on the new-style MSN.
Yeah, it's pretty clear that for heavy-duty use, HFS+ is not really the way to go. With ZFS, Apple can build on what Sun has done, while at the same time they don't have to touch HFS+ at all, or fix all the it-doesn't-quite-work-like-HFS+ issues that UFS has. It makes a lot more sense for them to get ZFS to "just work" than to put that work into the existing UFS implementation.
There are probably two things that Apple would be looking for in ZFS: a shiny feature they can point to for their enterprise and video production markets, and for the consumer market, the promise of a simple, reliable way to back up and grow the storage of a Mac without have to worry about mounting/copying/moving volumes, managing backups, etc.
That's why I'm a Netflix customer. Right now, I just buy music videos, cult, or older TV stuff. Heck, if Netflix offers the next generation of disks, I might just buy a player, not the discs.
Gee, if anybody needs to be lectured about not storing metadata it's inline, it's the designers of Unix. Special files, directories with special names, using "From" as a message separate in mail files.
Well, I don't Apple wants to compete head on with Microsoft, and in fact there are those that say that easily running Windows on Apple hardware, either through dual-boot or a VM takes away Apple's justification for existence (they're wrong, of course, but it would certainly benefit Microsoft if only incrementally, and not at a cost to Apple).
However, a good relationship between Apple and Intel does put Apple in a good position if MS stumbles. It's a bonus, but potentially, a very, very, big one.
Apple might design the manufacturing process for its products, but as far as I know, it doesn't own any more manufacturing plants it just outsources to companies in Taiwan (and perhaps other places). Maybe this is not the case for some of the higher-end hardware, but iPods, iMacs, and iBooks are definitely not coming out of "Apple" factories. So the whole manufacturing cost thing is a red herring.
Netscape plug-ins can do all that, too. It's just the ActiveX's are so much easier to install and script, and given low enough security settings, makes them a better vehicle for attack.
Apple Mac OS X printing uses Rendezvous AND CUPS to make sure that, in the absence of a user's choice, SOME printer is selected. It can't do this all the time, but normally, if you've got a printer connected somewhere on your network, you can print from another Mac without ever having to configure anything. Sure, Apple's configuration dialogs and printer management GUI is decent, but the real value is not having to see them at all.
Just the added performance on Windows (especially in startup time) is worth it.
I know they're not community-driven, but I would like them to spend some time on getting the toolbar set back up to where other browsers are. I'm not a big toolbar user bit I like have the font size controls on the toolbar.
Also, I am going to file a suggestion that Flash be considered an image for the sake of image blocking.
Inasmuch as contemporary deconstruction is an sophisticated reading of a text within a social context, some of its "tools" are actually worth considering. Even scientists have egos and operate in social contexts whose foundations and assumptions are often not examined. (On the other hand, deconstructionist have their own egos, interest, and self-preserving institutional biases.)
However, within the social context of academia, the echo-chamber effect tends to reward political point-scoring. To a large extent, I think this is because radical leftist ideology has failed to catch on in the outside world, so its proponents find themselves trying to control words, something that can be done in a tightly confined, even solipsistic milieu, instead of convincing the world at large. In other words, we can't change the world, so we'll move the playing field to language and try to win there instead.
One of our VCRs broke late last year, and we haven't replaced it yet, because we don't use it that often, and there's another TV with a DVD+VCR unit attached. Still, it would be nice to replace that VCR.
So, why not a combo VCR and TiVO ? After all, the TiVO is basically a VCR replacment, but people still have tapes, and it saves an input jack to the TV. And given how cheap VHS parts are now, it wouldn't cost much more than a TiVO. Add a DVD recorder and then you've got a way to convert tapes as well.
But, another thing that you've not mentioned is that many digital masters are at higher resolution these days - Sony SBM was doing 20-bit 48 kHz five years ago at least, and now pro audio tends to use 24-bit 94 kHz as a standard. Lossy compressors can work from these formats and capture some of the pyschoacoustic information that is lost in the 16-bit 44.1 kHz CD audio master. The end result may very well end up souding nearly as good as a CD.
I haven't seen the "better" video yet (sheesh, why don't they use Akamia or something ?), but the Sun-hosted video appears to showcase mere 3D effects applied to 2D windows, nothing that the "dominant" and "other" OS suppliers haven't done or couldn't do in short order. Yes, the performance is impressive, but to what end ? Also, I don't get the part about "collaborative" desktop software suppliers we are shown a browser (presumably Mozilla), and RealPlayer. That's 50% open source software, not counting the underlying implementations of the technology (probably closed) and Java itself (definitely closed).
Putting the annotation on the back of the window is cool, but as a software guy I'd be more interested in how they're persistently attached to windows or documents, how complex those attachments can be, and how the user digs them up again after the windows are gone.
Unfortunately, even the real application of 3D to human/computer interfaces has been a bust. It's been the metaphor of the future for about twenty years now...
I bet the RDF advocates (here's a primer) are going to love this, because RDF already uses URIs to refer to objects, although the URIs are often used just as a namespace themselves. In other words, just because you see a URLI in a RDF fragments doesn't mean it actually exists, it's just a name for something. This is not unlike XML namespace use of URIs.
If you could refer to more kinds of objects with URLs that could be resolved, that would make RDF more useful.
It's time outlaw gets(3).
Seriously, shouldn't any data-reading C library function that doesn't have a maximum buffer size parameter be deprecated, or better yet, removed ?
Re:Maybe the problem is Minsky himself?
on
AI Going Nowhere?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Yep, logic-based AI is definitely at a dead end. Minsky won't admit it. A lot of AI researchers at MIT went to the Media Lab when they saw the writing on the wall.
Robots are not a bad thing to work on if other kinds of AI are going to have a chance, because a more holistic kind of AI would recognize that intelligence and cognition first emerged as a function of having a physical body. On the other hand, it's just robotics, it's not AI itself.
Also, AI was good for the hackers who supported its development on computer workstations. Systems like the Lisp Machine still compare very well to current languages and tools.
Not knowing much about C#, is Java 1.5 "borrowing" features ?
I see two trends: being a better C++ (typesafe enums and parameterized types), and borrowing features from Lisp (code metadata, auto boxing/unboxing). I don't like to tie developments like this to particular people, but I wonder how much Guy Steele has do to with the Lisp-like features, if in fact he is still working at Sun.
While it's true that HD-DVDs might be the medium for high definition video, bandwidth would catch up sooner or later. And if smart compression lessens the need for blue-laser discs, then that also helps video delivered over broadband, too.
Ultimate, I think acceptance of whatever way of getting content is going to have more to do with the consumer's perception of control and value than the technical aspects.
Slashdot Mirror
Look at it is this way: Yahoo is already using a relatively open, web-based strategy to make money. Meanwhile, Microsoft has poured hundeds of millions of dollars into MSN, first as a way of binding Windows-using Internet users to Windows even more tightly (which didn't make money), and then more recently, making steps of not requiring Windows to get interesting functionality (and that still might not make money). Seems to me Yahoo should go it alone, and if MSN's new strategy fails, just hire away the good engineers working on the new-style MSN.
Yeah, it's pretty clear that for heavy-duty use, HFS+ is not really the way to go. With ZFS, Apple can build on what Sun has done, while at the same time they don't have to touch HFS+ at all, or fix all the it-doesn't-quite-work-like-HFS+ issues that UFS has. It makes a lot more sense for them to get ZFS to "just work" than to put that work into the existing UFS implementation.
There are probably two things that Apple would be looking for in ZFS: a shiny feature they can point to for their enterprise and video production markets, and for the consumer market, the promise of a simple, reliable way to back up and grow the storage of a Mac without have to worry about mounting/copying/moving volumes, managing backups, etc.
That's why I'm a Netflix customer. Right now, I just buy music videos, cult, or older TV stuff. Heck, if Netflix offers the next generation of disks, I might just buy a player, not the discs.
Gee, if anybody needs to be lectured about not storing metadata it's inline, it's the designers of Unix. Special files, directories with special names, using "From" as a message separate in mail files.
Livejournal has its problems now and then, but it's been pretty reliable.
Worth the wait, isn't it ?
;)
I'm going to search for my name/id in the source code
For example, Word has internal and external links - those are supported by PDF. You don't get those features if you just treat PDF like a printer.
Well, I don't Apple wants to compete head on with Microsoft, and in fact there are those that say that easily running Windows on Apple hardware, either through dual-boot or a VM takes away Apple's justification for existence (they're wrong, of course, but it would certainly benefit Microsoft if only incrementally, and not at a cost to Apple).
However, a good relationship between Apple and Intel does put Apple in a good position if MS stumbles. It's a bonus, but potentially, a very, very, big one.
Apple might design the manufacturing process for its products, but as far as I know, it doesn't own any more manufacturing plants it just outsources to companies in Taiwan (and perhaps other places). Maybe this is not the case for some of the higher-end hardware, but iPods, iMacs, and iBooks are definitely not coming out of "Apple" factories. So the whole manufacturing cost thing is a red herring.
But does the Win32 layer sit on top of the kernel or WinFX ?
Netscape plug-ins can do all that, too. It's just the ActiveX's are so much easier to install and script, and given low enough security settings, makes them a better vehicle for attack.
Azureus is an open-source Java-based BitTorrent client with a built-in tracker.
Trillian isn't perfect but it does the job well. Also, they've got a free Jabber plug-in.
Apple Mac OS X printing uses Rendezvous AND CUPS to make sure that, in the absence of a user's choice, SOME printer is selected. It can't do this all the time, but normally, if you've got a printer connected somewhere on your network, you can print from another Mac without ever having to configure anything. Sure, Apple's configuration dialogs and printer management GUI is decent, but the real value is not having to see them at all.
Just the added performance on Windows (especially in startup time) is worth it.
I know they're not community-driven, but I would like them to spend some time on getting the toolbar set back up to where other browsers are. I'm not a big toolbar user bit I like have the font size controls on the toolbar.
Also, I am going to file a suggestion that Flash be considered an image for the sake of image blocking.
Inasmuch as contemporary deconstruction is an sophisticated reading of a text within a social context, some of its "tools" are actually worth considering. Even scientists have egos and operate in social contexts whose foundations and assumptions are often not examined. (On the other hand, deconstructionist have their own egos, interest, and self-preserving institutional biases.)
However, within the social context of academia, the echo-chamber effect tends to reward political point-scoring. To a large extent, I think this is because radical leftist ideology has failed to catch on in the outside world, so its proponents find themselves trying to control words, something that can be done in a tightly confined, even solipsistic milieu, instead of convincing the world at large. In other words, we can't change the world, so we'll move the playing field to language and try to win there instead.
One of our VCRs broke late last year, and we haven't replaced it yet, because we don't use it that often, and there's another TV with a DVD+VCR unit attached. Still, it would be nice to replace that VCR.
So, why not a combo VCR and TiVO ? After all, the TiVO is basically a VCR replacment, but people still have tapes, and it saves an input jack to the TV. And given how cheap VHS parts are now, it wouldn't cost much more than a TiVO. Add a DVD recorder and then you've got a way to convert tapes as well.
But, another thing that you've not mentioned is that many digital masters are at higher resolution these days - Sony SBM was doing 20-bit 48 kHz five years ago at least, and now pro audio tends to use 24-bit 94 kHz as a standard. Lossy compressors can work from these formats and capture some of the pyschoacoustic information that is lost in the 16-bit 44.1 kHz CD audio master. The end result may very well end up souding nearly as good as a CD.
Putting the annotation on the back of the window is cool, but as a software guy I'd be more interested in how they're persistently attached to windows or documents, how complex those attachments can be, and how the user digs them up again after the windows are gone.
Unfortunately, even the real application of 3D to human/computer interfaces has been a bust. It's been the metaphor of the future for about twenty years now...
I bet the RDF advocates (here's a primer) are going to love this, because RDF already uses URIs to refer to objects, although the URIs are often used just as a namespace themselves. In other words, just because you see a URLI in a RDF fragments doesn't mean it actually exists, it's just a name for something. This is not unlike XML namespace use of URIs. If you could refer to more kinds of objects with URLs that could be resolved, that would make RDF more useful.
It's time outlaw gets(3) . Seriously, shouldn't any data-reading C library function that doesn't have a maximum buffer size parameter be deprecated, or better yet, removed ?
Yep, logic-based AI is definitely at a dead end. Minsky won't admit it. A lot of AI researchers at MIT went to the Media Lab when they saw the writing on the wall.
Robots are not a bad thing to work on if other kinds of AI are going to have a chance, because a more holistic kind of AI would recognize that intelligence and cognition first emerged as a function of having a physical body. On the other hand, it's just robotics, it's not AI itself.
Also, AI was good for the hackers who supported its development on computer workstations. Systems like the Lisp Machine still compare very well to current languages and tools.
Not knowing much about C#, is Java 1.5 "borrowing" features ?
I see two trends: being a better C++ (typesafe enums and parameterized types), and borrowing features from Lisp (code metadata, auto boxing/unboxing). I don't like to tie developments like this to particular people, but I wonder how much Guy Steele has do to with the Lisp-like features, if in fact he is still working at Sun.
While it's true that HD-DVDs might be the medium for high definition video, bandwidth would catch up sooner or later. And if smart compression lessens the need for blue-laser discs, then that also helps video delivered over broadband, too.
Ultimate, I think acceptance of whatever way of getting content is going to have more to do with the consumer's perception of control and value than the technical aspects.