That's an important distinction because nothing in these locked up media systems prevents the creation of alternative liberally licensed media: there is no "toll collector" aspect to it I can see.
That's not how it is going to work in practice. DRM technologies, connectors, and protocols used by these new systems are patented; people will have to license them and get keys in order to publish stuff for free, only the cost will be so high that publishing free content won't make much sense.
What the RIAA and MPAA really fear is not piracy, it's open source-like competition. In fact, high quality free content is already eating into their profits.
With ISPs trying to put restrictions on services, the FCC could guarantee universal service that does not discriminate based on content or business model.
For Mac development, the free XCode tools are good, however I would look into CodeWarrior because ObjectiveC, in my opinion, is an antiquated and bastardized attempt at object orientated programming, CodeWarrior offers C++ access to OSX programming API's.
I don't actually like Objective-C or Xcode, but there is one thing where they are clearly superior to C++: Objective-C is far closer to what object oriented programming is about than C++. As Alan Kay wrote:
"I invented the term Object-Oriented, and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind."
Why is it so *wildly* portable (even moreso than Java)?
That's simple: it was the first of the full-fledged UNIX scripting languages. Before Perl, there was only shell+awk. All the other scripting languages arrived several years later. The fact that Python, Ruby, and PHP have become as popular as they have, despite the existence of Perl, is, in fact, a strong indication that Perl has deep technological problems.
Alphabetical layouts have been evaluated again and again, and they just don't work very well: they completely screw up experienced typists, and they don't help novices one bit. There is a reason why even thumb keyboards are laid out in QWERTY.
Claiming that this keyboard has been dsigned with "ergonomics in mind" is bogus; the designers of this keyboard just don't know what they are doing.
I've found that over 90% of the people who publically state that they've migrated from Perl to Ruby or Python or PHP were drawn in by features of those languages that they *thought* Perl didn't have
Actually, one reason for leaving Perl behind is that it has too many features. In my experience, people get up to speed in PHP much more quickly than in Perl, and they end up producing more maintainable code.
Until Perl 6 hits, I'll happily continue producing mod_perl portals that will smoke the competition in performance,
Microsoft Research already has lots of excellent people working there, including in HCI. But the sad truth is that having good people in research seems to be neither necessary nor sufficient for making a high quality product--Microsoft's products still suck. Even when they have a good product idea, they usually mess it up somehow.
Apple, in contrast, has hardly any world-class researchers working for them anymore, yet Apple products are consistently better than Microsoft's, in terms of GUI, interaction, and reliability.
The problem with Microsoft is ultimately twofold: market share and leadership. In terms of market share, it is very hard for a single company to do a good job making a product that works for 80% of the market. In terms of leadership, neither Ballmer nor Gates seem interested in quality or design, other than as a checklist item necessary for increasing profits; that results in great ROI for the company, but mediocre products.
It's possible that whatever browser has the highest usage rating will have the most [viruses] written for it.
Anything is possible. But when it comes to Microsoft, we actually know: Microsoft has plenty of products that are not dominant, and they contain lots of security vulnerabilities, too. The problem is with the way Microsoft creates software, not that Microsoft software is popular.
As for Firefox, it is not invulnerable; many of its defects, however, are the result of closely imitating Microsoft and targeting Windows.
I am planning to move from Perl 5.8; in fact, I have already mostly moved: to Python and to PHP5. I use Perl only for a few legacy scripts on Linux and for some Windows admin stuff.
Perl was a great advance over shell+awk when it came out, but I can say now: Perl has served its purpose and I'm not sad to retire it.
Actually, that's plain stupid, although I like how you divide the world into "America" and "overseas". Can you name one good reason why the US should not accept studies from - say - France or Japan? No? Didn't think so.
The reason is simple: the the US can only reasonably apply principles and ethical standards against India and other developing nations if it does so uniformly against all nations; simply assuming that France and Japan are OK is bad foreign policy (and bad public policy). Therefore, the US needs to define standards and requirements for accepting foreign medical tests and then evaluate all foreign nations against those standards. Until that happens, foreign tests should not be acceptable, not from Japan and not from India.
And other nations should do the same thing vs. the US; it is far from clear that US medical testing standards satisfy, say, German requirements.
"kraut": I like how you divide the world into "America" and "overseas".
Sounds to me like you have an ax to grind; get over it.
In recent studies by many organization, public transportation costs more per mile than do cars.
Not if you fully account for all the costs associated with driving.
The insurance industry is more expensive BECAUSE of regulations and mandates.
Of course it is. But many of those mandates and regulations are necessary in order to have the insurance companies accomplish what we want them to accomplish.
In fact, we had great health care for decades until government stepped in.
The term "great" is vague. Lots of people may have had "great" healthcare, in the sense that lots of them got state of the art healthcare, but state of the art back then was cheap and limited.
We just have to agree to disagree, except your policies affect how I live. My policies don't force you to do anything you don't want to.
Antitrust legislation, environmental regulation, healthcare regulation, and other regulations are not the result of some kind of communist conspiracy, they are the result of decades of experience at the beginning of the industrial revolution. There are many government regulations that are necessary for ensuring prosperity and quality of life; attempts like yours to dismantle them very much force me to do things I don't want.
I'm sorry you appear to be completely ignorant of that history, but the solution is for you to pick up history books and educate yourself.
The US should not accept trial results from trials conducted overseas. That's prudent for other reasons as well. It's not a complete solution, but it would help.
In the PC world, there is no regulations on the cost, quality or performance of PCs. We have hundreds of companies selling products -- big boys like Dell and HP, small guys like Ram's PC Shop. Guess what? Prices have fallen even against inflation.
There is plenty of regulation in the PC world, it just happens to come courtesy of Microsoft, who also skim billions off the top.
In the automotive world, we have heavy regulations -- steel tariffs, union requirements and other government mandates. Car prices have risen, faster than inflation.
Car prices haven't risen fast enough--they still aren't anywhere near accounting for the cost they impose on society.
In the medicine world, we have excessive regulations, and prices have climbed beyond inflation.
Actually, the regulated and public medical providers are the most efficient ones in the system; it's the private insurance companies that are driving up costs further and further, not because of regulation, but because of a lack of regulation.
Tell me again how regulations help and anarchy hurts?
You didn't think your haphazard collection of poorly chosen examples constituted an argument supporting your position, did you?
Whether government regulation helps or hurts depends on the goals one wants to achieve, the market, and the details of the regulations. The details are fairly well understood economically, although doing the right thing is often politically difficult. One regulation that is generally a good idea is antitrust regulation: markets are rarely well-served by a single dominant company.
What you're saying is kind of like stating a weatherman can't predict a storm surge after a hurricane because he's not an
Weathermen are trained in prediction, geologists aren't.
And in the process, he wouldn't be at all aware of trends crucial to making predictions...
The way it works is that geologists measure past trends, and then experts on prediction and data analysis need to take over.
What a troll.
People like you believe whoever has impressive sounding academic credentials and happens to be preaching what you want to hear. Whether it makes sense or not is irrelevant.
Of course, because I stayed away from the courses in geomorphology.
If you want to make climate predictions, the courses you should have been taking are courses in dynamical systems theory, numerical simulation, fluid dynamics, statistics, and visualization. Training and research in geology and related subjects only qualifies you to provide input data for climate models (including historical data and relevant geochemical data), not to make predictions.
Here's a news flash for you: climatology is a very young science, and climatologists are arguing amongst themselves. Can you imagine why?
Probably because people like you insist on making statements outside their area of expertise.
Someone who makes statements about cause and effect in predictive climate models should have an extensive background in applied mathematics, statistics, and climate modeling; some knowledge of ecology, biology, chemistry, and physics is also important.
Geologists may provide relevant historical climate data, but that's all they have to contribute. Generally, geologists seem to overestimate the relevance of historical climate data to what is happening today, ending up with some variant of the fallacious statement the GP post was implying, something to the effect of "because it's been this hot before, we have nothing to worry about".
This should prove... once and for all, to the teeming masses of Slashdot kids, that people, by and large, DO NOT hate Microsoft and Bill Gates.
I don't think that surprises anybody. In fact, there are lots of historical figures that were perceived positively by their contemporaries and later turned out to be great villains. Besides, you're confusing cause and effect. Stories like the Times story are PR tools to create images; they don't necessarily reflect public opinion.
As for Gates, I suspect in the long run, history will judge him for what he is: a monopolist who has cheated the public out of hundreds of billions of dollars, stolen intellectual property wherever he could, and who has held back progress by decades. Donating a small fraction of his earnings for his pet projects and PR stunts doesn't change any of that.
As a geologist, [...] That ice sheet was one of many recent glaciations. Are humans contributing to "global warming'? Perhaps. Is that contribution significant compared to natural process? I am skeptical.
As a geologist, you aren't particularly qualified to make judgements about cause and effect in climate models.
In any case, it is unnecessary to prove conclusively that human activity is causing global warming in order to justify taking steps; reducing CO2 emissions is sensible and economically beneficial public policy.
It doesn't matter which Mac you have, compared to a native, high-quality implementation, Apple's X11 implementation performs poorly in my experience.
In terms of desktop integration, the fact that all X11 apps are treated as a single Macintosh app is a big problem. Another big problem is the poor integration of Macintosh and X11 keymaps.
Be careful before tossing out the standard issue slashbot line, because when something eventually goes BOOM you won't be allowed to ask "Why didn't the spooks connect the dots and prevent it" if you are now howling that they shouldn't be looking for the dots.
That's not the right question to ask. The real questions to ask are:
What are the demonstrable causes of terrorism against Americans?
What demonstrable increase in security are we getting for the hundreds of billions of dollars spent in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Why are we letting hundreds of thousands of Americans die every year from easily and cheaply preventable causes in the US and instead spend money on overseas wars with uncertain outcomes?
What demonstrable increase in security are we getting from the dismantling of our civil liberties and privacy?
You should be able to set upper limits for your cell phone expenses, plus have people call you back if there is unusual activity.
Credit card companies do this for credit cards and it works fine. There is no reason not to do it for cell phones, other than that cell phone companies hope you'll run up lots of charges. The reason why they hope you do that is because, unlike credit card charges, cell phone charges are not real money. That is, if you complain about your $10000 cell phone bill, it costs them little to "forgive" it, whereas a $10000 credit card bill is real money.
X11 is nothing like the graphical system in Windows, aside from it is a graphical system and it will soon run in userland...
You're right: there are still lots of differences, and X11's design is still far superior. But Windows is moving in the right direction. Give Microsoft another decade or two, and maybe their engineers will catch up.
Slashdot Mirror
That's an important distinction because nothing in these locked up media systems prevents the creation of alternative liberally licensed media: there is no "toll collector" aspect to it I can see.
That's not how it is going to work in practice. DRM technologies, connectors, and protocols used by these new systems are patented; people will have to license them and get keys in order to publish stuff for free, only the cost will be so high that publishing free content won't make much sense.
What the RIAA and MPAA really fear is not piracy, it's open source-like competition. In fact, high quality free content is already eating into their profits.
With ISPs trying to put restrictions on services, the FCC could guarantee universal service that does not discriminate based on content or business model.
I don't actually like Objective-C or Xcode, but there is one thing where they are clearly superior to C++: Objective-C is far closer to what object oriented programming is about than C++. As Alan Kay wrote:
Why is it so *wildly* portable (even moreso than Java)?
That's simple: it was the first of the full-fledged UNIX scripting languages. Before Perl, there was only shell+awk. All the other scripting languages arrived several years later. The fact that Python, Ruby, and PHP have become as popular as they have, despite the existence of Perl, is, in fact, a strong indication that Perl has deep technological problems.
Alphabetical layouts have been evaluated again and again, and they just don't work very well: they completely screw up experienced typists, and they don't help novices one bit. There is a reason why even thumb keyboards are laid out in QWERTY.
Claiming that this keyboard has been dsigned with "ergonomics in mind" is bogus; the designers of this keyboard just don't know what they are doing.
I've found that over 90% of the people who publically state that they've migrated from Perl to Ruby or Python or PHP were drawn in by features of those languages that they *thought* Perl didn't have
Actually, one reason for leaving Perl behind is that it has too many features. In my experience, people get up to speed in PHP much more quickly than in Perl, and they end up producing more maintainable code.
Until Perl 6 hits, I'll happily continue producing mod_perl portals that will smoke the competition in performance,
The operative word there being "I".
Microsoft Research already has lots of excellent people working there, including in HCI. But the sad truth is that having good people in research seems to be neither necessary nor sufficient for making a high quality product--Microsoft's products still suck. Even when they have a good product idea, they usually mess it up somehow.
Apple, in contrast, has hardly any world-class researchers working for them anymore, yet Apple products are consistently better than Microsoft's, in terms of GUI, interaction, and reliability.
The problem with Microsoft is ultimately twofold: market share and leadership. In terms of market share, it is very hard for a single company to do a good job making a product that works for 80% of the market. In terms of leadership, neither Ballmer nor Gates seem interested in quality or design, other than as a checklist item necessary for increasing profits; that results in great ROI for the company, but mediocre products.
It's possible that whatever browser has the highest usage rating will have the most [viruses] written for it.
Anything is possible. But when it comes to Microsoft, we actually know: Microsoft has plenty of products that are not dominant, and they contain lots of security vulnerabilities, too. The problem is with the way Microsoft creates software, not that Microsoft software is popular.
As for Firefox, it is not invulnerable; many of its defects, however, are the result of closely imitating Microsoft and targeting Windows.
I am planning to move from Perl 5.8; in fact, I have already mostly moved: to Python and to PHP5. I use Perl only for a few legacy scripts on Linux and for some Windows admin stuff.
Perl was a great advance over shell+awk when it came out, but I can say now: Perl has served its purpose and I'm not sad to retire it.
Actually, that's plain stupid, although I like how you divide the world into "America" and "overseas". Can you name one good reason why the US should not accept studies from - say - France or Japan? No? Didn't think so.
The reason is simple: the the US can only reasonably apply principles and ethical standards against India and other developing nations if it does so uniformly against all nations; simply assuming that France and Japan are OK is bad foreign policy (and bad public policy). Therefore, the US needs to define standards and requirements for accepting foreign medical tests and then evaluate all foreign nations against those standards. Until that happens, foreign tests should not be acceptable, not from Japan and not from India.
And other nations should do the same thing vs. the US; it is far from clear that US medical testing standards satisfy, say, German requirements.
"kraut": I like how you divide the world into "America" and "overseas".
Sounds to me like you have an ax to grind; get over it.
In recent studies by many organization, public transportation costs more per mile than do cars.
Not if you fully account for all the costs associated with driving.
The insurance industry is more expensive BECAUSE of regulations and mandates.
Of course it is. But many of those mandates and regulations are necessary in order to have the insurance companies accomplish what we want them to accomplish.
In fact, we had great health care for decades until government stepped in.
The term "great" is vague. Lots of people may have had "great" healthcare, in the sense that lots of them got state of the art healthcare, but state of the art back then was cheap and limited.
We just have to agree to disagree, except your policies affect how I live. My policies don't force you to do anything you don't want to.
Antitrust legislation, environmental regulation, healthcare regulation, and other regulations are not the result of some kind of communist conspiracy, they are the result of decades of experience at the beginning of the industrial revolution. There are many government regulations that are necessary for ensuring prosperity and quality of life; attempts like yours to dismantle them very much force me to do things I don't want.
I'm sorry you appear to be completely ignorant of that history, but the solution is for you to pick up history books and educate yourself.
The US should not accept trial results from trials conducted overseas. That's prudent for other reasons as well. It's not a complete solution, but it would help.
In the PC world, there is no regulations on the cost, quality or performance of PCs. We have hundreds of companies selling products -- big boys like Dell and HP, small guys like Ram's PC Shop. Guess what? Prices have fallen even against inflation.
There is plenty of regulation in the PC world, it just happens to come courtesy of Microsoft, who also skim billions off the top.
In the automotive world, we have heavy regulations -- steel tariffs, union requirements and other government mandates. Car prices have risen, faster than inflation.
Car prices haven't risen fast enough--they still aren't anywhere near accounting for the cost they impose on society.
In the medicine world, we have excessive regulations, and prices have climbed beyond inflation.
Actually, the regulated and public medical providers are the most efficient ones in the system; it's the private insurance companies that are driving up costs further and further, not because of regulation, but because of a lack of regulation.
Tell me again how regulations help and anarchy hurts?
You didn't think your haphazard collection of poorly chosen examples constituted an argument supporting your position, did you?
Whether government regulation helps or hurts depends on the goals one wants to achieve, the market, and the details of the regulations. The details are fairly well understood economically, although doing the right thing is often politically difficult. One regulation that is generally a good idea is antitrust regulation: markets are rarely well-served by a single dominant company.
What you're saying is kind of like stating a weatherman can't predict a storm surge after a hurricane because he's not an
Weathermen are trained in prediction, geologists aren't.
And in the process, he wouldn't be at all aware of trends crucial to making predictions...
The way it works is that geologists measure past trends, and then experts on prediction and data analysis need to take over.
What a troll.
People like you believe whoever has impressive sounding academic credentials and happens to be preaching what you want to hear. Whether it makes sense or not is irrelevant.
"...or a criminal's worst nightmare."
Not really. Anybody who doesn't want to get tracked uses a one-way pager and a prepaid cell phone that's turned on only when needed.
In the end, cell phone companies are only going to hurt themselves by creating a product that consumers don't trust and turn off.
Of course, because I stayed away from the courses in geomorphology.
If you want to make climate predictions, the courses you should have been taking are courses in dynamical systems theory, numerical simulation, fluid dynamics, statistics, and visualization. Training and research in geology and related subjects only qualifies you to provide input data for climate models (including historical data and relevant geochemical data), not to make predictions.
Here's a news flash for you: climatology is a very young science, and climatologists are arguing amongst themselves. Can you imagine why?
Probably because people like you insist on making statements outside their area of expertise.
Someone who makes statements about cause and effect in predictive climate models should have an extensive background in applied mathematics, statistics, and climate modeling; some knowledge of ecology, biology, chemistry, and physics is also important.
Geologists may provide relevant historical climate data, but that's all they have to contribute. Generally, geologists seem to overestimate the relevance of historical climate data to what is happening today, ending up with some variant of the fallacious statement the GP post was implying, something to the effect of "because it's been this hot before, we have nothing to worry about".
This should prove... once and for all, to the teeming masses of Slashdot kids, that people, by and large, DO NOT hate Microsoft and Bill Gates.
I don't think that surprises anybody. In fact, there are lots of historical figures that were perceived positively by their contemporaries and later turned out to be great villains. Besides, you're confusing cause and effect. Stories like the Times story are PR tools to create images; they don't necessarily reflect public opinion.
As for Gates, I suspect in the long run, history will judge him for what he is: a monopolist who has cheated the public out of hundreds of billions of dollars, stolen intellectual property wherever he could, and who has held back progress by decades. Donating a small fraction of his earnings for his pet projects and PR stunts doesn't change any of that.
So that means the bears that do survive will be better swimmers than previous. Evolution wins again!
Or they'll die out altogether; that's what often happens to species when the environment changes rapidly.
As a geologist, [...] That ice sheet was one of many recent glaciations. Are humans contributing to "global warming'? Perhaps. Is that contribution significant compared to natural process? I am skeptical.
As a geologist, you aren't particularly qualified to make judgements about cause and effect in climate models.
In any case, it is unnecessary to prove conclusively that human activity is causing global warming in order to justify taking steps; reducing CO2 emissions is sensible and economically beneficial public policy.
It doesn't matter which Mac you have, compared to a native, high-quality implementation, Apple's X11 implementation performs poorly in my experience.
In terms of desktop integration, the fact that all X11 apps are treated as a single Macintosh app is a big problem. Another big problem is the poor integration of Macintosh and X11 keymaps.
That's not the right question to ask. The real questions to ask are:
You should be able to set upper limits for your cell phone expenses, plus have people call you back if there is unusual activity.
Credit card companies do this for credit cards and it works fine. There is no reason not to do it for cell phones, other than that cell phone companies hope you'll run up lots of charges. The reason why they hope you do that is because, unlike credit card charges, cell phone charges are not real money. That is, if you complain about your $10000 cell phone bill, it costs them little to "forgive" it, whereas a $10000 credit card bill is real money.
X11 is nothing like the graphical system in Windows, aside from it is a graphical system and it will soon run in userland...
You're right: there are still lots of differences, and X11's design is still far superior. But Windows is moving in the right direction. Give Microsoft another decade or two, and maybe their engineers will catch up.
(Ya, I am a Mac zealot... busted. I have X11 installed as well, came with Tiger.)
I'm typing on a Mac, and unfortunately X11 on the Mac sucks: it's poorly integrated with the desktop and it is rather slow.