I think you need to learn the difference between closed hardware and software platforms.
You seem to be regurgitating the argument for FOSS vs. proprietary software, these arguments make much less sense in the context of hardware. Whilst hardware does also tend to inevitably get hacked, it's often much harder. Specifically, the argument of the community not really knowing aobut the hack because it isn't an open platform is utterly nonsensical in the context of cheating, games, and consoles.
I don't think consoles are hack proof, I just realise that they are much harder to crack, and much easier to fix than PCs. With PCs you can get round any software fix for a hack in a day, you can even largely automate the process. When it comes to hardware, it can sometimes take weeks to get around, but only days for the vendor to fix, so you effectively have a much higher ratio of cheat free time to cheat filled time on consoles, whilst on the PC, cheats are there pretty much permanently.
Yeah, I think with the PC the key is not so much preventing cheating, but dealing with it.
As someone else said in response to this article, it's a social problem, and the ability to publicly flag players as cheats is probably the best bet such that if enough people flag one person then they can be kept a closer eye on to see if they really are cheating or something along those lines.
I agree that we don't want to say goodbye to open platforms, because as you say, closed platforms mean higher costs, but similarly I think if you really want to play on open platforms, you sadly have to accept the disadvantages that brings in terms of gaming, whilst realising the power of an open platform in other ways- better support for mods is one prominent example of course.
It's really down to deciding what your priorities are I guess, if cheating is your biggest issue, then paying for a closed platform is the solution, if modding or cost is a priority then stick with the open platform and understand that there may be cheating online however.
This is truly groundbreaking, why has no one thought of this before? Even dating back before computer science, even mathematicians should've thought of a tool like this, they could've called it the input domain or something.
Seriously though, you're dead right, this is one of those examples where the separation of math teaching from computing teaching has meant developers have lost an understanding of these sorts of basic principles. The same issue occurs with formal logic, where many developers don't actually understand what their boolean statements will really result in trues and falses for, or even when such statements are needlessly overly complicated.
It's the sort of thing that has been stripped out of software engineering degrees, and is one of the points where software engineering and computer science degrees differ. Yet, as demonstrated here, it's also something that's fundamental to writing code that is valid much more consistently.
I'm not against software engineering degrees, I strongly believe they are equally important in the real world, where I've seen just as many comp. sci. students completely and utterly unable to architect large scale applications, even if they can write the algorithms for each function itself. However I believe this sort of thing should be in software engineering regardless of the attempts to separate it from comp. sci. because it really is just fundamental to anyone writing code to make sure they get it right as often as humanly possible.
The PC in general is an open platform because you can easily and trivially run whatever code on it you want and peak and poke the memory as you see fit, even if the OS itself is closed.
If you want a gaming platform where cheating is not an issue, you need a closed platform, like a console, where it is much easier for the developers to detect and prevent cheating, if there is even any in the first place. Despite being 5 years old this year, whilst it has suffered some game logic cheats which are easily patched, the Xbox 360 has yet to be prone to a single aimbot or radar cheat for example.
PC's are great for general usage and single player/cooperative gaming, but not for competitive gaming where cheating is largely an unsolveable problem without closing the platform, which goes against what PCs are great at. Even assuming in a few years you move everything server side and just pass images to the client there's still the possibility that people will write pattern recognition apps, to recognise enemies and send control messages to aim at them like any other aimbot.
To expand on what the parent is saying, basically Windows sets a block of memory for each process aside and changes this on peak memory usage. This is a somewhat simplified explanation, but if an application uses 20mb of RAM 99% of the time, but then spikes to 200mb of RAM that other 1% of it's running time, rather than resize the pool each time from 20mb to 200mb, it'll just leave it at 200mb after it's noticed this pattern a few times to avoid having to keep enlarging, and shrinking (and as the parent said- zeroing out) the additional memory required.
If Windows gets a bit short on RAM, it will not bother with this optimisation, and will just do the resizing each time, to ensure that real RAM is available as much as possible- because the resizing is still faster than paging with virtual memory.
Effectively, it's just a free performance boost for when there is enough memory available. Sure it looks bad in task manager, but it's not really.
As I say though, the above was a simplified explanation, the real rules on when memory does and doesn't get allocated and the pool for each process does and doesn't get resized I believe are based on a rather more complex algorithm than that, so it is potentially possible that part of Windows 7's speed optimisation involve modifying this very algorithm, hence why things may look different in task manager now than they used to.
I've not personally noticed any issues with Windows 7 bar one, with Firefox, where I went to bed one night and left it running, coming down the next morning to see it eating up a massive 1.8gb of RAM. I suspect this really was a memory leak and am inclined to blame Firefox seeing as it seems to have been on a downward spiral into shittiness ever since about version 3.0- I find it tends to crash sometimes now also which it never used to, all this since I updated to version 3.6. I didn't find previous versions had these sorts of issues, but I have found the browser getting progressively slower with each version. I even contemplated switching back to IE, until I tried browsing with it and got a reminder that whilst yes, Firefox seems to be getting worse, at least it's still not _that_ bad;) Chrome was an option, nice and fast but the UI just pisses me off.
Anyway, I digress. Their assertion of slow downs based on what appears to be merely theory from them extrapolated from a misunderstanding of Windows RAM allocations seems to fly completely in the face of the general global consensus that Windows 7 actually performs very well, particularly compared to Vista. So I suspect their entire conclusion- the theory about virtual memory usage and slow downs is all just the result of their initial flawed premise of how Windows allocates memory.
One final note, I was looking for an article on MSDN I read a few years ago that gave a better description of that I have described above with a slightly more in depth explanation than I've been able to give off hand, but I can't for the life of me find it now. if you are interested in more detail, it may be worth having a dig around for it to see if you can find it though as it was quite a good article.
Sorry, my comment was a case of crossed wires then, I didn't realise US proposals for controlling carbon was applied to personal use as well.
Here in Europe, it's only applied to businesses, hence my original point.
I agree carbon credits are the wrong option for individuals and families.
Regarding your solution, the biggest issue I see is deciding who does the research, if it's public sector then that's generally highly inefficient compared to industry, but similarly if it's industry, then governments have a long history of letting themselves be ripped off too. Presumably straight to the academics would be the best solution?
But that's just it, this is part the problem with the whole anti-Global Warming crowd. They keep repeating this line, until people like you repeat it too:
"Give us the programs and data so any high school science student can run the programs and get your results, then let "real" programmers look over the code for stupid mistakes, and real scientists check the data for stupid errors, then we might be on the way to science. All we have right now is "The dog ate my homework"."
Yet the data is available, and always has been, here:
Sure the CRU's model isn't available but so what?- I believe others are available. The data is there for you to come up with your own conclusions, how many people would even understand the CRU's modelling system that aren't climate scientists themselves and hence part of the so-called conspiracy anyway?
The data is there, I'm just waiting for someone to do an objective study on it to show something contrary to the professional climatologists conclusion from it, yet all we get is this repeating of the myth that the data isn't available. Some data isn't, but most of it is- enough to be able to do peer review and conduct your own counter-studies.
If there was anything coming out of the denier crowd that was useful then great, they might have a stronger case, but right now? They are for the most part just making shit up and using half-stories that ignore the all important context.
You're confusing evidence and proof, whilst I have not seen proof that god does not exist, I have seen plenty of evidence that could lead to such a conclusion.
Regardless, it's not a question of lack of existence, it's a question of the cause of it, and the effects of it. The existence of it as a long term trend is largely settled.
Most so-called climate deniers focus on whether man is to blame, and whether it's even a problem if it happens. Evidence or ultimately proof of both of these things either for or against are perfectly valid.
Isn't regulating the carbon economy a fairly good way of pushing industry into investing into green technology though where they would otherwise sit in bliss of the idea that the fuel they depend on will be there, and be the same price forever?
I agree, measures have to be focussed, and sensible, but I'm not sure that carbon credits for example necessarily go against the goal of pushing for a green technology based economy.
I'm not totally in agreement with the resolution because I think it's been made for the wrong reasons- I think it's been made for purely economic reasons.
I am however in agreement that we need to focus on the science though, but this requires effort from the denier camp too. Effectively we need to be able to audit the scientists involved, and whether there really is any reason for them to have an agenda, if there is, remove that reason, or remove them from the post. If however there isn't, then it is a little unfair if they follow scientific process that the denial camp still come up with un-scientific excuses whilst they are wrong.
So I do agree with you, it requires effort from both sides, the only thing I disagree on is that we should stop efforts to cut CO2 emissions and so forth, because a) I prefer to play on the side of caution, rather than leave it until it's too late, and b) because decrease dependence on heavily pollutant industry, and use of fossil fuels, is generally a bad idea regardless of the real outcome.
For what it's worth though I'm inclined to have some faith in some of the climate scientists, the common argument against them is that they're in fear of losing their jobs if they don't elevate the threat, but that's actually not true for many of them- climate forecasting and modelling is something that's been done long before climate change was a true worry, and something that will be done long after. I'm sure there are still plenty there with funds that exist purely because of the scare, but the idea that they all are is wrong, and so I struggle to see much motive for those in truly permanent positions. What would be interesting is to see a breakdown of climate scientists by funding- how many are doing a job they've always done and will always do, and how many are in newly created posts and whom would lose posts if climate change was indeed found to be a myth.
No, I don't intend to address their points, because unlike you, and unlike the likes of Andrew Orlowski I don't pretend to be qualified to judge the merits of the climate science involved.
What I do know however is that:
- The Register singles out and disallows discussion about certain topics such as in articles about climate change
- The few times they do allow discussion on topics such as climate change, the discussion is heavily controlled and moderated
- They have been known to push scientifically discredited theories from certain camps as fact
- They have been known to reach conclusions based on false premises, to reach false conclusions based on correct promises, or to contradict themselves- i.e. they have shown themselves incapable of correctly reaching logical conclusions, but instead pushing their false conclusions as fact
- They have been known to simply outright lie
So there you have it, I hope this makes it clear why they are a bad source.
They're not sources, but I can tell you that in my garden this year in the UK it reached -17.7c, when the usual minimum temperature we expect here in winter is -7c and has been for over a decade and even prior to that not breaking -10c.
I also read a few weeks back Australia had their hottest night ever recorded at over 34c at night.
My girlfriend's relatives in Ottawa, Canada also had an extremely mild winter, so much so that they had less snow and higher temperatures than us during our period of bad weather which is unheard of.
China also saw record snow, as did South Korea I believe in the same period.
So whilst I don't have a source to hand (although I'm sure Google would oblige), I can say for sure that in different parts of the world countries have had extreme temperatures one way or the other. Australia has had it hotter than ever before, Britain has nearly beaten it's all time lows, whilst at least parts of Canada had a far more mild than usual start to the year and large parts of Asia had record snow. Whilst things may be different now, there was clearly at least a few weeks in January where things were extremely screwy across large parts of the globe.
Ah a couple of articles from The Register, also known as the IT World's official climate denier news site.
The Register has zero credibility when it comes to climate science because it has spent the last few years creating countless articles, many of which are full of not just inaccuracies, but sometimes outright lies. I'm sure they have the odd good point in there, but it's impossible to tell the agenda based propaganda from the valid arguments, which is actually quite ironic when that's their argument against professional climate research.
Really, you might as well have just linked to the pope's official blog in a discussion about whether god exists as evidence that he does. If The Register is the best source you can find, then you simply do not have a real source. I'm not exactly pro-AGW theory- I'm somewhat undecided, becoming more skeptical, but any counter evidence has to be a bit more solid than something coming from The Register or the likes of Climate Audit which those articles use as their sources.
"So what the state of Utah is saying is that since no one else is taking this seriously, we shouldn't have to? I agree that it will hurt us economically and competitively with other nations but you have to look at what scientific evidence we have before you mire this in those sorts of things."
You know, I'm not even sure this is true. Even if climate change isn't a real problem then there's still the issue of non-infinite supplies of fossil fuels, and the reliance on dangerous regimes from Venezuela to Russia, to Iran for them.
So regardless of climate change, we're going to need to look at renewables and green technology anyway, and as such I suspect that the market for environmentally friendly, or green technology will actually be quite massive, such that it has the potential to do for that area that embraces it and leads the world on it in the 21st century what IT did for silicon valley did in the 20th century.
Green technology is not going to be a small market, it's going to be a global market, with increasing prominence however you cut it, so on the contrary, those who embrace it, may have short term expendature, but long term it could put their economy up there as one of the richest in the world. There is going to be a lot of money however you cut it.
The choice really comes down to whether you avoid short term research costs, and just follow the rest of the world remaining a non-factor, or whether you invest, and lead the world as California has done for much of the past few decades.
Well, it sounds like you've decided to trust those who consistently provide zero evidence for their claim that global warming is not a problem, or at least not a man made problem, over those who have provided at least some evidence.
That in itself is probably a very poor choice.
The fact one side is capable of producing verifiable evidence whilst the other continues to produce none at all is in itself quite telling as to which is probably the better bet.
"So, where does the dictionary define "proper" as "physical"? I think it is your problem, as much as you protest that it isn't."
The dictionary follows common language, it does not define how people should interpret it before it is defined as official language however, so I'm not sure why you're bringing it up, other than grasping at straws to cover the fact you're being pedantic and pretending you don't understand what I was referring to when you either do, or you're extremely dumb.
"You appear to be the one struggling to understand. The touchscreen is a component of the "virtual" keyboard. It is hardware. therefore, it is physical."
No it's not, the touchscreen is a generic input device used with the keyboard. I understand perfectly thanks, you not being able to grasp the difference and some fundamental computing concepts isn't my problem I'm afraid.
"Your reasoning doesn't make sense. Your regular, "physical" keyboard requires software to display characters on the screen, so the presence of software to interpret input doesn't make something less physical."
lol, you really do find this difficult don't you? The output on screen is not part of the input. You can have keyboards attached to headless systems, but they're still keyboards or are you telling me now that a keyboard without being plugged into a working PC without software on it is not a keyboard?
"How the fuck would you know which netbook keyboards I can't touch type on, if you've never even met me, let alone gone netbook shopping together?"
Sorry, I didn't realise you were some omnipresent being that exists inside everyone.
"Again, you assume that tactile feedback is always a key factor for everybody in every usage situation. That's not necessarily true."
Well in terms of faster typing it is.
"Also, how is "software latency" relevant? Your "physical" keyboard also suffers from software latency, as its input needs to be interpreted by software."
Yes, it's always an issue in computing systems certainly, but it's negligible on physical keyboards because they generally have their own buffer, are connected directly to the input bus, and use hardware interrupts.
"In reality, with a modern processor and well-written software, software latency just isn't an issue with virtual keyboards."
Right, but that's because in most cases lack of tactile feedback prevents people typing fast enough for it to be a problem. Try using a virtual keyboard in an app with high CPU and memory usage however.
Still, I'm bored now, you don't have enough of an understanding about computing to be having this discussion because your comments don't make sense and we had a good laugh around the office at some of your more stupid questions. Do yourself a favour and actually learn a bit about how computers, both hardware and software work. Crack that virtualisation nut- figure out why the term virtual is valid and where it fits in the universe rather than remaining ignorant. When you actually have a worthwhile understanding of computing come back and have a mature conversation about it, but I suspect by that point, you'll already understand why your viewpoint was wrong and there wont be much to discuss anyway.
"As they say, [citation needed]. Why would they develop such applications as Final Cut Pro, Logic and Filemaker if they weren't profitable?"
I didn't say weren't profitable, just barely profitable. The reason they continue to maintain them is because doing so and gaining just a little profit is better than ceasing to maintain them and pissing off customers who depend on them such that they may never buy from Apple ever again.
"The piracy aspect is huge. If the business market could get away with wholesale piracy of applications, they would don an eyepatch in a heartbeat. The difference is that businesses cannot afford to get caught pirating software, so standards are very different in that world (although if you look at very small businesses, things get dodgy pretty quickly)."
Congratulations, you understand why the real money is in business software then? Sure there is certainly money to be made in the consumer markets, but my point was ignoring business markets when making claims such as piracy means the PC software industry is not as successful as the app store is laughably ignorant.
"This is your problem. You chose your words poorly."
Your lack of ability to understand and correctly interpret common English is not my problem, it is yours.
"Yes, I agree that is the traditional usage - but it is baggage that we must get rid of if we want to evolve and become more sophisticated about technology. "Virtual" is a crutch, a term used by those struggling to come to terms with software and digital objects."
No, really, it's not. In fact, it's becoming ever more prominent with the rise of virtualisation I'm afraid.
"But it is a physical keyboard. How else would it detect you touching it?"
You really do struggle to understand how on screen keyboards work don't you? I don't think I've ever met anyone who finds it so hard to understand technology concepts like this. I'll try one last time, to answer your question, the on screen keyboard doesn't detect you touching it, the separate input device, the touch screen does, and the on screen keyboard which is software interprets that, the keyboard itself is not physical, it is an on-screen keyboard, it is a virtual keyboard. I thought it might finally click when you got the orange example, but you still seem to be struggling to make the leap to understanding this rather simple concept.
"Back to your example - what good is a netbook keyboard that's so small you can't touch-type on it? Wouldn't a virtual keyboard be just as effective in that case? What about the space the keyboard takes up? On a device that is not used mainly for typing, wouldn't adding a bulky keyboard actually be a drawback? Typing speed is not the only consideration."
I've yet to find a Netbook with a keyboard so small that you can't touch-type on it, simply because there are no netbooks with keyboards that small. No a virtual keyboard would not be just as effective, because it still lacks tactile response, and still suffers the afformentioned problem of inherent software latency. Space is hardly a valid argument, because Netbooks like Asus' Seashell line are not big enough in relation to say the iPad to cause a problem unless you have particular massively constrained circumstances where a few mm or at worst the odd cm matters, but that'll effect a portion of users so small it's not a concern.
Now let's see if you can finally grasp this concept of virtual shall we?
I hate The Register too, but when they're quoting straight from the horses mouth, it's hard for them to go wrong.
Apple doesn't make much money from software at all, that's why they keep OSX locked to Apple hardware, because it costs them more to maintain it than they make from selling it, hence why they can't afford to have to support it on generic hardware, grossly escalating the costs of development and support for them. All their other software is free, or too focussed at niche markets to make any real worthwhile profit. Using games as an example of software that makes money from consumers isn't the greatest, you should perhaps go to somewhere like Gamedev.net and see how for the past few years every single week there is news of mroe studios shedding developers left right and centre, there are certainly some successes, but as a whole, the industry still isn't making anywhere near as much as companies that focus primarily on business software, because again, that's where the real money is.
Here in the UK we often have a problem of unexploded ordinance and I would imagine countries like France, Germany et al. do also. Unexploded bombs in land or mines at sea dating back to World War II are usually found a few times a year here in the UK and are generally detonated because they are not safe to simply move, although some are safe enough to just move.
So nice theory, but unfortunately it seems you're completely and utterly wrong. You might want to consider looking for facts to back up your assertions in future. The reality is you have absolutely no idea how many apps the average PC users buys and for how much compared to iPhone users. Most prominently though, you seem to have completely and utterly forgotten about business. The iPhone is primarily a consumer phone with no worthwhile showing in the business market, hence why RIM is so successful in business phones because that's what it does best. Businesses spend a fortune on software from vendors big and small, this is why the PC software market is not a failure, whilst in comparison the iPhone app store isn't exactly a massive money spinner, all it really does is act as a vehicle for increasing popularity of the hardware and phone contracts- where the real money is. If Apple were to make money from software, they would need to venture out into the world of business, but they have shown numerous times they are not interested in that.
If you're going to talk about software markets, please at least do a little bit of research to understand them first, rather than just simply making it all up as you go along.
Slashdot Mirror
"What are you going to do then?"
Get a finger transplant?
I think you need to learn the difference between closed hardware and software platforms.
You seem to be regurgitating the argument for FOSS vs. proprietary software, these arguments make much less sense in the context of hardware. Whilst hardware does also tend to inevitably get hacked, it's often much harder. Specifically, the argument of the community not really knowing aobut the hack because it isn't an open platform is utterly nonsensical in the context of cheating, games, and consoles.
I don't think consoles are hack proof, I just realise that they are much harder to crack, and much easier to fix than PCs. With PCs you can get round any software fix for a hack in a day, you can even largely automate the process. When it comes to hardware, it can sometimes take weeks to get around, but only days for the vendor to fix, so you effectively have a much higher ratio of cheat free time to cheat filled time on consoles, whilst on the PC, cheats are there pretty much permanently.
Yeah, I think with the PC the key is not so much preventing cheating, but dealing with it.
As someone else said in response to this article, it's a social problem, and the ability to publicly flag players as cheats is probably the best bet such that if enough people flag one person then they can be kept a closer eye on to see if they really are cheating or something along those lines.
I agree that we don't want to say goodbye to open platforms, because as you say, closed platforms mean higher costs, but similarly I think if you really want to play on open platforms, you sadly have to accept the disadvantages that brings in terms of gaming, whilst realising the power of an open platform in other ways- better support for mods is one prominent example of course.
It's really down to deciding what your priorities are I guess, if cheating is your biggest issue, then paying for a closed platform is the solution, if modding or cost is a priority then stick with the open platform and understand that there may be cheating online however.
This is truly groundbreaking, why has no one thought of this before? Even dating back before computer science, even mathematicians should've thought of a tool like this, they could've called it the input domain or something.
Seriously though, you're dead right, this is one of those examples where the separation of math teaching from computing teaching has meant developers have lost an understanding of these sorts of basic principles. The same issue occurs with formal logic, where many developers don't actually understand what their boolean statements will really result in trues and falses for, or even when such statements are needlessly overly complicated.
It's the sort of thing that has been stripped out of software engineering degrees, and is one of the points where software engineering and computer science degrees differ. Yet, as demonstrated here, it's also something that's fundamental to writing code that is valid much more consistently.
I'm not against software engineering degrees, I strongly believe they are equally important in the real world, where I've seen just as many comp. sci. students completely and utterly unable to architect large scale applications, even if they can write the algorithms for each function itself. However I believe this sort of thing should be in software engineering regardless of the attempts to separate it from comp. sci. because it really is just fundamental to anyone writing code to make sure they get it right as often as humanly possible.
Then you made a poor platform choice.
The PC in general is an open platform because you can easily and trivially run whatever code on it you want and peak and poke the memory as you see fit, even if the OS itself is closed.
If you want a gaming platform where cheating is not an issue, you need a closed platform, like a console, where it is much easier for the developers to detect and prevent cheating, if there is even any in the first place. Despite being 5 years old this year, whilst it has suffered some game logic cheats which are easily patched, the Xbox 360 has yet to be prone to a single aimbot or radar cheat for example.
PC's are great for general usage and single player/cooperative gaming, but not for competitive gaming where cheating is largely an unsolveable problem without closing the platform, which goes against what PCs are great at. Even assuming in a few years you move everything server side and just pass images to the client there's still the possibility that people will write pattern recognition apps, to recognise enemies and send control messages to aim at them like any other aimbot.
To expand on what the parent is saying, basically Windows sets a block of memory for each process aside and changes this on peak memory usage. This is a somewhat simplified explanation, but if an application uses 20mb of RAM 99% of the time, but then spikes to 200mb of RAM that other 1% of it's running time, rather than resize the pool each time from 20mb to 200mb, it'll just leave it at 200mb after it's noticed this pattern a few times to avoid having to keep enlarging, and shrinking (and as the parent said- zeroing out) the additional memory required.
If Windows gets a bit short on RAM, it will not bother with this optimisation, and will just do the resizing each time, to ensure that real RAM is available as much as possible- because the resizing is still faster than paging with virtual memory.
Effectively, it's just a free performance boost for when there is enough memory available. Sure it looks bad in task manager, but it's not really.
As I say though, the above was a simplified explanation, the real rules on when memory does and doesn't get allocated and the pool for each process does and doesn't get resized I believe are based on a rather more complex algorithm than that, so it is potentially possible that part of Windows 7's speed optimisation involve modifying this very algorithm, hence why things may look different in task manager now than they used to.
I've not personally noticed any issues with Windows 7 bar one, with Firefox, where I went to bed one night and left it running, coming down the next morning to see it eating up a massive 1.8gb of RAM. I suspect this really was a memory leak and am inclined to blame Firefox seeing as it seems to have been on a downward spiral into shittiness ever since about version 3.0- I find it tends to crash sometimes now also which it never used to, all this since I updated to version 3.6. I didn't find previous versions had these sorts of issues, but I have found the browser getting progressively slower with each version. I even contemplated switching back to IE, until I tried browsing with it and got a reminder that whilst yes, Firefox seems to be getting worse, at least it's still not _that_ bad ;) Chrome was an option, nice and fast but the UI just pisses me off.
Anyway, I digress. Their assertion of slow downs based on what appears to be merely theory from them extrapolated from a misunderstanding of Windows RAM allocations seems to fly completely in the face of the general global consensus that Windows 7 actually performs very well, particularly compared to Vista. So I suspect their entire conclusion- the theory about virtual memory usage and slow downs is all just the result of their initial flawed premise of how Windows allocates memory.
One final note, I was looking for an article on MSDN I read a few years ago that gave a better description of that I have described above with a slightly more in depth explanation than I've been able to give off hand, but I can't for the life of me find it now. if you are interested in more detail, it may be worth having a dig around for it to see if you can find it though as it was quite a good article.
Perhaps, but if like me you've moved to a company that uses Lotus Notes, you'll be pining for Outlook again.
I used Outlook for 7 years straight, and now Notes for 2 years, I'd do anything to get Outlook back!
For all it's quirks, you don't realise how good Outlook is until you have to try the likes of Notes.
Sorry, my comment was a case of crossed wires then, I didn't realise US proposals for controlling carbon was applied to personal use as well.
Here in Europe, it's only applied to businesses, hence my original point.
I agree carbon credits are the wrong option for individuals and families.
Regarding your solution, the biggest issue I see is deciding who does the research, if it's public sector then that's generally highly inefficient compared to industry, but similarly if it's industry, then governments have a long history of letting themselves be ripped off too. Presumably straight to the academics would be the best solution?
But that's just it, this is part the problem with the whole anti-Global Warming crowd. They keep repeating this line, until people like you repeat it too:
"Give us the programs and data so any high school science student can run the programs and get your results, then let "real" programmers look over the code for stupid mistakes, and real scientists check the data for stupid errors, then we might be on the way to science. All we have right now is "The dog ate my homework"."
Yet the data is available, and always has been, here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/
Sure the CRU's model isn't available but so what?- I believe others are available. The data is there for you to come up with your own conclusions, how many people would even understand the CRU's modelling system that aren't climate scientists themselves and hence part of the so-called conspiracy anyway?
The data is there, I'm just waiting for someone to do an objective study on it to show something contrary to the professional climatologists conclusion from it, yet all we get is this repeating of the myth that the data isn't available. Some data isn't, but most of it is- enough to be able to do peer review and conduct your own counter-studies.
If there was anything coming out of the denier crowd that was useful then great, they might have a stronger case, but right now? They are for the most part just making shit up and using half-stories that ignore the all important context.
You're confusing evidence and proof, whilst I have not seen proof that god does not exist, I have seen plenty of evidence that could lead to such a conclusion.
Regardless, it's not a question of lack of existence, it's a question of the cause of it, and the effects of it. The existence of it as a long term trend is largely settled.
Most so-called climate deniers focus on whether man is to blame, and whether it's even a problem if it happens. Evidence or ultimately proof of both of these things either for or against are perfectly valid.
Isn't regulating the carbon economy a fairly good way of pushing industry into investing into green technology though where they would otherwise sit in bliss of the idea that the fuel they depend on will be there, and be the same price forever?
I agree, measures have to be focussed, and sensible, but I'm not sure that carbon credits for example necessarily go against the goal of pushing for a green technology based economy.
I'm not totally in agreement with the resolution because I think it's been made for the wrong reasons- I think it's been made for purely economic reasons.
I am however in agreement that we need to focus on the science though, but this requires effort from the denier camp too. Effectively we need to be able to audit the scientists involved, and whether there really is any reason for them to have an agenda, if there is, remove that reason, or remove them from the post. If however there isn't, then it is a little unfair if they follow scientific process that the denial camp still come up with un-scientific excuses whilst they are wrong.
So I do agree with you, it requires effort from both sides, the only thing I disagree on is that we should stop efforts to cut CO2 emissions and so forth, because a) I prefer to play on the side of caution, rather than leave it until it's too late, and b) because decrease dependence on heavily pollutant industry, and use of fossil fuels, is generally a bad idea regardless of the real outcome.
For what it's worth though I'm inclined to have some faith in some of the climate scientists, the common argument against them is that they're in fear of losing their jobs if they don't elevate the threat, but that's actually not true for many of them- climate forecasting and modelling is something that's been done long before climate change was a true worry, and something that will be done long after. I'm sure there are still plenty there with funds that exist purely because of the scare, but the idea that they all are is wrong, and so I struggle to see much motive for those in truly permanent positions. What would be interesting is to see a breakdown of climate scientists by funding- how many are doing a job they've always done and will always do, and how many are in newly created posts and whom would lose posts if climate change was indeed found to be a myth.
No, I don't intend to address their points, because unlike you, and unlike the likes of Andrew Orlowski I don't pretend to be qualified to judge the merits of the climate science involved.
What I do know however is that:
- The Register singles out and disallows discussion about certain topics such as in articles about climate change
- The few times they do allow discussion on topics such as climate change, the discussion is heavily controlled and moderated
- They have been known to push scientifically discredited theories from certain camps as fact
- They have been known to reach conclusions based on false premises, to reach false conclusions based on correct promises, or to contradict themselves- i.e. they have shown themselves incapable of correctly reaching logical conclusions, but instead pushing their false conclusions as fact
- They have been known to simply outright lie
So there you have it, I hope this makes it clear why they are a bad source.
They're not sources, but I can tell you that in my garden this year in the UK it reached -17.7c, when the usual minimum temperature we expect here in winter is -7c and has been for over a decade and even prior to that not breaking -10c.
I also read a few weeks back Australia had their hottest night ever recorded at over 34c at night.
My girlfriend's relatives in Ottawa, Canada also had an extremely mild winter, so much so that they had less snow and higher temperatures than us during our period of bad weather which is unheard of.
China also saw record snow, as did South Korea I believe in the same period.
So whilst I don't have a source to hand (although I'm sure Google would oblige), I can say for sure that in different parts of the world countries have had extreme temperatures one way or the other. Australia has had it hotter than ever before, Britain has nearly beaten it's all time lows, whilst at least parts of Canada had a far more mild than usual start to the year and large parts of Asia had record snow. Whilst things may be different now, there was clearly at least a few weeks in January where things were extremely screwy across large parts of the globe.
Ah a couple of articles from The Register, also known as the IT World's official climate denier news site.
The Register has zero credibility when it comes to climate science because it has spent the last few years creating countless articles, many of which are full of not just inaccuracies, but sometimes outright lies. I'm sure they have the odd good point in there, but it's impossible to tell the agenda based propaganda from the valid arguments, which is actually quite ironic when that's their argument against professional climate research.
Really, you might as well have just linked to the pope's official blog in a discussion about whether god exists as evidence that he does. If The Register is the best source you can find, then you simply do not have a real source. I'm not exactly pro-AGW theory- I'm somewhat undecided, becoming more skeptical, but any counter evidence has to be a bit more solid than something coming from The Register or the likes of Climate Audit which those articles use as their sources.
"So what the state of Utah is saying is that since no one else is taking this seriously, we shouldn't have to? I agree that it will hurt us economically and competitively with other nations but you have to look at what scientific evidence we have before you mire this in those sorts of things."
You know, I'm not even sure this is true. Even if climate change isn't a real problem then there's still the issue of non-infinite supplies of fossil fuels, and the reliance on dangerous regimes from Venezuela to Russia, to Iran for them.
So regardless of climate change, we're going to need to look at renewables and green technology anyway, and as such I suspect that the market for environmentally friendly, or green technology will actually be quite massive, such that it has the potential to do for that area that embraces it and leads the world on it in the 21st century what IT did for silicon valley did in the 20th century.
Green technology is not going to be a small market, it's going to be a global market, with increasing prominence however you cut it, so on the contrary, those who embrace it, may have short term expendature, but long term it could put their economy up there as one of the richest in the world. There is going to be a lot of money however you cut it.
The choice really comes down to whether you avoid short term research costs, and just follow the rest of the world remaining a non-factor, or whether you invest, and lead the world as California has done for much of the past few decades.
"So, where did you get those figures from? Like I said (sigh) - citation needed."
Apple's investor documentation and FTC releases.
"That's good, because I never made that claim. Do you have any reading comprehension ability at all?"
Not being able to remember back any more than 24 hrs must really suck for you.
"Like I lamented. Who can I trust?"
Well, it sounds like you've decided to trust those who consistently provide zero evidence for their claim that global warming is not a problem, or at least not a man made problem, over those who have provided at least some evidence.
That in itself is probably a very poor choice.
The fact one side is capable of producing verifiable evidence whilst the other continues to produce none at all is in itself quite telling as to which is probably the better bet.
"So, where does the dictionary define "proper" as "physical"? I think it is your problem, as much as you protest that it isn't."
The dictionary follows common language, it does not define how people should interpret it before it is defined as official language however, so I'm not sure why you're bringing it up, other than grasping at straws to cover the fact you're being pedantic and pretending you don't understand what I was referring to when you either do, or you're extremely dumb.
"You appear to be the one struggling to understand. The touchscreen is a component of the "virtual" keyboard. It is hardware. therefore, it is physical."
No it's not, the touchscreen is a generic input device used with the keyboard. I understand perfectly thanks, you not being able to grasp the difference and some fundamental computing concepts isn't my problem I'm afraid.
"Your reasoning doesn't make sense. Your regular, "physical" keyboard requires software to display characters on the screen, so the presence of software to interpret input doesn't make something less physical."
lol, you really do find this difficult don't you? The output on screen is not part of the input. You can have keyboards attached to headless systems, but they're still keyboards or are you telling me now that a keyboard without being plugged into a working PC without software on it is not a keyboard?
"How the fuck would you know which netbook keyboards I can't touch type on, if you've never even met me, let alone gone netbook shopping together?"
Sorry, I didn't realise you were some omnipresent being that exists inside everyone.
"Again, you assume that tactile feedback is always a key factor for everybody in every usage situation. That's not necessarily true."
Well in terms of faster typing it is.
"Also, how is "software latency" relevant? Your "physical" keyboard also suffers from software latency, as its input needs to be interpreted by software."
Yes, it's always an issue in computing systems certainly, but it's negligible on physical keyboards because they generally have their own buffer, are connected directly to the input bus, and use hardware interrupts.
"In reality, with a modern processor and well-written software, software latency just isn't an issue with virtual keyboards."
Right, but that's because in most cases lack of tactile feedback prevents people typing fast enough for it to be a problem. Try using a virtual keyboard in an app with high CPU and memory usage however.
Still, I'm bored now, you don't have enough of an understanding about computing to be having this discussion because your comments don't make sense and we had a good laugh around the office at some of your more stupid questions. Do yourself a favour and actually learn a bit about how computers, both hardware and software work. Crack that virtualisation nut- figure out why the term virtual is valid and where it fits in the universe rather than remaining ignorant. When you actually have a worthwhile understanding of computing come back and have a mature conversation about it, but I suspect by that point, you'll already understand why your viewpoint was wrong and there wont be much to discuss anyway.
"As they say, [citation needed]. Why would they develop such applications as Final Cut Pro, Logic and Filemaker if they weren't profitable?"
I didn't say weren't profitable, just barely profitable. The reason they continue to maintain them is because doing so and gaining just a little profit is better than ceasing to maintain them and pissing off customers who depend on them such that they may never buy from Apple ever again.
"The piracy aspect is huge. If the business market could get away with wholesale piracy of applications, they would don an eyepatch in a heartbeat. The difference is that businesses cannot afford to get caught pirating software, so standards are very different in that world (although if you look at very small businesses, things get dodgy pretty quickly)."
Congratulations, you understand why the real money is in business software then? Sure there is certainly money to be made in the consumer markets, but my point was ignoring business markets when making claims such as piracy means the PC software industry is not as successful as the app store is laughably ignorant.
"This is your problem. You chose your words poorly."
Your lack of ability to understand and correctly interpret common English is not my problem, it is yours.
"Yes, I agree that is the traditional usage - but it is baggage that we must get rid of if we want to evolve and become more sophisticated about technology. "Virtual" is a crutch, a term used by those struggling to come to terms with software and digital objects."
No, really, it's not. In fact, it's becoming ever more prominent with the rise of virtualisation I'm afraid.
"But it is a physical keyboard. How else would it detect you touching it?"
You really do struggle to understand how on screen keyboards work don't you? I don't think I've ever met anyone who finds it so hard to understand technology concepts like this. I'll try one last time, to answer your question, the on screen keyboard doesn't detect you touching it, the separate input device, the touch screen does, and the on screen keyboard which is software interprets that, the keyboard itself is not physical, it is an on-screen keyboard, it is a virtual keyboard. I thought it might finally click when you got the orange example, but you still seem to be struggling to make the leap to understanding this rather simple concept.
"Back to your example - what good is a netbook keyboard that's so small you can't touch-type on it? Wouldn't a virtual keyboard be just as effective in that case? What about the space the keyboard takes up? On a device that is not used mainly for typing, wouldn't adding a bulky keyboard actually be a drawback? Typing speed is not the only consideration."
I've yet to find a Netbook with a keyboard so small that you can't touch-type on it, simply because there are no netbooks with keyboards that small. No a virtual keyboard would not be just as effective, because it still lacks tactile response, and still suffers the afformentioned problem of inherent software latency. Space is hardly a valid argument, because Netbooks like Asus' Seashell line are not big enough in relation to say the iPad to cause a problem unless you have particular massively constrained circumstances where a few mm or at worst the odd cm matters, but that'll effect a portion of users so small it's not a concern.
Now let's see if you can finally grasp this concept of virtual shall we?
I hate The Register too, but when they're quoting straight from the horses mouth, it's hard for them to go wrong.
Apple doesn't make much money from software at all, that's why they keep OSX locked to Apple hardware, because it costs them more to maintain it than they make from selling it, hence why they can't afford to have to support it on generic hardware, grossly escalating the costs of development and support for them. All their other software is free, or too focussed at niche markets to make any real worthwhile profit. Using games as an example of software that makes money from consumers isn't the greatest, you should perhaps go to somewhere like Gamedev.net and see how for the past few years every single week there is news of mroe studios shedding developers left right and centre, there are certainly some successes, but as a whole, the industry still isn't making anywhere near as much as companies that focus primarily on business software, because again, that's where the real money is.
They certainly are.
Here in the UK we often have a problem of unexploded ordinance and I would imagine countries like France, Germany et al. do also. Unexploded bombs in land or mines at sea dating back to World War II are usually found a few times a year here in the UK and are generally detonated because they are not safe to simply move, although some are safe enough to just move.
More to the point, why does a threat from one gamer automatically mean that gamers in general are more threatening?
Yeah, except iTunes and the App store don't actually make any money whilst the PC software business was worth $303.8bn by the start of last year, of which only at absolute most $60bn was attributable to Microsoft during that period. The sector has only grown since then, whilst Apple is still only just about breaking even with it's online stores.
So nice theory, but unfortunately it seems you're completely and utterly wrong. You might want to consider looking for facts to back up your assertions in future. The reality is you have absolutely no idea how many apps the average PC users buys and for how much compared to iPhone users. Most prominently though, you seem to have completely and utterly forgotten about business. The iPhone is primarily a consumer phone with no worthwhile showing in the business market, hence why RIM is so successful in business phones because that's what it does best. Businesses spend a fortune on software from vendors big and small, this is why the PC software market is not a failure, whilst in comparison the iPhone app store isn't exactly a massive money spinner, all it really does is act as a vehicle for increasing popularity of the hardware and phone contracts- where the real money is. If Apple were to make money from software, they would need to venture out into the world of business, but they have shown numerous times they are not interested in that.
If you're going to talk about software markets, please at least do a little bit of research to understand them first, rather than just simply making it all up as you go along.