I just e-mailed ComCast and told them that I have a Linux box set up as a firewall with 2 Windows 2K machines behind it. I look forward to their response.
My justification was as follows:
1: I don't trust Win2K to be directly connected to the internet because of the many security flaws of the past and surely in the future.
2: The 2 Win2K machines I use, 1 is for personal use, and one I use as a database server and to pcAnywhere into work. I never use both at the same time, I can't.
3: They're benefitting from the fact that I'm running Squid on my Linux box and therefore caching web pages and reducing my actual bandwidth usage.
If I get a response soon, I'll post it, but I've basically come straight out and told them the truth. How they react will be a judgement of their character as a company
I chose ComCast for 1 reason: I could get billing for cable and internet from one company. If they wish to deny me that, I'll simply switch to satellite TV and DSL modem, and they lose my business entirely ($100/month for them right now).
Sorry, but unless you already have a Ferrari, I'd recommend against bidding on this one. Why? Ask anyone who owns one (I'm not one, fortunately), but you always buy them in pairs because one is always "in the shop." Not that they aren't great cars, but unless you have a place where you can drive it 150mph, the engines will always have problems. These cars are clearly built to be driven fast, and if you don't drive them fast, it's brutal on the engines.
If you already have one and need another for those days when your other Ferrari is in the shop, then feel free to bid.
I've been programming for 23 years. I've used Linux off and on for about 5 or 6 years, but not daily.
I used to be able to do kernel builds. My last several attempts have been disasterous. The main thing is that the config just has too many damn options and the language is too technical, even for a programmer. That's insane.
I'd like a simpler utility, but Aunt Tillie doesn't need to be rebuilding her kernel. That's insane. This is the dumbest question I've seen on Slashdot in a long time.
I've barely been able to watch it since Duchovny left. Yeah, Gillian Anderson is great, but it was the chemistry between the two that did it for me. For me, he really defined the show, and when he left, it was pretty much over, I think. As far as I'm concerned, it ended several seasons ago.
Actually, I've completely lost faith in classical theory. The failure to find the Higgs Boson is the main reason. It seems pretty clear that we're not going to find it. We've already exceeded the energy levels at which we should have found it, by quite a bit (though there is a very, very small chance it may be found at higher energy levels, but doubtful). Without the Higgs Boson, classical theory falls apart.
I think String theory is a much more likely scenario, and hopefully with the new experiments that may detect the extra dimensions required by string theory, we may know the truth in the next few years.
I get a lot of SPAM, it came all of a sudden and hasn't let up and the jerks won't take me off their list (okay, I was a little optimistic). So, I took the time to find the email addresses of the spammers (from their own web sites, from WHOIS, etc), and I simply add them to my "SPAM" filter which then sends a copy of each piece of SPAM I get to all of these addresses.
Will this fix the problem? No. Am I adding to the bandwidth waste, yeah. Sorry, but it was the best solution I could come up with.
One of the biggest offenders is a company in San Francisco. I live in Virginia and thought I'd try to sue them under VA law. The problem is collecting on an out-of-state spammer is difficult. So, I spoke to my cousin who is a lawyer in San Francisco and asked him if I could sue them under CA. law. For one thing, CA. allows for 5 times the compensation per e-mail than VA, which was very appealing. Unfortunately he said it probably wouldn't apply to an out-of-state recpient of the SPAM.
So, really, the only way to get rid of it in the States is to make a national law that's tough and easy to enforce. Otherwise, do what I do, pester them.
I think I've posted this before, but I'll post it again.
I've long believed there are ETs out there for us to meet, but the truth is, if they're out there, I doubt highly that they're in our galaxy, which pretty much puts them entirely out of reach for any sort of contact, communication or otherwise.
I'm not going to post the link again 'cause I'm tired of posting it, but Scientific American ran a great article about 2 years ago about the chances for intelligent (and exploring) life in our galaxy, and the result is, if they existed, they would have colonized the entire galaxy by now. At least, statistics agree with that, and I believe in statistics.
At only a bit ahead of our current technology, it would only take 5 million years to colonize the entire galaxy, a blink of the eye in astronomical terms. Therefore, we're here, and nobody else has colonized. If they had, their fingerprints would be everywhere.
Nobody is more disappointed than I by this. I want to meet the ETs, but frankly, I just can't reasonably believe that they're there anymore (at least not in our galaxy).
There are also compelling arguments about the series of events that led to multi-cellular life and later intelligence on our own planet. Many of these were "accidents" or "luck".
You add to all this that the fact that every extrasolar system (save one), where we have found planets, they have gas giants in the "habitable zone", or between the "habitable zone" and the star,which means that no liveable planets could survive (the gas giants would toss them into the star, or more likely, out of the system).
Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think we're alone in this galaxy (with the exception of life that either has no interest in exploring, or a lesser intelligence than us).
I have/had @Home through ComCast. I sometimes spiked at 2Mbps, but 1.5Mbps was pretty much the average top speed I got. What I'd like to see is an increase in uplink speed. Doubt I'll see it, but that's what I care more about. I'm stuck with a lousy 50kbps uplink which sucks since I have 3 computers at home, 1 at work, and I use them all from work or home.
Honestly, it's hard to find sites where I can download faster than 200kbps anyway, so a more than 1.5Mbps wouldn't do me much good anyway.
Obviously you didn't read this slashdot article about Joel on Software.
What is the #1 thing he says causes software companies to fail? Rewriting from scratch!!!
I won't deny that there are times it has to be done. Joel points out some of those time (and yours isn't one of them even from the little you've written). Ours happened to fit everything he said, and we did rewrite, and not only was it the right thing to do, it was the only option for us, but the company just barely survived the process.
Don't take that lightly. I speak with experience and Joel is right. You don't rewrite from scratch unless there is no conceivable alternative. Joel describes it well, so I won't "rewrite" it. You can just click the link and read it yourself.
There is no common integrated development environment (IDE) for Linux. OS development is command-line driven and applications development requires a new set of tools for each device. Developers must either build their own tool-chain from piecing together Open Source tools or opt for a specific vendor's costly toolset.
Uh, yeah, that's what happens when you use a monopoly to put all of your competition out of business. In the old days there used to be a choice of IDEs for Windows. In fact, I remember at one point Borland was the leader in development tools. Oh well, what do you expect from M$?
Haven't we learned anything from OS/2? Without Windows compatibility OS/2 would have failed miserably. Oh wait, it did fail miserably. Sorry, I must have been thinking of something else...
Well, the Mayans actually appeared about 4600 years ago (~2600 B.C.), and really didn't have any real "civilization" to speak of until about 1500 B.C.. Their art, and I believe this includes all the pyramids in the Yucatan, didn't come into existence until the classical period which was 300-700 A.D.
So, if it predates the Mayans by 1400-2500 years (depending on how you view it), then I doubt they're very closely related to the Mayans, since the Mayans didn't really get that far North either. They got to the Northern end of the Yucatan Peninsula, which is around where modern day Merida, Mexico is, going down into Central America.
The precursors to the Olmecs is more likely, but I doubt that as well.
I seem to recall something about this about 20 years ago when Pacman started getting popular. I know some of you probably don't know what Pacman is, but it was this computer game that got popular and lot of people spent a lot of money and time playing it in the arcade and there was concern that this addiction could be serious. It's been about 19 years since I've heard about anyone being a Pacman addict.
About 20 years ago, there were all these people playing this game called Dungeons and Dragons. There was a lot of concern that they were addicts and spent too much time playing it. It's been about 19 years since I've heard about anyone being a Dungeons and Dragons addict.
Translation: This too will pass. People get in to cool games. I used to love Asteroids. I used to love Dungeons and Dragons. I used to play this game called RoboSport 'til all hours of the morning with my cousin when I was an undergrad and he was in law school. He now has his own practice and I've been quite successful in my profession.
I don't buy into this being a particularly bad thing. Each game that causes this kind of thing is a fad, and fads pass. Maybe another will come later, but it comes and goes. If it becomes a problem for some people, trust me, there'd be something else there for them that would be a "problem" if the games weren't there. It's the people with the problems, not the games.
The only "tool" using species that I'm aware of are humans, some varieties of monkeys (stems for catching ants), and elephants (trunks are a wonderful thing).
You could argue for ants, maybe, but ants are brainless robots. Not enough brainmass...
I'm not sure I agree with the eleven lineages part. Can you point to something? Because as far as I know, the Eukaryotes were the first multi-celled "animals", and therefore the only lineage.
I totally agree with you. particle entanglement is the cheapest way to go for faster than light communications (more expensive ways include bending space with gravitons, wormholes, etc), but that doesn't change the fact that if a civilization in this galaxy, wanted to explore it, they would be everywhere by now. Maybe they don't want to be found, and that's a possibility (and if they didn't want to, I guarantee they'd have the technology to do it), but I don't think it's the case. I think ETIs are in other galaxies and not in ours. Just my opinion.
I've been crunching data for SETI@Home since it first began. I've currently got 4 computers going full-time at it. I don't think it'll find anything, but I think it's a worthwhile program.
There was a great piece in Scientific American last year about why there are no ETIs in our galaxy. I found it thoroughly convincing, at least if you think along these lines: If there were an extra-terrestrial intelligence in our galaxy, and they were explorers, like us (and really, that's probably the only kind of race we'll find until we go out, physically, and look for them), then they most likely would have already colonized the entire galaxy by now.
Chances are, we will colonize the entire galaxy before any other species gets a chance.
That doesn't mean there's not life out there. I think that life is probably commonplace in our galaxy, and I'm sure there's intelligent exploring life in others (but most SETI projects aren't looking that far yet). I would imagine most life in our galaxy is single-celled. Of the entire history of life on this planet, 85+% of the time, it was single-celled.
The conditions under which single-celled organisms evolved to multi-celled organisms was a fluke. In fact, many of the important steps that led to our evolution, were a series of flukes. Evolution does not necessarily lead to intelligence. The objective of evolution is to give you the tools necessary to procreate and continue to exist as a species. Once that job is done, evolution is done.
Humans have been around, what 100,000-200,000 years? The dinosaurs were here for 140,000,000 years, or roughly 1000 times as long as we've been here, and they never developed intelligence.
Anyway, until we have the ability to listen to search for ETIs in other galaxies, I don't think we're going to find any.
Although they haven't been created yet, there was a story here a couple years ago about a "transporter" beam that IBM had built. It wasn't the real deal, but it was based on a similar idea, but it only did a single particle. As I recall, it used entangled pairs to accomplish its task and the original had to be destroyed as part of the process.
I wish I still had a link to the site. It was really cool stuff.
There's also been a great deal of science fiction leaking into stuff like the SETI programs. I think the people in SETI research picked up some good ideas about what kinds of things to look for. Again, don't have any links.
As a C++ programmer, I agree, it would be nice to see some sort of accreditation, but it won't happen. Not with C++, and not with programming. Not anytime soon.
Why not? Because programming is no more science than art and no more art than science. Yet.
I have big dreams for programming. I dream of one day it being an engineering discipline. Today it isn't. At least not as practiced by most software developers.
A chemical engineer posted earlier talking about responsibility to society. I agree, but he's also talking about a very small percentage of programmers. I write database systems. If someone uses my DB system for a life-critical function without my knowledge, well, their bad. If they ask my opinion, I'll say, "Don't use it for a life-critical system."
It comes down to this. It's art, with some science, until it becomes life critical. At that point, it MUST be engineering. That's the difference, though. The application, not the skill. Programming will always be on the fringe of engineering with a lot of "art" involved. At least in the forseeable future.
Is this a bad thing? I don't know. Aspiring to engineering is, in some ways, a good thing, but look at all the good stuff that came out of lone programmers, working out of their basements, with no degrees, writing cool software. It's happened, and it will continue to happen.
Now hopefully these guys will avoid painting their balloon with aluminum powder...
Plugins, plugins, plugins
on
Java IDEs?
·
· Score: 2
I haven't written an IDE, but I use one (Is that kind of like, IANAD but I play one on TV?). Start simple. Make a basic editor with color coding for keywords, maybe even variables and other things. Most importantly, make it extensible via plugins. If you're going to go open-source, this means that you don't have to write all the functionality. Other people will write coold stuff to plug into it.
I don't do Java, but I've played with it and the lack of a good IDE is a problem. Make it possible to plugin new functionality (code-snippet libraries, integrated CVS, regular expression/text search tools, etc) and people will add to it.
The current project I'm in involves a very component-based system. One of the best things we ever did was to add a "plugin" capability to our system. We now support one executeable (with very limited functionality), but we have a bunch of different options, in the form of plugins, that we can ship to different customers to fit their needs. If there's a bug in the primary code, then we fix it and all of our customers get it, no matter what customizations they have.
Granted, I'm the architect of the product, so I've got a little pride in the fact that it works so well for us (not that plugins were my idea, but for our product, it's original). But after seeing it work so well, I'm sold on the idea of creating component-based, extensible products. I think it's something that would work especially well in the open-source environment.
Just what I've been waiting for: A CPU cooling device that physically breaks my CPU. Sounds like instead of a review of the product, they should have just had a 1 paragraph summary in large bold letters warning people from buying this defective product. Giving it a review almost gives it legitimacy.
I think this is really a matter of personal preference.
I don't want to say Microsoft is the "good guy", but at the same time, let's face it, they spent MILLIONS on usability testing. They continually do usability testing. For this reason, above any other, they dominate the desktop market.
I like KDE. It rocks, as Unix windowing environments go. Still, Microsoft is winning for one reason and one alone: Usability testing and usability satisfaction.
Sorry, but this post seems like a personal gripe against a usability feature that others have no problem with.
In fact, despite what one user said, the Casino industry is one that would do this. They have hundreds if not 1000+ cameras in most of the larger casinos. It needs to be at least 30fps and it needs to pretty much be 24/7. 30fps to catch the slight of hand stuff and there's going to be very little you can get from motion detection as they tend to run 24/7 with at least someone on camera (usually a dealer at the very least).
As for capturing the data, if going digital is a must, I'd probably spread the capturing out over a number of computers with the data going to a central repository. Actually, you might want to get capture boards with onboard compression (if you don't already have them) to offload a lot of the compression from the CPU, as that's going to be your most CPU-intensive aspect.
Handling the incoming 90MB/sec shouldn't be a problem if you distribute the network load properly and use a fibre backbone.
Your biggest problem is going to be downtime. If, for example, your data server fails, you're looking at a pretty expensive reboot, especially if you don't have a journaling file system (I assume you'd use a journaling file system). Still, the data server goes down and you lose all your feeds. For this reason, going to analog is much safer. It's rare that ALL of the analog recorders would fail at once.
Just my thoughts. The idea of consulting with the casinos is probably the best idea. Actually, the casinos would probably be willing to share this kind of technical information, as it wouldn't provide any information on how to get around their work. What they're less likely to talk about are the types of tricks they look for.
Slashdot Mirror
I just e-mailed ComCast and told them that I have a Linux box set up as a firewall with 2 Windows 2K machines behind it. I look forward to their response.
My justification was as follows:
1: I don't trust Win2K to be directly connected to the internet because of the many security flaws of the past and surely in the future.
2: The 2 Win2K machines I use, 1 is for personal use, and one I use as a database server and to pcAnywhere into work. I never use both at the same time, I can't.
3: They're benefitting from the fact that I'm running Squid on my Linux box and therefore caching web pages and reducing my actual bandwidth usage.
If I get a response soon, I'll post it, but I've basically come straight out and told them the truth. How they react will be a judgement of their character as a company
I chose ComCast for 1 reason: I could get billing for cable and internet from one company. If they wish to deny me that, I'll simply switch to satellite TV and DSL modem, and they lose my business entirely ($100/month for them right now).
Sorry, but unless you already have a Ferrari, I'd recommend against bidding on this one. Why? Ask anyone who owns one (I'm not one, fortunately), but you always buy them in pairs because one is always "in the shop." Not that they aren't great cars, but unless you have a place where you can drive it 150mph, the engines will always have problems. These cars are clearly built to be driven fast, and if you don't drive them fast, it's brutal on the engines.
If you already have one and need another for those days when your other Ferrari is in the shop, then feel free to bid.
I've been programming for 23 years. I've used Linux off and on for about 5 or 6 years, but not daily.
I used to be able to do kernel builds. My last several attempts have been disasterous. The main thing is that the config just has too many damn options and the language is too technical, even for a programmer. That's insane.
I'd like a simpler utility, but Aunt Tillie doesn't need to be rebuilding her kernel. That's insane. This is the dumbest question I've seen on Slashdot in a long time.
I've barely been able to watch it since Duchovny left. Yeah, Gillian Anderson is great, but it was the chemistry between the two that did it for me. For me, he really defined the show, and when he left, it was pretty much over, I think. As far as I'm concerned, it ended several seasons ago.
Actually, I've completely lost faith in classical theory. The failure to find the Higgs Boson is the main reason. It seems pretty clear that we're not going to find it. We've already exceeded the energy levels at which we should have found it, by quite a bit (though there is a very, very small chance it may be found at higher energy levels, but doubtful). Without the Higgs Boson, classical theory falls apart.
I think String theory is a much more likely scenario, and hopefully with the new experiments that may detect the extra dimensions required by string theory, we may know the truth in the next few years.
I get a lot of SPAM, it came all of a sudden and hasn't let up and the jerks won't take me off their list (okay, I was a little optimistic). So, I took the time to find the email addresses of the spammers (from their own web sites, from WHOIS, etc), and I simply add them to my "SPAM" filter which then sends a copy of each piece of SPAM I get to all of these addresses.
Will this fix the problem? No. Am I adding to the bandwidth waste, yeah. Sorry, but it was the best solution I could come up with.
One of the biggest offenders is a company in San Francisco. I live in Virginia and thought I'd try to sue them under VA law. The problem is collecting on an out-of-state spammer is difficult. So, I spoke to my cousin who is a lawyer in San Francisco and asked him if I could sue them under CA. law. For one thing, CA. allows for 5 times the compensation per e-mail than VA, which was very appealing. Unfortunately he said it probably wouldn't apply to an out-of-state recpient of the SPAM.
So, really, the only way to get rid of it in the States is to make a national law that's tough and easy to enforce. Otherwise, do what I do, pester them.
I think I've posted this before, but I'll post it again.
,which means that no liveable planets could survive (the gas giants would toss them into the star, or more likely, out of the system).
I've long believed there are ETs out there for us to meet, but the truth is, if they're out there, I doubt highly that they're in our galaxy, which pretty much puts them entirely out of reach for any sort of contact, communication or otherwise.
I'm not going to post the link again 'cause I'm tired of posting it, but Scientific American ran a great article about 2 years ago about the chances for intelligent (and exploring) life in our galaxy, and the result is, if they existed, they would have colonized the entire galaxy by now. At least, statistics agree with that, and I believe in statistics.
At only a bit ahead of our current technology, it would only take 5 million years to colonize the entire galaxy, a blink of the eye in astronomical terms. Therefore, we're here, and nobody else has colonized. If they had, their fingerprints would be everywhere.
Nobody is more disappointed than I by this. I want to meet the ETs, but frankly, I just can't reasonably believe that they're there anymore (at least not in our galaxy).
There are also compelling arguments about the series of events that led to multi-cellular life and later intelligence on our own planet. Many of these were "accidents" or "luck".
You add to all this that the fact that every extrasolar system (save one), where we have found planets, they have gas giants in the "habitable zone", or between the "habitable zone" and the star
Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think we're alone in this galaxy (with the exception of life that either has no interest in exploring, or a lesser intelligence than us).
I have/had @Home through ComCast. I sometimes spiked at 2Mbps, but 1.5Mbps was pretty much the average top speed I got. What I'd like to see is an increase in uplink speed. Doubt I'll see it, but that's what I care more about. I'm stuck with a lousy 50kbps uplink which sucks since I have 3 computers at home, 1 at work, and I use them all from work or home.
Honestly, it's hard to find sites where I can download faster than 200kbps anyway, so a more than 1.5Mbps wouldn't do me much good anyway.
Obviously you didn't read this slashdot article about Joel on Software.
What is the #1 thing he says causes software companies to fail? Rewriting from scratch!!!
I won't deny that there are times it has to be done. Joel points out some of those time (and yours isn't one of them even from the little you've written). Ours happened to fit everything he said, and we did rewrite, and not only was it the right thing to do, it was the only option for us, but the company just barely survived the process.
Don't take that lightly. I speak with experience and Joel is right. You don't rewrite from scratch unless there is no conceivable alternative. Joel describes it well, so I won't "rewrite" it. You can just click the link and read it yourself.
There is no common integrated development environment (IDE) for Linux. OS development is command-line driven and applications development requires a new set of tools for each device. Developers must either build their own tool-chain from piecing together Open Source tools or opt for a specific vendor's costly toolset.
Uh, yeah, that's what happens when you use a monopoly to put all of your competition out of business. In the old days there used to be a choice of IDEs for Windows. In fact, I remember at one point Borland was the leader in development tools. Oh well, what do you expect from M$?
Haven't we learned anything from OS/2? Without Windows compatibility OS/2 would have failed miserably. Oh wait, it did fail miserably. Sorry, I must have been thinking of something else...
Well, the Mayans actually appeared about 4600 years ago (~2600 B.C.), and really didn't have any real "civilization" to speak of until about 1500 B.C.. Their art, and I believe this includes all the pyramids in the Yucatan, didn't come into existence until the classical period which was 300-700 A.D.
So, if it predates the Mayans by 1400-2500 years (depending on how you view it), then I doubt they're very closely related to the Mayans, since the Mayans didn't really get that far North either. They got to the Northern end of the Yucatan Peninsula, which is around where modern day Merida, Mexico is, going down into Central America.
The precursors to the Olmecs is more likely, but I doubt that as well.
I seem to recall something about this about 20 years ago when Pacman started getting popular. I know some of you probably don't know what Pacman is, but it was this computer game that got popular and lot of people spent a lot of money and time playing it in the arcade and there was concern that this addiction could be serious. It's been about 19 years since I've heard about anyone being a Pacman addict.
About 20 years ago, there were all these people playing this game called Dungeons and Dragons. There was a lot of concern that they were addicts and spent too much time playing it. It's been about 19 years since I've heard about anyone being a Dungeons and Dragons addict.
Translation: This too will pass. People get in to cool games. I used to love Asteroids. I used to love Dungeons and Dragons. I used to play this game called RoboSport 'til all hours of the morning with my cousin when I was an undergrad and he was in law school. He now has his own practice and I've been quite successful in my profession.
I don't buy into this being a particularly bad thing. Each game that causes this kind of thing is a fad, and fads pass. Maybe another will come later, but it comes and goes. If it becomes a problem for some people, trust me, there'd be something else there for them that would be a "problem" if the games weren't there. It's the people with the problems, not the games.
The only "tool" using species that I'm aware of are humans, some varieties of monkeys (stems for catching ants), and elephants (trunks are a wonderful thing).
You could argue for ants, maybe, but ants are brainless robots. Not enough brainmass...
I'm not sure I agree with the eleven lineages part. Can you point to something? Because as far as I know, the Eukaryotes were the first multi-celled "animals", and therefore the only lineage.
I totally agree with you. particle entanglement is the cheapest way to go for faster than light communications (more expensive ways include bending space with gravitons, wormholes, etc), but that doesn't change the fact that if a civilization in this galaxy, wanted to explore it, they would be everywhere by now. Maybe they don't want to be found, and that's a possibility (and if they didn't want to, I guarantee they'd have the technology to do it), but I don't think it's the case. I think ETIs are in other galaxies and not in ours. Just my opinion.
Glad to finally know what "always on" means.
I'm screwed. I can't get DSL, I don't have a landline (I just have a cell phone), and now my cable modem's going to be turned off. This sucks.
I've been crunching data for SETI@Home since it first began. I've currently got 4 computers going full-time at it. I don't think it'll find anything, but I think it's a worthwhile program.
There was a great piece in Scientific American last year about why there are no ETIs in our galaxy. I found it thoroughly convincing, at least if you think along these lines: If there were an extra-terrestrial intelligence in our galaxy, and they were explorers, like us (and really, that's probably the only kind of race we'll find until we go out, physically, and look for them), then they most likely would have already colonized the entire galaxy by now.
Chances are, we will colonize the entire galaxy before any other species gets a chance.
That doesn't mean there's not life out there. I think that life is probably commonplace in our galaxy, and I'm sure there's intelligent exploring life in others (but most SETI projects aren't looking that far yet). I would imagine most life in our galaxy is single-celled. Of the entire history of life on this planet, 85+% of the time, it was single-celled.
The conditions under which single-celled organisms evolved to multi-celled organisms was a fluke. In fact, many of the important steps that led to our evolution, were a series of flukes. Evolution does not necessarily lead to intelligence. The objective of evolution is to give you the tools necessary to procreate and continue to exist as a species. Once that job is done, evolution is done.
Humans have been around, what 100,000-200,000 years? The dinosaurs were here for 140,000,000 years, or roughly 1000 times as long as we've been here, and they never developed intelligence.
Anyway, until we have the ability to listen to search for ETIs in other galaxies, I don't think we're going to find any.
Although they haven't been created yet, there was a story here a couple years ago about a "transporter" beam that IBM had built. It wasn't the real deal, but it was based on a similar idea, but it only did a single particle. As I recall, it used entangled pairs to accomplish its task and the original had to be destroyed as part of the process.
I wish I still had a link to the site. It was really cool stuff.
There's also been a great deal of science fiction leaking into stuff like the SETI programs. I think the people in SETI research picked up some good ideas about what kinds of things to look for. Again, don't have any links.
As a C++ programmer, I agree, it would be nice to see some sort of accreditation, but it won't happen. Not with C++, and not with programming. Not anytime soon.
Why not? Because programming is no more science than art and no more art than science. Yet.
I have big dreams for programming. I dream of one day it being an engineering discipline. Today it isn't. At least not as practiced by most software developers.
A chemical engineer posted earlier talking about responsibility to society. I agree, but he's also talking about a very small percentage of programmers. I write database systems. If someone uses my DB system for a life-critical function without my knowledge, well, their bad. If they ask my opinion, I'll say, "Don't use it for a life-critical system."
It comes down to this. It's art, with some science, until it becomes life critical. At that point, it MUST be engineering. That's the difference, though. The application, not the skill. Programming will always be on the fringe of engineering with a lot of "art" involved. At least in the forseeable future.
Is this a bad thing? I don't know. Aspiring to engineering is, in some ways, a good thing, but look at all the good stuff that came out of lone programmers, working out of their basements, with no degrees, writing cool software. It's happened, and it will continue to happen.
Now hopefully these guys will avoid painting their balloon with aluminum powder...
I haven't written an IDE, but I use one (Is that kind of like, IANAD but I play one on TV?). Start simple. Make a basic editor with color coding for keywords, maybe even variables and other things. Most importantly, make it extensible via plugins. If you're going to go open-source, this means that you don't have to write all the functionality. Other people will write coold stuff to plug into it.
I don't do Java, but I've played with it and the lack of a good IDE is a problem. Make it possible to plugin new functionality (code-snippet libraries, integrated CVS, regular expression/text search tools, etc) and people will add to it.
The current project I'm in involves a very component-based system. One of the best things we ever did was to add a "plugin" capability to our system. We now support one executeable (with very limited functionality), but we have a bunch of different options, in the form of plugins, that we can ship to different customers to fit their needs. If there's a bug in the primary code, then we fix it and all of our customers get it, no matter what customizations they have.
Granted, I'm the architect of the product, so I've got a little pride in the fact that it works so well for us (not that plugins were my idea, but for our product, it's original). But after seeing it work so well, I'm sold on the idea of creating component-based, extensible products. I think it's something that would work especially well in the open-source environment.
Just what I've been waiting for: A CPU cooling device that physically breaks my CPU. Sounds like instead of a review of the product, they should have just had a 1 paragraph summary in large bold letters warning people from buying this defective product. Giving it a review almost gives it legitimacy.
That's why I sleep with the T.V. on. It definitely overpowers the noise of my computer fan.
I think this is really a matter of personal preference.
I don't want to say Microsoft is the "good guy", but at the same time, let's face it, they spent MILLIONS on usability testing. They continually do usability testing. For this reason, above any other, they dominate the desktop market.
I like KDE. It rocks, as Unix windowing environments go. Still, Microsoft is winning for one reason and one alone: Usability testing and usability satisfaction.
Sorry, but this post seems like a personal gripe against a usability feature that others have no problem with.
In fact, despite what one user said, the Casino industry is one that would do this. They have hundreds if not 1000+ cameras in most of the larger casinos. It needs to be at least 30fps and it needs to pretty much be 24/7. 30fps to catch the slight of hand stuff and there's going to be very little you can get from motion detection as they tend to run 24/7 with at least someone on camera (usually a dealer at the very least).
As for capturing the data, if going digital is a must, I'd probably spread the capturing out over a number of computers with the data going to a central repository. Actually, you might want to get capture boards with onboard compression (if you don't already have them) to offload a lot of the compression from the CPU, as that's going to be your most CPU-intensive aspect.
Handling the incoming 90MB/sec shouldn't be a problem if you distribute the network load properly and use a fibre backbone.
Your biggest problem is going to be downtime. If, for example, your data server fails, you're looking at a pretty expensive reboot, especially if you don't have a journaling file system (I assume you'd use a journaling file system). Still, the data server goes down and you lose all your feeds. For this reason, going to analog is much safer. It's rare that ALL of the analog recorders would fail at once.
Just my thoughts. The idea of consulting with the casinos is probably the best idea. Actually, the casinos would probably be willing to share this kind of technical information, as it wouldn't provide any information on how to get around their work. What they're less likely to talk about are the types of tricks they look for.