Not everyone is comfortable knowing how and why something happened.
Belief in one or more deities and the desire to know "how and why" are not mutually exclusive.
More than that. Science has never, ever, answered the why question. That's philosophy or religion. Newton never said anything about why apples fall from trees.
Does it matter, if your browser, mm player, compiler, etc all run on different cores, each getting 100% CPU to itself? Concurrency is hard work, it'll take us a long time to cath up. I don't know enough about Hypertransport to know if I should worry about memory bottleneck?
Oh we still have those Unix boxes. The same ones you were using 10+ years ago. Most of the Unix boxes in my dept. are Sun Ultra 5/10's. They're steadily being replaced by shiny beige Dell boxes. Hell, our new MRI machines even have a Windows box on the front. And yes, it is a pain in the arse. The easiest way to transfer data off of them? USB Memory stick. Makes you want to cry.
Non ASCII is a problem, you're right.
But I don't see why we need XML tags, rather than some simpler syntax. It could still be a standard, with a ref. implementation and all. Plenty of scripting/programming languages seem to have managed. #include seems to work well for including other files, and it wouldn't be too difficult to invent something a little more selective. Yeah, okay, I feel like Lisp is grinning at me.
XML files seem great for fulfilling a general standard, but not to be all that human readable.
Hooray for that! Whoever thought XML config fiels were a good idea? 12 layers of nested tags before you even get to a parameter - not so easy to skim over. Plain text config file with some provision for commenting is the way forward.
I work in academia, and my box runs Linux. I'd love to never touch a Windows box, but in a university environment it just isn't possible. I currently have three major stumbling points:
- Producing slides. When I present at an international conference, the standard specification is Powerpoint. Yes, I can produce my slides in OpenOffice, but we all know that OO and MS Office don't quite interact. I want my slides to look right and it's important that those diagrams and equations appear exactly as I intended. Hence I borrow a machine and use Powerpoint.
- Writing papers. More and more journals are demanding papers are submitted as MS Word files, and do not accept LaTeX. I need to publish my work. Most of my collaborators use MS Word - they like the track changes option. Again, borrow a Win machine.
- Email. Yeah, that's right, email. My university is currently doing everything it can to stop rogue users with weird, non-standard machines running odd software. To improve security (I know), Information Services have decided to move email to use Outlook, exclusively.
We have three problems. One is that the university doesn't pay much for IT support, so we get monkeys. The second is the MS Campus license, which means MS software doesn't really cost anything (once the campus license has been paid for, which is generally a different pot of money). Third is the admin staff, who make sweeping decisions like what standard software the university will support, use Windows and don't like software they don't know.
I am currently allowed to run Linux, as long as I agree that I get zero technical support. I can do that, but many users can't/don't want to. In a years time, I may well be running Windows. For the time being, I'm ordering a copy of VMWare.
Well said. Those 'ignorant' and 'foolish' people are a necessary part of medicine. At some stage, somebody has to go first. As this case (probably) shows, it doesn't matter how many animal tests or simulations you run, things might work out different in a real human test. It would scare the hell out of me, but I'm glad some folk do volunteer. That the drug company split when things go wrong is sickening though.
It sounds like you are missing something, yes. Maybe you should follow the news? These guys in Chile clearly do. From this mornings headlines:
More than 54 civilians, at least 34 of them children, have been killed in a town in south Lebanon in the deadliest Israeli strike of the conflict so far.BBC News
This is a sadly ordinary story. I'm no fan of Hezbollah, but I cannot understand the Israeli action, or the lack of action by my (I'm British) or the US government. Just remember who are selling those bombs.
Experts believe that the nation with the most machines near the top of the ranking generally has the most competitive economy.
Oh come on - were these American experts by chance? How about flops/head? But lets think for a moment. Do raw flops count, or is it what you do with them? Once you have a big computer, it's easy to generate lots of numbers. The art of science, though, is to abstract your question, so you can make some useful predictions. Otherwise you might as well just measure the world that's out there, in all its complexity.
I've spent long enough using Linux that I'm genuinely surprised that you can't emerge or apt-get or winstall on a Windows box. It's so easy to try out new packages under Linux. I've recently been recommneding Inkscape and JabRef to lots of people. The Windows users don't seem to really understand free, and don't really trust it. I used to think like that to. The trouble with open source is it just sounds too good to be true.
First of all academia is about teaching students.
The teaching part is all about teaching students. If you start a PhD you'll find there's a whole lot more on campus.
three year position
Got me there, I'm on the three year run. But research has to be long term. If I finish a contract without ideas to fill the next few years, I'll never get funding. You need the long and the short. But if you want to give me a long term grant...
Thirdly, money
Well, the pay's not exceptional. But I get a a fun job. Equipment? I'm currently using a 10 node dual Opteron cluster by myself. If things get big I move to the 1000 node system (but I have to share that). When I get out of simulation and into reality, I use milion-pound machines. I work in MRI, and have immediate access to 2 state-of-the-art scanners, and several other systems if I need them. I have access to RAD in engineering if I need it, we have some very skilled mechanical and electronic workshop guys. We have a large library (as any decent university does), subscribe to most of the journals I need, and have access to the journals/books we don't have via inter-library loans. I'm allowed to publish all my results (a problem in industry), and get to at least one international conference each year (usually more). Money is always tight in academia, but only because we play with big toys.
As for kids - just ask a group of academics what their parents do - you'll be surprised how much it 'stays in the family' (not that I'm saying this is a good thing).
From the Linux world, we all know that automatic/semi-automatic updates are a good thing and make life easier. MS are catching on with their automatic updates. But you're right, using the OS updater to automatically update IE is monopolistic. The solution is obvious - MS should also offer auto updates for Firefox and Opera, for anyone using those. Shall I phone the EU and suggest it?
Found it - have a look at http://www.techmind.org/sl/ - okay, so it doesn't include the fusion bit, but it explains how to set up the sonoluminescence experiment. Ah, the bubbles...
Hang on, this is meant to be/. - that was an informed, informative answer. Thank you. I...think I'll go and lie down for a while. And kudos to the Moz team for not rushing something out to shut up whiners like me.
In my case, getting hardcopy out of the printer (v1.5.0.4, cups, linux).
If I try to print a web page that should cover several paper pages, I only get the first sheet. Firefox seems to make hard work of paper sizes too. It uses a mystery A4 size that is different enough to the CUPS A4 that my print job is rejected. I've never really chased the problem - Opera just works (tm).
I love these hard definitions of soft concepts. Just because you write down some rules, it doesn't mean we follow them. Any programmer understands roughly what 'high level' and 'low level' mean, but I'm sure we'll all argue over where the boundaries are - they're not well defined. I guess you stopped at 101?
Every serious hacker should have a play with assember, or even machine code. There is real magic in starting up a uP or uC on a board you built yourself, and making it flash a few LEDs under the control of your hand assembled program. I found a whole new depth of understanding when I built a 68hc11 based board (not to mention memorizing a whole bunch of op-codes). Of course, I'd never want to write a 'serious' piece of code in assembly, and it still amazes me that anyone ever did!
You forgot one important point. We don't know very much about this story. We have to prefix everything in the media with "Microsoft said...". But I'm sure Microsoft don't have an agenda here - right?
Later in the show we'll feature an independent Microsoft report called "What's wrong with Openoffice", followed by "Why Java is rubbish" and "Linux is evil".
Slashdot Mirror
Not everyone is comfortable knowing how and why something happened. Belief in one or more deities and the desire to know "how and why" are not mutually exclusive. More than that. Science has never, ever, answered the why question. That's philosophy or religion. Newton never said anything about why apples fall from trees.
Does it matter, if your browser, mm player, compiler, etc all run on different cores, each getting 100% CPU to itself? Concurrency is hard work, it'll take us a long time to cath up. I don't know enough about Hypertransport to know if I should worry about memory bottleneck?
You didn't take stalking 101? friendsreunited is kind of like dial-a-freak, but with an added personal connection.
Oh we still have those Unix boxes. The same ones you were using 10+ years ago. Most of the Unix boxes in my dept. are Sun Ultra 5/10's. They're steadily being replaced by shiny beige Dell boxes. Hell, our new MRI machines even have a Windows box on the front. And yes, it is a pain in the arse. The easiest way to transfer data off of them? USB Memory stick. Makes you want to cry.
Non ASCII is a problem, you're right. But I don't see why we need XML tags, rather than some simpler syntax. It could still be a standard, with a ref. implementation and all. Plenty of scripting/programming languages seem to have managed. #include seems to work well for including other files, and it wouldn't be too difficult to invent something a little more selective. Yeah, okay, I feel like Lisp is grinning at me. XML files seem great for fulfilling a general standard, but not to be all that human readable.
all-config-in-text-files
Hooray for that! Whoever thought XML config fiels were a good idea? 12 layers of nested tags before you even get to a parameter - not so easy to skim over. Plain text config file with some provision for commenting is the way forward.
I work in academia, and my box runs Linux. I'd love to never touch a Windows box, but in a university environment it just isn't possible. I currently have three major stumbling points:
- Producing slides. When I present at an international conference, the standard specification is Powerpoint. Yes, I can produce my slides in OpenOffice, but we all know that OO and MS Office don't quite interact. I want my slides to look right and it's important that those diagrams and equations appear exactly as I intended. Hence I borrow a machine and use Powerpoint.
- Writing papers. More and more journals are demanding papers are submitted as MS Word files, and do not accept LaTeX. I need to publish my work. Most of my collaborators use MS Word - they like the track changes option. Again, borrow a Win machine.
- Email. Yeah, that's right, email. My university is currently doing everything it can to stop rogue users with weird, non-standard machines running odd software. To improve security (I know), Information Services have decided to move email to use Outlook, exclusively.
We have three problems. One is that the university doesn't pay much for IT support, so we get monkeys. The second is the MS Campus license, which means MS software doesn't really cost anything (once the campus license has been paid for, which is generally a different pot of money). Third is the admin staff, who make sweeping decisions like what standard software the university will support, use Windows and don't like software they don't know.
I am currently allowed to run Linux, as long as I agree that I get zero technical support. I can do that, but many users can't/don't want to. In a years time, I may well be running Windows. For the time being, I'm ordering a copy of VMWare.
Well said. Those 'ignorant' and 'foolish' people are a necessary part of medicine. At some stage, somebody has to go first. As this case (probably) shows, it doesn't matter how many animal tests or simulations you run, things might work out different in a real human test. It would scare the hell out of me, but I'm glad some folk do volunteer. That the drug company split when things go wrong is sickening though.
What, you mean like students?
It sounds like you are missing something, yes. Maybe you should follow the news? These guys in Chile clearly do. From this mornings headlines:
More than 54 civilians, at least 34 of them children, have been killed in a town in south Lebanon in the deadliest Israeli strike of the conflict so far. BBC News
This is a sadly ordinary story. I'm no fan of Hezbollah, but I cannot understand the Israeli action, or the lack of action by my (I'm British) or the US government. Just remember who are selling those bombs.
From TFA:
Experts believe that the nation with the most machines near the top of the ranking generally has the most competitive economy.
Oh come on - were these American experts by chance? How about flops/head? But lets think for a moment. Do raw flops count, or is it what you do with them? Once you have a big computer, it's easy to generate lots of numbers. The art of science, though, is to abstract your question, so you can make some useful predictions. Otherwise you might as well just measure the world that's out there, in all its complexity.
I've spent long enough using Linux that I'm genuinely surprised that you can't emerge or apt-get or winstall on a Windows box. It's so easy to try out new packages under Linux. I've recently been recommneding Inkscape and JabRef to lots of people. The Windows users don't seem to really understand free, and don't really trust it. I used to think like that to. The trouble with open source is it just sounds too good to be true.
People like free stuff. News at 10.
First of all academia is about teaching students.
The teaching part is all about teaching students. If you start a PhD you'll find there's a whole lot more on campus.
three year position
Got me there, I'm on the three year run. But research has to be long term. If I finish a contract without ideas to fill the next few years, I'll never get funding. You need the long and the short. But if you want to give me a long term grant...
Thirdly, money
Well, the pay's not exceptional. But I get a a fun job. Equipment? I'm currently using a 10 node dual Opteron cluster by myself. If things get big I move to the 1000 node system (but I have to share that). When I get out of simulation and into reality, I use milion-pound machines. I work in MRI, and have immediate access to 2 state-of-the-art scanners, and several other systems if I need them. I have access to RAD in engineering if I need it, we have some very skilled mechanical and electronic workshop guys. We have a large library (as any decent university does), subscribe to most of the journals I need, and have access to the journals/books we don't have via inter-library loans. I'm allowed to publish all my results (a problem in industry), and get to at least one international conference each year (usually more). Money is always tight in academia, but only because we play with big toys.
As for kids - just ask a group of academics what their parents do - you'll be surprised how much it 'stays in the family' (not that I'm saying this is a good thing).
thousands of bald programmers in darkened rooms pulling out their hair
If they're bald, what hair are they pulling on? Ewww.
From the Linux world, we all know that automatic/semi-automatic updates are a good thing and make life easier. MS are catching on with their automatic updates. But you're right, using the OS updater to automatically update IE is monopolistic. The solution is obvious - MS should also offer auto updates for Firefox and Opera, for anyone using those. Shall I phone the EU and suggest it?
Found it - have a look at http://www.techmind.org/sl/ - okay, so it doesn't include the fusion bit, but it explains how to set up the sonoluminescence experiment. Ah, the bubbles...
Hang on, this is meant to be /. - that was an informed, informative answer. Thank you. I...think I'll go and lie down for a while. And kudos to the Moz team for not rushing something out to shut up whiners like me.
You could say exactly the same of the Mozilla devs. Why on earth does Gecko not render Acid2 properly?
In my case, getting hardcopy out of the printer (v1.5.0.4, cups, linux). If I try to print a web page that should cover several paper pages, I only get the first sheet. Firefox seems to make hard work of paper sizes too. It uses a mystery A4 size that is different enough to the CUPS A4 that my print job is rejected. I've never really chased the problem - Opera just works (tm).
I love these hard definitions of soft concepts. Just because you write down some rules, it doesn't mean we follow them. Any programmer understands roughly what 'high level' and 'low level' mean, but I'm sure we'll all argue over where the boundaries are - they're not well defined. I guess you stopped at 101?
Every serious hacker should have a play with assember, or even machine code. There is real magic in starting up a uP or uC on a board you built yourself, and making it flash a few LEDs under the control of your hand assembled program. I found a whole new depth of understanding when I built a 68hc11 based board (not to mention memorizing a whole bunch of op-codes). Of course, I'd never want to write a 'serious' piece of code in assembly, and it still amazes me that anyone ever did!
Selling stuff. Why restrict yourself to your home market when you can sell to the whole world? You've gotta think big.
But Darl invented Mach-O binaries. Why do you people keep trying to steal his stuff?
You forgot one important point. We don't know very much about this story. We have to prefix everything in the media with "Microsoft said...". But I'm sure Microsoft don't have an agenda here - right? Later in the show we'll feature an independent Microsoft report called "What's wrong with Openoffice", followed by "Why Java is rubbish" and "Linux is evil".