Slashback: Lingualism, Cooperation, Re-entry 124
What goes up must go SPLOOSH. Detritus writes: "The BBC is reporting that GRO has reentered the atmosphere and splashed down in the Pacific ocean, as predicted." So just what is the space equivalent of Davy Jones' Locker?
Serbo-Croatian, Swahili, Esperanto. After many spirited comments regarding Chris Rijk's Java / C shootout, Nilsson writes: "John Pierce has done some interesting language performance tests. Instead of benchmarking how a problem can be solved in the fastest possible way he tries to benchmark how an average programmer would have solved the problem in various languages. C, Awk, Java, Perl, Pike and Tcl are tested. You can probably start religious wars with this document." Tools for the job, tools for the job ...
Just like an after-school special. Landaras writes "NYC pointed out in a thread that The Offspring and Napster have reached a very amicable settlement over the whole t-shirt issue link Since you clarified that Napster wasn't suing (it was a cease and decist) you might want to again clarify that the cease and decist has been dropped. In fact, Napster is now helping The Offspring create new products." Writing in with more detail, mishaco pointed out this link to an NME story noting that " Napster have now backed down, allowing the band to sell the material, but only if the proceeds are donated to charity."
If it exists, it blows. Which doesn't suck, necessarily. dthor writes: "The Hubble Space Telescope finds more freaks of space: a black hole that's been switched from suck to blow. Apparently, a black hole in the Virgo cluster has begun to emit largish bubbles of colourful nebula gas (or rather...began to emit hundreds of years ago, but CNN is just now catching up). Read the article, complete with an "interactive" Anatomy of a Black Hole (the regular sucking kind). Neato." [Updated 8 June 12:05GMT by timothy] Note that, as readers like daVinci1980 point out below, this is entirely consistent with current black hole theory and observations. There's not really a "suck / blow" switch on black holes' control panels. That we know of.
How the suits saw it. Duncan Lawie penned -- err, "tapped" -- his account of the UK Linux Expo 2000 in London, and it was at least partly about code, distributions and drinking beer. On the other side of the aisle, meanwhile ... Xolution writes "There's a small article on CNN.com about Linux starting to come into the mainstream."
Out of the goodness of their 8-chambered hearts? Kaufmann writes: "Bruce reports: they've received email from a MS product manager, promising to fix the Interix GPL violation (recently reported on Slashdot as well). That's a relief." Nice to hear; thanks for Bruce and company for the sharp eye and persistence.
Davy Jones' Locker (Score:2)
Major Tom's Capsule?
Quantum Equivalent (Score:2)
Re:We ALL Know (Score:1)
Actually, the term Eat Flaming Death comes from a 1980s comic called CPU Wars [e-pix.com]
Re:Pick One and Only One (Score:1)
An important one they missed (Score:2)
Your slashdot password is stored unencrypted in your cookie file
I didn't believe it myself until I looked. It's URL encoded but it aint encrypted
Rich
Re:YAY!!! (Score:1)
Re:HUH??? (Score:1)
As stated numerous times in the numerous articles relating to Napster, Napster must fight for their trademark else they'd lose it .. But yes, that shows they're just another corporation.. Any like all fads and too many many businesses, it will soon pass or go out of business (or get sued out of existance .. whichever comes first)..
Daniel
daniel@splink.net
The Black Hole DOES NOT BLOW (IMPORTANT) (Score:4)
There is an important distinction to be made here. The Black hole itself is still happily gravitating objects in towards its center, at incredible rates of speed. As these objects are brought in closer to the event horizon, they are both stretched and squeezed.
To visualize what is happening to the matter and energy a black hole feeds on, remember all the cartoons you've seen as a child (or last night) where a cartoon character is sucked into a bottle. As they enter into the bottle, their body is stretched ever so slightly. And because their hands are not being pulled directly downward, but to a point mass directly below their feet, they are squeezed towards their center of mass.
The squeezing causes light to be emitted in the form of X-Rays at increasing intensity the closer to the Event horizon the trapped particles are. Of course once the particles cross the event horizon, all light they emit in the form of X-rays are trapped within the black hole, never to be seen from again. (Except possibly from a white hole...)
Because of a unique property of Black Holes, the larger the black hole, the shorter the distance of space around the black hole is affected. This is a natural result of Universal Gravitation (Gmm/R^2), which again applies once outside the event horizon. This means that Gas and dust that are a significant distance away from the Black hole will not be drawn in towards the sucker as much as they are pushed away by the force of the collisions from the X-Rays. Kinda neat, huh?
Apologies to physicists if I oversimplified anything..
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
Re:"slower than C" (Score:1)
If my memory is right, it's about 300000 km/s. Oh, you were talking about computer languages? Never mind then...
Re:Accent? (Score:1)
Y'all know I git excited when we're talkin' bout Mr. Gates and all that money -Makes me all genteel.
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Re:(Offtopic) Invalid form key (Score:1)
No but I got it too earlier today. Let's see if it happens again...
Re:Charity (Score:1)
Re:Java Compiler counter productive. (Score:2)
The virtual machine / bytecode concept has existed for quite a while. Java's promise to write once run anywhere is not unique, just the most publicized. And if you look around in Sun's archives, you'll probably find info on the Java Processor, which was to have been a CPU that ran Java bytecodes in a truly native environment. As far as I know, that's been abandoned.
But a native compiler will beat a VM written in native code, if both are written by people who know what they are doing. A JIT will help some, but still will lose out to a native compiler.
Java's portability is great. The ease of use is great. But it will never perform as well in a VM as a native compile. That's why some people (e.g., TowerJ) write native compilers. It's not counterproductive. It's just solving a different problem.
The primary resistance to native compilers for Java is over portability and the fear of non-standard extensions or implementations. Java programmers don't want to worry about (or even know) how many bytes are in an int; it's specified in the standard, after all. A bad native compiler may end up introducing the need to worry about that kind of thing...
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bukra fil mish mish
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Monitor the Web, or Track your site!
UAL816 (Score:3)
IIRC, the plane flew a little to the west of it's usual flight path. Appearently there was no danger due to the timing of the events (ie plane and satelite not in the same area at the same time) but they weren't taking any risks (though it would be an interesting way to go: "err, his plane was hit by a satellite", though I don't think my wife would see it that way)
Re:YAY!!! (Score:1)
concerts. Oh, the terror of it all, I still
code, but my love is for live concerts. So,
the Offspring came to town and I went with
this ultra hot chick I'd known from school.
At that concert, I had the distinction of
arriving with the first girl to take off her
bra. Mother would be so proud
Anyways, mandatory geek content: c++ rules.
Theory vs practice :-( (Score:2)
$s = "abcdefghij";
$n = shift || 50000;
foreach (1..$n) {
push @X, $s ;
}
foreach my $str (@X) {
push @Y, $str . " ";
}
Re:Pick One and Only One (Score:1)
for the zillionth time, a copyright is: the temporary right to control who may make copies of some given information, under some but not all circumstances.
that doesn't meet the qualifications needed to own something at all. and information by it's nature can't be owned. attempts to extend property law to information fail because they fly in the face of reality.
so it's not 'stealing', it's 'unauthorized redistribution of copies of copyrighted information.'
sorry if it doesn't roll off the tongue as easily, but claiming otherwise implies that copyright holders have rights that they simply do not have, are unconstitutional and are unrealistic.
Damn, that's 815, not 816 (Score:2)
Re:Gosh. (Score:2)
2
2
2
2
2
where exponentiation is made m times, where m is equal to
2
2
2
2
2
where exponentiation is made 65536 times.
--
Everything that comes in must come out (Score:1)
Re:How Black Holes Blow Better than Monica... (Score:1)
For reasonably small-sized black holes, tidal forces of thousands of Gs per CM are easy to achieve (i.e. the gravitational pull 1CM past the event horizon is thousands of Gs less than it is right AT the event horizon). Imagine, for a moment, the kind of stress that this would place on a 5'8" frame going feet first into a black hole, and you'll understand why black holes are considered an unhealthy travel option. As a super-dense black hole approaches point size, this value aproaches infinity.
Pulling apart a virtual pair doesn't require them to be straddling the event horizon, it only requers that they be close enough for the tidal forces to rip them apart before they re-combine. The negative-energy particle would get sucked into the black hole, and the positive-energy one would be free to go on it's merry way.
As you consider the possibility of larger (i.e. ENORMOUS) black holes, things start to get a little bit more tame. If you got enough mass together in one place, you would have a black hole about 3 light months in diameter, where the event horizon had a negligible tidal force (fractional Gs per light-week) and the gravity was 1G. A black hole this large would have almost no evaporation events and would last roughly forever.
It would also have an average density less than water.
--
Re:What about the MS Kerberos problem (Score:2)
I think the fact that their latest attempt in this vein uses patents rather than clickwraps is a tipoff that they realize their case was a wash.
--
Re:We ALL Know (Score:1)
Re:Java Compiler counter productive. (Score:2)
Re:Pick One and Only One (Score:1)
If you think semantics are meaningless, you don't understand the meaning of the word, period. Look it up. Please.
Re:Haiku (Score:1)
Only playful poetry
Slashback, a good thing
Re:Many Black Holes Blow! (Score:1)
im sure that most of the crowd is familiar with hawkings
good point though
Re:We ALL Know (Score:1)
- Lisp as an Alternative to Java - Erann Gat @ jpl [nasa.gov]
- Python for Lisp Programmers - Peter Norvig [norvig.com]
- Lisp as an Alternative to Java - Peter Norvig [norvig.com]
Seriously,Re:Pick One and Only One (Score:1)
There will always be thevies. But in this case, the majority of the people aren't.
And what about the people who would rather download then go through the process of ripping? Time is money and all that, you know.
Fact is, MP3s are good buisiness, not just for those who sell them directly, but for the band, which profits indirectly. Metallica is hurting its sales (even Lars admits that Napster raised his album sales) and its fans.
The Offspring blew it (Score:2)
Ah man, The Offspring backed off. They should have told Napster to shove it and kept the profits.
On the other hand, perhaps this is the solution to Napster. Perhaps Napster, Inc. could go to the record companies and say they will donate all of their proceeds to charity. :)
--
Re:Slashdot in Java!!! (Score:1)
Re:"slower than C" (Score:1)
1) All interpreted language implementations in this test were slower, often much slower than a compiled C implementation on the same platform.
2) Most programmers tend to assume reasonably optimized interpreters and compilers as tools for their host language. Given the indicated specifications on this benchmark, this seems to be a reasonable assumption. (unreasonable assumptions would include proper tail recursion handling in all cases under C, for instance...)
3) A lot of sleep() calls everywhere under C and not under the other languages would be a false test; also, your feeble attempt at trickery would show using the time system utility, as the actual CPU usage under a reasonably optimized version of a UNIXish Operating System would be much lower than the execution time.
4) A gcc compiled executable runs faster than a gcc compiled interpreter running similar code in this test. There. I said it. What a surprise.
5) Piss off, I'm not in the mood to be this anal over a fine point of nerd language usage, even if I am on slashdot.
I hope that clears things up for you.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
blow holes (Score:2)
Go shove a planet down it's throat.
Re:GPF Violation? (Score:1)
Java Compiler counter productive. (Score:3)
Most problems arise in software is caused by lack of abstraction. Look at all the problems that games had early on. Remember trying to get quake to run in 800x600. You had to install the vesa bios extension. Which really wasn't all that hard, but it did stick the game to a very basic set of drivers. Now that gaming has moved over to the open/gl or direct x games can run on all kinds of different systems, and have made a lot of progress in a short amount of time. Mainly because it allows games to be hardware accelerated.
Today software is ran the same way it was ran 20 years ago. When it comes down to it, we still interact with our hardware using add, mov, lea, and a whole slew of other very simple instructions. In the case of RISC chips there is even less. Functions are totaly basic, but no chips out there allow you to define one on the chip, allowing it to be optimized. The time has come for us to move more of our common software structure into hardware.
Imagine if all your objects were not only stored in hardware, but managed by a hardware memory controller, and garbage collector. If threading was unified so that hardware could really do the switching, and the os would be left to kick things off and make sure things got scheduled correctly. Sun is already working on this and the next line of sparc hardware will have java acceleration built-in to the hardware. Servlets on sparc will take over as the leader in web based application performance.
Pick up the java vm specs from Sun and you'll find that the real magic is the java byte code. Java uses an single byte code. There are 202 op codes that can do almost everything that a non-gui program would ever have to do. From simple addition and all the object/function handling routines. When you start to look under the hood of a java vm you find that a large majority of it is acutally native code. java.system java.io, the major packages of classes, are all written natively. Bascially it creates a standard interface to hardware that can then be ported to each operating system. Now image that your video card, network card, sound card, and harddrive controller all have java acceleration or a part of a java vm running on them. Then a the core java vm, or java kernel would then coordinate all the transactions. Threading and IO performance would increase dramactically, and be much faster and robust then any simple intel like arch. running simple c code. The age of accelerated software is upon us, wake up. my $0.02
Re:"slower than C" (Score:1)
--
Re:Language Comparisons (Score:3)
Of course, this is a much more difficult question - but i, for one, think it is a much *much* more interesting one. For a rare and satisfyingly substantial example of a study concerned with just this question, see (postscript) "An Empirical Comparison of C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Rexx, and Tcl for a Search/String-Processing Program" [ira.uka.de]. It involves much more than lines-of-code and wild-assed guessing - it's an extensive and rational empirical study that examines programming practice and productivity, and the way that different languages facilititate it. Cool!
Re:We ALL Know (Score:1)
A better reference for the language wars (Score:1)
Lutz Prechelt's preprint An Empirical Comparison of C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Rexx, and Tcl for a Search/String-Processing Program [ira.uka.de] (available in ps and pdf only)
See http://python.org/doc/Comparisons.html [python.org] for a refreshingly unbiased, given that the source is one of the languages in question, selection of similar papers.
Re:We ALL Know (Score:4)
So far CMUCL has been quite impressive on our sparc here at work, but I have to get home and check out my linux box which is quite similar to the one used in the tests.
I'd like to point out that the only usefulness of this test is to show what speed one-off programs will run at in various languages.
This really totally ignores the features of each language, (for example they couldn't do a C based hash-table test even... DUH), and it is heavily biased toward a c/perl/awk style of programming.... pre-allocating arrays and filling them, multiple hash tables... The descriptions even give you an algorithm, rather than a problem to solve... so they pre-suppose a way to solve a given problem.
For example, most common lisp compilers, and all scheme compilers will optimize away the function calls in the ackermann example. Furthermore, it is much more natural in lisp to compute some of these results by the use of concatenate and map(-into)... Some compilers (esp functional languages) will prove you could never use the results of your little loop that has no side effects and returns no value, and simply optimize it away entirely !!!
I'll give some results here tomorrow for a few of the tests... the easy ones that don't require me to download large datasets over a slow link... in CMUCL on a dual pII 233 w/ 128 MB of ram running linux.
Re:C and PERL reign supreme (Score:1)
Have you actually looked at the benchmarks, buddy?
I find it ironic, enlightening and enormously amusing that Perl never scored better than any of the other languages compared, and even at handling REGEXPs (which Perl folk so readily tout as one of the crown features of their beloved toy) it scored below AWK (which is no surprise to me). But then again, as they say: when you have a problem and think "I know, I'll use regexps!" you end up with two problems.
Stomp the Chomp Phenomenon (Score:1)
Very tongue-in-cheek, clever.
However, it's "champing at the bit", not "chomping at the bit."
It frankly amazes me how widespread this mistake is.
--Conan the Grammarian
"It's... (Score:1)
What about the MS Kerberos problem (Score:3)
I just checked and the posts are still up (very good Slashdot) but I for one am curious on whether the lawyers are still mulling over this or if Microsoft has just decided to ignore it?
Is there any kind of upcoming date like "must be removed by _____ that we can watch for?
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Re:Java Compiler counter productive. (Score:2)
Re:Pick One and Only One (Score:1)
learn how to moderate you dolts. jsut cause someone doesnt agree with you or is angry doesnt make it a troll. THIS is a troll. so moderate this.
jesus fucking christ. slashdot is so full of idiots.
Re:Pick One and Only One (Score:1)
doesnt change a thing.
No it's not. (Score:1)
>Microsoft is made up of people
It's not a person dammit, it's a Borg!
-- With apologies to Patrick Stewart
john
Re:The Black Hole DOES NOT BLOW (IMPORTANT) (Score:2)
The matter swirling towards the black hole forms a disc which is in the plane of the spinning of the black hole (most black holes are thought to spin on an axis much in the way that the earth does). This disc, the accretion disc, is the way in which most suspected black holes are spotted--we can't see the black hole itself, but as the matter around the hole is heated up it releases energy in the form of EM radiation (it "fluoresces").
Sometimes, as in the case of quasars (quasi-stellar objects), the radiation is at the wavelength of visible light, making an object that looks like a star, but is not. In some cases, there are very nifty effects such as jets shooting off of the black hole at the poles. (This particular effect is currently not well-understood, but there are several theories as to the mechanism behind this.)
In addition to the jets shooting off the poles, quasars (and in general very large black holes with large accretion discs) can have enough matter in the accretion disc that the energy that builds up is enough to blow off some of the outer matter. It is thought that small black holes do not exhibit this effect as much because they do not tend to build up large accretion discs, and the matter that does accrete is too close to the hole--that is, under too much gravitational force--to be blown off).
In all of these cases, the black hole still sucks
Re:Pick One and Only One (Score:2)
Ownership has a very specific meaning. Pretending otherwise doesn't change things. Information can't be owned because it's impossible to satisfy the qualifications for ownership. (Being able to use it in any way, being able to control it's use by others, being able to dispose of it)
And legally, ownership doesn't extend to information.
Please feel free to disregard language, law and the nature of reality. But don't expect the universe to comply with your misconceptions.
Bullshit (Score:1)
We ALL Know (Score:4)
Eat flaming death, Perl bigots!
language tests (Score:1)
Re:We ALL DON'T Know (Score:1)
It's "Slashback" (Score:1)
It's where the editors add followup stories, additional comments, and (supposedly, anyway) corrections.
I guess it came about because Slashdot has a tendency to a) screw things up occasionaly and b) inspire people to the highest heights of human achievement.
There you go.
Re:Score 1: Funny?!?!? (Score:1)
agreed. i really like having to parenthesize arithmetical expressions and memorize obscure (and, in the case of C, broken) precedence rules. it's a lot more fun than actually programming.
Re:Quickies? (Score:1)
Actually, I wish /. would gather lists of (somewhat) related Quickies together more often. Too many trivial topics are getting their own articles nowadays, and sometimes "normal" quickies are hard to spot and discuss, because searching for comments regarding them is dificult amidst the other discussions.
< tofuhead >
Re:Stomp the Chomp Phenomenon (Score:1)
Guess I'll have to go look that up in Wester's Quotations...
gone from suck to blow? (Score:4)
Ahhh, Spaceballs. "No, no, no, go past this part. In fact, never play this again."
Black Holes and the Virgo Cluster (Score:2)
This black hole is widely reported to be the final resting place of Pioneer 10, OS/2, 8-track tapes, the two-hit-wonder Australian band "Men At Work", and the Chevy Chase Show. Recently the Hubble Space Telescope spotted a slew of Amigas being drawn towards the center of M87 as well. NASA predicts that future victims will include BeOS and Britney Spears.
Re:We ALL DON'T Know (Score:1)
(unfortunately I seem to have found a bug with respect to read-sequence... so I can't run the "io-byte" test on CMUCL, but CLISP also works for that test, CLISP is a common lisp system available at clisp.sourceforge.net)
Here's what I've got so far... it does many of the basic tests....
btw: rot13 is a method of converting a string of text by rotating all characters by 13 positions... try a google search, or use "tr"
;(setf extensions:*bytes-consed-between-gcs* 30000000) ; use this with CMUCL to prevent it from doing GC too often on a sparc without the incremental GC
(defun ack (x y)
(declare (type fixnum x) (type fixnum y))
(cond ((= x 0) (+ 1 y))
((= y 0) (ack (- x 1) 1))
(t (ack (- x 1) (ack x (- y 1))))))
(defun array-int (n)
(declare (type integer n))
(let ((a1 (make-array n
(a2 nil))
(dotimes (x n nil)
(setf (aref a1 x) x))
(setf a2 (copy-seq a1))
nil))
(defun array-str (n)
(let* ((a (make-array n
(b (make-array n
(map-into b #'(lambda (x) (concatenate 'simple-string x " ")) a)
nil))
;(defun assoc-build (file)
; (make-hash-table (
;)))
(defun inc-loop (n)
(declare (type (unsigned-byte 32) n))
(do ((i 0 (1+ i)))
((= i n) nil)
(declare (type (unsigned-byte 32) i))))
(defun io-str (file)
"although read-sequence is probably better for speed, the more
natural way to do this in lisp is with a read-line, assuming the file
is line oriented."
(with-open-file
(f file)
(do ((str (read-line f nil) (read-line f nil)))
((not str) nil)
(write-line str))))
(defun io-byte (file)
"here's the probably significantly faster io routine"
(with-open-file
(f file )
(if (not f) (format t "f isn't a good file~%"))
(do* ((arr (make-string (* 1024 32)) arr)
(pos (read-sequence arr f ) (read-sequence arr f)))
(( (length s) n) (setf len (length s)))
; (format t "~S~%" (switcheroo (expander s)) )
)))))
(defun sum-test (filename)
(with-open-file
(input filename)
(do* ((x (read input nil ) (read input nil))
(sum x (if x (+ sum x) sum)))
((not x) sum)
(declare (type (or float nil) x)
(type float sum)))))
HUH??? (Score:2)
Napster gets angry when a band (who actually supports them) lifts their logo (IP and trademark) and distributes T shirts with the sites logo on it?
Will anyone here please realize that if you want to share music with your friends, that's fine... but Napster is trully evil... They stand for nothing that the whole open source movement stands for except the "free as in beer" concept... And even that looks shady if they move forward on charging subscription access.
Yeah... Napster backed down quickly, but even the idea that they acted up about the whole thing in the first place should go to show you that they're just another corporation like any other...
YAY!!! (Score:4)
Now THERE'S a business model for the new millenium!
Re:Gosh. (Score:1)
No, there are some problems that not even a Beowulf will help you with...
for more info on the ackermann function go to:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/AckermannFunction.
or google it up...
Re:The REAL language is... (Score:1)
Jesus, that was funny...
Slashdot in Java!!! (Score:1)
Charity (Score:5)
still the same (Score:1)
but what happens when slashdotters are asked by Metallica to stop violating their "gpl"?? They get ignored and shit upon. Isn't slashdot great? they are for a type of freedom, their own. And ironically it's all about greed. Think about this: you are just as greedy by stealing copyrighted material as the RIAA is for selling it at such a bloated cost.
------the irony of it all.....
Score 1: Funny?!?!? (Score:1)
Gosh. (Score:1)
I tried to do some ackerman(sp?) tests in several scheme and lisp environments; I ran out of memory for ackerman 6 6 in Chez Scheme (the interpreted version), and had the lisp compilers crash and burn on me (fast, but not really arbitrary precision for the power functions, I guess...)
Oh, and Timothy: leave the Quickies to CmdrTaco, okay? So people can filter the Quickies instead of you? Thanks.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
Linux? (Score:1)
Pick One and Only One (Score:2)
Microsoft (Score:1)
Re:gone from suck to blow? (Score:1)
They must have beaten us by a week!
Re:gone from suck to blow? (Score:1)
Re:We ALL Know (Score:1)
Acthually, I find ith's alwayth too hard for people to underthtand what I'm thaying when I lithp.
Love,
Thindy Brady
GPF Violation? (Score:5)
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The space equivalant of Davy Jones's Locker... (Score:1)
Re:Pick One and Only One (Score:1)
its a large generalization to say that most people buy the cd after getting the mp3. i dont believe that for a minute. not most people. a lot, but not the majority.
and... the fact is, it's stealing.
true, maybe the bands are shooting themselves in the foot. but, that's their choice. they have every right to file suit against a company that makes it's living off providing the infrastructure to transport pirated music. maybe mp3's do boost album sales (there are a multitude of non-conclusive surveys, you cant really spout fact from them, but we'll assume) BUT, metallica and others do not deserve such criticism for taking action.
whatever good intentions you have, you ARE stealing.
Re:HUH??? (Score:2)
Seriously, though, Napster has no technical advantage over any of the other distributed filesystems. I don't see any reason for it to exist (and if CNN would shut up about it, maybe it actually *would* die). Mind you I guess Gnutella is already kind of taking over, so maybe it'll die anyway.
Yay for death.
Side note: anyone else here that someone offered Britney Spears 10M US$ or something for sex? Funny stuff.
NEWS: Articles About Linux Going Mainstream (Score:4)
News Organizations Feel More Comfortable About Reporting On Open-Source OS
ATLANTA, GA (AP) - News organizations such as CNN [cnn.com] and ABC News [abcnews.com] are beginning to warm up to the Linux operating system. Linux, which is an "open source" operating system that provides an alternative to Microsoft Windows, has been seeing gradually more media coverage over the course of the past year or so. Although the popular operating system has been in use in the industry's mainstream for quite some time now, news stories about the OS's mainstream status were considered "fringe" by major media outlets, and were generally avoided.
"A year or so ago, you would never have seen an article about how Linux has entered the mainstream," explained Steve Kinsworth, a senior editor at Brill's Content. "Articles like that were considered 'niche articles' that had a very limited readership. The majority of people would have no use for such articles, and would be better served by articles about systems such as Microsoft Windows. These days, though, everybody is jumping on the Linux mainstream reporting bandwagon. Reporting about Linux's mainstream status has jumped from fringe to mainstream. We are very excited by all this."
Leonard Shaffer, Vice-President of Corporate Egotism at Wired [wired.com], echoed Kinsworth's sentiments. "The media is in love with Linux and stories about how it has gone mainstream. Just a few months ago, if you had gone into your editor's office and suggested doing an article about Linux, the response would have been 'Huh?' or 'You wanna write about what?' These days, editors and managers all over are chomping at the bit to get more coverage of mainstream Linux onto the pages of their magazine."
Not everybody shares the enthusiasm, however. Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp. and owner of the Fox News Channel, has publicly decried the coverage of the operating system. "I am deeply disturbed by the mainstreaming of coverage of Linux as mainstream," Murdoch said. "We at the Fox News Channel cater to the Christian Right and to ultra-paranoid conservatives," Murdoch explained. "We have absolutely no interest in blubbering all over some sort of leftist free-love collectivist liberal mishmash of computer code." Fox News contributor Bob Dornan agreed, calling Linux author Linus Torvalds "the anti-Christ."
Ted Turner contributed to this story.
Space equivalent (Score:2)
Klono's gadolinium guts.
Trust me on this.
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Hundreds of years? (Score:1)
Re:NEWS: Articles About Linux Going Mainstream (Score:2)
Fair and Balanced Reporting (Score:1)
I would like to thank the Slashfolk for not using that little quip as an intro to the breakup story. That would have been far too amusing.
Dammit, my mom is not a Karma whore!
How Black Holes Blow Better than Monica... (Score:2)
See, space isn't really a vacuum, as Hawking points out in his book. In actuality, in the vacuum of space particles and their associated anti-particles blink in and out of existence constantly--they appear, move apart from one another an imperceptible distance, and then are immediately drawn back together and "cancel out" and disappear with no remnants. So, although we on the macroscopic level perceive space to be empty, on a sub-atomic scale it is quite full and active.
But that's where black holes come in. The only force strong enough to prevent those sub-atomic particles from re-colliding and blinking out of existence is, you guessed it, the event horizon of a black hole. If the particles pop into existence right at the event horizon, and one crosses the event horizon and the other doesn't, then both particles will be forced into continued existence instead of cancelling out--the anti-particle can get sucked into the black hole and actually cause the black hole's mass to decrease by one particle when it cancels out part of the black hole's central point, while the particle which escapes becomes part of the rest of the universe just like any other particle. Hawking mentioned this as a possible way that black holes could decrease in mass/size of event horizon over time, and this process could account for the "blow" effect of the black hole mentioned in the article if, for whatever physical reasons, the black hole's situation is conducive to the condition of capturing these anti-particles at its event horizon and thus "emitting" particles. It's complicated, but I've tried to explain it as simplistically as possible, so forgive me if the explanation is slightly inaccurate. But, that's how this could happen.
Re:An important one they missed (Score:1)
Either way, it's bad form to store passwords unencrypted. For example, Joe User has two accounts, one on system A, one on system B. Due to bad security on system A, Jim Cracker finds out the password for system A is "Bill". Jim knows that Joe has two sons, Bill and Ben. If Joe did in fact use the password "Ben" for system B then Jim gets a good chance at working it out rather than having to make a stab in the dark. (Yes, I know Jim has chosen bad passwords but I simplified for purposes of illustration and, having seen unencrypted password files, I can tell you that it's not that far separated from being real life)
Rich
(Offtopic) Invalid form key (Score:1)
Rich
Har, Me Hearties! (Score:2)
Major Tom's Locker?
Re:Language Comparisons (Score:2)
I guess that's what I was trying to solicit. For those that have worked in two or more of these languages, give me an estimate of how long you thought it would take you to have coded up each of these examples for each of your langagues when you were at the novice, average and guru stages in your development.
Then, I could aggregate the responses and perhaps plot out some consensus of what the learning curve looks like for each language.
From there, we could interpret the relative performance versus the 'degree of difficulty' and come up with a very precise estimate of the bang per buck ratio of each language
Of course, that very precise estimate will be almost, but not quite, perfectly irrelevant to anything in the real world. (spot the reference)
Cheers.
Re:Language Comparisons (Score:2)
Re:It doesn't blow, it throws... (Score:1)
Language Comparisons (Score:2)
A scientific wild ass guess of elapsed time for a novice, average and guru programmer of each language would also be good.
If people want to look at the sources and email me [mailto] with their estimates, I'll compile the stats in about a week and post them. Cheers!
Many Black Holes Blow! (Score:2)
Re:language tests (Score:2)
Hell hasn't actually frozen over (Score:2)
Yes Stephen Hawking has predicted black holes could emmit radiation (Hawking radiation), however it wouldn't be of such a large and sizable ammount.
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Re:Haiku (Score:3)
Lack Of Follow-Through, They Cry
We Serve Most Humbly.
--
Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org
Re:Java Compiler counter productive. (Score:2)
You'd think so, but it's been tried a few times, and the vanilla hardware always won in the end. The Intel iAPX 432 and the Symbolics 3600 had hardware support for garbage collection. Both were much slower than comparable vanilla machines of the same period. Sun tried a direct-execution Java chip, but it was slower than other CPUs of comparable cost and complexity.
A little support for garbage collection in the MMU, though, is a big win.
The Perl examples have very poor style (Score:2)
The biggest benefit being the incr_loop test:
$n = shift || 50000;
foreach (1..$n) {
++$sum;
}
print "$sum\n";
I sent my modified version to the author along with pointers to what and why the style changes were made. (Every last one has maintainability as its primary goal. The speed increase comes because more maintainable code pushes more work checking boundary conditions etc down to Perl, which is both less likely to mess up and is faster than your code written in Perl.)
I hope he redoes the Perl tests...
Cheers,
Ben
Re:Language Comparisons (Score:2)
Part of being a guru is being adept enough at the language that your design flows almost immediately into code, and your design is invariably one that is easy to adapt to the language.
Thus, all the time is spent understanding the problem.