Comment But they invented the name (Score 1) 293
Before IBM released their PC, these items were called microcomputers...
Comment Morality of the Multiverse - Hah! (Score 1) 387
Just because one might believe in a Multiverse, doesn't make one not care about the future of one's current self. Your future states are what you should care about, not the other selves in the other universes - they're effectively different people, and because they're outside your causal influence, you should care less about them than people you are in causal contact with.
Still, as other posters have commented, the real reason why (some) physicists are mad, is the seeming giving up on scientific testibility. I think this is wrong - that scientific testibility is possible, in principle and practice, and the ontological benefits of a Mulitverse are worth it. I could recommend David Deutcsh's book "Fabric of Reality" for an excellent discussion, or my own book "Theory of Nothing" (gratutitous plug warning).
Comment The title of this posting is wrong (Score 1) 465
The title of this posting is wrong. The original article says that "free programs are not always cheaper".
There are, of course, plenty of situations where this is true: an example might be in the area of digital video editing, where free software is still inferior to turnkey solutions, and requires a lot more effort and patience to set up.
Conversely, there are plenty of situations where the per-seat license of proprietry software is crippling compared with using free software. High performance computing clusters are a classic example of this.
Both of these seemingly contradictory statements satisfy the original article's statement: "free programs are not always cheaper".
Comment Scratch or Alice (Score 1) 1095
To keep a youngster interested and motivated, try Scratch or Alice. These make it really easy to generate some flashy graphics, and do teach real programming concepts. My 10 yo son has done quite a bit of Scratch programming, mostly self-taught.
Alternatively, get him doing Lego robotics. This is a bit more expensive, but loads of fun.
Once they're hooked on programming and computers, that's when they'll have the patience to do "real" programming languages like C++ etc, like we cut our teeth on (actually mine was Pascal, but that just shows how long my teeth are). But not everyone will get to that stage. In the meantime, the experience with Scratch (or Alice) will always be useful, provided they don't develop unrealistic expectations on how easy programming is.
Submission + - Telstra taking Communications minister to court (news.com.au)
lego_boy_aus writes: "TELSTRA has begun proceedings in the High Court against Communications Minister Helen Coonan over broadband funding."
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,221 82192-5005961,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22
Submission + - Theory of Nothing
HighPerformanceCoder writes: ""Theory of Nothing" is a romp through areas of physics, maths, biology, computer science and philosophy to ties together a coherent explanation for why things are as they seem.
I have just posted the book as a free (as in beer) download.
Amazon.com gives the book a Flesch-Kincaid index of 12.9 , ie suitable for a reading age of some studying Grade 13 (First year uni). Sounds like the slashdot crowd to me! Also the topic will be of interest to some readers on this list."
I have just posted the book as a free (as in beer) download.
Amazon.com gives the book a Flesch-Kincaid index of 12.9 , ie suitable for a reading age of some studying Grade 13 (First year uni). Sounds like the slashdot crowd to me! Also the topic will be of interest to some readers on this list."
Submission + - LogFS: A new flash filesystem
gjsmo writes: "From "LogFS: A new way of thinking about flash filesystems" at Linux.com:
Storage manufacturers are getting ready to start shipping solid state disks, and Linux-based devices like One Laptop per Child's XO and Intel's Classmate don't contain standard hard disks. To improve performance on the wide array of flash memory storage devices now available, project leader Jërn Engel has announced LogFS, a scalable filesystem specifically for flash devices. Linux users already have two mature flash filesystems to choose from — JFFS2 and YAFFS — so why do they need another? Engel discounts both of these options, for different reasons. Engel says that YAFFS "has never made a serious attempt of kernel integration, which may disqualify it" for many potential users. At the same time, Engel says that memory consumption and mount time for JFFS2 are unacceptable on larger flash devices. "Unlike most filesystems, there is no tree structure of any sorts on the medium, so the complete medium needs to be scanned at mount time and a tree structure kept in-memory while the filesystem is mounted. With bigger devices, both mount time and memory consumption increase linearly." "
Storage manufacturers are getting ready to start shipping solid state disks, and Linux-based devices like One Laptop per Child's XO and Intel's Classmate don't contain standard hard disks. To improve performance on the wide array of flash memory storage devices now available, project leader Jërn Engel has announced LogFS, a scalable filesystem specifically for flash devices. Linux users already have two mature flash filesystems to choose from — JFFS2 and YAFFS — so why do they need another? Engel discounts both of these options, for different reasons. Engel says that YAFFS "has never made a serious attempt of kernel integration, which may disqualify it" for many potential users. At the same time, Engel says that memory consumption and mount time for JFFS2 are unacceptable on larger flash devices. "Unlike most filesystems, there is no tree structure of any sorts on the medium, so the complete medium needs to be scanned at mount time and a tree structure kept in-memory while the filesystem is mounted. With bigger devices, both mount time and memory consumption increase linearly." "
