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Domain: cf.ac.uk

Stories and comments across the archive that link to cf.ac.uk.

Comments · 56

  1. Ah - no. by Vesperi · · Score: 1 · on Alien Life Found On Earth?

    They didn't find anything, this was all based on the spectroscopic data for the light of a Leniod meteor buring up in the atmosphere. Try the actual website for the Astrobiology Dept. referenced.
    --
    James Michael Keller

  2. "Two possible explanations." by raymondlowe · · Score: 3 · on Alien Life Found On Earth?
    The Professor is quoted as saying "only two possible explanations. [...] organisms have been lifted from the earth to great heights in the skies and have somehow multiplied there and changed over time." The second, he said, is "that this is an example of primitive alien life."

    I fail to see what the first explanation is not the more reasonable!

    This is an old argment - they a whole web site: http://www.panspermia.org/

    R.

  3. Disappointing but unsurprising... by Christopher+B.+Brown · · Score: 3 · on Anders Hejlsberg Interviewed On C#
    If they really wanted to do something moderately innovative, Microsoft might try building something more like a successor for Pascal, perhaps more like Eiffel or Modula3 rather than slavishly replicating yet another stepchild to Simula and BCPL

    Of course, for a more radically "innovative" approach, Microsoft already hired Simon Peyton-Jones, of some "fame" in the world of Functional Programming, and furthermore, he already had C--, Still Another "BCPL stepchild."

    There are probably a whole pile of "cool things" that have been deployed internally that might actually be good things that will never see the light of day because, as Matt Welsh observes,

    What you end up with, after running an operating system concept through these many marketing coffee filters, is something not unlike plain hot water.

    That can apply as well to languages as to OSes...

  4. If you want to rewrite, pick better... by Christopher+B.+Brown · · Score: 3 · on Linux 2.4.0-test1 Released
    C++ and Java are the "obvious" choices, even to illiterate Pointy-Haired Bosses, but unfortunately have a need for considerable runtime systems, particularly Java. A JVM requires a memory manager, which leaves you having to lift yourself by your own bootstraps if you write the JVM in Java, and thereby require a JVM and a memory manager, which leaves you recursing infinitely...

    More reasonable alternatives would include:

    • Modula-3 , in which is written Spin.
    • Or perhaps Oberon, which has been used to construct several OS-like environments.
    • Or perhaps even Eiffel, whose Design By Contract approach makes claims that C++ can provide anything describable as rock solid look very silly.
    • Based on the number of language compilers being built using ML, I'd think it to perhaps be a candidate. The ability to do heavy-duty static type inference would, not unlike with Eiffel, make claims of C++ being "rock solid" look pretty sad.

    Yes, these languages don't have syntax that slavishly resembles C. But it's not as if the actual semantics of C++ or Java are actually that much like C...

  5. Related links. by Edwin+Oostra · · Score: 1 · on Testing the Theory of Relativity

    Here's the link to another group doing research in this field:

    http://www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/gravwave/index.html

    And here's a quick overview of the timeline of this field of research:

    http://www.gsu.edu/other/timeline/gravity.html

  6. Alcubierre warps by vlax · · Score: 2 · on Testing the Theory of Relativity

    Alcubierre's homepage (http://www.astro.cf.ac.u k/pub/Miguel.Alcubierre/index.html) has a broken link to the paper itself. I can't find another copy.

    The New Scientist has an article about it here.