Domain: nemitz.net
Stories and comments across the archive that link to nemitz.net.
Comments · 15
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Re: No?
Before you design a core, you need to specify an assembly-language instruction set. Here is one, with main features of 64-bit addressing and 128-bit data-processing registers (and 128 bits of data at every single address, instead of 8), which was declared Public Domain (last paragraph) back in 2001. Ahead of its time, it is now easily possible to build, and perhaps, because of progress in inventing new instructions since that time, should be upgraded to 256-bit data-processing (while still using 64-bit addressing, because we can expect to not need more than that for a couple more decades). Enjoy!
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Re:HOW OFTEN
It is possible that one must eventually stop switching languages. A major reason to acquire knowledge is to use it. If you are constantly learning stuff, how much using are you accomplishing? About 1974 I had a FORTRAN class in college. There was a mainframe with keypunch machines and punch cards to feed into the computer. I never got to use FORTRAN for anything after college, but must have remembered some basics, because when home computers started being popular in the early 1980s, they all had BASIC and I learned that language very quickly, self-taught. A couple years after that, and there was more I wanted to do than the computer's memory could hold, so I got a book on 6809 Assembly Language and taught myself that. I happened to like that language it a lot, and did some fun projects like modifying the computer's ROM code (it could be EPROMmed) so that a full-screen editor replaced the wimpy line-editor that came with the computer, my new code fitting in the same space as the old code. That was all hobby-type stuff, and then a friend suggested I could help his small business if I learned a BASIC-like language called "CLIPPER", which was designed for database management in the days before SQL, and competed with languages like dBase III and FoxPro. That was interesting and fun; I figured out a way to put CLIPPER code inside a database, and get the program to pull blocks of its own code from the database as needed, and run them. We stopped worrying about the overall size of the program and memory limitations ("640K ought to be enough for anyone", hah!), after that. But the small business was too small and didn't survive, so when another friend mentioned a programming job if I learned C, I got the Kernighan and Ritchie book from the library and taught myself that. Since they say C has all of the advantages and all the disadvantages of Assembly, I liked that language a lot, too. I could reminisce more, but instead I'll just mention some more languages I've used to some degree or other, over the years: QBASIC, Delphi (aka Object Pascal), C++, C#, SQL, 8086 Assembly, GAP, HTML/CSS, PHP, and JavaScript. Sometimes I feel a bit like the character Rufo in Heinlein's "Glory Road", who said something like, "I've forgotten how many languages I know, but when I hear one, I speak it." Nowadays I'm back to hobbyist programming. If any nerds out there are interested in a few rather mental but free JavaScript games and puzzles, built into web pages so accessible by any Operating System on any device that has a modern standards-compliant browser , go here. I'll be adding more in due course, including some multiplayer games.
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Re:Try Other Questions
Well, depending on the total number of virtual gravitons available, "mostly transparent" might be so close to "actually transparent" as makes an indetectable difference. Some wild-eyed speculations that I've played around with include the notion that if we want ANY type of mass-energy to be directly associated with a rate-of-production of virtual gravitons, then we might most-simply compute it using the wave-particle duality. Pretend each wave-like vibration is associated with one virtual graviton, and a single electron would emit something like 10-to-the-20th-power virtual gravitons per second. If another electron was nearby, how many virtual gravitons per second would need to be absorbed, to account for gravitation between the two electrons? Even granting that the gravitons get radiated in all directions, such that only a portion pass near enough to the other electron to be absorbable, how many ignore that electron as if it wasn't there?
The second of the two links has some algebra in it, and a proposed explanation for how virtual gravitons could be so-rarely absorbable --and it is "interesting" that if a virtual graviton from the Sun had appropriate properties such that it got absorbed by the Earth, those same properties would have not made it absorbable when it reached the Moon! And vice-versa; only those virtual gravitons with properties such that the Earth couldn't absorb them might have properties such that the Moon could absorb some of them. This neatly makes the Earth totally transparent, with respect to Sun-Moon interactions, heh! -
Obscuring the point
The main article is kind of silly. If I write an "app" that uses only HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, then that app can run in the browser, an the Operating System, whether it be Chrome or Windows or iOS or Android, doesn't matter in the least, so long as the browser is modern enough to handle HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Here is an example of such an "app".
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Re:Edutainment - games
Here's a Web page that should work under Linux; it can be loaded from a hard disk instead of the Web:
(javascript "mastermind" program, entirely client-side) -
To eliminate joke, use different theory
A number of years ago the late Dr. Robert L. Forward published some notions about this Question:
"How did the Big Bang get around the Law of Conservation of Mass/Energy?"
The suggested answer involves "negative" mass/energy, a thing which is very different from "anti-matter".
One conclusion is that the huge voids in the Universe (there are many many more than just that big one) hold superclusters of galaxies made of negative mass/energy; it doesn't mix well with ordinary mass/energy because the two types gravitationally repel each other --and we can't see those superclusters because our eyes and current instruments don't register negative-energy photons.
For more about negative-mass/energy theory, you might read this. -
Re:bye-bye!
"An alternative explanation of the Two-slits experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-slit_experiment
) could be possible with the aether thing."
That "aether thing" spells out in detail how the Two-slits experiment can do its thing. It also explicitly states that nothing is Real for very long, and why, and was supposedly written in 1995. According to archive.org the prediction has been posted on the Web since 2004. -
Re:bye-bye!
Bohm's interpretation isn't the only alternative to the standard Copenhagen interpretaion. The "many worlds" interpretation is popular with science fiction (such as Stargate SG-1). There is also a "transactional interpretation" by John Cramer. It invokes interactions between the future and the present, just as there are also ordinary interactions between the past and the present. And here is something that calls itself (only at the end of the file) an "aethereal interpretation". It starts by talking about all those "virtual particles in the vacuum", and saying, let's call that thing "the aether"... and goes from there.
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Re:JS
I kind-of like JavaScript, probably because of its basic similarity to C, while it-seems-to-me being simpler than C++ I definitely like how a complete and completely functional program (however ugly it may LOOK), can be embedded in a Web page. I even like the way such a program can be client-side-only, needing no interaction with the server. In this day of phishing and other scams, it's nice to be able to offer something harmless to the masses. Here, for example: http://www.nemitz.net/vernon/SuDoKuHelp.htm
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Re:Port an existing project you wrote
A simple game can also be a good thing to write. My choice was "Master Mind". No matter what language you write it in, you need to construct a user interface and behind-the-scenes functionality. You will learn most of what you need to write anything else in that language. Over the years I wrote my chosen game program in "Color BASIC" (Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer), GWBASIC for MS-DOS, Clipper (DOS), C (DOS), Delphi (Windows), C (Windows), and JavaScript. Today I work full-time programming in Delphi. Here is the JavaScript version, built into a Web page that can be saved; you don't need to be connected to the Internet to load it up and play it. So, pick some simple game and have fun learning a new computer language (and you get to have fun playing the game, too).
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Re:How about a puzzle?
Above, "This" was supposed to be a link. I thought it WAS a link. Sorry.
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Reasonably short; definitely nontrivial
Back in the 1970s a little game came out called Master Mind. It's still available today, uses a plastic board and colored pegs. Great game -- except that if the person who creates a puzzle for you to solve makes a mistake in handing out clues, it is very upsetting. So the first significant program I wrote (BASIC) was Master Mind. Keyboard input, graphical output, clue algorithm, etc. Took me about a week, but back then I was just a beginner. NEVER makes a mistaking handing out clues! As years go by and I learn more languages, I usually turn to Master Mind as something significant to write. Clipper, C, Delphi, and Javascript. I like that last one because just viewing the page means you have loaded the program. Save the page and you can play the game offline. (Ok, so the output of that version isn't graphical. Feel free to improve as you like.)
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Javascript/HTML Logic game
Here.
That Web page is entirely self-contained; a browser can load it from the hard drive and the game will work fine, no Internet connection required. If you want to translate it to Ugandan, go ahead! -
Logic Game
Here is a simple Web page you can copy. The whole game is embedded in the page as JavaScript. Saved as a file, this page can be accessed any time, and works fine with no Internet connection. Also, for Spanish speakers, the page has been prettied up and translated. (Sorry, that link is not as exact as I'd like; click on "Actividades", and then click on "Adivina el numero".) You may need permission from the people who did the translation.
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Many Interpretations
Roughly in chronological order are:
The original Copenhagen Interpretation
Bohm's Interpretation
The Many Worlds Interpretation
The Transactional Interpretation
My own Aethereal Interpretation (blatant plug :)