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Knuth: All Questions Answered
sunhou writes: "The AMS published a lecture by Donald Knuth called All Questions Answered (pdf), where Knuth simply responded to questions from the audience. Topics ranged from errors in software ('I think Microsoft should say, "You'll get a check from Bill Gates every time you find an error"') to how he gets distracted by fonts on restaurant menus, to software patents. There were some really good questions (and responses)."
In the publishing field, there is quite a lot of software used before latex
And LaTeX has been in use since 1986 IIRC. The current version (LaTeX2e) dates from 1994. I'm not sure the first PowerPC was commercialised at that time.
Not to mention that LaTeX is an extension of TeX, which is even older. The TeXbook has been published in 1984, which was after the release of the program itself.
If you have some name of program used before LaTeX and still in use, could you name them for us? Thank you!
Well, I would like to ask the slashdot editors to please post more Knuth news. I think that his contributions to Computer Science deserve to be more widely appreciated by everybody even remotely connected with Computer Science (and not only the theoretically inclined people).
Unfortunately, I recognize that not everybody reading Slashdot has a theoretical education in Computer Science (well, many people are only practically trained -- if such a thing even exists) and miss the elegant construction of algorithms that Donald Knuth does in his books, algorithms which are efficient both regarding space and time (things which I miss in most software being written today, sadly).
This is not to mention the care with which his books are written, from didactic, technical and typographical standpoints: a lesson on how to write well.
I guess that the problem I mentioned above about current programmers writing code which is not exactly space- and time-efficient is that they must think "it's not worth it" (or many haven't actually even thought about the subject). A pity indeed.
This is, unfortunately, one of the bad sides of the ease of current (integrated) programming environments (which doesn't man that they are bad): people which aren't exactly trained can program, their programs run, but in a sub-optimal way.
I also think that many programming environments are an incentive to trial-and-error programming ("recompiling the program is too easy -- don't even bother to think if we have to add 1 or subtract 1"). This, of course, leads to sloopy programming.
Anyway, back to Knuth, I would really love to see a Slashdot interview with him, as I would appreciate anything regarding him and computers.
Hitler was in no way a christian, in fact his aryan beliefs were in almost complete contradiction to any christian belief. And the holocaust was based on race, not religion.
Hitler was indeed a christian. He did very evil things, but he was still a christian. Your second point however, is correct, the holocaust was about race, however the eugenicists saw it..
The Christian religion, is one of the primary reasons for the development of Europe to where it is today. Considering the immense influence it has had over the last 1500 years, it it not supprising that bad things came along with the good. The problem is with human nature, compared to any powerful instituion before it, it was a model of civility.
In fact, Christianity was one of the prime factors holding BACK Western European civilization for the 6-800 years following the fall of the roman empire. What need is there to innovate and to improve your lot in life if the messiah's second coming is right around the corner? It was only after Greco-Roman thought was re-introduced via Islam that Western European civilization started its upswing. Even later, the church had to be pulled kicking and screaming through the centuries by science. From Gailileo to Creationism, the church has had a great damping effect on scientific progress. See A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom for many, many more examples.
I'm not trying to take a dump on your beliefs. If they work for you, great. Have a cookie. But don't try to paint Christianity, or any other religion too rosy. Like most institutions, it has its darker side, and Christianity has a very dark one indeed.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
I don't know exactly what you've done, but as someone who's had to do papers in both word and latex, let me respectfully point out that making a word document look the same (or even have the same number of pages) on multiple computers, let alone multiple versions of Word, is something that made me tear my hair out. You want control, you use TeX. Period. You want a lot of control, but ease of use, you use LaTeX. You want total and complete frustration because your paper is a different number of pages depending on the computer, splits text in the dumbest places (leaves orphan headers), and so on ad nauseum, you use Word. You don't get control with Word. Even when you've micromanaged the text. I spent a week doing this, and vowed never to use Word again, and thus to never submit to this conference. (The conference I was submitting to was a bit out of my area, in any case, and is completely out now.)
Lea