I had them when I was 10-12 years old, and they really explained all the principles. They also allowed for an immense number of circuits. From simple light-switches, over AM-radios to proximity detectors and the like.
Yeah, but can you do without the syntactic sugar?:) E.g. without the proc etc. I remember writing small assembler programs under DOS using the debug command, that could produce.com files.
2. The gimp is a viable replacement for Photoshop for Adobe's target group (professionals).
I know it's "en vogue" to bash GIMP in favor of Photoshop. But I think that's a lot prejudiced, although I cannot explain why it is so. My wife, for example, is a professional fashion designer. For her pixel-based work she prefers the GIMP over Photoshop, regularly complaining that Photoshop is missing features, that she finds useful in GIMP. For vector-based work she uses CorelDraw X3. Although she tried and used Inkscape. But that does not scale very well with complex drawings, plus it lacks several features that are in CorelDraw. I think here Inkscape has still a lot to catch up to. So from my personal experience, at least in some professional design disciplines, The GIMP is already prime-time software.
The Chinese have ID cards, and they also have execution vans roaming the countryside acting as judge, jury and executioner, handing out justice at needlepoint.
What on earth is this supposed to imply? That id-cards boost unjust trials? You cannot be hinting at the ethical problems connected with capital punishments, since the US uses capital punishment, too. Counterexample: In Germany we have had id-cards since after the war. We abolished capital punishment in 1951 and have a working juridicial system that adheres to the rule of law. So maybe the US should also look at positive examples of countries having id-cards. Your comment was simply polemic.
Could someone explain to me the main differences between TeXmacs and LyX? I have used the latter quite extensively some years ago, but I am now back to using Emacs and AucTeX/RefTeX.:)
It is like the use of the right Alt key on European keyboards to get extra accented characters. The key is called "Alt Gr" on many European keyboards. On a German keyboard, you press Alt Gr + some other key to get things like the Euro sign, the backslash, the pipe character, the tilde character, curly braces, or the @ sign.
Exactly. And it is similar to the "US intl" layout in X11. Where you can access different international characters with the right ALT key (like the umlauts etc). And I think that has been around for years, too.
But they all came back to Windows, because there are Windows input methods and word processors for Simplified and Traditional Chinese that kick the pants off of anything available for Linux. The wife doesn't even care so much for Mac OSX compared to the one for Windows. And the fonts for Simplified Chinese in Fedora are mediocre at best, and awful at worst. Looking at a Google.cn search in Firefox on Ubuntu 7.04 is hideous even to my untrained eyes -- you see many characters missing, and the characters that are there look like a mish-mash of multiple fonts.
Current Linux distributions, especially OpenSuSE, are quite good at this. You don't need to tweak much anymore. Just choose your locale upon installation and you are ready to go. If there are still problems, have a look at Mike Fabian's website (http://www.suse.de/~mfabian/). There is a very good CJK document and a mailing list for discussions.
So, if you care about this issue, this is what needs to happen.
Go check out NJStar on Windows. Make something like that for Linux, but better.
Go check out how the Windows Simplified Chinese works, and put that there.
And steal some decent fonts for Linux and make sure your favorite distro has 'em.
As I said, the fonts are no problem anymore. I found the Arphic TTF fonts to be really great (e.g. already included in OpenSuSE). My sister studied chinese (language, business, laws), and did her thesis about 5 or 6 years ago. Using Linux, StarOffice and some XIM input program, that I forgot the name of. It seemed to work really well for her! I just took a look at NJStar, and it looks very similar to the program that she used. Pinyin input, and then interactive selection of the matching character -- nothing new here.
And one more thing: Try to switch from English to Chinese user interfaces in Windows. Even during mid-session! Not possible? Well, Linux does that... I must say Linux and especially KDE have an excellent localization and internationalization support. And as a programmer I have to give Kudos to the Trolls for making Qt so easily translatable, just fantastic!
And while we're at it: Trolltech also sells the Greenphone, a Linux-based phone running Qtopia. This is not really for end-users, but meant as a development platform for Qtopia applications. I find it very neat. Smaller screen than iPhone and the NEO, but still very nice! Have a look at:
> No, you didn't test Konqueror 3.5.7 unitl AFTER Opera apparently passed. > So Konqueror passed after Opera. Sure, it may have been ABLE to pass > before, but it never took the initiative.
Damn, you're right! I checked the changelog, and the konq developers wrote: "Dudes, we, like, made Konqueror css selector test compatible, but I am, like, totally wasted to try it." And so the fact went unnoticed! Oh no!
Sequencer - again not crucial to meet the definition of a standard 3D animation suite - but again a powerful feature that is part of Blender.
And may I say: The sequencer is one of the BEST parts of blender. Nothing beats whipping up a short presentation movie with the blender sequencer. It is quite intuitive for a blender user, since it uses the same key and mouse mappings. We use it all the time when we want to stitch together some clips.
Some of the references are english, so you might want to check them. The page above states energetic amortization times of 3-5 years for monocrystalline solar panels. Polycrystalline or amorphic panels have much lower pay-back times. The expected lifetime of a mono panel is about 20 years.
A space-based infrared telescope (like Spitzer, but better) is exactly the right tool for detecting the presence of ozone. (A ground based telescope will not do, since infrared is absorbed by the atmosphere.)
>> C++ defines container classes which cannot overflow. >> Try using them next time you write some C++ code. > > No, the STL defines container classes, and they suck > just as badly as the C++ language itself. Performance > goes out he window unless you spend inordinate amounts > of time ensuring that all the classes you put into the > containers are setup to avoid multiple copying. This is > a major pain in the arse, as different implementations > of the STL have different semantics, and "accepted best > practice" is to not to hold a copy rather than a > reference to an object in a container
On the contrary -- the GP is quite correct. First, the STL ist not called the STL anymore for ages. It is part of the C++ standard library. And that's what it is -- a STANDARD. Compilers that do not follow the semantics described IN the standard are plainly broken and should only be used with care, if at all. But this is always a problem with languages that are implemented by a lot of people. Java for example is simple, because there are only vert few implementations in existance, and most probably 95% of the people using Java uses the one done by SUN. I think only very few use gcj for example.
Also the STL is not that complex as you think and it really is efficient, if used correctly. But that is the case for any library and any tool. Furthermore one can always put pointers to objects in a container, which is the same as using a reference. And if you want to have some safety there, use a smartpointer -- there is nothing complicated about that. The discussion here really shows that C++ is indeed a COMPLEX language and that indeed it is NOT UNDERSTOOD by many of us here. But I think those who have worked with it for some years and REALLY UNDERSTOOD some of the more complex topics of it, will admit that C++ is a powerful, efficient and elegant language. There is no all-purpose language that is ALWAYS simple, efficient and elegant. This just can't happen. But C++ fits a lot of purposes well. For example for many occasions I write small python programs when I need to do some parsing, conversion or small calculations. That's totally great! But I also use C++ for larger programs, because it offers a vast amount of libraries and ideas. Not having to implement my own partition, sort, find or vector every time is really helpful. And those algorithms even run very fast on all my self-created types.
I don't know where else to ask, since I don't know a public discussion forum for discussing slashdot.:) But honestly: why are there so little modded comments at the moment? I also haven't had modpoints in some time. Has this something to do with the new comment system or tagging beta?
I was just playing around with cal, reading the man page and found this:
$ cal 9 1752
September 1752
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
That's a really weird month. Appearently, the September Massacres happened on September 2nd, 1752. Don't know if there is a relationship there.
From the manpage of cal(1):
The Gregorian Reformation is assumed to have occurred in 1752 on the 3rd of September. By this time, most countries had recognized the reformation (although a few did not recognize it until the early 1900's.) Ten days following that date were eliminated by the reformation, so the calendar for that month is a bit unusual.
The Turing test is not a well defined test. Whether a robot passes the Turing test or not, it greatly depends on the intelligence of the human partner. A chatbot may fool a 10-year old, but it may fail with a 20-year old. So in fact, we already have many chatbots that pass the Turing test - it all depends on how you look at the issue.
I agree. Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence both can have different levels. If a 10-year old is not clever enough to tell a chatbot from a real human, maybe then the chatbot has the intelligence equivalent to a 10-year old. It might also be that one day we have chatbots that fool even well educated people and that can be identified only by AI experts. That does not make us more stupid or the chatbot less "Turing-worthy". Intelligence is a relative quantity. The question is: what amount and detail of intelligence do we want to create? The Turing-test aims at AI that can fool the counterpart in a conversation. The Turing test will only be truly won, if every living person on this earth could be fooled by the chatbot. But I don't think that's what we aim for. It would be quite intriguing though when we will have bots that can fool the regular slashdotter...:)
And while we're at it. There is a free alternative. It has even got all the spiffy KDE features like ioslaves and so on at its hands. Plus all the cameras supported that gphoto2 has.
Slashdot Mirror
In Germany, the best kits are or at least were made by Busch:
http://www.busch-model.com/karina/katalog/d/530.htm
I had them when I was 10-12 years old, and they really explained all the principles. They also allowed for an immense number of circuits. From simple light-switches, over AM-radios to proximity detectors and the like.
They even have a computer kit:
http://www.busch-model.com/karina/katalog/d/2188.htm
It teaches you from the ground up how computers work.
Yeah, but can you do without the syntactic sugar? :) E.g. without the proc etc. I remember writing small assembler programs under DOS using the debug command, that could produce .com files.
I know it's "en vogue" to bash GIMP in favor of Photoshop. But I think that's a lot prejudiced, although I cannot explain why it is so. My wife, for example, is a professional fashion designer. For her pixel-based work she prefers the GIMP over Photoshop, regularly complaining that Photoshop is missing features, that she finds useful in GIMP. For vector-based work she uses CorelDraw X3. Although she tried and used Inkscape. But that does not scale very well with complex drawings, plus it lacks several features that are in CorelDraw. I think here Inkscape has still a lot to catch up to. So from my personal experience, at least in some professional design disciplines, The GIMP is already prime-time software.
What on earth is this supposed to imply? That id-cards boost unjust trials? You cannot be hinting at the ethical problems connected with capital punishments, since the US uses capital punishment, too. Counterexample: In Germany we have had id-cards since after the war. We abolished capital punishment in 1951 and have a working juridicial system that adheres to the rule of law. So maybe the US should also look at positive examples of countries having id-cards. Your comment was simply polemic.
Could someone explain to me the main differences between TeXmacs and LyX? I have used the latter quite extensively some years ago, but I am now back to using Emacs and AucTeX/RefTeX. :)
> My predictions for 1988: ...
> 9. Liquid crystal will be discovered by Frederick Reintzer.
According to Wikipedia [1] that happened in 1888.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_crystals#History
Exactly. And it is similar to the "US intl" layout in X11. Where you can access different international characters with the right ALT key (like the umlauts etc). And I think that has been around for years, too.
D'oh! I am in Homer-Mode again. Of course I didn't mean PEACH, I meant the Apricot project: http://www.blender.org/blenderorg/blender-foundati on/2007-plans/apricot-open-game/
:-)
All those fruits...
Well then, everyone, let's head over to Project Peach: http://peach.blender.org/
Yes, the blenderheads are at it again, and they are doing a game this time...
Current Linux distributions, especially OpenSuSE, are quite good at this. You don't need to tweak much anymore. Just choose your locale upon installation and you are ready to go. If there are still problems, have a look at Mike Fabian's website (http://www.suse.de/~mfabian/). There is a very good CJK document and a mailing list for discussions.
As I said, the fonts are no problem anymore. I found the Arphic TTF fonts to be really great (e.g. already included in OpenSuSE). My sister studied chinese (language, business, laws), and did her thesis about 5 or 6 years ago. Using Linux, StarOffice and some XIM input program, that I forgot the name of. It seemed to work really well for her! I just took a look at NJStar, and it looks very similar to the program that she used. Pinyin input, and then interactive selection of the matching character -- nothing new here.
And one more thing: Try to switch from English to Chinese user interfaces in Windows. Even during mid-session! Not possible? Well, Linux does that... I must say Linux and especially KDE have an excellent localization and internationalization support. And as a programmer I have to give Kudos to the Trolls for making Qt so easily translatable, just fantastic!
And while we're at it: Trolltech also sells the Greenphone, a Linux-based phone running Qtopia. This is not really for end-users, but meant as a development platform for Qtopia applications. I find it very neat. Smaller screen than iPhone and the NEO, but still very nice! Have a look at:
http://trolltech.com/products/qtopia/greenphone
And yes, the software is GPL'ed when you buy the community edition of the phone.
> No, you didn't test Konqueror 3.5.7 unitl AFTER Opera apparently passed.
> So Konqueror passed after Opera. Sure, it may have been ABLE to pass
> before, but it never took the initiative.
Damn, you're right! I checked the changelog, and the konq developers wrote: "Dudes, we, like, made Konqueror css selector test compatible, but I am, like, totally wasted to try it." And so the fact went unnoticed! Oh no!
Or an iGasm? *ducks*
And may I say: The sequencer is one of the BEST parts of blender. Nothing beats whipping up a short presentation movie with the blender sequencer. It is quite intuitive for a blender user, since it uses the same key and mouse mappings. We use it all the time when we want to stitch together some clips.
There is a German website with references about this topic: http://www.volker-quaschning.de/datserv/kev/index. html
Some of the references are english, so you might want to check them. The page above states energetic amortization times of 3-5 years for monocrystalline solar panels. Polycrystalline or amorphic panels have much lower pay-back times. The expected lifetime of a mono panel is about 20 years.
Here in Germany the vaccination is paid by your health insurance (everybody has one). The vaccination is not mandatory, but every woman can afford it.
Except at the Antarctic... ;-)
>> C++ defines container classes which cannot overflow.
>> Try using them next time you write some C++ code.
>
> No, the STL defines container classes, and they suck
> just as badly as the C++ language itself. Performance
> goes out he window unless you spend inordinate amounts
> of time ensuring that all the classes you put into the
> containers are setup to avoid multiple copying. This is
> a major pain in the arse, as different implementations
> of the STL have different semantics, and "accepted best
> practice" is to not to hold a copy rather than a
> reference to an object in a container
On the contrary -- the GP is quite correct. First, the STL ist not called the STL anymore for ages. It is part of the C++ standard library. And that's what it is -- a STANDARD. Compilers that do not follow the semantics described IN the standard are plainly broken and should only be used with care, if at all. But this is always a problem with languages that are implemented by a lot of people. Java for example is simple, because there are only vert few implementations in existance, and most probably 95% of the people using Java uses the one done by SUN. I think only very few use gcj for example.
Also the STL is not that complex as you think and it really is efficient, if used correctly. But that is the case for any library and any tool. Furthermore one can always put pointers to objects in a container, which is the same as using a reference. And if you want to have some safety there, use a smartpointer -- there is nothing complicated about that. The discussion here really shows that C++ is indeed a COMPLEX language and that indeed it is NOT UNDERSTOOD by many of us here. But I think those who have worked with it for some years and REALLY UNDERSTOOD some of the more complex topics of it, will admit that C++ is a powerful, efficient and elegant language. There is no all-purpose language that is ALWAYS simple, efficient and elegant. This just can't happen. But C++ fits a lot of purposes well. For example for many occasions I write small python programs when I need to do some parsing, conversion or small calculations. That's totally great! But I also use C++ for larger programs, because it offers a vast amount of libraries and ideas. Not having to implement my own partition, sort, find or vector every time is really helpful. And those algorithms even run very fast on all my self-created types.
Have a look here:
r ce.html
http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq_opensou
I don't know where else to ask, since I don't know a public discussion forum for discussing slashdot. :) But honestly: why are there so little modded comments at the moment? I also haven't had modpoints in some time. Has this something to do with the new comment system or tagging beta?
So now you complain about dupes AND crappy articles? Where do you think they should take those high quality stories from?? ;)
I agree. Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence both can have different levels. If a 10-year old is not clever enough to tell a chatbot from a real human, maybe then the chatbot has the intelligence equivalent to a 10-year old. It might also be that one day we have chatbots that fool even well educated people and that can be identified only by AI experts. That does not make us more stupid or the chatbot less "Turing-worthy". Intelligence is a relative quantity. The question is: what amount and detail of intelligence do we want to create? The Turing-test aims at AI that can fool the counterpart in a conversation. The Turing test will only be truly won, if every living person on this earth could be fooled by the chatbot. But I don't think that's what we aim for. It would be quite intriguing though when we will have bots that can fool the regular slashdotter... :)
This is known and actually a feature, which can be turned off:
9 .html
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/00974
And while we're at it. There is a free alternative. It has even got all the spiffy KDE features like ioslaves and so on at its hands. Plus all the cameras supported that gphoto2 has.