. . . on the other side of the solar system. Obviously, he is right in the very short term, nobody is moving there today and, likely, not in the next decade or three. Will there be a base on mars in the next century? Maybe. Will we go there to live once we have mastered genetic engineering to adapt to any environment? Duh? We may live on Jupiter. Of course, that might be centuries away, so who gives a fuck?
My first languages were assembly (z80 and IBM 370). Assembly language forced me to understand the context of the language (hardware). The representations and abstractions were well defined by the context. I wrote my own macros and subroutines, which became libraries. Life was good. My best work was a 'Carbon Copy' like program that ran in less than 200 bytes of memory by effectively using the BIOS routines.
I documented my code well, as it helped me understand what I did better. I tried very hard to accomplish something with as little code as possible and explained why I thought it was best. In school, I challenged others to find ways to do it 'more elegantly' with less code and simpler logic flows. Of course, beyond writing a device driver, assembly language becomes complex in ways that rival C++ or even Objective C.
Later, I tried Forth. I could write really tight code, sometimes as efficient as assembly. However, I had a hard time with RPN and couldn't even document it well. I called it 'write only' code because it was so hard to read. By then, I had begun using C (also COBOL and PL/1). C was good for writing device driver utilities like configurators, and could be mixed with assembly for larger device drivers like video controllers (though I did not feel comfortable mixing languages). COBOL was good for writing business logic because it hardly needed much supplemental documentation. I liked PL/1 because it was the first language I used with strong typing and a checkout compiler. PL/1 forced more discipline into the start of my coding but made debugging easier. C++ was like that, but I had gotten so accustomed to C that it felt like my lover had become a dominatrix.
My point is that programming languages are as much for the programmer as for the target. When it is just me and my target (machine), the programming language is like a cerebral videogame controller, very intimate connection and control. As soon as you have a programming team, the code is no longer so intimate, as other humans must understand it. In my opinion, that is a huge compromise. However, that is life, human life.
The ideal might be a language that puts the machine on the same level as the programmers. It becomes part Product Owner and so some degree the Scrum Master, though the Scrum model would change quite a bit. Beyond the ideal, machines program themselves, and their code looks like this 010010101000110001010. Just a thought.
This post highlights the possibility that the NSA could spy on Americans in America by working with a foreign partner to act as a proxy in exchange for the NSA spying on their people, sort of like wife-swapping. Obviously, it would not be Saudi Arabia, as they lack the resources for such a grand effort. However, the British could do it quite well. More importantly, it fits with the American business trend of outsourcing and off-shoring work.
As for Saudi Arabia, they see like a good place to outsource 'enhanced interrogation'. It would be ironic, too, given that we have so many Americans who would be more than qualified to do the dirty work. I guess they could move to Riyadh.
The last machine that I recall using 8" disks was an NEC PC 8086. Running DOS 2.1, it was shaped like a microwave oven. That was in the mid 1980s. The diskette held about a megabyte, and there was no HDD.
The DDN network is likely an X25 WAN with bisync lines (RS422 or V35), a.k.a. ARPAnet. Bisync was notorious for going down due to 2-bit errors, making data look like control characters. I had a script that could reset a line, and you couldn't tell if the signal had gone down. That meant it was possible to tap into it. Diskettes could carry malware, and as several have mentioned, machines that booted from them were victims of some of the first PC viruses. Theirs probably boot from socketed EPROMs, which are easy to swap. All this was architected before network security was an issue. Fortunately, most terrorists are too young to know about these antiquities. However, if the Air Force believes it is invulnerable because it is ancient, then we are doomed.
Antimatter is so derisory. Must we put such a polarizing label on something we do not fully understand? If people referred to me that way, I would not hang around, either.
Of course it matters that we are made, and whatever we are made of quantum-wise, we should be proud, even if it destroys us when we come together.
I vote for calling it 'matter-of-fact'.
P.S. I appreciate StartsWithaBang renaming it from, "Why are we layered fatter?"
It would not be the first time the deceased left a will with a prank inside. Given the vulture-like disposition of some relatives, she might have left the map to her fortune inside the iPad. I would. Without the password, the data would be lost, as the password is used to encrypt the data.
. . . that it was actually the K**h brothers who contracted with the Russian Mafia to invent Bitcoin, and they set Nakomoto up as the fall guy. I'm sure it is totally bogus, in spite of the salaciousness and viral rumor-mongering appeal. Has anyone got any completely unsubstantiated confirmation of this?
As a desktop guy from way back (my 1st was a H89 that I built myself), I find this news to be depressing. However, the handwriting is on the wall. Once the volumes of desktops drop, the motherboard will become the exotic anomaly and hardware hacking will be the domain of the Raspberry PI generation.
I live in the shadow of Google but have AT&T DSL and use it to watch Netflix. In the past six months, performance has deteriorated significantly, dropping from an average of 1.35Mbps to 800Kbps and sometimes less. AT&T has tested the link to the CO and found it meets their service level standards.
I have spoken with other locals who expressed similar problems with Comcast. If you look at the sales of iPads and other tablets, their growth seems to track against this slowdown. Have these new tablets, streaming YouTube, Vimeo, and Netflix, put a strain on the local ISPs? I doubt if theISP's provisioning would keep up with sudden demand.
Until Leo Szilard made him famous. You can argue about a theorem, but you can't argue with a nuke. When the next Leo prints an AR-15 and shoots his critics, then Gutenburg will be as glorious as Einstein, and nobody will fuck with a publisher. Someday, they will have a printer that can build an Abrams M1A2. Of course, that tank will be a rare antique by then, but I'll be the first to order one.
1st Amendment meets 2nd Amendment, and they kick ass - William Randolph Hearst had wet dreams about this.
First, Silicon Valley sent the silicon (fabs) to Asia. Then, they outsourced labor to Asia. Then most start-ups needed an "Asian talent connection" (H1-B visa, India/China engineering, etc.) to get funding. Then,the VC set up offices in Asia. Now, those offices fund Asian start-ups. Asia is where the action is, and that is where the money is, too.
This may be a good example of a hive mind implementation. The first being the church, and the second was the corporation. The difference is that a machine might be the parser, instead of another person. There was talk of this kind of machine logic being used by companies in the form of schedulers, automated personal assistants, and management analytic engines -- all based on business policies. Once interconnected, they form a collective intelligence that drives the workers, probably like DNA drives a colony of ants. One might think something sinister, but the results are likely to be unpredictable.
Wish they were. People under 18 can't vote, have limited rights to free speech, can't smoke or drink, and generally must be under adult supervision. They can't have sex, either, which means they can't propagate. They also must go to school. Those over 18 are usually the problems, though. They seems to fuck everybody at some point.
The car will be the electronic communication device, and there will be no human driver. The unions will not like this. Expect politicians to pass laws that make this one seem "logical and highly intuitive."
As the Internet makes information easier to deliver, the traditional publishers struggle to deal with the separation of content and distribution. This transition is still unsettled because the shift from delivery to filtering is not complete. Someday, we will be able to access almost all data, and the trick will be to find the relevant information. There will be a lot of money made by successfully editing the world's knowledge. Until that model evolves, we are stuck with problems such as this.
It is wiser to know only what you need to know when you need to know it than to try to know everything.
Paul got 12% of the vote in the Texas primary and Romney got just over two-thirds, http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/primaries/state/tx. This was after the primary race was already in the bag for Mitt. Polls showed Paul would have done even better if Santorum and Gingrich had not bee splitting the ticket. As a favorite son, Ron Paul does not have to win in Texas. He just needs to get 15% (double digits) of the Republican vote for Mitt to lose as Massachusetts presidential candidates usually do in Texas.
He should select Ron Paul. It would consolidate the Republican base. On the other hand, if Ron Paul runs as an independent in just a few swing states (e.g., Texas), Ron will give the election to Obama. As VP, Ron could be effectively managed, as Kennedy did with Johnson and Reagan did with Bush. Remember what Mr. Gates used to say, "keep your friends close and your enemies closer."
However, I am talking about Mitt, a man with few political instincts. Therefore, he will pick Portman as an electoral hedge, because Rob is from the critical swing state of Ohio.
Slashdot Mirror
Taking you 'seriously', fish do not live 'on' earth.
. . . on the other side of the solar system. Obviously, he is right in the very short term, nobody is moving there today and, likely, not in the next decade or three. Will there be a base on mars in the next century? Maybe. Will we go there to live once we have mastered genetic engineering to adapt to any environment? Duh? We may live on Jupiter. Of course, that might be centuries away, so who gives a fuck?
My first languages were assembly (z80 and IBM 370). Assembly language forced me to understand the context of the language (hardware). The representations and abstractions were well defined by the context. I wrote my own macros and subroutines, which became libraries. Life was good. My best work was a 'Carbon Copy' like program that ran in less than 200 bytes of memory by effectively using the BIOS routines.
I documented my code well, as it helped me understand what I did better. I tried very hard to accomplish something with as little code as possible and explained why I thought it was best. In school, I challenged others to find ways to do it 'more elegantly' with less code and simpler logic flows. Of course, beyond writing a device driver, assembly language becomes complex in ways that rival C++ or even Objective C.
Later, I tried Forth. I could write really tight code, sometimes as efficient as assembly. However, I had a hard time with RPN and couldn't even document it well. I called it 'write only' code because it was so hard to read. By then, I had begun using C (also COBOL and PL/1). C was good for writing device driver utilities like configurators, and could be mixed with assembly for larger device drivers like video controllers (though I did not feel comfortable mixing languages). COBOL was good for writing business logic because it hardly needed much supplemental documentation. I liked PL/1 because it was the first language I used with strong typing and a checkout compiler. PL/1 forced more discipline into the start of my coding but made debugging easier. C++ was like that, but I had gotten so accustomed to C that it felt like my lover had become a dominatrix.
My point is that programming languages are as much for the programmer as for the target. When it is just me and my target (machine), the programming language is like a cerebral videogame controller, very intimate connection and control. As soon as you have a programming team, the code is no longer so intimate, as other humans must understand it. In my opinion, that is a huge compromise. However, that is life, human life.
The ideal might be a language that puts the machine on the same level as the programmers. It becomes part Product Owner and so some degree the Scrum Master, though the Scrum model would change quite a bit. Beyond the ideal, machines program themselves, and their code looks like this 010010101000110001010. Just a thought.
This post highlights the possibility that the NSA could spy on Americans in America by working with a foreign partner to act as a proxy in exchange for the NSA spying on their people, sort of like wife-swapping. Obviously, it would not be Saudi Arabia, as they lack the resources for such a grand effort. However, the British could do it quite well. More importantly, it fits with the American business trend of outsourcing and off-shoring work. As for Saudi Arabia, they see like a good place to outsource 'enhanced interrogation'. It would be ironic, too, given that we have so many Americans who would be more than qualified to do the dirty work. I guess they could move to Riyadh.
The difference between a republican and a democrat -- a donut blimp. Figure it out.
The last machine that I recall using 8" disks was an NEC PC 8086. Running DOS 2.1, it was shaped like a microwave oven. That was in the mid 1980s. The diskette held about a megabyte, and there was no HDD.
The DDN network is likely an X25 WAN with bisync lines (RS422 or V35), a.k.a. ARPAnet. Bisync was notorious for going down due to 2-bit errors, making data look like control characters. I had a script that could reset a line, and you couldn't tell if the signal had gone down. That meant it was possible to tap into it. Diskettes could carry malware, and as several have mentioned, machines that booted from them were victims of some of the first PC viruses. Theirs probably boot from socketed EPROMs, which are easy to swap. All this was architected before network security was an issue. Fortunately, most terrorists are too young to know about these antiquities. However, if the Air Force believes it is invulnerable because it is ancient, then we are doomed.
Antimatter is so derisory. Must we put such a polarizing label on something we do not fully understand? If people referred to me that way, I would not hang around, either.
Of course it matters that we are made, and whatever we are made of quantum-wise, we should be proud, even if it destroys us when we come together.
I vote for calling it 'matter-of-fact'.
P.S. I appreciate StartsWithaBang renaming it from, "Why are we layered fatter?"
The Internet once again gets too much credit. Johannes Gutenberg started it all.
Too late, the feeding frenzy has begun -- http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/0...
He is better off wearing a sushi suit in a shark tank.
It would not be the first time the deceased left a will with a prank inside. Given the vulture-like disposition of some relatives, she might have left the map to her fortune inside the iPad. I would. Without the password, the data would be lost, as the password is used to encrypt the data.
. . . that it was actually the K**h brothers who contracted with the Russian Mafia to invent Bitcoin, and they set Nakomoto up as the fall guy. I'm sure it is totally bogus, in spite of the salaciousness and viral rumor-mongering appeal. Has anyone got any completely unsubstantiated confirmation of this?
This is the end of the motherboard era. LIke Mainframes (that are doing well, BTW), the motherboard has seen its heyday. Intel is de-emphasizing them in favor of processors for mobile, and AMD is looking pretty sad, see http://www.techradar.com/news/upgrades/graphics-cards/motherboards/computing-components/processors/computing/pc/why-the-pc-of-2020-could-be-bad-news-for-modders-1117302
As a desktop guy from way back (my 1st was a H89 that I built myself), I find this news to be depressing. However, the handwriting is on the wall. Once the volumes of desktops drop, the motherboard will become the exotic anomaly and hardware hacking will be the domain of the Raspberry PI generation.
. . . the world will end . . . for someone.
Fog will do it, too.
I live in the shadow of Google but have AT&T DSL and use it to watch Netflix. In the past six months, performance has deteriorated significantly, dropping from an average of 1.35Mbps to 800Kbps and sometimes less. AT&T has tested the link to the CO and found it meets their service level standards.
I have spoken with other locals who expressed similar problems with Comcast. If you look at the sales of iPads and other tablets, their growth seems to track against this slowdown. Have these new tablets, streaming YouTube, Vimeo, and Netflix, put a strain on the local ISPs? I doubt if theISP's provisioning would keep up with sudden demand.
Until Leo Szilard made him famous. You can argue about a theorem, but you can't argue with a nuke. When the next Leo prints an AR-15 and shoots his critics, then Gutenburg will be as glorious as Einstein, and nobody will fuck with a publisher. Someday, they will have a printer that can build an Abrams M1A2. Of course, that tank will be a rare antique by then, but I'll be the first to order one.
1st Amendment meets 2nd Amendment, and they kick ass - William Randolph Hearst had wet dreams about this.
. . . but he doesn't seem too bright. Guess that proves his point, paradoxically speaking.
First, Silicon Valley sent the silicon (fabs) to Asia. Then, they outsourced labor to Asia. Then most start-ups needed an "Asian talent connection" (H1-B visa, India/China engineering, etc.) to get funding. Then,the VC set up offices in Asia. Now, those offices fund Asian start-ups. Asia is where the action is, and that is where the money is, too.
This may be a good example of a hive mind implementation. The first being the church, and the second was the corporation. The difference is that a machine might be the parser, instead of another person. There was talk of this kind of machine logic being used by companies in the form of schedulers, automated personal assistants, and management analytic engines -- all based on business policies. Once interconnected, they form a collective intelligence that drives the workers, probably like DNA drives a colony of ants. One might think something sinister, but the results are likely to be unpredictable.
Wish they were. People under 18 can't vote, have limited rights to free speech, can't smoke or drink, and generally must be under adult supervision. They can't have sex, either, which means they can't propagate. They also must go to school. Those over 18 are usually the problems, though. They seems to fuck everybody at some point.
The car will be the electronic communication device, and there will be no human driver. The unions will not like this. Expect politicians to pass laws that make this one seem "logical and highly intuitive."
I've had no need for it. Who does?
As the Internet makes information easier to deliver, the traditional publishers struggle to deal with the separation of content and distribution. This transition is still unsettled because the shift from delivery to filtering is not complete. Someday, we will be able to access almost all data, and the trick will be to find the relevant information. There will be a lot of money made by successfully editing the world's knowledge. Until that model evolves, we are stuck with problems such as this.
It is wiser to know only what you need to know when you need to know it than to try to know everything.
Paul got 12% of the vote in the Texas primary and Romney got just over two-thirds, http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/primaries/state/tx. This was after the primary race was already in the bag for Mitt. Polls showed Paul would have done even better if Santorum and Gingrich had not bee splitting the ticket. As a favorite son, Ron Paul does not have to win in Texas. He just needs to get 15% (double digits) of the Republican vote for Mitt to lose as Massachusetts presidential candidates usually do in Texas.
He should select Ron Paul. It would consolidate the Republican base. On the other hand, if Ron Paul runs as an independent in just a few swing states (e.g., Texas), Ron will give the election to Obama. As VP, Ron could be effectively managed, as Kennedy did with Johnson and Reagan did with Bush. Remember what Mr. Gates used to say, "keep your friends close and your enemies closer."
However, I am talking about Mitt, a man with few political instincts. Therefore, he will pick Portman as an electoral hedge, because Rob is from the critical swing state of Ohio.