Dunno why you attracted such nasty replies. I'm with you for the most part, but I listen to podcasts as I'm driving my daily commute. I might do that if I took the DC Metro, too, since I tend to get carsick reading while the train goes around curves. The podcast I just finished (the History of Rome) was quite different in audio than it would have been in print; the author (right term?) was asked whether he was going to come out with a book of the episodes, and he pointed out that what works in speech doesn't necessarily work in print--jokes and other turns of phrase don't come across the same, nor do pauses. All in all, I think I preferred listening.
It's sort of a joke. A *very* smart compiler would look at the code, determine that it was trying to calculate the digits of pi, and perform the optimization: substitute the value of pi to the requisite number of digits, calculated (if need be) at compile time. I'm sure I saw that somewhere, but a quick search didn't turn anything up. Just this:
"Never put off until run time what you can do at compile time."
- David Gries, in "Compiler Construction for Digital Computers", circa 1969.
I've adapted to be able to use it, because I have to use it at work. That doesn't mean I don't still complain about it, much less that I'm too dense to comprehend. It does mean that I can imagine something better (menus).
Wow, you really are negative about the Ribbon. Just like me. Only diff is, I don't call them icons, I call them hieroglyphics. (There's a reason alphabetic writing systems took over nearly everywhere except China, and to some extent Japan.)
You mean my Stanley Steamer isn't a horseless carriage? Then there's the steam plant I worked on that drove a 4000 ton destroyer at 35 mph... Ok, I'm getting off-topic.
So all seriousness aside, we use MsOffice 2013 at work. (I think--how can you tell any more? there's no "Help | About"! Ok, had to google it, and yes, 2013.) So I tried this preview you mention: selected some text, and moused-over the hieroglyphs, I mean icons. No preview. There's a little balloon that gives a text description of what it means to underline text ("Underline your text", duh), but the selected text doesn't change for this or most other changes. The only formatting change that seems to offer a preview is the font selection. But I never ever ever ever change the font of a piece of text; I always use Styles. So that does me no good. And mousing over the styles (which, as I say, I do use) again does not preview anything, which would be really useful (or preview changes I make to a style). Instead, mouse-over of a style just gives a balloon listing some (obviously not all) of the settings for the particular style, and there seems to be no way at all to preview changes to a style.
Maybe previewing works in Office 365?
And btw, I don't see why previewing wouldn't work just as well with menus as it does (in 365?) with the ribbon. So unless I'm missing s.t., this doesn't seem to be an advantage to the ribbon, it's just a somewhat useful feature that Microsoft happens to have added after replacing the menu with the ribbon.
"Common functions are easier to find for most users..." I guess I'm not "most users", because I don't find it particularly easy to find the functions I use commonly. On the contrary, I have to overlook a lot of features that are, for me, junk: nearly every formatting feature in the "Home" ribbon tab, for example--like I say, that's what God made Styles for. Every single thing in the Design and Mailings tabs, and almost everything in the Insert tab except "Table"--and then, once you've inserted a Table, you have to use an entirely different tab to do anything with it. Whereas everything having to do with Tables used to be accessible from a single "Table" menu. The Review tab has some useful things, but what on earth the Language stuff is doing in there, I don't know (nor who uses it--I'm a linguist, and I virtually never use it). And what's the difference between the Paragraph thingy in the Home tab and the separate Paragraph thingy in the Page Layout tab? I guess if I studied them, I'd figure it out, but it's not intuitive.
In short, I find most of the tabs/ icons in the ribbon useless, confusing, or hard to find. But I'm sure there must be some user somewhere who finds it all logical. You, I guess.
On a semi-related topic, I guess/. doesn't do Unicode (I recall seeing that in someone's sig line). When I typed in my post, I had an umlauted 'o' in Erdos' name, and I see it's gone now. Weird, I wonder why/. can't get with the times? It's not like Unicode is new...
As a linguist, I guess I have to agree with you about skyscrapers. (There's a story about a certain skyscraper and some languages...) And you're right in lots of what you say. But I guess there are other things you can't describe with math, but you can with language. The beauty of a sunset, the uglyness of a burned out car; love, hate; joy, sorrow. We would not be human if we had math but no language.
Math is not the better language, nor is language the better math. I'd say they were orthogonal, but that's not quite true either. But they certainly serve different purposes in different ways.
"[The newborn] may learn...language... and that's no contradiction of the blank slate because it's not born with those things."
Chomsky would disagree with you about language, and so would I (I'm a linguist). Virtually everyone learns at least one language, which is unlike the learning of math, physics, and (to some extent) morals. The only plausible explanation (I think) is that we do not come to language with a blank slate; we have some innate understanding of how languages work, and some more or less automatic way to learn them from exposure.
"Lots of people simply do not have the intellectual facilities...you're not going to become Einstein just because you 'really try.'"
Of course. But I think the point of the original article (and the talk) was that somewhere along the line, someone who did have good intellectual facilities got lost in the system. To what extent it was his fault (for falling in with the wrong gang), and to what extent it was the system's fault (for not recognizing his ability and helping him use it), I have no idea. And how frequent this is, I also don't know. But it is a problem. I was lucky, and maybe you were too; I was in a school system that recognized talent and helped you succeed, and I had great teachers along the way. And I never ran into the wrong gang. Not everyone is so lucky.
I took algebra, geometry, trig, and calculus in High School, and a smattering of linear algebra; finished with a semester of calculus and a semester of probability and statistics in college. The latter was a very theory-oriented course: we learned that there is a theorem that says it's possible to cut up a solid object and put it back together in such a way that it's twice as big (radius, volume, doesn't matter) with no space. (Of course it only works if the sphere is infinitely divisible, i.e. not atomic.)
What have I actually needed since then? Well, I studied linguistics, and now work in computational linguistics. Geometry was eye opening: the notion of proof from axioms. Basic algebra and trig were of some use; advanced algebra and calculus never really helped. But I sure wish I knew more about linear algebra and statistics.
YMMV, of course; engineers, especially electrical engineers, probably need the rest, and of course there are science disciplines that need other kinds of math. But IMHO *everyone* should know a lot more about probability and statistics. And that includes students who never go to college. Very little algebra is needed to get a working knowledge of statistics.
In sum, I think the math that's taught (past arithmetic) is upside down. (Most) people need more statistics, and far less algebra, trig, calculus...
Another movie you might like, with similar point of view, is "Spare Parts" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3233418/). Also a book. A Wired article tells the story more briefly (https://www.wired.com/2014/12/spare-parts/).
Similar story here, although I can't remember (it *was* almost 60 years ago) whether I got points off for writing your kind of 4 and 9 (and a 2 that looked like the printed 2, rather than some kind of curly-cue thing), or whether I just gave in so I wouldn't lose points. It wasn't until drafting class in High School that I reverted to my father's 2, 4 and 9. (He was an engineer, and in those days being an engineer meant hand-written numbers and words on your blueprints: drafting.)
I guess you're talking about this: http://www.nationaldefensemaga... The article dates back to 2000, and I haven't heard about it since. I wonder if it was vaporware... Have you seen anything more recent?
Not sure what you're saying here, but: all the asteroids we've ever seen orbit the Sun (unless you count Phobos and Deimos, two moons of Mars, which appear to be captured asteroids; and maybe some of the moons of Jupiter). There are asteroids around other stars, but we've never actually observed individual ones.
Otoh, very few of the asteroids in orbit around the Sun pass the Earth's orbit; most remain out between Mars and Jupiter.
It's possible to track the larger asteroids that cross the Earth's orbit, and predict where they (and of course we) will be on future orbit crossings. Not perfectly, and the tracking depends on how long the asteroid in question has been tracked, and of course the accuracy goes down for predictions further into the future.
Looking at the other replies, it reminds me that we old people are not just better, we're smarter. These young whippersnappers just can't handle something like LaTeX.
Slashdot Mirror
Dunno why you attracted such nasty replies. I'm with you for the most part, but I listen to podcasts as I'm driving my daily commute. I might do that if I took the DC Metro, too, since I tend to get carsick reading while the train goes around curves. The podcast I just finished (the History of Rome) was quite different in audio than it would have been in print; the author (right term?) was asked whether he was going to come out with a book of the episodes, and he pointed out that what works in speech doesn't necessarily work in print--jokes and other turns of phrase don't come across the same, nor do pauses. All in all, I think I preferred listening.
It's sort of a joke. A *very* smart compiler would look at the code, determine that it was trying to calculate the digits of pi, and perform the optimization: substitute the value of pi to the requisite number of digits, calculated (if need be) at compile time. I'm sure I saw that somewhere, but a quick search didn't turn anything up. Just this:
"Never put off until run time what you can do at compile time."
- David Gries, in "Compiler Construction for Digital Computers", circa 1969.
Smart compiler. What does it do to a program that calculates 64 (say) digits of pi?
That's true of a tree, but it's not necessarily true of a Direct Acyclic Graph (DAG). In particular, it's not true of a DAG which is not a tree.
I used it all the time in Prolog, it's really the only way to program in that language.
Oh, yeah, I guess that was nearly two decades ago... Time flies when I'm having fun.
I've adapted to be able to use it, because I have to use it at work. That doesn't mean I don't still complain about it, much less that I'm too dense to comprehend. It does mean that I can imagine something better (menus).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Wow, you really are negative about the Ribbon. Just like me. Only diff is, I don't call them icons, I call them hieroglyphics. (There's a reason alphabetic writing systems took over nearly everywhere except China, and to some extent Japan.)
You mean my Stanley Steamer isn't a horseless carriage? Then there's the steam plant I worked on that drove a 4000 ton destroyer at 35 mph... Ok, I'm getting off-topic.
So all seriousness aside, we use MsOffice 2013 at work. (I think--how can you tell any more? there's no "Help | About"! Ok, had to google it, and yes, 2013.) So I tried this preview you mention: selected some text, and moused-over the hieroglyphs, I mean icons. No preview. There's a little balloon that gives a text description of what it means to underline text ("Underline your text", duh), but the selected text doesn't change for this or most other changes. The only formatting change that seems to offer a preview is the font selection. But I never ever ever ever change the font of a piece of text; I always use Styles. So that does me no good. And mousing over the styles (which, as I say, I do use) again does not preview anything, which would be really useful (or preview changes I make to a style). Instead, mouse-over of a style just gives a balloon listing some (obviously not all) of the settings for the particular style, and there seems to be no way at all to preview changes to a style.
Maybe previewing works in Office 365?
And btw, I don't see why previewing wouldn't work just as well with menus as it does (in 365?) with the ribbon. So unless I'm missing s.t., this doesn't seem to be an advantage to the ribbon, it's just a somewhat useful feature that Microsoft happens to have added after replacing the menu with the ribbon.
"Common functions are easier to find for most users..." I guess I'm not "most users", because I don't find it particularly easy to find the functions I use commonly. On the contrary, I have to overlook a lot of features that are, for me, junk: nearly every formatting feature in the "Home" ribbon tab, for example--like I say, that's what God made Styles for. Every single thing in the Design and Mailings tabs, and almost everything in the Insert tab except "Table"--and then, once you've inserted a Table, you have to use an entirely different tab to do anything with it. Whereas everything having to do with Tables used to be accessible from a single "Table" menu. The Review tab has some useful things, but what on earth the Language stuff is doing in there, I don't know (nor who uses it--I'm a linguist, and I virtually never use it). And what's the difference between the Paragraph thingy in the Home tab and the separate Paragraph thingy in the Page Layout tab? I guess if I studied them, I'd figure it out, but it's not intuitive.
In short, I find most of the tabs/ icons in the ribbon useless, confusing, or hard to find. But I'm sure there must be some user somewhere who finds it all logical. You, I guess.
Like them tailfins on your horseless carriage?
"China got the bomb, but have no fears
They can't wipe us out for at least five years!"
--Tom Lehrer
Expert system? How 1980s...
"It's a shame your parents were unaware of birth-control." Yeah, I'm opposed to abortion, but for that AC I might make an exception.
Durn you! I was going to tell that whippersnapper a thing or two about FORTRAN, but you zero-upped me!
On a semi-related topic, I guess /. doesn't do Unicode (I recall seeing that in someone's sig line). When I typed in my post, I had an umlauted 'o' in Erdos' name, and I see it's gone now. Weird, I wonder why /. can't get with the times? It's not like Unicode is new...
As a linguist, I guess I have to agree with you about skyscrapers. (There's a story about a certain skyscraper and some languages...) And you're right in lots of what you say. But I guess there are other things you can't describe with math, but you can with language. The beauty of a sunset, the uglyness of a burned out car; love, hate; joy, sorrow. We would not be human if we had math but no language.
Math is not the better language, nor is language the better math. I'd say they were orthogonal, but that's not quite true either. But they certainly serve different purposes in different ways.
Coffee was illegal?
Oops, I guess that saying was wrongly attributed to Erds. But Erds is said to have drunk a lot of coffee.
"[The newborn] may learn...language... and that's no contradiction of the blank slate because it's not born with those things."
Chomsky would disagree with you about language, and so would I (I'm a linguist). Virtually everyone learns at least one language, which is unlike the learning of math, physics, and (to some extent) morals. The only plausible explanation (I think) is that we do not come to language with a blank slate; we have some innate understanding of how languages work, and some more or less automatic way to learn them from exposure.
"Lots of people simply do not have the intellectual facilities...you're not going to become Einstein just because you 'really try.'"
Of course. But I think the point of the original article (and the talk) was that somewhere along the line, someone who did have good intellectual facilities got lost in the system. To what extent it was his fault (for falling in with the wrong gang), and to what extent it was the system's fault (for not recognizing his ability and helping him use it), I have no idea. And how frequent this is, I also don't know. But it is a problem. I was lucky, and maybe you were too; I was in a school system that recognized talent and helped you succeed, and I had great teachers along the way. And I never ran into the wrong gang. Not everyone is so lucky.
I took algebra, geometry, trig, and calculus in High School, and a smattering of linear algebra; finished with a semester of calculus and a semester of probability and statistics in college. The latter was a very theory-oriented course: we learned that there is a theorem that says it's possible to cut up a solid object and put it back together in such a way that it's twice as big (radius, volume, doesn't matter) with no space. (Of course it only works if the sphere is infinitely divisible, i.e. not atomic.)
What have I actually needed since then? Well, I studied linguistics, and now work in computational linguistics. Geometry was eye opening: the notion of proof from axioms. Basic algebra and trig were of some use; advanced algebra and calculus never really helped. But I sure wish I knew more about linear algebra and statistics.
YMMV, of course; engineers, especially electrical engineers, probably need the rest, and of course there are science disciplines that need other kinds of math. But IMHO *everyone* should know a lot more about probability and statistics. And that includes students who never go to college. Very little algebra is needed to get a working knowledge of statistics.
In sum, I think the math that's taught (past arithmetic) is upside down. (Most) people need more statistics, and far less algebra, trig, calculus...
Another movie you might like, with similar point of view, is "Spare Parts" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3233418/). Also a book. A Wired article tells the story more briefly (https://www.wired.com/2014/12/spare-parts/).
Similar story here, although I can't remember (it *was* almost 60 years ago) whether I got points off for writing your kind of 4 and 9 (and a 2 that looked like the printed 2, rather than some kind of curly-cue thing), or whether I just gave in so I wouldn't lose points. It wasn't until drafting class in High School that I reverted to my father's 2, 4 and 9. (He was an engineer, and in those days being an engineer meant hand-written numbers and words on your blueprints: drafting.)
I guess you're talking about this:
http://www.nationaldefensemaga...
The article dates back to 2000, and I haven't heard about it since. I wonder if it was vaporware... Have you seen anything more recent?
Not sure what you're saying here, but: all the asteroids we've ever seen orbit the Sun (unless you count Phobos and Deimos, two moons of Mars, which appear to be captured asteroids; and maybe some of the moons of Jupiter). There are asteroids around other stars, but we've never actually observed individual ones.
Otoh, very few of the asteroids in orbit around the Sun pass the Earth's orbit; most remain out between Mars and Jupiter.
It's possible to track the larger asteroids that cross the Earth's orbit, and predict where they (and of course we) will be on future orbit crossings. Not perfectly, and the tracking depends on how long the asteroid in question has been tracked, and of course the accuracy goes down for predictions further into the future.
Amen, brother, preach it!
Looking at the other replies, it reminds me that we old people are not just better, we're smarter. These young whippersnappers just can't handle something like LaTeX.
Give me one reason why it's better. Not flashier, or newer, or shinier, or more colorful. Just better.
They say people can adapt to losing an arm or a leg, or all their teeth. That doesn't make it good.