Re:x86 is popular to hate, but not that bad really
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Is The x86 Obsolete?
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· Score: 1
I've written code generators for those chips--and I'd disagree with you.
What makes the x86 a major proctalgia is the nonorthogonality it inherits from the 4004 et al.; nearly every register is "magic" in some way, i.e. there's some instruction that requires an operand to be in that register, so that you spend a lot of time maneuvering values into and out of the magic registers. (Admittedly, the SH is at least as troublesome, because there, it's one register that's magic, i.e. R0...but OTOH, that arises from its use of fixed length sixteen bit instructions, which undercuts the "code bloat" argument somewhat, as does the "THUMB" mode on ARM and "MIPS-16" mode on MIPS.) There aren't very many registers, so that more variables get to live in memory than on typical RISC processors.
The RISC machines aren't without their hassles, most notably the Procrustean instruction length which constrains immediates and displacements, but that's far less hassle than the x86.
Well...that's certainly one meaning of "obsolete." Another meaning, though, is more on the order of "antiquated" or "out-of-date," and in that sense the x86 architecture is certainly obsolete. Thanks to the Wintel duopoly we have the bizarre spectacle of on the hardware side people working frantically to speed up chips that take the antiquated x86 ISA and turn it underneath into something reasonable that can be executed efficiently (e.g. NexGen and AMD since they bought NexGen), while on the software side people beat their heads against the wall trying to flog the dead horse a bit harder. When will the hardware people pry the lid off and let the software people see underneath, so that new stuff can be compiled to use the decent architecture underneath, while old stuff can continue to use the rotting hulk of the x86 architecture until it's recompiled?
Re:Mozilla... Mozirra... proper pronunciation?
on
Mozilla M16 Released
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· Score: 1
To be pedantic, the Japanese pronounce it "Gojira." (That's the Hepburn romanization; I don't know whether the Japanese use kanji or kana to write it.) So perhaps whether it's "Mozilla" or "Mojira" depends on whether you're speaking English or Japanese.
"An armed gnat is still a gnat." I bet that's what the military said about the Viet Cong. If it comes to revolt, which it may well--even the children of the boomers will eventually realize what's going on once 80+% of their income is going into the black hole of entitlements--that's the situation the government will be faced with.
I have to admit you're honest at least in one place--"...more desperately poor people, which means more crime." i.e. "Give us money or we or our children will mug you or your children."
Re:Okay, read this first before using "socialism"
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EU Web Tax Proposed
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· Score: 1
So basically it's a system in which people can count on the government to steal on their behalf, like the US, only more so. I'm glad I don't live in Europe, then.
Re:Why all Internet access should be taxed
on
EU Web Tax Proposed
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· Score: 1
Governments get most of their money through sales taxes.
Good...then maybe we can finally, to borrow a phrase from Microsoft, "cut off their air supply" and get them to finally constrain themselves to their sole proper functions.
Come to think of it, the government has overlooked something--when it says that APIs shall be released in the same form that they're sent to MS employees, what's to stop MS from sending them out in encrypted form, as long as that's how they're distributed in-house? Then MS is within the letter of the law. "You didn't say that they had to be readable..."
Sure, it's far-fetched, but MS has shown itself to be positively Clintonesque; I don't doubt that they have many people looking for any possible workaround to whatever is finally adopted.
You're confusing two things. X windows is a lower layer that supports whatever window manager (KDE, Enlightenment, etc.) people care to write to use it. They depend on X already being there.
Since politicians are never going to do what you want them to, e.g. put on their web sites data that contradict their position, doesn't it make more sense to promote programs such as Third Voice, which let the users puncture fluff and spin at the source? That seems to me to be real user-centered politics! Just imagine the TV equivalent--what if on TV while Clinton was giving a speech you were to see right there "LIE," "SPIN," "AD HOMINEM," "NON SEQUITUR," "IRRELEVANT," "MISLEADING," etc. flashing on the screen with links to sources that proved that what was being said was bogus.
Chirality is literally handedness (cheiros, hand). Some molecules aren't totally specified just by the number and type of atoms that comprise them--the same set of atoms can be arranged in different ways. Some come in two arrangements, one the mirror reflection of the other, like one's left and right hand; hence the term "chirality."
What I'm wondering is whether this can be turned into very high density memory.
Depends on the age. The stock answer for small children is Logo and Smalltalk, though you might want to check out ToonTalk.
People have already mentioned Python. I'd give some consideration to Dr. Scheme or to Haskell (the latter especially in view of the recent book The Haskell School of Expression).
The mapping is not onto [0,1); you'll never hit any of the irrationals, which have nonterminating expansions (so that there's always at least one 1 bit any given finite integer will have missed), with your sequence.
Nope, you're not confused--OK, a little bit, because aleph-0 is the cardinality of the set of natural numbers, C the cardinality of the set of reals, etc.
Paul Cohen in the 1960s proved that you can either assume the continuum hypothesis or its negation, and either way you don't get any contradictions that weren't in set theory without either of those assumptions. (Ditto for the axiom of choice, if memory serves.)
Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall, aleph-null bottles of beer...
I agree with you about the drawbacks of the mouse, but I hate the eraserhead with a passion--not quite up there with Microsoft, but fierce nonetheless. It has such a small range of motion that it requires major acceleration to be bearable, but that in turn means that fine control is impossible.
Do I have an idea? Well...one can move one's thumb about a fair amount while keeping fingers on the home row, so how about a thumb-driven touchpad just south of the spacebar?
That's a pretty Clintonesque stretch, but it is a point--Linux users should make a point of defending their systems against Windows systems to which they're networked that might mung their files thanks to a virus targeting Windows.
Actually, there is a company that pushes stacks of monitors, or perhaps just racks that you can stack monitors on (it was hard to tell from the web site...), and I forget whether it was on Slashdot or elsewhere that I read about 200 dpi LCD displays (not out yet...sigh), so the future isn't that far away. (Crude measurement of the 19" monitor before me shows the display area about 16" across, and at 200 dpi that would just about eat a 16-bit coordinate.)
As requested: stop!;-) Look again at the quote, at its precise wording. It says "...used by independent software developers" [emphasis mine]. As long as Microsoft isn't split up, the people who write Office are not independent, so it does not prevent M$ app writers from getting access to advantageous undocumented interfaces.
I'm sure the proposal is full of Clintonisms. One that stands out immediately from the original post is the qualification "used by independent software vendors," i.e. you won't get the undocumented hooks that Microsoft app writers have access to. Come on, folks (and DOJ); the Romans called it punica fides, "Carthaginian trustworthiness," and Microsoft has demonstrated it copiously in the past.
No, it doesn't mean that. Care to bet that someone hasn't already set up a web page with a link that reads "K00L WAR3Z, D00D!" and links to the child porn bait, with the goal of tricking someone into getting his IP posted as the address of a supposed pedophile? I'm amazed at people here bashing The Wave, but defending this, which lends itself just as easily to abuse.
Is it immoral for the local news to cover a robbery in progress, then? They're displaying an illegal and immoral act for all to see--and who knows, maybe someone out there gets some kicks out of it!
I'm sure it was meant to be in the Greek tragedy genre. A good friend pointed out to me long ago that "Atreides" is the genitive of "Atreus," as in "house of..." Hence Agamemmnon in St. Alia's head demanding to be heard.
There was a hilarious USENET post (thread?) long ago before Lynch's ghastly Dune movie came out, about possible casting and soundtrack music for a Dune movie. The part I remember was the suggestion of Crystal Gayle's "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue?" for the soundtrack.
Slashdot Mirror
What makes the x86 a major proctalgia is the nonorthogonality it inherits from the 4004 et al.; nearly every register is "magic" in some way, i.e. there's some instruction that requires an operand to be in that register, so that you spend a lot of time maneuvering values into and out of the magic registers. (Admittedly, the SH is at least as troublesome, because there, it's one register that's magic, i.e. R0...but OTOH, that arises from its use of fixed length sixteen bit instructions, which undercuts the "code bloat" argument somewhat, as does the "THUMB" mode on ARM and "MIPS-16" mode on MIPS.) There aren't very many registers, so that more variables get to live in memory than on typical RISC processors.
The RISC machines aren't without their hassles, most notably the Procrustean instruction length which constrains immediates and displacements, but that's far less hassle than the x86.
Well...that's certainly one meaning of "obsolete." Another meaning, though, is more on the order of "antiquated" or "out-of-date," and in that sense the x86 architecture is certainly obsolete. Thanks to the Wintel duopoly we have the bizarre spectacle of on the hardware side people working frantically to speed up chips that take the antiquated x86 ISA and turn it underneath into something reasonable that can be executed efficiently (e.g. NexGen and AMD since they bought NexGen), while on the software side people beat their heads against the wall trying to flog the dead horse a bit harder. When will the hardware people pry the lid off and let the software people see underneath, so that new stuff can be compiled to use the decent architecture underneath, while old stuff can continue to use the rotting hulk of the x86 architecture until it's recompiled?
To be pedantic, the Japanese pronounce it "Gojira." (That's the Hepburn romanization; I don't know whether the Japanese use kanji or kana to write it.) So perhaps whether it's "Mozilla" or "Mojira" depends on whether you're speaking English or Japanese.
I have to admit you're honest at least in one place--"...more desperately poor people, which means more crime." i.e. "Give us money or we or our children will mug you or your children."
So basically it's a system in which people can count on the government to steal on their behalf, like the US, only more so. I'm glad I don't live in Europe, then.
Good...then maybe we can finally, to borrow a phrase from Microsoft, "cut off their air supply" and get them to finally constrain themselves to their sole proper functions.
Sure, it's far-fetched, but MS has shown itself to be positively Clintonesque; I don't doubt that they have many people looking for any possible workaround to whatever is finally adopted.
You're confusing two things. X windows is a lower layer that supports whatever window manager (KDE, Enlightenment, etc.) people care to write to use it. They depend on X already being there.
Since politicians are never going to do what you want them to, e.g. put on their web sites data that contradict their position, doesn't it make more sense to promote programs such as Third Voice, which let the users puncture fluff and spin at the source? That seems to me to be real user-centered politics! Just imagine the TV equivalent--what if on TV while Clinton was giving a speech you were to see right there "LIE," "SPIN," "AD HOMINEM," "NON SEQUITUR," "IRRELEVANT," "MISLEADING," etc. flashing on the screen with links to sources that proved that what was being said was bogus.
What I'm wondering is whether this can be turned into very high density memory.
People have already mentioned Python. I'd give some consideration to Dr. Scheme or to Haskell (the latter especially in view of the recent book The Haskell School of Expression).
The mapping is not onto [0,1); you'll never hit any of the irrationals, which have nonterminating expansions (so that there's always at least one 1 bit any given finite integer will have missed), with your sequence.
Paul Cohen in the 1960s proved that you can either assume the continuum hypothesis or its negation, and either way you don't get any contradictions that weren't in set theory without either of those assumptions. (Ditto for the axiom of choice, if memory serves.)
Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall, aleph-null bottles of beer...
Do you mean like OS/2's WPS?
One word: hubris.
Do I have an idea? Well...one can move one's thumb about a fair amount while keeping fingers on the home row, so how about a thumb-driven touchpad just south of the spacebar?
Hmmm....this means that X windows is a second system. [slaps head]
That's a pretty Clintonesque stretch, but it is a point--Linux users should make a point of defending their systems against Windows systems to which they're networked that might mung their files thanks to a virus targeting Windows.
Actually, there is a company that pushes stacks of monitors, or perhaps just racks that you can stack monitors on (it was hard to tell from the web site...), and I forget whether it was on Slashdot or elsewhere that I read about 200 dpi LCD displays (not out yet...sigh), so the future isn't that far away. (Crude measurement of the 19" monitor before me shows the display area about 16" across, and at 200 dpi that would just about eat a 16-bit coordinate.)
As requested: stop! ;-) Look again at the quote, at its precise wording. It says "...used by independent software developers" [emphasis mine]. As long as Microsoft isn't split up, the people who write Office are not independent, so it does not prevent M$ app writers from getting access to advantageous undocumented interfaces.
I'm sure the proposal is full of Clintonisms. One that stands out immediately from the original post is the qualification "used by independent software vendors," i.e. you won't get the undocumented hooks that Microsoft app writers have access to. Come on, folks (and DOJ); the Romans called it punica fides, "Carthaginian trustworthiness," and Microsoft has demonstrated it copiously in the past.
No, it doesn't mean that. Care to bet that someone hasn't already set up a web page with a link that reads "K00L WAR3Z, D00D!" and links to the child porn bait, with the goal of tricking someone into getting his IP posted as the address of a supposed pedophile? I'm amazed at people here bashing The Wave, but defending this, which lends itself just as easily to abuse.
Is it immoral for the local news to cover a robbery in progress, then? They're displaying an illegal and immoral act for all to see--and who knows, maybe someone out there gets some kicks out of it!
I'm sure it was meant to be in the Greek tragedy genre. A good friend pointed out to me long ago that "Atreides" is the genitive of "Atreus," as in "house of..." Hence Agamemmnon in St. Alia's head demanding to be heard.
There was a hilarious USENET post (thread?) long ago before Lynch's ghastly Dune movie came out, about possible casting and soundtrack music for a Dune movie. The part I remember was the suggestion of Crystal Gayle's "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue?" for the soundtrack.