The book is "Tesla: The Modern Sorcerer," which is a rather whimsical and unscientific book (it's aimed at children). I actually hadn't read it myself before. Now that I have a copy sitting in front of me, as well as the Amazon.com listing for the book, it appears that this is also considered a novel. Unfortunately, it's impossible to tell what is fact and what is fictionalized. Anyway, the passage in question:
Edison's infatuation with electricity combined well with his fascination with pain. Other people's pain. Once, he and an accomplice wired a series of high-voltage batteries to a high-voltage transformer that was, in turn, connected to a metal urinal in the men's washroom in a train station at the edge of a small town. Edison and his fellow practical joker peered through a crack in the roof-boards of the station to watch the victims take turns standing on the wet floor and grounding the current through their urine streams.
I acknowledged that the book might have been incorrect before, but now I'm even more doubtful. I did find one other reference to this event on usenet (http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF- 8&oe=UTF-8&selm=3B4E30BC.F77437B0%40att.ne t), though that's hardly credible and may be from the same source. Either way, my original point stands- important people are often crazy people.
It's not limited to mathematics. Just about any scientist of great import was slightly crazy. Read about Edison- he electrified the urinals at train stations and killed a hobo as part of an experiment. Tesla was pretty whacked also. Ramanujan was quirky. Of course, it's not limited to scientists, either- brilliant artists are the same way. Rachmaninov was a bit strange, Mozart had his quirks (many), and Poe and Cummings were pretty out there. I keep hoping my own oddities indicate some kind of mental talent, but I think they just show that I need to get out more.;-)
I'm actually right in the middle of the book mentioned, and it is quite good. Unfortunately (or fortunately), DeNiro and Hardy look nothing alike. Still, it'd be a good movie.
I don't like that the function you've called is named "findPerson" - wouldn't it be far better to call it something like "findPersonByFirstName"? Or "findFirstPersonWithFirstName"?
No- function overloading means that Person::find () should work fine no matter what (reasonable) parameters are given. If you want different funtions for finding by name, age, birth date, and social security number, feel free to use another language.;-)
I agree with most of your other points, even the ones that really should be defined at the function definition, not the caller.
I'm not sure if this question is implementation-specific, but in general, I see hierarchical pie menus working like this:
- Open a subpie (old pie menu remains in the background, new pie menu pops up around the selected item and thus the mouse's location) - If you want to navigate back through a subpie, click the center. The problem here is that it's difficult to navigate backwards through more than one level, but if you're that deep into the menu system, you're probably paying pretty close attention to what you're doing anyway.
I think it'd be interesting (and very difficult) to create a program that would render characters from a font at various sizes in various pairings and arrangements and intelligently analyze the curves and such other characteristics as kerning to create an identical font. Like I said, though, it'd be extremely hard to do. Where's John Carmack when you need him? =)
I read an article about this in a periodical- I believe it was Scientific American. A man who had been blind or nearly so for most of his life regained a fair amount of sight and had no idea what to do with it- for example, he had difficulty telling the difference between a sphere and a cube. I'm sure other cases would work out similarly. Sorry if my details are sketchy.
I've seen large, flying black triangles also. As I recall, the sides were lit red and green. It was flying about 40-50 ft above the rooftops of nearby houses (this was in Staten Island- no comments about rotting trash affect my brain, please). My mom and I noticed it hovering above said houses as we were walking the dog, and it scared the shit out of me. It was completely silent. Creepy. I saw a picture of something resembling what I saw that night at a place linked to by Art Bell's site (I guess I'm a certified crackpot not) and it claimed it was a secret government aircraft. It certainly doesn't resemble this new thing- my triangle was an equilateral, this one's markedly isosceles. =P
If I were a billionaire I would buy Trolltech and CUPS and eliminate the last of the objections to their licensing and pay people to stop developing GNOME and to develop KDE or cool new apps on top of Qt and KDE.
But... but... If I were a billionaire, I'd pay people to develop GNOME and give up KDE! Wait...
"This is intended to allow real-time cinematic effects in real-time"
Today is a great day in computing history: nVidia is the first to bring us "real-time cinematic effects" that actually occur in real time! I can't wait!
Isn't anyone else terrified of hyperactive, forgetful old people? "OhwellIknowIwassupposedtodosomethingIthinkIwasgoi ngtocheckthemailorwasthatthebluejaywheredobluejays liveisitinAlaskaIdon'tquiteremember... Oh, hi there."
Though it's not nearly as nerdy, I've always liked Samir's "I don't want to go to a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison! I don't want to go to any prison!" It's been the source of many a stupid inside joke.
I was aware of the KDE name history, but since they dropped the "Kool" and just stuck with the desktop environment, and nobody expands the acronym anyway, they win the name war. =)
This is offtopic as all hell, but the Sister Machine Gun album "Burn" has the coolest hidden track in the history of the world. Instead of being after the last track, it's before the first track. Yep. Start the CD, seek to about -4:00, and there's "Strange Days" waiting for you.
Slashdot Mirror
The book is "Tesla: The Modern Sorcerer," which is a rather whimsical and unscientific book (it's aimed at children). I actually hadn't read it myself before. Now that I have a copy sitting in front of me, as well as the Amazon.com listing for the book, it appears that this is also considered a novel. Unfortunately, it's impossible to tell what is fact and what is fictionalized. Anyway, the passage in question:
- 8&oe=UTF-8&selm=3B4E30BC.F77437B0%40att.ne t), though that's hardly credible and may be from the same source.
Edison's infatuation with electricity combined well with his fascination with pain. Other people's pain.
Once, he and an accomplice wired a series of high-voltage batteries to a high-voltage transformer that was, in turn, connected to a metal urinal in the men's washroom in a train station at the edge of a small town. Edison and his fellow practical joker peered through a crack in the roof-boards of the station to watch the victims take turns standing on the wet floor and grounding the current through their urine streams.
I acknowledged that the book might have been incorrect before, but now I'm even more doubtful. I did find one other reference to this event on usenet (http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF
Either way, my original point stands- important people are often crazy people.
I'll have the name of the book on here by tomorrow. I assure you that I didn't just pull this out of my ass.
It's not limited to mathematics. ;-)
Just about any scientist of great import was slightly crazy. Read about Edison- he electrified the urinals at train stations and killed a hobo as part of an experiment. Tesla was pretty whacked also. Ramanujan was quirky.
Of course, it's not limited to scientists, either- brilliant artists are the same way. Rachmaninov was a bit strange, Mozart had his quirks (many), and Poe and Cummings were pretty out there.
I keep hoping my own oddities indicate some kind of mental talent, but I think they just show that I need to get out more.
I'm actually right in the middle of the book mentioned, and it is quite good. Unfortunately (or fortunately), DeNiro and Hardy look nothing alike. Still, it'd be a good movie.
Each host has the name of a serial killer and the page mentions "loose hits." With that in mind, I wouldn't touch those systems with a ten foot pole.
I'd recommend buying a SPARC on EBay if you can. They're not horribly cheap, but they're pretty quiet and very low profile.
True enough.
No- function overloading means that Person::find () should work fine no matter what (reasonable) parameters are given. If you want different funtions for finding by name, age, birth date, and social security number, feel free to use another language. ;-)
I agree with most of your other points, even the ones that really should be defined at the function definition, not the caller.
But have you taught a poodle to fly?
I'm not sure if this question is implementation-specific, but in general, I see hierarchical pie menus working like this:
- Open a subpie (old pie menu remains in the background, new pie menu pops up around the selected item and thus the mouse's location)
- If you want to navigate back through a subpie, click the center. The problem here is that it's difficult to navigate backwards through more than one level, but if you're that deep into the menu system, you're probably paying pretty close attention to what you're doing anyway.
You ignorant fool,
A snowy grave awaits you;
Here's an example
I think it'd be interesting (and very difficult) to create a program that would render characters from a font at various sizes in various pairings and arrangements and intelligently analyze the curves and such other characteristics as kerning to create an identical font. Like I said, though, it'd be extremely hard to do. Where's John Carmack when you need him? =)
I read an article about this in a periodical- I believe it was Scientific American. A man who had been blind or nearly so for most of his life regained a fair amount of sight and had no idea what to do with it- for example, he had difficulty telling the difference between a sphere and a cube. I'm sure other cases would work out similarly. Sorry if my details are sketchy.
No thanks- I saw Vanilla Sky. Say it with me now: "Tech support!"
Hold your breath for a certain amount of time (or die)
"Ok, this is really easy to operate: all you have to do is die..."
I've seen large, flying black triangles also. As I recall, the sides were lit red and green. It was flying about 40-50 ft above the rooftops of nearby houses (this was in Staten Island- no comments about rotting trash affect my brain, please). My mom and I noticed it hovering above said houses as we were walking the dog, and it scared the shit out of me. It was completely silent. Creepy.
I saw a picture of something resembling what I saw that night at a place linked to by Art Bell's site (I guess I'm a certified crackpot not) and it claimed it was a secret government aircraft. It certainly doesn't resemble this new thing- my triangle was an equilateral, this one's markedly isosceles. =P
But... but... If I were a billionaire, I'd pay people to develop GNOME and give up KDE! Wait...
"This is intended to allow real-time cinematic effects in real-time"
Today is a great day in computing history: nVidia is the first to bring us "real-time cinematic effects" that actually occur in real time! I can't wait!
Pfft, E. E. Cummings was asynchronous back in the 1920's.
Isn't anyone else terrified of hyperactive, forgetful old people? "OhwellIknowIwassupposedtodosomethingIthinkIwasgoi ngtocheckthemailorwasthatthebluejaywheredobluejays liveisitinAlaskaIdon'tquiteremember... Oh, hi there."
Though it's not nearly as nerdy, I've always liked Samir's "I don't want to go to a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison! I don't want to go to any prison!" It's been the source of many a stupid inside joke.
I was aware of the KDE name history, but since they dropped the "Kool" and just stuck with the desktop environment, and nobody expands the acronym anyway, they win the name war. =)
Actually, I prefer to pronounce it as "genome." Why? It just sounds cooler. Really, while GNOME is my preferred desktop, KDE has the better name.
I don't mean to insult the poster, because there's nothing wrong with the post itself, but how did it wind up being modded up to '3, Informative?'
This is offtopic as all hell, but the Sister Machine Gun album "Burn" has the coolest hidden track in the history of the world. Instead of being after the last track, it's before the first track. Yep. Start the CD, seek to about -4:00, and there's "Strange Days" waiting for you.