Once again, a document was spell-checked without being proof-read. I call your attention to the following:
and for wich it was not necessary
there really wasn't anything to preven state agencies
I might accept the argument that they just weren't sure yet of Linux as middleware accept for
this Bill can only really be past with support from you.
and my favorite:
As I approached Sen. Atkinson's office I called to him, "Senator Atkinson," I said, "would you at least consider this legislation?"
"I'll tell you what I'll do," he said, "if Senator Atkinson says it's okay, then it's okay with me--he's the tech guy.'"
The one thing that I don't understand about the Rolla story is this:
Humphrey, an assistant director at the All God's Children day-care facility, was caring for 130 children when the lights went out Monday. "It was a mess," she said. "We couldn't flush the toilets, we didn't have any water, and the air conditioning was out."
Excuse me? The toilets wouldn't flush? My toilets have always worked just fine during power outages.
I want a robot that can pick up my dirty clothes, look up their washing instructions based on their RFID tag, sort them based on said instructions, and load them into my washing maching along with the proper amount of soap and/or bleach.
I'm still working on how to get them dried and folded.
VW "bugs" did this back in the sixties/seventies. You could buy a VW, then buy a fiberglass shell from any of several after-market dealers. There were lots and lots of dune buggy bodies, but others as well. One of my favorites was a fake Rolls-Royce hood on an otherwise stardard "beetle" body.
After my reply discussing server-side Java, I noticed that another/. item refered to this article. Allow me to quote the pertinent paragraph:
"Microsoft tries to do all things for all people in software. As you scale down devices, it tends to overload them with too much software for what people need," notes Dwight Davis, vice president and practice director for tech analysis firm Summit Strategies and one-time editorial director of the Microsoft-centric newsletter Windows Watcher. Davis points to Microsoft's mobile- phone software efforts as a train wreck in the making: "By contrast, I think their long-time foe Java is moving much more rapidly and successfully in that market."
So, it appears that microsoft is being squeezed by Java at both ends of the market.
Relatively few client programs are being written in Java these days, but more and more server-side apps are. It has become a favored language for this because moving apps between servers is orders of magnitude easier than making sure that an app runs on every client known to man.
And Microsoft Terminal Services has absolutely EVERYTHING to do with normal, every day desktop usage by everyone doesn't it?
Actually, it does for many people. There are lots of businesses that are giving people WinCE-based thin clients as desktops, and expecting them to use them for day-to-day work.
I've been working in the Windows world for years now, and client-server display systems are utterly irrelvent to the majority of real-world computer users.
Terminal Services is providing the backbone of key Windows XP features such as Remote Desktop and Remote Assistance, and will continue to be strongly integrated into the Windows Server(TM) 2003 platform.
I notice that the link to Torrentse.cx redirects to http://www.redcoat.net/pics/tubgirl.jpg, which is as cheerful a pic as goatse.cx. Am I the only person to follow links?
The given examples of possible competitions (Highest altitude reached; time-to-climb; time between reflight; total number of people carried) are all very interesting, yet they somehow missed two of the most interesting of all: Greatest distance traveled between takeoff and landing, and greatest horizontal distance traveled above 100 km.
Right now, the teams are trying to break the 100 km barrier by going straight up and returning straight down. For example, in Rutan's design the airspeed never exceeds 155 knots. As a result, it will take 80 minutes to cover a horizontal distance of 35 miles. That is enough to win the prize and I'm fine with that. But, in years to come, there should be new targets that get us closer to orbital flight. Greatest distance prizes will do that.
The first one, greatest distance traveled between takeoff and landing, could possibly be won by some sort of hybrid between Rutan's globe-circling Voyager and his Spaceship One, but that's also something that I'd be fine with. It would, like the current X-Prize, stretch aviation technology to lits limits.
My second idea, greatest horizontal distance traveled above 100 km, would be a logical follow-up to the first one, since it could only be won by someone following a ballistic trajectory. This would might inspire new research into thermal shielding, or it may generate all new ways to return to earth. (For example, find a way to eliminate your horizontal velocity before re-entering the atmosphere.)
Either of these would be far better than the possibilites discussed in the article.
IIRC, SGI had a GUI-based login screen that looked an awful look like the Mac or XP/Home. You had a list of users, with customizable thumnails for each (so I could have a picture of myself next to my name).
VNC (and other similar products) has long allowed you to produce multiple persistant X11 desktops, allowing you to log in once, create a desktop, and disconnect without dropping the desktop.
Sun's Java stations (and other similar products) allow the use of a smartcard to log on to a diskless workstation and start-up a personal VNC-like desktop.
Sounds like a lot of prior art, albeit in bits and pieces. The only possiblity for a patent may be in the combination all the individual parts.
doing. If I've been working a station for two years, I already know which screws need to be tightened down, and which order, and how tight.
Not necessarily. The article mentioned wiring harnesses with thousands of cables that need to be routed. I don't care how long you've been doing it, you probably aren't going to learn how to do it, there's just too many things to remember. There are so many wires that even with color-coding you can't tell them all apart, much less where they all go.
At the end of Spencer's post, he says, TOPEX/Poseidon has experimentally
maintained its ground track without engine firings, using an unexpected and poorly-understood "body-fixed force" which is thought to be light-pressure thrust from its thermal radiators.
This has also been observed in the Pioneer spacecraft. Someone at NASA noticed that they were slowing down faster than expected due to the Sun's gravity. (See Google for more details.) For a while, there were dreams a new fundimental force dubbed hypergravity, but a careful energy audit attributed it to the heat emmitted by the on-board nuclear generator. (Sorry, I don't have any links for the solution. It wasn't as sexy as the mystery, and so seems harder to Google.)
IIRC, stego was invented by the ancient Persians, and consisted of shaving a slaves head, tatooing the message onto his scalp, waiting for his hair to grow back, and sending him to the recepient.
So, using the header of a file is obviously very much in the spirit of the original concept.
Re:Still looking for decent charting app
on
Gnumeric Turns 5
·
· Score: 1
I had looked at GD and GD:Chart, but had somehow missed GD:Graph. It looks interesting. Thanks for the pointer.
The company, recently under pressure to distribute some of its cash, is also considering stock buybacks, a major acquisition and higher ordinary dividends, the report on (http://ft.com) said.
Let's see, which would Microsoft most likely buy?
Apple
IBM
Redhat
SCO
Cmdr Taco
Still looking for decent charting app
on
Gnumeric Turns 5
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
For the last couple of weeks, I've been looking for a charting application that's the equal of MS Excel. In particular, I have trending data where the X axis has to be dates, and I want to create.PNG images for use in a web-based application. So far, everything sucks. I've been reduced to trying to add date formating to plotutils, which isn't too easy.
Gnuplot seems pretty good, but isn't a GNU app (as I understand it, it semi-predates GNU) or much of an open source app. So GNOME feels that they can't use it and I don't want to use it for philosophical reasons.
Everything else, as I've said, sucks. Guppi looks interesting , though. I can't seem to find out if there's any way to use it from an Apache server-side app. Anyone else know?
I can't help noticing that several functions are flagged as "Subset" support. That would seem to mean that Gnumeric is still not duplicating all Excel functionality. Unfortunately, there's no mention in the man pages for each such function exactly what is still missing.
In fact, there are still many man pages still missing. Several that I clicked on came up with a "Page not found" error.
I hand-code all of my lex and yacc. The lex and yacc compilers generate C, and feed it to the C compiler. The C compiler, in case you've never looked, generates assembler, and feeds it to the assembler; then it takes the object files and feeds them to the linker. The C code produced by lex and yacc contains "goto"s, but most people should never have to look at it. The assembler contains lots of branch instructions (which are "goto"s), but again most people should never have to look at it. The object files contain lots of binary data, but most people never even know about the tools that let them look inside.
This isn't beside the point. The point is that "goto"s confuse people who have to maintain code; that's why they are "considered harmful". If people don't have to maintain the code, then "goto"s aren't harmful. This is relevant because a language for beginners should be easy to use, not in the sense of BASIC, but in the sense of Smalltalk, which was usable by kindergardeners.
(And by the way, recursive descent compilers are very efficient, and don't use any "goto"s, either. I don't know why they aren't as popular as LALR(1) compilers. The BNF required is, IMHO, easier to understand.)
"GW-Basic" was "Gee-Whiz Basic", because it had every bell and whistle of any version of Basic that had preceeded it. (And that reminds me of a joke from 20 years back. "Advanced Basic: a Basic that implements one or more Cobol verbs." Cobol, for you young whipper-snappers, has verbs to sort arrays or produce reports, almost identical to present day Perl, while back then Basic was truly wimpy.)
I've written lots of parsers and compilers, and never used a single "goto". I wrote most of them in Lex and Yacc/Bison, which let you describe what you need, and they just do it. Sure, there's an intermediate level of C/C++ containing lots of "goto"s, but you *never* look at that. ou do all your design and debugging at the high level and let the tools do the grunt work.
They look the same at first glance, but service processors are the boxes that control really big data equipment, like disk arrays and heavy duty communications equipement. They are usually mounted in the door to swing down when needed. They are manufactured by laptop makers like Twinhead, but there are several differences. For instance, the batteries are usually removed (avoiding leakage problems) and the hard drive is server quality. They are designed to run for years on end, monitoring the big box, and "phoning home" if they notice anything wrong.
I can't get to this guy's website, but reading other people's replies gives me a good idea of what it's all about.
I've designed a few CPUs back when I was in college, using 74xx ALUs, etc. Never acutally implemented one, though a friend did. What I have done is buy a bunch of used relays and had my teen-age children build full adders with them. Now that's fun. You get a real sense of accomplishment when you flip some switches, listen to the relays click, and see a row of light bulbs display the sum.
Slashdot Mirror
- and for wich it was not necessary
- there really wasn't anything to preven state agencies
- I might accept the argument that they just weren't sure yet of Linux as middleware accept for
- this Bill can only really be past with support from you.
and my favorite:- As I approached Sen. Atkinson's office I called to him, "Senator Atkinson," I said, "would you at least consider this legislation?"
The "he" was Senator Beyer, not Senator Atkinson."I'll tell you what I'll do," he said, "if Senator Atkinson says it's okay, then it's okay with me--he's the tech guy.'"
Humphrey, an assistant director at the All God's Children day-care facility, was caring for 130 children when the lights went out Monday. "It was a mess," she said. "We couldn't flush the toilets, we didn't have any water, and the air conditioning was out."
Excuse me? The toilets wouldn't flush? My toilets have always worked just fine during power outages.
I'm still working on how to get them dried and folded.
Here are some links:
and last but not least,
After my reply discussing server-side Java, I noticed that another /. item refered to this article. Allow me to quote the pertinent paragraph:
"Microsoft tries to do all things for all people in software. As you scale down devices, it tends to overload them with too much software for what people need," notes Dwight Davis, vice president and practice director for tech analysis firm Summit Strategies and one-time editorial director of the Microsoft-centric newsletter Windows Watcher. Davis points to Microsoft's mobile- phone software efforts as a train wreck in the making: "By contrast, I think their long-time foe Java is moving much more rapidly and successfully in that market."
So, it appears that microsoft is being squeezed by Java at both ends of the market.
Relatively few client programs are being written in Java these days, but more and more server-side apps are. It has become a favored language for this because moving apps between servers is orders of magnitude easier than making sure that an app runs on every client known to man.
Actually, it does for many people. There are lots of businesses that are giving people WinCE-based thin clients as desktops, and expecting them to use them for day-to-day work.
Hmmm, 50 galleries, 6 pics per gallery, that means I'm a quick script away from having a different desktop everyday for almost a year.
Care to tell Microsoft that? Allow me to quote:
Terminal Services is providing the backbone of key Windows XP features such as Remote Desktop and Remote Assistance, and will continue to be strongly integrated into the Windows Server(TM) 2003 platform.
I notice that the link to Torrentse.cx redirects to http://www.redcoat.net/pics/tubgirl.jpg, which is as cheerful a pic as goatse.cx. Am I the only person to follow links?
Right now, the teams are trying to break the 100 km barrier by going straight up and returning straight down. For example, in Rutan's design the airspeed never exceeds 155 knots. As a result, it will take 80 minutes to cover a horizontal distance of 35 miles. That is enough to win the prize and I'm fine with that. But, in years to come, there should be new targets that get us closer to orbital flight. Greatest distance prizes will do that.
The first one, greatest distance traveled between takeoff and landing, could possibly be won by some sort of hybrid between Rutan's globe-circling Voyager and his Spaceship One, but that's also something that I'd be fine with. It would, like the current X-Prize, stretch aviation technology to lits limits.
My second idea, greatest horizontal distance traveled above 100 km, would be a logical follow-up to the first one, since it could only be won by someone following a ballistic trajectory. This would might inspire new research into thermal shielding, or it may generate all new ways to return to earth. (For example, find a way to eliminate your horizontal velocity before re-entering the atmosphere.)
Either of these would be far better than the possibilites discussed in the article.
VNC (and other similar products) has long allowed you to produce multiple persistant X11 desktops, allowing you to log in once, create a desktop, and disconnect without dropping the desktop.
Sun's Java stations (and other similar products) allow the use of a smartcard to log on to a diskless workstation and start-up a personal VNC-like desktop.
Sounds like a lot of prior art, albeit in bits and pieces. The only possiblity for a patent may be in the combination all the individual parts.
Not necessarily. The article mentioned wiring harnesses with thousands of cables that need to be routed. I don't care how long you've been doing it, you probably aren't going to learn how to do it, there's just too many things to remember. There are so many wires that even with color-coding you can't tell them all apart, much less where they all go.
This has also been observed in the Pioneer spacecraft. Someone at NASA noticed that they were slowing down faster than expected due to the Sun's gravity. (See Google for more details.) For a while, there were dreams a new fundimental force dubbed hypergravity, but a careful energy audit attributed it to the heat emmitted by the on-board nuclear generator. (Sorry, I don't have any links for the solution. It wasn't as sexy as the mystery, and so seems harder to Google.)
So, using the header of a file is obviously very much in the spirit of the original concept.
I had looked at GD and GD:Chart, but had somehow missed GD:Graph. It looks interesting. Thanks for the pointer.
Let's see, which would Microsoft most likely buy?
Gnuplot seems pretty good, but isn't a GNU app (as I understand it, it semi-predates GNU) or much of an open source app. So GNOME feels that they can't use it and I don't want to use it for philosophical reasons.
Everything else, as I've said, sucks. Guppi looks interesting , though. I can't seem to find out if there's any way to use it from an Apache server-side app. Anyone else know?
In fact, there are still many man pages still missing. Several that I clicked on came up with a "Page not found" error.
Wouldn't it be better to call it LinCE?
This isn't beside the point. The point is that "goto"s confuse people who have to maintain code; that's why they are "considered harmful". If people don't have to maintain the code, then "goto"s aren't harmful. This is relevant because a language for beginners should be easy to use, not in the sense of BASIC, but in the sense of Smalltalk, which was usable by kindergardeners.
(And by the way, recursive descent compilers are very efficient, and don't use any "goto"s, either. I don't know why they aren't as popular as LALR(1) compilers. The BNF required is, IMHO, easier to understand.)
"GW-Basic" was "Gee-Whiz Basic", because it had every bell and whistle of any version of Basic that had preceeded it. (And that reminds me of a joke from 20 years back. "Advanced Basic: a Basic that implements one or more Cobol verbs." Cobol, for you young whipper-snappers, has verbs to sort arrays or produce reports, almost identical to present day Perl, while back then Basic was truly wimpy.)
I've written lots of parsers and compilers, and never used a single "goto". I wrote most of them in Lex and Yacc/Bison, which let you describe what you need, and they just do it. Sure, there's an intermediate level of C/C++ containing lots of "goto"s, but you *never* look at that. ou do all your design and debugging at the high level and let the tools do the grunt work.
They look the same at first glance, but service processors are the boxes that control really big data equipment, like disk arrays and heavy duty communications equipement. They are usually mounted in the door to swing down when needed. They are manufactured by laptop makers like Twinhead, but there are several differences. For instance, the batteries are usually removed (avoiding leakage problems) and the hard drive is server quality. They are designed to run for years on end, monitoring the big box, and "phoning home" if they notice anything wrong.
I've designed a few CPUs back when I was in college, using 74xx ALUs, etc. Never acutally implemented one, though a friend did. What I have done is buy a bunch of used relays and had my teen-age children build full adders with them. Now that's fun. You get a real sense of accomplishment when you flip some switches, listen to the relays click, and see a row of light bulbs display the sum.