Steve Irwin, crocodile hunter. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic Australian. Steve Irwin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster... crikier!
Did you refer to your elbow as a wrist? Did you refer to your knee as a foot? Or your ear as a mouth? We're not talking about knowing where your liver is here.
until you can just drag and drop to install apps on Linux (like OS X), Linux will not be accepted on the desktop
What the hell? You can't even do that on Windows. Everything on Windows has to have an installer so that a jillion obscure registry entries and DLLs are set up right, then it gets hidden somewhere in Program Files. All the user sees is one more line in a gargantuan Start menu.
3-button copy/paste is a hack from the 70s, before people (like Apple, back when they actually did serious usability studies) figured out better models for using the clipboard. IMHO, it should be completely banished from any distro intended to be used by ordinary mortals. In fact, whatever API supports it should be completely broken so that nothing even uses it by accident.
Those three dozen 50+ year old Unix Beard types that still want it can still have it with their Linux From Scratch.
You want a car analogy? Windows is like your average Detroit car. For most people, it's just fine. OS X is like a BMW. You get more luxury, and BMW will change the oil for you.
Linux is like a kit car. With the parts designed by hundreds of individual gearheads. Sure, you can get them mostly pre-assembled (Ubuntu, etc.), but if you want to add something that doesn't come with it, like a radio, and if the radio is less than a year old, you have to run the wires yourself, and sometimes the radio may suddenly stop working when you make a left turn. And it may not quite fit in your garage, because of some rods sticking out from the side. Just go ahead and saw a notch in your garage to make it fit. But if you tune it just right, you can take it to the racetrack... which is useless for a soccer mom. And next year's model will have an entirely different dashboard, because the new dashboard is more "free".
I should clarify that I'm not saying this change would be useless for everybody, just that I don't want to have the current tab system forcibly taken away and replaced with this. Consider the windows task bar that I mentioned. You can choose which way you want it. Microsoft hasn't (yet) forced you to put it only on the right side of the screen. Same with the OS X Dock, though originally you had to to do tricky stuff to move it.
That's find for the Winderz people who freak out with anything but full-screen zoom. Those of us who have been using Macs for years and know window management don't want that. It takes up more screen area than tabs, especially when all you're doing is popping a dozen threads in a message board to read sequentially. I hate sidebar things, because they mean I have to make my window wider and cover up more windows with mostly unused space.
For a comparison, how many people move their Windows task bar to the side of the screen, even with a wide moitor? Not many.
Indeed. The problem with the 8086/8088 wasn't the segments, it was the 16-bit offsets. Segments had potential, but they were mainly used as an excuse to stay with 16-bit registers. This was definitely not an example of a "future-proof" architecture. While the 8088 was an 16-bit computer in an 8-bit body, in contrast, the 68000 was a 32-bit computer in a 16-bit body. The 8086/8088 architecture had to be re-designed to be 32-bit, but the 68000 never had to be re-designed to be 32-bit.
The worst part was the 80286. I still find it hard to believe that someone thought that 16-bit offsets were okay for a "next generation" CPU, after the way that the 8086 got used. By the time the 386 came out, people were pretty damn tired of the segment registers and went completely linear.
I learned Z-80 assembly language back in 1979... from Bill Gates himself, in the form of TRS-80 Level II BASIC. There was 12K of well written (if mostly 8080-style plus relative jumps) assembly code in there, just the right size to study and learn from.
Then I became one of the first "Switchers" and went to Mac. The 68000 is really nice to program in assembly language. And I still dabble in it a bit, by trying my hand at Sega Genesis programming. However, I have gotten tired of writing new code in assembly language and got a GCC cross-compiler built. But like always, I've learned how things work under the hood before doing it the "easy way".
Back in The Old Days, the data sheets to chips would be stapled to the backs of the hang cards in Radio Shack. I still have a 4-page 555 data sheet somewhere. And those are full 8.5x11 pages, not data book half-legal size pages.
It's in a plane. Over water. You don't need to clean under the cage, just leave a hole in the hull below it. You can't go high enough to need a compressed atmosphere, because then the pigeons wouldn't be able to see anything.
They explored display Postscript, and discarded it in favor of X11. While X11 was open source, display Postscript was much faster and easier to program in, and gave cleaner displays. But they then screwed up X11, proprietizing it and making it incompatible.
Meanwhile, what happened to DPS? It got used by NeXT. Then what happened? Apple bought out NeXT, re-wrote it using a PDF model instead of Postscript (functionally similar, but more efficient than having a full interpreted programming language for your display model), with X11 only being an afterthought.
What we have here is an example of two companies who both started with high-margin 68000-based computers, switched to RISC, then x86. The difference is that one of them stopped producing its RISC computers completely. It also reduced its margins in the meantime, increased its volume, and is still its own company.
except that the notable absence of sound-based rhythmic coordination among other apes is exactly what led to these researchers' theory that vocal mimicry is the key
There was a rumor back in the '90s that they were going to make a Star Trek prequel about the crew's days at the academy. This movie is obviously the fulfillment of that idea. But what had the fans really pissed off back then was the further rumor that it was going to be a Starfleet Academy movie in the Police Academy flavor of "academy".
I haven't seen much to like so far from the TV commercial trailers. Just a bunch of people crashing cars and blowing shit up. Which doesn't really sound much like Star Trek to me. Star Trek was about taking science fiction seriously, not cookie-cutter Buck Rogers* space opera.
I've just spent all week re-watching the original six movies (not because of the new movie; this is just when I finally got around to watching the box set I got four or so years ago), and you know what? I think SF movies were better back in the days when people had to work to make special effects with mattes and models and optical printers. Now that they can do all sorts of special effects on computer, there's no budget restraints to keep the movie makers from using films as nothing more than an excuse to cram in as many explosions and flashy shit as they can, instead of plot and characterization.
* I mean the black & white Buck Rogers, of course. I really liked the first season of the Gil Gerard version. But the second season was lame. I wanted more Princess Ardala, not some poor two-dimensional clone of Star Trek.
I've been bitten by this a few times with cables made by other people, including just this past weekend. If you insist on making your own cables, this is something you must understand.
Do not use solid wire with crimp connectors intended for stranded wire!
Stranded wire crimp connectors have one tooth that goes into the middle of the bundle of wires and depends on the compression of the wires from both sides to make a good connection.
Solid wire crimp connectors are an inside wedge that is designed to cut the insulation and compress the wire between two pieces of metal, to the point where the copper gets deformed into the wedge.
When you use a stranded wire connector on a solid wire, the tooth just pushes the wire to the side, and creates a weak connection.
While it is possible to get male crimp connectors for solid wire, it's better to just completely avoid using crimp connectors with solid wire. Only use solid wire with punch-down block female connectors.
Slashdot Mirror
Steve Irwin, crocodile hunter. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic Australian. Steve Irwin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster... crikier!
They just won't tell you that the virgins post on Slashdot.
Fixed.
This guy deserves to be nominated for an Ig Nobel prize in statistics!
Did you refer to your elbow as a wrist? Did you refer to your knee as a foot? Or your ear as a mouth? We're not talking about knowing where your liver is here.
I hear 2012 will be the year of Linux on the Desktop.
until you can just drag and drop to install apps on Linux (like OS X), Linux will not be accepted on the desktop
What the hell? You can't even do that on Windows. Everything on Windows has to have an installer so that a jillion obscure registry entries and DLLs are set up right, then it gets hidden somewhere in Program Files. All the user sees is one more line in a gargantuan Start menu.
3-button copy/paste is a hack from the 70s, before people (like Apple, back when they actually did serious usability studies) figured out better models for using the clipboard. IMHO, it should be completely banished from any distro intended to be used by ordinary mortals. In fact, whatever API supports it should be completely broken so that nothing even uses it by accident.
Those three dozen 50+ year old Unix Beard types that still want it can still have it with their Linux From Scratch.
You want a car analogy? Windows is like your average Detroit car. For most people, it's just fine. OS X is like a BMW. You get more luxury, and BMW will change the oil for you.
Linux is like a kit car. With the parts designed by hundreds of individual gearheads. Sure, you can get them mostly pre-assembled (Ubuntu, etc.), but if you want to add something that doesn't come with it, like a radio, and if the radio is less than a year old, you have to run the wires yourself, and sometimes the radio may suddenly stop working when you make a left turn. And it may not quite fit in your garage, because of some rods sticking out from the side. Just go ahead and saw a notch in your garage to make it fit. But if you tune it just right, you can take it to the racetrack... which is useless for a soccer mom. And next year's model will have an entirely different dashboard, because the new dashboard is more "free".
I should clarify that I'm not saying this change would be useless for everybody, just that I don't want to have the current tab system forcibly taken away and replaced with this. Consider the windows task bar that I mentioned. You can choose which way you want it. Microsoft hasn't (yet) forced you to put it only on the right side of the screen. Same with the OS X Dock, though originally you had to to do tricky stuff to move it.
That's find for the Winderz people who freak out with anything but full-screen zoom. Those of us who have been using Macs for years and know window management don't want that. It takes up more screen area than tabs, especially when all you're doing is popping a dozen threads in a message board to read sequentially. I hate sidebar things, because they mean I have to make my window wider and cover up more windows with mostly unused space.
For a comparison, how many people move their Windows task bar to the side of the screen, even with a wide moitor? Not many.
Eee, by goom ee's a bad oon.
You do know that dst is a pointer type, so sizeof(dst) is always equal to 4? (or 8 in 64-bit)
#define memcpy_s(dest,destlen,src,srclen) { assert(destlen <= srclen); memcpy(dest,src,srclen); }
Really, that's all it sounds like this is, along with forbidding memcpy used other than this way. Belt and suspenders.
And nobody is forcing you to do this unless your employer's name happens to be "Microsoft".
Alien Automobile Association?
After all, he is an official honorary Harlem Globetrotter!
And didn't they invent Jello Pudding for NASA or something? It's so high-tech, they must have.
Indeed. The problem with the 8086/8088 wasn't the segments, it was the 16-bit offsets. Segments had potential, but they were mainly used as an excuse to stay with 16-bit registers. This was definitely not an example of a "future-proof" architecture. While the 8088 was an 16-bit computer in an 8-bit body, in contrast, the 68000 was a 32-bit computer in a 16-bit body. The 8086/8088 architecture had to be re-designed to be 32-bit, but the 68000 never had to be re-designed to be 32-bit.
The worst part was the 80286. I still find it hard to believe that someone thought that 16-bit offsets were okay for a "next generation" CPU, after the way that the 8086 got used. By the time the 386 came out, people were pretty damn tired of the segment registers and went completely linear.
I learned Z-80 assembly language back in 1979... from Bill Gates himself, in the form of TRS-80 Level II BASIC. There was 12K of well written (if mostly 8080-style plus relative jumps) assembly code in there, just the right size to study and learn from.
Then I became one of the first "Switchers" and went to Mac. The 68000 is really nice to program in assembly language. And I still dabble in it a bit, by trying my hand at Sega Genesis programming. However, I have gotten tired of writing new code in assembly language and got a GCC cross-compiler built. But like always, I've learned how things work under the hood before doing it the "easy way".
Back in The Old Days, the data sheets to chips would be stapled to the backs of the hang cards in Radio Shack. I still have a 4-page 555 data sheet somewhere. And those are full 8.5x11 pages, not data book half-legal size pages.
It's in a plane. Over water. You don't need to clean under the cage, just leave a hole in the hull below it. You can't go high enough to need a compressed atmosphere, because then the pigeons wouldn't be able to see anything.
They explored display Postscript, and discarded it in favor of X11. While X11 was open source, display Postscript was much faster and easier to program in, and gave cleaner displays. But they then screwed up X11, proprietizing it and making it incompatible.
Meanwhile, what happened to DPS? It got used by NeXT. Then what happened? Apple bought out NeXT, re-wrote it using a PDF model instead of Postscript (functionally similar, but more efficient than having a full interpreted programming language for your display model), with X11 only being an afterthought.
What we have here is an example of two companies who both started with high-margin 68000-based computers, switched to RISC, then x86. The difference is that one of them stopped producing its RISC computers completely. It also reduced its margins in the meantime, increased its volume, and is still its own company.
except that the notable absence of sound-based rhythmic coordination among other apes is exactly what led to these researchers' theory that vocal mimicry is the key
All right, then, explain the elephants.
"Xenu Flu" actually has a nice sound to it.
Then again, so does "GNU/Flu".
Inability to receive satellite transmissions through the metal roof of a typical supermarket will be a minor problem to be worked out in beta testing.
There was a rumor back in the '90s that they were going to make a Star Trek prequel about the crew's days at the academy. This movie is obviously the fulfillment of that idea. But what had the fans really pissed off back then was the further rumor that it was going to be a Starfleet Academy movie in the Police Academy flavor of "academy".
I haven't seen much to like so far from the TV commercial trailers. Just a bunch of people crashing cars and blowing shit up. Which doesn't really sound much like Star Trek to me. Star Trek was about taking science fiction seriously, not cookie-cutter Buck Rogers* space opera.
I've just spent all week re-watching the original six movies (not because of the new movie; this is just when I finally got around to watching the box set I got four or so years ago), and you know what? I think SF movies were better back in the days when people had to work to make special effects with mattes and models and optical printers. Now that they can do all sorts of special effects on computer, there's no budget restraints to keep the movie makers from using films as nothing more than an excuse to cram in as many explosions and flashy shit as they can, instead of plot and characterization.
* I mean the black & white Buck Rogers, of course. I really liked the first season of the Gil Gerard version. But the second season was lame. I wanted more Princess Ardala, not some poor two-dimensional clone of Star Trek.
I've been bitten by this a few times with cables made by other people, including just this past weekend. If you insist on making your own cables, this is something you must understand.
Do not use solid wire with crimp connectors intended for stranded wire!
Stranded wire crimp connectors have one tooth that goes into the middle of the bundle of wires and depends on the compression of the wires from both sides to make a good connection.
Solid wire crimp connectors are an inside wedge that is designed to cut the insulation and compress the wire between two pieces of metal, to the point where the copper gets deformed into the wedge.
When you use a stranded wire connector on a solid wire, the tooth just pushes the wire to the side, and creates a weak connection.
While it is possible to get male crimp connectors for solid wire, it's better to just completely avoid using crimp connectors with solid wire. Only use solid wire with punch-down block female connectors.