all because my company doesn't want to fork over the cash for a proper sized "gas guzzler".
So it's your companies fault? Not the fault of us people, who actually work in london on a daily basis, who've decided to elect a mayor who introduced a congestion charge? You know, that charge that's used to persuade people like you, to keep your big cars out of the town center? If you really want to get around london quickly, the best solution by far, is to use the underground (like everyone else). As an added bonus, the undergound & overground trains have enough leg room for even the tallest person.
But no..... Instead of taking the tube, you've decided it would be better to drive a tiny car, into one of the most congested cities in the world, and complain about the fact it's uncomfortable to sit in a traffic jam for long periods? A+ for stupidity.
but his ideas were great, and no one can argue against it.
There are plenty of people who can argue against the design choices in C++, and plenty of people who think his ideas don't translate very well into large scale maintainable systems. He's made a huge computer to computer science, but that does not mean he hasn't made a few mistakes along the way.
No language is as dominant and most crucial to the world's infrastructure
Only if you are one of those people who refuse to acknoweldge the existence of C.
This is not a good philosophy to have for education, science, or any learning in general. Everything must be out in the open if we are to take it seriously and build on it with new research or ideas.
Bullshit. Teaching does not work that way. If you want to explain how a device 'actually' works, you teach theory (because it is something that crosses the boundaries between architectures, and you are able to isolate small nuggets of knowledge into digestable packets). You may use pseudocode for this, or you may use some diagrams, but you do not use the heavily optimised code that these devices use at their core. The aim is to encourage students to learn, not to scare the shit out of them on day one. What is the point of describing a single architecture down to that microscopic level of detail, when it will be out of production before the child has left university? Teaching is about ideas and concepts, it is not about describing the quirky specifics of the graphics drivers of an already 'old' architecture (it's not ARMv7). This is a device to help 10-16 year olds get their first experience of the lower level aspects of a computer. They have the ability to put together their own linux distros (if they wish), and have full access to most of the sourcecode for the OS (If that interests them). Isn't that enough? Isn't that better than what came before? Or would you prefer teachers taught how adders work by pointing an electron microscope at the chip?
anyone know if that was open in the way he describes?
On the old 8bit machines you could pretty much figure out how the ROM worked via PEEK, but to be honest, that's something that I do now in my 30's for fun. At the time the real benefit was being able to play around within BASIC, and maybe experiment with a bit of ASM if you wished. Understanding every aspect took years (and I'm still learning new tricks even now, 30 years later....). It was not however 'open' in the sense we use today. It was however relatively open in the sense that you could figure out how it worked, however if you'd copied the architecture and started knocking out cheap BBC clones, you'd have been sued to kingdom come!
Exactly. Who'd want to furnish each child within a class of 30 with their own computer, when they could have a single rounded corner device to share between all of them? Makes perfect sense. +4 internets for you.
Well that's just terrible. We'd best remove these horrible closed architectures, and revert to what we had before - those simple to understand Microsoft windows based PC's with simple lectures on how to use Microsoft word!
I agree with the GP. It is exactly the same as the anti-semetic propoganda from 80 years ago. I'm fairly tolerant of most things, but that video is not a comedy, it's an insult to everyone who watches it (be you christian, jew, atheist, or muslim).
I actually watched the youtube video in question, and as an atheist (from the UK), I'd quite like it to be removed from youtube. These days, watching something such as 'Bugs bunny nips the nips' is interesting from a historical perspective, but through modern eyes, it's a pretty repugnent piece of derogatory racist propoganda. The 'innocence of muslims' is insulting to anyone who watches it. It's out and out racism, designed to incite a large population of people into reacting in an angry way, and as a result, people have died over this video. You are entitled to free speech, but in most civilised countries, there is a line drawn between free speech, and incitement. The innocence of muslims has crossed that line by a very long distance indeed, and imho, it's on a par with Westboro Baptist Church turning up to protest at a dead soldiers funeral. The people who created the video should not be able to hide behind the claim of 'free speech'. It isn't free speech, it's hate speech plain and simple. The people responsible for the video, should face criminal prosectution for that video. My 2 cents....
I think you completely missed the part about 'binary bootloader and graphics driver'. Yes you can write your own OS, but you still have to integrate that binary blob into your code somewhere. The GP is not complaining about his inability to write an OS for it, he's complaining about the fact the binary blob is closed. It's not something that bothers me all that much, but it's something that bothers the GP. Each to their own and all that....
Hey, give the guy a break! You can't blame him for missing a few words here and there.... it's damned difficult to read slashdot in safari on the small screen of the iPad!
"getting sumthin for nuthin" is exactly what intrest is.
You are getting something for 'risk'. You give your money to the bank, they either give it someone else, or they start gambling with it. There have been many occasions where banks have faltered because debts haven't been paid off (eg sub-prime mortgages), or because employees of the bank have seriously underestimated the risk (e.g. Barings Bank). There is always a very real possibility that your bank could go bust, taking all of your savings with it. If you are lucky, the governement will step in to prevent that, but even then, you aren't guarenteed to get all of your savings back (i.e. The UK will only guarentee £30k of your savings).
Wonders of the solar system.
Wonders of the Universe.
Everything & Nothing.
Chemistry: A volatile history.
Planet earth.
The frozen planet.
Science & Islam.
The majority of the UK population thinks: global warming is a massive environmental disaster, that we're all descended from a common ancestor, and that the earth has been around for a few billion years more than the bible claims. The quality of the BBC's programming is largely to thank for that, and so i'm happy to continue paying my license fee. Compare any of the above programs with the typical output of 'the history channel', and I think you'll quickly change your opinion about the program quality.
... are microsoft getting into the refinement of uranium/plutonium as a way to avoid patent litigation from Apple/Samsung/Google over the surface?
"We raise your patent for 'a small button on the device front, that allows the user to turn it on', with two 8Kg blocks of plutonium-239, which we shall now hand to your lawyers as one big block, whilst running away very, very, quickly..... ".
I've written some of my best code when on one of those 'working-all-weekend-crunch-time' stints. If you're currently excited by the work infront of you, then the code quality is usually of a good quality (whether written on a saturday, or a wednesday). The problem comes when the 'working all weekend' stint becomes more than a one off, and starts to feel like part of the culture. At that point, your more likely to be spending your time at work day-dreaming about the weekend you're missing, rather than doing any productive work.
Slashdot Mirror
I take it from that, you're not as hyped up about the new and amazing Windows Really Trendy edition as I am?
Everyone would just start leaving hospital with an enlarged wanger, and a $12,000,000,000,000,000 bank deposit from a Nigerian prince.
Most projects stay at 90% done for 90% of their duration.
Puffin rhymes with nothin', and everyone knows puffins are better than penguins....
all because my company doesn't want to fork over the cash for a proper sized "gas guzzler".
So it's your companies fault? Not the fault of us people, who actually work in london on a daily basis, who've decided to elect a mayor who introduced a congestion charge? You know, that charge that's used to persuade people like you, to keep your big cars out of the town center? If you really want to get around london quickly, the best solution by far, is to use the underground (like everyone else). As an added bonus, the undergound & overground trains have enough leg room for even the tallest person.
But no..... Instead of taking the tube, you've decided it would be better to drive a tiny car, into one of the most congested cities in the world, and complain about the fact it's uncomfortable to sit in a traffic jam for long periods? A+ for stupidity.
Toilets. Nothing worse than having too few toilets for too many people.....
I've worked on projects where writing the documentation was far more entertaining, and less tedious, than dealing with the actual code.....
He's made a huge contribution to computer science..... Sigh.
but his ideas were great, and no one can argue against it.
There are plenty of people who can argue against the design choices in C++, and plenty of people who think his ideas don't translate very well into large scale maintainable systems. He's made a huge computer to computer science, but that does not mean he hasn't made a few mistakes along the way.
No language is as dominant and most crucial to the world's infrastructure
Only if you are one of those people who refuse to acknoweldge the existence of C.
I'd heard it was a landscape gardening company with a penchant for dry stone walling?
This is not a good philosophy to have for education, science, or any learning in general. Everything must be out in the open if we are to take it seriously and build on it with new research or ideas.
Bullshit. Teaching does not work that way. If you want to explain how a device 'actually' works, you teach theory (because it is something that crosses the boundaries between architectures, and you are able to isolate small nuggets of knowledge into digestable packets). You may use pseudocode for this, or you may use some diagrams, but you do not use the heavily optimised code that these devices use at their core. The aim is to encourage students to learn, not to scare the shit out of them on day one. What is the point of describing a single architecture down to that microscopic level of detail, when it will be out of production before the child has left university? Teaching is about ideas and concepts, it is not about describing the quirky specifics of the graphics drivers of an already 'old' architecture (it's not ARMv7). This is a device to help 10-16 year olds get their first experience of the lower level aspects of a computer. They have the ability to put together their own linux distros (if they wish), and have full access to most of the sourcecode for the OS (If that interests them). Isn't that enough? Isn't that better than what came before? Or would you prefer teachers taught how adders work by pointing an electron microscope at the chip?
anyone know if that was open in the way he describes?
On the old 8bit machines you could pretty much figure out how the ROM worked via PEEK, but to be honest, that's something that I do now in my 30's for fun. At the time the real benefit was being able to play around within BASIC, and maybe experiment with a bit of ASM if you wished. Understanding every aspect took years (and I'm still learning new tricks even now, 30 years later....). It was not however 'open' in the sense we use today. It was however relatively open in the sense that you could figure out how it worked, however if you'd copied the architecture and started knocking out cheap BBC clones, you'd have been sued to kingdom come!
Exactly. Who'd want to furnish each child within a class of 30 with their own computer, when they could have a single rounded corner device to share between all of them? Makes perfect sense. +4 internets for you.
Well that's just terrible. We'd best remove these horrible closed architectures, and revert to what we had before - those simple to understand Microsoft windows based PC's with simple lectures on how to use Microsoft word!
I agree with the GP. It is exactly the same as the anti-semetic propoganda from 80 years ago. I'm fairly tolerant of most things, but that video is not a comedy, it's an insult to everyone who watches it (be you christian, jew, atheist, or muslim).
What happened to freedom of speech, Google?
I actually watched the youtube video in question, and as an atheist (from the UK), I'd quite like it to be removed from youtube. These days, watching something such as 'Bugs bunny nips the nips' is interesting from a historical perspective, but through modern eyes, it's a pretty repugnent piece of derogatory racist propoganda. The 'innocence of muslims' is insulting to anyone who watches it. It's out and out racism, designed to incite a large population of people into reacting in an angry way, and as a result, people have died over this video. You are entitled to free speech, but in most civilised countries, there is a line drawn between free speech, and incitement. The innocence of muslims has crossed that line by a very long distance indeed, and imho, it's on a par with Westboro Baptist Church turning up to protest at a dead soldiers funeral. The people who created the video should not be able to hide behind the claim of 'free speech'. It isn't free speech, it's hate speech plain and simple. The people responsible for the video, should face criminal prosectution for that video. My 2 cents....
The typical iPhone user is only considered with the number 5.
I'm still waiting for that 10Ghz Pentium 4 they promised.....
I think you completely missed the part about 'binary bootloader and graphics driver'. Yes you can write your own OS, but you still have to integrate that binary blob into your code somewhere. The GP is not complaining about his inability to write an OS for it, he's complaining about the fact the binary blob is closed. It's not something that bothers me all that much, but it's something that bothers the GP. Each to their own and all that....
Hey, give the guy a break! You can't blame him for missing a few words here and there.... it's damned difficult to read slashdot in safari on the small screen of the iPad!
"getting sumthin for nuthin" is exactly what intrest is.
You are getting something for 'risk'. You give your money to the bank, they either give it someone else, or they start gambling with it. There have been many occasions where banks have faltered because debts haven't been paid off (eg sub-prime mortgages), or because employees of the bank have seriously underestimated the risk (e.g. Barings Bank). There is always a very real possibility that your bank could go bust, taking all of your savings with it. If you are lucky, the governement will step in to prevent that, but even then, you aren't guarenteed to get all of your savings back (i.e. The UK will only guarentee £30k of your savings).
Yes, 3rd party developers are at the mercy of Apple
So much like developing on windows then? Or for that matter linux? or PS3? or Wii? or infact any operating system on which your code needs to run?
Wonders of the solar system.
Wonders of the Universe.
Everything & Nothing.
Chemistry: A volatile history.
Planet earth.
The frozen planet.
Science & Islam.
The majority of the UK population thinks: global warming is a massive environmental disaster, that we're all descended from a common ancestor, and that the earth has been around for a few billion years more than the bible claims. The quality of the BBC's programming is largely to thank for that, and so i'm happy to continue paying my license fee. Compare any of the above programs with the typical output of 'the history channel', and I think you'll quickly change your opinion about the program quality.
... are microsoft getting into the refinement of uranium/plutonium as a way to avoid patent litigation from Apple/Samsung/Google over the surface?
"We raise your patent for 'a small button on the device front, that allows the user to turn it on', with two 8Kg blocks of plutonium-239, which we shall now hand to your lawyers as one big block, whilst running away very, very, quickly..... ".
I've written some of my best code when on one of those 'working-all-weekend-crunch-time' stints. If you're currently excited by the work infront of you, then the code quality is usually of a good quality (whether written on a saturday, or a wednesday). The problem comes when the 'working all weekend' stint becomes more than a one off, and starts to feel like part of the culture. At that point, your more likely to be spending your time at work day-dreaming about the weekend you're missing, rather than doing any productive work.