Firstly, no self-respecting audio professional would use a wireless connection of any kind for critical listening. It's well-shielded, unidirectionally (or bi-directionally) grounded cabling, and fiber optics where applicable.
If it's digital, error-corrected and doesn't drop out, who cares if it's wireless? It will not make you lose quality compared to cables or fiber optics.
I'm skipping over the childish exchange which goes something like this:
Us: Why?
Them: It will help prevent fake currency. Us: No it won't. Them:....
I'm not stifling debate, I'm encouraging it. Idiot legislators who say things like "This bill will prevent activity X" without discussing all of the ways that the bill will not prevent activity X are the ones stifling debate.
I don't care about the kernel. If language support is so great, why does running Chinese and French software simultaneously inevitably result in dialogs coming up that have French accents replaced with random Chinese characters? I'm not talking about no-name programs, either, I'm talking about MS Office, Explorer, and other system components.
You can switch input languages on the fly, but can you switch output languages? On my Mac, if I want to switch the interface to Chinese, I move Chinese to the top of my languages list and every app that I launch after that will launch with a Chinese interface (if the app actually has that localization). Or I can just fast user switch to a different account that's set up with a different language. Can you do that in Windows? I've never found a way.
Whenever restrictions are proposed, it is those who are for it who must answer the question, "Why?" It is not necessary for those who oppose a restriction to answer the question "Why not?"
I speak French, and it didn't confuse me, because I said to myself, "Hey, this article is about Brazil, maybe they speak some other language than French there...."
This has been discussed to death. The people working on these rovers are very smart, and they surely thought of this idea. Wiper blades imply a hefty wiper-blade subsystem, meaning less weight available to devote to other subsystems. Moreover, the solar cells are merely the first system likely to fail; find a way to keep them alive indefinitely, and you find something else that will die (such as the rechargeable batteries) in short order.
This kind of thoughtlessness regarding people who speak more than one language is all too common. Windows is a nightmare for multilingual users. You can't change OS languages without reinstalling, and using programs in two languages with different encodings inevitably results in one language being completely mangled. This is one area where the Mac really shines. And don't even get me started on idiot webmail programmers who think that everyone uses ASCII, search sites that think everyone uses Latin1, etc. etc. etc. Your experience is slightly worse than normal, but not surprising. The correct response is to demand your money back and send them a strong message that they need to be aware that not everybody in a given country exclusively speaks that country's national language.
It's still possible to perform a checksum on prebound binaries, see http://web.periodic-kingdom.org/People/Miro/Papers/. These traditional unix tools simply need to be updated to understand the OS X executable file format and treat it accordingly.
It's faster if you don't have it set to require your password when you wake it from sleep. And Panther finally fixes the long-standing problems with disappearing network drives; if a remote server dies (or the network in between) and you have a network drive mounted from it, it doesn't even stall for a moment.
The point is that it's easier to have the computer automatically resize it than it is to do so manually; after all, this is the kind of thing that computers are for: doing boring tasks behind your back so you don't have to think about them.
If you have to call to verify that somebody received an e-mail, then what is the point of e-mail? I don't have to call to verify that somebody received my postal mail, because postal mail is so close to 100% reliable that I can't even tell the difference. If I have to use another method of communication to verify e-mail, then I may as well just use that method of communication for the original message as well.
Well, as Terje Mathisen said, "All programming is an exercise in caching." The interesting thing is that they cache unusual things, in unusual ways. I remember when the G3 was first released, and everybody was talking about its L2 cache, because it was a huge advance and made things way faster. A standard technique, when applied in a novel way, is novel.
Caching is one of the best ways to make things faster. Don't believe me? Try disabling your L3/L2 cache (and L1 if you can), your filesystem cache, and use a video card with no separate VRAM, and see how fast your system goes.
The only thing that's even remotely like what you're talking about is the Mach-O ABI and how it accesses global addresses.
Mach-O the ABI (not to be confused with Mach-O the executable format, which is totally different) accesses global addresses via PC-relative addressing. This design decision was made back in the NeXT days, and made a lot of sense at the time. Unfortunately, the PowerPC doesn't have any support for PC-relative addressing, so the only way to do it is to use several instructions and induce a pipeline stall in the process. Depending on how a program is written, this problem can mean up to a 10% speed hit.
That is the only brain-dead decision in the ABI that I'm aware of. It certainly makes good use of all registers, intelligently defines leaf procedures, and in general makes full use of the PPC architecture other than that one problem.
Altivec includes both instructions and processors. That is one of the things that makes Altivec really cool, is that it has a shitload of vector registers that are totally separate from the other registers, and don't interfere in any way.
You shouldn't find it insulting. The US has a long, long history of civilian control of the military, and this is why we have never had so much as the tiniest hint of a military coup since the country was founded. The fact that the President, whoever he may be, is commander in chief of the military is a supremely good thing.
You're aware that "corporation" is just a legal code-word for "a bunch of people working together", aren't you? Slashdot's rabid, emotional anti-corporatism is as bad as the environmental movement's knee-jerk anti-nuclear stance.
It is precisely this crazy, focused mindset that enables people to do insane things like fly halfway around the world just to meet a girl. Some girls are turned off by it, of course, but when you find the right one, it helps a great deal to be just a little bit insane in this way.
Advocates of nuclear power always say, "Well it'd be perfect if it was done right."
I'm an advocate of nuclear power, and I don't say that. What I say is this: "Even as done today, it's better than every method of generating power that burns stuff, and more practical than every other method that doesn't." That is good enough for me.
Actually, five grams of hydrogen will supply enough energy via fusion to supply a hundred one-kilowatt-consuming households with their electricity for one year. Fusion is nice, but it's not as magical as you say as far as the energy content goes.
I was under the impression that Bruce Stirling was a cool guy, although I never read any of his stuff, but he comes across as a total asshat in this article. Here is one teeny example:
nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. (((If you don't count the nuclear energy released over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that is.)))
Yeah, those 300,00 dead in the nuclear attacks on Japan certainly look horrible compared to the millions of air pollution deaths. He continually treats nuclear power and nuclear weapons as one and the same, and generally comes off making no sense.
I stopped reading halfway through, I couldn't stand it anymore, but he basically says, "What are you thinking? Nukes are bad. I don't care what evidence you have. I don't care what the alternatives are. Bad! Bad! Bad!" It's like a satire or caricature on the wacko ultra-environmental movement. Maybe that's what it really is. If not, then my only response is to say, what a jerk.
Ahh, Core Wars. I had lots of fun with that when I was younger. It was the first assembly-like language I was exposed to, although not the first computer language. I never was very good at it, my best program got about halfway up the beginner hill, but it sure was fun to play with.
Slashdot Mirror
Firstly, no self-respecting audio professional would use a wireless connection of any kind for critical listening. It's well-shielded, unidirectionally (or bi-directionally) grounded cabling, and fiber optics where applicable.
If it's digital, error-corrected and doesn't drop out, who cares if it's wireless? It will not make you lose quality compared to cables or fiber optics.
I'm skipping over the childish exchange which goes something like this:I'm not stifling debate, I'm encouraging it. Idiot legislators who say things like "This bill will prevent activity X" without discussing all of the ways that the bill will not prevent activity X are the ones stifling debate.
Modifying commercial image-processing software costs corporations money as well.
I don't care about the kernel. If language support is so great, why does running Chinese and French software simultaneously inevitably result in dialogs coming up that have French accents replaced with random Chinese characters? I'm not talking about no-name programs, either, I'm talking about MS Office, Explorer, and other system components.
You can switch input languages on the fly, but can you switch output languages? On my Mac, if I want to switch the interface to Chinese, I move Chinese to the top of my languages list and every app that I launch after that will launch with a Chinese interface (if the app actually has that localization). Or I can just fast user switch to a different account that's set up with a different language. Can you do that in Windows? I've never found a way.
Why not?
Wrong question.
Whenever restrictions are proposed, it is those who are for it who must answer the question, "Why?" It is not necessary for those who oppose a restriction to answer the question "Why not?"
I speak French, and it didn't confuse me, because I said to myself, "Hey, this article is about Brazil, maybe they speak some other language than French there...."
It's worse than that: he found your head!
This has been discussed to death. The people working on these rovers are very smart, and they surely thought of this idea. Wiper blades imply a hefty wiper-blade subsystem, meaning less weight available to devote to other subsystems. Moreover, the solar cells are merely the first system likely to fail; find a way to keep them alive indefinitely, and you find something else that will die (such as the rechargeable batteries) in short order.
This kind of thoughtlessness regarding people who speak more than one language is all too common. Windows is a nightmare for multilingual users. You can't change OS languages without reinstalling, and using programs in two languages with different encodings inevitably results in one language being completely mangled. This is one area where the Mac really shines. And don't even get me started on idiot webmail programmers who think that everyone uses ASCII, search sites that think everyone uses Latin1, etc. etc. etc. Your experience is slightly worse than normal, but not surprising. The correct response is to demand your money back and send them a strong message that they need to be aware that not everybody in a given country exclusively speaks that country's national language.
PC stands for Program Counter. Look it up in your computer architecture book. Nothing to do with crossplatform compatibility.
It's still possible to perform a checksum on prebound binaries, see http://web.periodic-kingdom.org/People/Miro/Papers /. These traditional unix tools simply need to be updated to understand the OS X executable file format and treat it accordingly.
It's faster if you don't have it set to require your password when you wake it from sleep. And Panther finally fixes the long-standing problems with disappearing network drives; if a remote server dies (or the network in between) and you have a network drive mounted from it, it doesn't even stall for a moment.
The point is that it's easier to have the computer automatically resize it than it is to do so manually; after all, this is the kind of thing that computers are for: doing boring tasks behind your back so you don't have to think about them.
If you have to call to verify that somebody received an e-mail, then what is the point of e-mail? I don't have to call to verify that somebody received my postal mail, because postal mail is so close to 100% reliable that I can't even tell the difference. If I have to use another method of communication to verify e-mail, then I may as well just use that method of communication for the original message as well.
Well, as Terje Mathisen said, "All programming is an exercise in caching." The interesting thing is that they cache unusual things, in unusual ways. I remember when the G3 was first released, and everybody was talking about its L2 cache, because it was a huge advance and made things way faster. A standard technique, when applied in a novel way, is novel.
Caching is one of the best ways to make things faster. Don't believe me? Try disabling your L3/L2 cache (and L1 if you can), your filesystem cache, and use a video card with no separate VRAM, and see how fast your system goes.
So, what was your point?
The only thing that's even remotely like what you're talking about is the Mach-O ABI and how it accesses global addresses.
Mach-O the ABI (not to be confused with Mach-O the executable format, which is totally different) accesses global addresses via PC-relative addressing. This design decision was made back in the NeXT days, and made a lot of sense at the time. Unfortunately, the PowerPC doesn't have any support for PC-relative addressing, so the only way to do it is to use several instructions and induce a pipeline stall in the process. Depending on how a program is written, this problem can mean up to a 10% speed hit.
That is the only brain-dead decision in the ABI that I'm aware of. It certainly makes good use of all registers, intelligently defines leaf procedures, and in general makes full use of the PPC architecture other than that one problem.
Altivec includes both instructions and processors. That is one of the things that makes Altivec really cool, is that it has a shitload of vector registers that are totally separate from the other registers, and don't interfere in any way.
You shouldn't find it insulting. The US has a long, long history of civilian control of the military, and this is why we have never had so much as the tiniest hint of a military coup since the country was founded. The fact that the President, whoever he may be, is commander in chief of the military is a supremely good thing.
That's funny...
Copyright © 2004 Green Bay Packers, Inc.
Seeing as how "Inc." stands for "Incorporated", it sure looks like the Green Bay Packers are a corporation to me.
You're aware that "corporation" is just a legal code-word for "a bunch of people working together", aren't you? Slashdot's rabid, emotional anti-corporatism is as bad as the environmental movement's knee-jerk anti-nuclear stance.
It is precisely this crazy, focused mindset that enables people to do insane things like fly halfway around the world just to meet a girl. Some girls are turned off by it, of course, but when you find the right one, it helps a great deal to be just a little bit insane in this way.
Advocates of nuclear power always say, "Well it'd be perfect if it was done right."
I'm an advocate of nuclear power, and I don't say that. What I say is this: "Even as done today, it's better than every method of generating power that burns stuff, and more practical than every other method that doesn't." That is good enough for me.
Actually, five grams of hydrogen will supply enough energy via fusion to supply a hundred one-kilowatt-consuming households with their electricity for one year. Fusion is nice, but it's not as magical as you say as far as the energy content goes.
I was under the impression that Bruce Stirling was a cool guy, although I never read any of his stuff, but he comes across as a total asshat in this article. Here is one teeny example:
nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. (((If you don't count the nuclear energy released over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that is.)))
Yeah, those 300,00 dead in the nuclear attacks on Japan certainly look horrible compared to the millions of air pollution deaths. He continually treats nuclear power and nuclear weapons as one and the same, and generally comes off making no sense.
I stopped reading halfway through, I couldn't stand it anymore, but he basically says, "What are you thinking? Nukes are bad. I don't care what evidence you have. I don't care what the alternatives are. Bad! Bad! Bad!" It's like a satire or caricature on the wacko ultra-environmental movement. Maybe that's what it really is. If not, then my only response is to say, what a jerk.
Ahh, Core Wars. I had lots of fun with that when I was younger. It was the first assembly-like language I was exposed to, although not the first computer language. I never was very good at it, my best program got about halfway up the beginner hill, but it sure was fun to play with.