Actually, it is quite a standard technique in the evaluation of integrals to make trigonometric substitutions for expressions of the form:
a^2 + x^2 (substitute x = a tan u)
a^2 - x^2 (substitute x = a sin u)
x^2 - a^2 (substitute x = a sec u)
This stuff is usually taught in Calculus I, but sometimes creeps into Calculus II. This page solves that exact problem (toward the middle--search for "More Trig Substitution").
Wikipedia has its share of misinformation and lies as well. Overall the content is quite nice, but I really don't think it competes with fact-checked and edited encyclopediae yet in accuracy (although it has an obvious edge in breadth). Still, the information cannot be trusted 100%.
I like the idea and I use Wikipedia a lot, but the quality control is somewhat lacking.
Be OS already was mostly POSIX compliant. It certainly had ports of bash, perl, tex, octave (mentioned because you refer to the sic/eng community) and most of the unix goodies.
I think that Apple's success is due completely to the return of Steve Jobs to the company.
Perhaps we should just agree to disagree. For me, there is XHTML, and for you, there is still HTML. I guess it ends up being a matter of taste. If/. moves to HTML 4.01 with CSS (and hopefully CSS positioning, not tables) then I guess that is progress.
I rather like the structure and aesthetic of the "box model," but I suppose I can see how someone might find it a bit pedantic if the want to "just code." I still believe that in the long-term, XHTML produces more maintainable and cleaner code, but I will cease to try to convince you of that.
For me, going back to HTML seems like a huge step in the wrong direction especially if I am using a language like perl or php to generate my (X)HTML, but to each his own.
Also, I would like to take issue with your point that more rules lead to more mistakes. A programming (or markup) language is simply a set of rules. I think that there is a point beyond which rules cease to be helpful, but you need to have some rules! The designers of XHTML believed (and I agree) that HTML was too loosely structured, which led to bad rendering and difficult to maintain code. I mean, look at Slashdot, which is only now being upgraded 7 years later since it was too much work to do it. Try to see it as a matter of taste. If you have not done any serious work in XHTML with CSS formatting and layout, then I suggest you try it out a bit. I guess part of the point of having each tag be closed is that CSS knows where to stop the formatting. Given this closed model, it is very simple to apply formatting to a document and then chage it on the fly.
You clearly have strong opinions on the matter, but allow me to address some of your questions.
The difference between "well-formed" (and by this I think they mean content separated from style) documents and messy table-filled documents where all the styling is in the text is huge. As a developer, it is frustrating at first, but lovely in the long run to have good style imposed on you. The restrictions are light and the benefits are immense
Case insensitivity in HTML is an unnecessary feature. All it does is make code slightly more confusing and difficult to read.
Terminating each element is highly desirable, so your document is broken up cleanly into distinct sections, which can be easily identified and consequently rendered. A paragraph break is an event, however, the paragraph itself is an element of the document structure. The <p> and </p> tags signify the beginning and end of each paragraph. Then you can use style sheets to describe how paragraphs should be rendered. If you just want line returns, use <br/>.
Quoting attributes makes code more clear and less error-prone. When the whole value is in quotes, there is no ambiguity as to what the value should be and what might be a typo or extraneous information. Surely you can imagine a situation where the next bit of text after an attribute would be a valid part of that attribute. and there is ambiguity as a result
Removal of attribute minimization also just makes fore cleaner, more deliberate code which clears up ambiguity. Surely you cannot be decrying the omission of a feature that you call "brain-dead."
As you can see, XHTML aims to make HTML more clean, standardized, and reusable. It aims to remove ambiguity and clutter from the code and separate the distinct realms of content and design (which is done using stylesheets). No, it is not perfect, but having switched from HTML to XHTML, I find it to be a much more pleasent environment to code in.
Welcome to the year 1999. The future is now. While I appreciate the efforts of the Slashcode developers, I would like to point out that it is still possible to write spectacularly awful code in HTML 4.01. Yes, it is possible to do so in XHTML, but it is more difficult. My one request to the developers (and believe me, you will thank me when maintaining this code base) is to use <div> tags, lists, and CSS positioning for layout instead of tables. It makes your code so much cleaner and easier to edit. In fact, to me it is the main benefit of CSS.
(If you remember this article, posted to/. a while back, it goes through some of the steps of converting a static image of a/. page to XHTML and CSS)
I am a Gentoo user and my linux box is my baby. I am very careful about what I load and am constantly making sure that I use what I have installed and only really install things that I feel confident will not aversely affect the performance and stability of my system. I stuck with 2.4 until recently, diligently upgrading when bugfixes were released. I had my kernel configuration down to a science. Less than the 20 minutes you described. All this new stuff--ALSA, udev, ACPI, new module loading tools, etc.--I didn't really want to take the time to mess with a good thing. However, these features intrigued me, as did the new scheduler, and various performance improvements. I eventually took the plunge and am very happy. I am using the Gentoo-patched sources, but hopefully your experience will be similar to mine.
It's been quite stable, X/GNOME is faster, ALSA works great, and best of all/sbin/poweroff finally does what it is supposed to. Plus, IDE CD-burning is now functioning. I say if you are not running a critical machine (and by that I mean, a server for a business, give it a shot. I am much happier in 2.6. It has been out long enough to be considered stable. Maybe stick to 2.6.12 if you are really worried (that's what I've been running).
like the features or dislike them, they are plentiful and were expensive to implement. that's why each successive version of mac os x carries that price tag. when they went form 8.5 to 8.6 it was free and you got what you paid for. you may not be getting $130 worth of new features (does anyone notice that 10.4 is a lot slower than 10.3?), but Apple is putting a lot of work into upgrades, bug fixes, and graphical consistency/usability. this is well documented fact...not really debatable. Apple used to give the OS away pretty much but since they spent so much money over the years developing their "next generation" OS, they had to try to recoup some of the costs.
the APIs and libraries are very close, but you had better believe that a TON of development goes into each revision of Mac OS X. Porting it to PowerPC (then to Intel), integrating Java, PDF (Quartz), opengl, HFS+, Zeroconf, bluetooth, expose, AppleScript plus all the Apple apps that they bundle. All the QC that goes into the UI and design. Trust me, it cost a lot to put out OS X.
Plus, it's not like they got NeXT for free. They paid $400 million for a company with virtually no revenue!! (WebObjects? No thanks.) All of that money was the price tag on the foundation for Mac OS X. If you have ever used a NeXT cube, you know that there is a pretty big difference between that OS and Mac OS X.
woulnd't the rising cost of scholarly journal subscriptions explain why there are fewer scholarly journal subscriptions? those are mostly subscribed to by universities anyway. while there is some truth to what you have said, the main reason is that libraries are spending on technology, architecture, and other junk. books are probably getting more expensive, too.
i think the silence is wonderful. there is so much noise everywhere else, why shouldn't the library be quiet? if you want a noisy place to read, go ANYEWHERE ELSE ON THE FREAKIN' PLANET. if you want a quiet place to read, study, or browse, well then go to the library. plus, many libraries have separate sections for group work, snack vending, audiovisual, or something else where the noise restrictions are less stringent. i really like the quiet of the library (almost as much as i like the books).
Finally, Outlook contact indexing. Also, you can delete entries from the index, which is nice as well for those of us using Google Desktop at work. Conspiracy theories aside, this looks like a pretty nice piece of software.
I wonder if there is a linux or mac version forthcoming. I could really use a piece of software like this on my linux box at home...
actually, apple put so much money into OS X development that they had to start charging for it in order to avoid massive losses. each successive version really is quite different from the previous and usually much faster as well (although upon cursory inspection, OSX 10.4 seems a bit slower). apple relies on large hardware margins and now ipod sales to make money.
I was doing dorm tech support at a major (Ivy League) university a year or two ago, which had upwards of 30,000 computers on its network. Even well after the height of the Blaster/Welchia/MyDoom/whatever outbreaks, I'd say that an unprotected and unpatched Windows XP machine lasted at most 2 minutes on the network before getting a worm or virus. Most machines were unusable after 30 seconds.
letter of recommendation? why bother? he already has a new job and this will just add fuel to the fire.
that last paycheck should definitely not be in question. i am not sure what channels you could go through to rightfully claim what is yours, but the courts come to mind (and certainly the threat of using the courts...)
really, you do have to force people to keep their systems clean otherwise the network is unusable to everyone. one solution we have come to at a major university is to block the connections of any computers detected to have a virus that is creating undue network traffic. all of their http requests are pointed to a special web page explaining the problem and the steps to correct it (of course we offer assistance). when you have that many computers on a network, you really have to strong-arm users some times in the interest of keeping the network safe and clean (and usalble)
windows 95, windows 95b, windows 98, windows 98SE, windows ME windows 2000, windows 2000SP1, SP2, etc. windows XP Home, Windows XP Pro, Windows XP Media Center Edition, SP1,...
there are many software products that only work with one of these. Everything is just called "Windows" on the box, and people don't think anymore of it.
well google is already paying for the feed (if it gets one -- but i thought they just lined to the AP website) since they are not a print publication. all this means is that some places will stop carrying AP stories online, which will cut down on the duplicates in google news search, hence making it easier to use and read.
CRM is customer relations management. it is for tracking customers, not employees. the software you linked to is also ERP, which is enterprise resource planning (closer, but still not spot on). searching for CRM will not get him anywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
yes, you may point me there. very funny :-).
- a^2 + x^2 (substitute x = a tan u)
- a^2 - x^2 (substitute x = a sin u)
- x^2 - a^2 (substitute x = a sec u)
This stuff is usually taught in Calculus I, but sometimes creeps into Calculus II. This page solves that exact problem (toward the middle--search for "More Trig Substitution").Wikipedia has its share of misinformation and lies as well. Overall the content is quite nice, but I really don't think it competes with fact-checked and edited encyclopediae yet in accuracy (although it has an obvious edge in breadth). Still, the information cannot be trusted 100%.
I like the idea and I use Wikipedia a lot, but the quality control is somewhat lacking.
Be OS already was mostly POSIX compliant. It certainly had ports of bash, perl, tex, octave (mentioned because you refer to the sic/eng community) and most of the unix goodies.
I think that Apple's success is due completely to the return of Steve Jobs to the company.
Perhaps we should just agree to disagree. For me, there is XHTML, and for you, there is still HTML. I guess it ends up being a matter of taste. If /. moves to HTML 4.01 with CSS (and hopefully CSS positioning, not tables) then I guess that is progress.
I rather like the structure and aesthetic of the "box model," but I suppose I can see how someone might find it a bit pedantic if the want to "just code." I still believe that in the long-term, XHTML produces more maintainable and cleaner code, but I will cease to try to convince you of that.
For me, going back to HTML seems like a huge step in the wrong direction especially if I am using a language like perl or php to generate my (X)HTML, but to each his own.
Also, I would like to take issue with your point that more rules lead to more mistakes. A programming (or markup) language is simply a set of rules. I think that there is a point beyond which rules cease to be helpful, but you need to have some rules! The designers of XHTML believed (and I agree) that HTML was too loosely structured, which led to bad rendering and difficult to maintain code. I mean, look at Slashdot, which is only now being upgraded 7 years later since it was too much work to do it. Try to see it as a matter of taste. If you have not done any serious work in XHTML with CSS formatting and layout, then I suggest you try it out a bit. I guess part of the point of having each tag be closed is that CSS knows where to stop the formatting. Given this closed model, it is very simple to apply formatting to a document and then chage it on the fly.
- The difference between "well-formed" (and by this I think they mean content separated from style) documents and messy table-filled documents where all the styling is in the text is huge. As a developer, it is frustrating at first, but lovely in the long run to have good style imposed on you. The restrictions are light and the benefits are immense
- Case insensitivity in HTML is an unnecessary feature. All it does is make code slightly more confusing and difficult to read.
- Terminating each element is highly desirable, so your document is broken up cleanly into distinct sections, which can be easily identified and consequently rendered. A paragraph break is an event, however, the paragraph itself is an element of the document structure. The <p> and </p> tags signify the beginning and end of each paragraph. Then you can use style sheets to describe how paragraphs should be rendered. If you just want line returns, use <br
/>. - Quoting attributes makes code more clear and less error-prone. When the whole value is in quotes, there is no ambiguity as to what the value should be and what might be a typo or extraneous information. Surely you can imagine a situation where the next bit of text after an attribute would be a valid part of that attribute. and there is ambiguity as a result
- Removal of attribute minimization also just makes fore cleaner, more deliberate code which clears up ambiguity. Surely you cannot be decrying the omission of a feature that you call "brain-dead."
As you can see, XHTML aims to make HTML more clean, standardized, and reusable. It aims to remove ambiguity and clutter from the code and separate the distinct realms of content and design (which is done using stylesheets). No, it is not perfect, but having switched from HTML to XHTML, I find it to be a much more pleasent environment to code in.let's see:
/. a while back, it goes through some of the steps of converting a static image of a /. page to XHTML and CSS)
HTML 3.2 - 1997
HTML 4.01 - 1999 (!)
XHTML 1.0 - 2000, revised in 2002
XHTML 1.1 - 2001
Welcome to the year 1999. The future is now. While I appreciate the efforts of the Slashcode developers, I would like to point out that it is still possible to write spectacularly awful code in HTML 4.01. Yes, it is possible to do so in XHTML, but it is more difficult. My one request to the developers (and believe me, you will thank me when maintaining this code base) is to use <div> tags, lists, and CSS positioning for layout instead of tables. It makes your code so much cleaner and easier to edit. In fact, to me it is the main benefit of CSS.
(If you remember this article, posted to
I am a Gentoo user and my linux box is my baby. I am very careful about what I load and am constantly making sure that I use what I have installed and only really install things that I feel confident will not aversely affect the performance and stability of my system. I stuck with 2.4 until recently, diligently upgrading when bugfixes were released. I had my kernel configuration down to a science. Less than the 20 minutes you described. All this new stuff--ALSA, udev, ACPI, new module loading tools, etc.--I didn't really want to take the time to mess with a good thing. However, these features intrigued me, as did the new scheduler, and various performance improvements. I eventually took the plunge and am very happy. I am using the Gentoo-patched sources, but hopefully your experience will be similar to mine.
/sbin/poweroff finally does what it is supposed to. Plus, IDE CD-burning is now functioning. I say if you are not running a critical machine (and by that I mean, a server for a business, give it a shot. I am much happier in 2.6. It has been out long enough to be considered stable. Maybe stick to 2.6.12 if you are really worried (that's what I've been running).
It's been quite stable, X/GNOME is faster, ALSA works great, and best of all
like the features or dislike them, they are plentiful and were expensive to implement. that's why each successive version of mac os x carries that price tag. when they went form 8.5 to 8.6 it was free and you got what you paid for. you may not be getting $130 worth of new features (does anyone notice that 10.4 is a lot slower than 10.3?), but Apple is putting a lot of work into upgrades, bug fixes, and graphical consistency/usability. this is well documented fact...not really debatable. Apple used to give the OS away pretty much but since they spent so much money over the years developing their "next generation" OS, they had to try to recoup some of the costs.
the APIs and libraries are very close, but you had better believe that a TON of development goes into each revision of Mac OS X. Porting it to PowerPC (then to Intel), integrating Java, PDF (Quartz), opengl, HFS+, Zeroconf, bluetooth, expose, AppleScript plus all the Apple apps that they bundle. All the QC that goes into the UI and design. Trust me, it cost a lot to put out OS X.
Plus, it's not like they got NeXT for free. They paid $400 million for a company with virtually no revenue!! (WebObjects? No thanks.) All of that money was the price tag on the foundation for Mac OS X. If you have ever used a NeXT cube, you know that there is a pretty big difference between that OS and Mac OS X.
woulnd't the rising cost of scholarly journal subscriptions explain why there are fewer scholarly journal subscriptions? those are mostly subscribed to by universities anyway. while there is some truth to what you have said, the main reason is that libraries are spending on technology, architecture, and other junk. books are probably getting more expensive, too.
i think the silence is wonderful. there is so much noise everywhere else, why shouldn't the library be quiet? if you want a noisy place to read, go ANYEWHERE ELSE ON THE FREAKIN' PLANET. if you want a quiet place to read, study, or browse, well then go to the library. plus, many libraries have separate sections for group work, snack vending, audiovisual, or something else where the noise restrictions are less stringent. i really like the quiet of the library (almost as much as i like the books).
Finally, Outlook contact indexing. Also, you can delete entries from the index, which is nice as well for those of us using Google Desktop at work. Conspiracy theories aside, this looks like a pretty nice piece of software.
I wonder if there is a linux or mac version forthcoming. I could really use a piece of software like this on my linux box at home...
actually, apple put so much money into OS X development that they had to start charging for it in order to avoid massive losses. each successive version really is quite different from the previous and usually much faster as well (although upon cursory inspection, OSX 10.4 seems a bit slower). apple relies on large hardware margins and now ipod sales to make money.
"He argues that developing space weapons is a surefire way to launch a new space weapon race."
One might also argue that not building space weapons is a surefire way to lose the space weapon race that has already begun.
hiring is difficult? boo fucking hoo. give me a job. the last thing i want to hear is that companies are having trouble hiring people.
not to mention code and equations.
I was doing dorm tech support at a major (Ivy League) university a year or two ago, which had upwards of 30,000 computers on its network. Even well after the height of the Blaster/Welchia/MyDoom/whatever outbreaks, I'd say that an unprotected and unpatched Windows XP machine lasted at most 2 minutes on the network before getting a worm or virus. Most machines were unusable after 30 seconds.
longhorn was always the pre-windows.net release when .net is supposed to become a fully native part of windows.
letter of recommendation? why bother? he already has a new job and this will just add fuel to the fire.
that last paycheck should definitely not be in question. i am not sure what channels you could go through to rightfully claim what is yours, but the courts come to mind (and certainly the threat of using the courts...)
really, you do have to force people to keep their systems clean otherwise the network is unusable to everyone. one solution we have come to at a major university is to block the connections of any computers detected to have a virus that is creating undue network traffic. all of their http requests are pointed to a special web page explaining the problem and the steps to correct it (of course we offer assistance). when you have that many computers on a network, you really have to strong-arm users some times in the interest of keeping the network safe and clean (and usalble)
well actually:
...
windows 95, windows 95b, windows 98, windows 98SE, windows ME
windows 2000, windows 2000SP1, SP2, etc.
windows XP Home, Windows XP Pro, Windows XP Media Center Edition, SP1,
there are many software products that only work with one of these. Everything is just called "Windows" on the box, and people don't think anymore of it.
well google is already paying for the feed (if it gets one -- but i thought they just lined to the AP website) since they are not a print publication. all this means is that some places will stop carrying AP stories online, which will cut down on the duplicates in google news search, hence making it easier to use and read.
Windows-L locks the screen.
CRM is customer relations management. it is for tracking customers, not employees. the software you linked to is also ERP, which is enterprise resource planning (closer, but still not spot on). searching for CRM will not get him anywhere.