This sounds like an IDE issue. When you look at code in a decent IDE, you should be able to mouse over a variable name and it should tell what type of variable the compiler thinks it is.
Yeah, I really hope XUL goes well with SVG. Maybe then the guys behind the tabbrowser extention will make it so the tabs can be on the left side of the browser window AND have tab name run vertically. This is the one thing I still wish for in terms of UI that is not available from any browser I know of.
If you work 9-5 then you can do your own project 6-1 plus 18 hours a day on weekends. Some very successful businessmen have been sponsored by their spouses in the beginning. Others started in college when mommy and daddy paid for room and board. The point is that software industry has a very low barrier to entry if you have a good idea, great coding skills, and passion for the work. You literally just need basic sustenance and a net connection to get going.
Start a FOSS project, build up a reputation, build up a community, take a few of the best helpers and start a support business. Why can't we go back to the "right" way of doing business: start small, do one thing and do it well, expand slowly on the back of strong reputation. The whole venture capital and stock market thing is a sham to pump out soulless big corporations which rarely do even one thing well.
I just ran a quick back of the envelop calculation for what you can expect out of chemical batteries. I took as a model of efficient storage the ATP molecule that nature uses in our bodies. Let's say that its size is about a cubic nanometer (it is less) and let us say that a reasonable size battery has volume of 1 cubic decimeter. The number of ATP molecules fitting in would be 10^24, so about a mol of ATP. A mol of ATP can release about 30.5 kJ of energy, or about 8.5 watt-hour. Our laptop batteries do an order of magnitude better than that so we are quite good compared to nature and there is unlikely to be much room for further improvement.
Funny, on old Russian calculators you could make an upside down something that roughly translates as "suck d*ck" (07931505), although some letters are latin and some cyrillic. Ah, the memories.
Why is it that mind cannot be explained by science? Certainly free thought is chemistry so we should be able to simulate a free thinking brain inside a computer in not too distant future. You have to remember that already people try to simulate complete cell function in a computer and also that humans start their development from a single cell. The whole thing is not only feasible, most parts of the puzzle are already available.
I think it is fine to have to pay for official documentation and official certification of compliance. It is not OK for the standards body to restrict free unofficial versions of documentation or private (potentially free) compliance testing. Otherwise, I agree, standards should be free.
Well, the problem is that his definition of open standards is essentially just standards. He dances around the openness thing. To be open, a standard must be useable for free or a nominal fee AND have no IP attached with clear prior art established for all major technologies involved in the standard. Ideally there should also be a fund for community defense against IP attacks but that is rare in practice. In any case, his response shows clearly that not only MS against open standards but that this is ingrained in their corporate culture, in the very way they think of things.
How does it compare with Illustrator? Does it do CMYK? Does it do exports in a good variety of formats? Does it handle page layout issues so printing people (at places like Science and Nature) are happy?
Don't worry about IBM. Having core developers in-house boosts their services part. If HP cuts their devs and goes with Linux without R&D part in place then their efforts to develop their service business (something they dearly want) will hit the wall sooner rather than later.
I use DnD with keyboard all the time. In Windows (yes I use Windows at work) if you hold shift while dragging then it moves, otherwise it copies. And Alt-Tab works nicely with DnD though I don't use that as much.
I recently had this issue and the way I did it is: 1. Download CD DOS bootdisk image off net 2. Burn boot CD 3. Format usb key with FAT16 4. Put bios update files on usb key 5. Boot from CD 6. Change drives to usb key 7. Update bios
Very simple, flexible, and takes no time. You only burn one CD for all updates.
Second, I dunno why everyone here is so focused on the specs he gave, since he omitted the key spec - HDD speed. See, if you load stuff off of punch-cards the load time will be days or more. I suspect that he uses on an old laptop with something like 4200 rpm hard drive or maybe even slower, perhaps with little to no cache. Now load times can be real bad. In short, he is benching his hard drive but reports mostly irrelevant cpu and memory speeds.
So the way I parse this, it seems they have found a way to make H2 from glucose for half the previous price. What was the previous best price for glucose -> H2 and how does it compare with the cost of other fuels?
For those not from Russia: The colloquial form of referring to sugar powder in Russia is "sand", so when the above joke works much better in Russian. It arose when there were shortages of sugar in late eighties. The full joke goes: "... 70 years of mirages and then rationing of sand."
What I want to know is if it is possible to set these dual cores up to do something like a mainframe, i.e. run the same load in parallel and compare results. If they don't match, alert the user and stop the calculation. Could be very useful for scientific computing.
Yeah, that's why when I was grading homeworks I made sure to keep copies of everything. Even now, close to a decade later I have a thick folder with the copies. If a review comes up, I will be ready even twenty years from now.
Well, chess playing machines were not considered worthy until they could play on par with and occasionally beat the chess champion. I don't think I am confused. I think halls of fame exist for a reason. Oh, btw, given an infinite lifetime (which we may assume for a machine so let's extend the courtesy to humans as well) most humans could accumulate enough knowledge, insight, and skill to be great at almost anything. Individual people may not choose to be great, but the whole point of having great specimens is to show that we have the capacity.
There is never a definitive translation. However the quality of translation can be judged pretty well. The point is that this excercise combines two crucial human traits: knowing the culture so as to understand what others are trying to say and having your own creativity (because any real translation must involve your own creative view of the text). Oh, and by the way, intelligence has to be judged against the best specimens of the human race, not a drunk redneck who can only moo and fart. I would maybe even go further and say that any artificial intelligence has to match up against the wit of the entire humanity, not just any one human. When we say that we have sent a man to the Moon we mean that a few particularly bright specimens did it. We measure human intelligence by its peaks not lows and so we should do with any AI.
As I understood him, he wants to see a compression engine for plain text with a compression ratio of a bit more than 6 (assuming a simple case like English Ascii with 8 bits per character to begin with). Personally I have my own test: given an arbitrary length text in a given language the machine should be able to provide a valid translation into another language. Not just grammatically valid, but also complete in terms of double meanings, innuendoes, poetic rhythms, rhimes, historical and archaic phraseology, and other such things. If a machine can obsolete human translators (especially the artistic kind who can spend a lifetime to translate one work of Shakespeare) then it has intelligence.
You know, I disagree. For the last 10 years one could make the case that storage needs were driven by one thing and one thing only: multimedia. Assuming that this is the limit of our storage needs, we can say that we need about 1 Tb per movie (uncompressed of course) and so between 10000 and 100000 Tb for typical storage needs. We also need on the order of 10 Tb of RAM to satisfy existing demand. Further, lugging around those 500 Gb HDD's is impractical, so those need to shrink to the size of microdrives. The end result is that storage density needs to improve by 6 to 7 orders of magnitude to satisfy existing demand. The above calculation shows why storage needs seem ever growing - it is because we are so far off from satisfying demand. But it is entirely unclear if there is anything beyond 2D and 1D data. My guess is that 10 million terabytes should be enough for most people for the next 50-100 years at least.
P.S. I am using uncompressed movie sizes as a reference based on what happened with audio. First it seemed that crappy low rate mp3's were enough but now lossless compression is becoming widespread. And that only buys you a factor of 2 so I omit it in order of magnitude calculations.
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This sounds like an IDE issue. When you look at
code in a decent IDE, you should be able to mouse
over a variable name and it should tell what type
of variable the compiler thinks it is.
Yeah, I really hope XUL goes well with SVG. Maybe then
the guys behind the tabbrowser extention will make
it so the tabs can be on the left side of the browser
window AND have tab name run vertically. This is the
one thing I still wish for in terms of UI that is
not available from any browser I know of.
If you work 9-5 then you can do your own project
6-1 plus 18 hours a day on weekends.
Some very successful businessmen have been sponsored
by their spouses in the beginning. Others started
in college when mommy and daddy paid for room and
board.
The point is that software industry has a very low
barrier to entry if you have a good idea, great
coding skills, and passion for the work. You
literally just need basic sustenance and a net
connection to get going.
Start a FOSS project, build up a reputation,
build up a community, take a few of the best
helpers and start a support business.
Why can't we go back to the "right" way of
doing business: start small, do one thing and
do it well, expand slowly on the back of strong
reputation. The whole venture capital and stock
market thing is a sham to pump out soulless
big corporations which rarely do even one thing
well.
I just ran a quick back of the envelop calculation
for what you can expect out of chemical batteries.
I took as a model of efficient storage the ATP
molecule that nature uses in our bodies. Let's say
that its size is about a cubic nanometer (it is less)
and let us say that a reasonable size battery has
volume of 1 cubic decimeter. The number of ATP
molecules fitting in would be 10^24, so about a
mol of ATP. A mol of ATP can release about 30.5 kJ
of energy, or about 8.5 watt-hour.
Our laptop batteries do an order of magnitude
better than that so we are quite good compared to
nature and there is unlikely to be much room for
further improvement.
Funny, on old Russian calculators you could make
an upside down something that roughly translates
as "suck d*ck" (07931505), although some letters
are latin and some cyrillic. Ah, the memories.
Why is it that mind cannot be explained by science?
Certainly free thought is chemistry so we should
be able to simulate a free thinking brain inside
a computer in not too distant future. You have
to remember that already people try to simulate
complete cell function in a computer and also that
humans start their development from a single cell.
The whole thing is not only feasible, most parts
of the puzzle are already available.
Mod parent +6 Funny.
I think it is fine to have to pay for official
documentation and official certification of
compliance. It is not OK for the standards body
to restrict free unofficial versions of documentation
or private (potentially free) compliance testing.
Otherwise, I agree, standards should be free.
Well, the problem is that his definition of open
standards is essentially just standards. He dances
around the openness thing. To be open, a standard
must be useable for free or a nominal fee AND have
no IP attached with clear prior art established
for all major technologies involved in the standard.
Ideally there should also be a fund for community
defense against IP attacks but that is rare in
practice.
In any case, his response shows clearly that not
only MS against open standards but that this is
ingrained in their corporate culture, in the very
way they think of things.
How does it compare with Illustrator?
Does it do CMYK? Does it do exports in a good
variety of formats? Does it handle page layout
issues so printing people (at places like
Science and Nature) are happy?
Don't worry about IBM. Having core developers in-house
boosts their services part. If HP cuts their devs
and goes with Linux without R&D part in place then
their efforts to develop their service business
(something they dearly want) will hit the wall sooner
rather than later.
I use DnD with keyboard all the time. In Windows
(yes I use Windows at work) if you hold shift while
dragging then it moves, otherwise it copies.
And Alt-Tab works nicely with DnD though I don't
use that as much.
Yeah, in my case the computer refused to boot from
USB key straight but if it works for you it is
simpler.
I recently had this issue and the way I did it is:
1. Download CD DOS bootdisk image off net
2. Burn boot CD
3. Format usb key with FAT16
4. Put bios update files on usb key
5. Boot from CD
6. Change drives to usb key
7. Update bios
Very simple, flexible, and takes no time. You only
burn one CD for all updates.
First off, loved the "armatures" bit. +1 Funny.
Second, I dunno why everyone here is so focused on
the specs he gave, since he omitted the key spec -
HDD speed. See, if you load stuff off of punch-cards
the load time will be days or more. I suspect that
he uses on an old laptop with something like 4200 rpm
hard drive or maybe even slower, perhaps with little
to no cache. Now load times can be real bad. In
short, he is benching his hard drive but reports
mostly irrelevant cpu and memory speeds.
So the way I parse this, it seems they have found a
way to make H2 from glucose for half the previous
price. What was the previous best price for
glucose -> H2 and how does it compare with the
cost of other fuels?
For those not from Russia:
The colloquial form of referring to sugar powder in
Russia is "sand", so when the above joke works
much better in Russian. It arose when there were
shortages of sugar in late eighties.
The full joke goes: "... 70 years of mirages and then
rationing of sand."
What I want to know is if it is possible to set these
dual cores up to do something like a mainframe,
i.e. run the same load in parallel and compare
results. If they don't match, alert the user and
stop the calculation.
Could be very useful for scientific computing.
Yeah, that's why when I was grading homeworks I
made sure to keep copies of everything. Even now,
close to a decade later I have a thick folder with
the copies. If a review comes up, I will be ready
even twenty years from now.
Well, chess playing machines were not considered
worthy until they could play on par with and
occasionally beat the chess champion. I don't
think I am confused. I think halls of fame exist
for a reason.
Oh, btw, given an infinite lifetime (which we may
assume for a machine so let's extend the courtesy
to humans as well) most humans could accumulate
enough knowledge, insight, and skill to be great
at almost anything. Individual people may not
choose to be great, but the whole point of having
great specimens is to show that we have the
capacity.
There is never a definitive translation. However
the quality of translation can be judged pretty
well. The point is that this excercise combines
two crucial human traits: knowing the culture so as
to understand what others are trying to say and
having your own creativity (because any real
translation must involve your own creative view
of the text).
Oh, and by the way, intelligence has to be judged
against the best specimens of the human race, not
a drunk redneck who can only moo and fart. I would
maybe even go further and say that any artificial
intelligence has to match up against the wit of
the entire humanity, not just any one human.
When we say that we have sent a man to the Moon
we mean that a few particularly bright specimens
did it. We measure human intelligence by its
peaks not lows and so we should do with any AI.
As I understood him, he wants to see a compression
engine for plain text with a compression ratio
of a bit more than 6 (assuming a simple case like
English Ascii with 8 bits per character to begin
with).
Personally I have my own test: given an arbitrary
length text in a given language the machine should
be able to provide a valid translation into
another language. Not just grammatically valid, but
also complete in terms of double meanings, innuendoes,
poetic rhythms, rhimes, historical and archaic
phraseology, and other such things. If a machine
can obsolete human translators (especially the
artistic kind who can spend a lifetime to
translate one work of Shakespeare) then it has
intelligence.
You know, I disagree. For the last 10 years one
could make the case that storage needs were driven
by one thing and one thing only: multimedia.
Assuming that this is the limit of our storage
needs, we can say that we need about 1 Tb per movie
(uncompressed of course) and so between 10000 and
100000 Tb for typical storage needs. We also need
on the order of 10 Tb of RAM to satisfy existing
demand. Further, lugging around those 500 Gb HDD's
is impractical, so those need to shrink to the
size of microdrives. The end result is that storage
density needs to improve by 6 to 7 orders of
magnitude to satisfy existing demand.
The above calculation shows why storage needs seem
ever growing - it is because we are so far off
from satisfying demand. But it is entirely
unclear if there is anything beyond 2D and 1D data.
My guess is that 10 million terabytes should be
enough for most people for the next 50-100 years
at least.
P.S. I am using uncompressed movie sizes as a
reference based on what happened with audio. First
it seemed that crappy low rate mp3's were enough
but now lossless compression is becoming
widespread. And that only buys you a factor of 2
so I omit it in order of magnitude calculations.
Harder time? No! See e.g.a rticle id=539&cid=4
http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?