The part you quote contains a link to another article describing levitating "ants, beetles, spiders, ladybugs, bees, tadpoles, and fish," but that levitation was done using ultrasound, not magnetism.
Better would be "Entertainment Weekly snubs science books in 100-best list."
EW isn't bemoaning anything. The article contains no analysis of the list. The entire article is nothing but the list. EW isn't claiming to have a standing to complain about anything about the list.
The headline at EW is "The New Classics: Books." That isn't making any suggestion at all. It's nothing but a couple of noun phrases.
Maybe the headline should have been "Slashdot article submitter bemoans lack of great science books on Entertainment Weekly's list."
At the Badger Herald, "UW" refers to UW-Madison. Elsewhere, "UW" is vague and might refer to the entire University of Wisconsin System. Sometimes that's a cause of confusion when reading the Herald, but most of the time, the context is clear enough, especially considering that the writers are writing to the local audience, not the worldwide audience brought in by Slashdot. It's a UW-Madison paper, so the abbreviation refers to the local school. The Herald frequently takes an informal tone like that.
"UW-M" doesn't refer to anything in Wisconsin; if you're talking about the Milwaukee campus, then it's UWM. None of the UW campuses use a hyphen in the shortened form: UWM, UWGB, UWEC, etc. We only use a hyphen when the city name is spelled out: UW-Milwaukee, UW-Green Bay, UW-Eau Claire, UW-Madison.
What's wrong with it is that the entire second sentence is superfluous if you simply make the text "webcammed about it" be the link. The very fact that there's a link implies that we can access it, so you don't need to make us read an additional sentence to tell us that.
You don't need to call special attention to a link. You don't even need to use the word "link." The browser already highlights the link for you with an underline, and links are the only things underlined on Slashdot. The link highlighting also serves as a beacon for the reader: "This is the important part of this article." When I read Slashdot, I read the headlines and the hyperlink text first because they are what stand out. When the hyperlinks I read just say "link," or "here," or even "article," there's nothing to draw me in to read the rest of it. Want me to read your summary? Then give me something that catches my eye.
Slashdot articles actually already go a long way toward doing that. There's the headline, possibly including a section name. There's also the "department" quip. The image bug indicates the broad topic of the article. But if there's no interesting text to capture my interest, I'll often skip over it. (I suspect the same works on the editors: If you want Taco to take notice of your article and post it, give him something interesting to work with.)
At Slashdot, the links are supposed to make you go somewhere else. The story on Slashdot is rarely anything more than a summary of someone else's text, so if you're reading the summary and interested enough to follow the link, do so. You're not going to miss anything by skipping the rest of the summary. The summary is often just an unattributed quote from the original article anyway.
Submissions get rejected from all sorts of places because of style preferences. It's not unique to Slashdot. Now that you know the style here, follow that style when you submit your next summary.
The sentence itself, while parted with a colon, also feels grammatically unweildy.
Yeah, but what legal document doesn't?
Should the "of" in "of other software [...]" not be "for"?
No. The sentence is saying "development of other software [...], distribution of other software [...], and use of other software [...], as 'development,' 'distribution,' and 'use' are defined under the terms of this license." Factor out the common "of other software [...]" from all three portions and put it at the end.
That particular sentence is fine. There are others, though, that don't have good parallel structure. Consider this passage from section 6:
Distribution of the Corresponding Source in accord with this section
must be in a format that is publicly documented, unencumbered by
patents, and must require no special password or key for unpacking,
reading or copying.
It's saying that the distribution must be in a format that is publicly documents, that it must be in a format that is unencumbered by patents, and that it must be in a format that is must require no special password. Is must? The alternative reading of that sentence is that the distribution must be in a format that is publicly documented, the distribution unencumbered by patents, and the distribution must require no special password. Distribution unencumbered? There are either too many verbs or not enough.
I can only hope that the authors of the license simply haven't given it to a copy editor yet -- this is just a draft, after all.
It's neither the SEH syntax nor how the compiler works with the SEH syntax that's patented. In fact, the patent has nothing whatsoever to do with syntax.
The C++ language specification describes something that it calls "exceptions." It describes what is supposed to happen when you say throw X, and it says what happens when you say catch (Y). What the specification does not say is how a compiler implementer is supposed to make a program do what the specification says the program should do. The specification doesn't say, for instance, that i = 2 must be translated into the (Intel) machine code mov eax, 2, and it doesn't say what machine code the compiler should generate for throw X. Those choices are left to the compiler implementers, such as Microsoft, Borland, and the authors of GCC.
The patent describes how Borland managed to implement part of the C++ language by using Windows Structured Exception Handling.
(I think I should point out that there may be other kinds of exception-handling that are also structured, but the term "SEH" in this context refers to the particular way that exceptions work in Windows (and OS/2). An earlier comment refered to Matt Pietrek's 1997 Microsoft Systems Journal article, A Crash Course on the Depths of Win32(TM) Structured Exception Handling. Readers of that article will notice that there's really very little in it about C++. Instead, it describes how Microsoft's __try, __finally, and __except work, not the C++ try and catch. That's because Windows SEH and C++ exceptions are completely separate concepts. You can have each without the other. It's just unfortunate that they both use the term "exception," so many people think it's all the same thing. The Microsoft extensions allow the programmer to hook into the OS's SEH facilities.)
The patent does not cover SEH itself. For anyone reading the patent, you need to realize that nearly half the text of the patent is dedicated solely to background information. It gives an overview of what exceptions are; it briefly describes another way of implementing C++ exceptions by using special return codes that compiler-generated code interprets after every function returns; it goes to great length describing how SEH works in OS/2 and Windows.
Eventually, the patent document gets to the meat of the patent, describing exactly how Borland devised a way to use the native OS exception facilities to implement C++'s notion of exceptions. It's certainly not the only way to implement the feature, but it seems like a pretty good way, so I can see why someone would want to patent it.
(We now enter the part of my post that I'm unsure about; I welcome clarifications anyone cares to give.)
Now, how does this all apply to GCC and Winelib? I'm not really sure; I've never used Wine or Winelib. Winelib is for taking source code written to target Windows and instead compiling it for Linux without having to change all the code, right? The way I see it, unless that source code was taking advantage of SEH directly, there should be nothing to change. Direct use of SEH is just foolish; it's very complicated, and you're liable to get it wrong. Instead, the code should be using language features like throw and catch, which GCC is free to implement however it wants, or the code should be using API functions like RaiseException, which Winelib is free implement however it wants (but which should probably be compatible with how GCC implements exceptions).
And Wine itself is to make already-compiled Windows programs run on Linux, right? So its job is different from Winelib's. Wine needs to not only implement API functions, but also mimic various OS behavior that the programs will be expecting. Specifically, it needs to mimic Windows SEH so that the programs can raise and handle exceptions properly. I figure
The original Delphi through Delphi 4 used a language called Object Pascal. With the release of Delphi 5, the name of the language was changed to Delphi.
No Delphi compiler understands C++, although C++ Builder can compile Delphi code and Delphi supports compiler directives for exporting C++ headers for use by C++ Builder. Delphi 2005, the newest Delphi version, does not include C++ Builder; it includes C# Builder.
In the past, Delphi has included C++ Builder as a separate install. It was usually the previous release version, so Delphi 5 came with C++ Builder 4.
Delphi 2005 is three products in one. It handles Win32 development in the Delphi lanaguage, it handles.Net development in the Delphi language, and it handles.Net development in the C# language. It's all in a single IDE, not separate products. To my knowledge, Borland still uses Microsoft's C# compiler for that portion of the product.
I was wondering whether anyone else would catch that! The author meant to write "Vanuatian," not "Vaunatian." It's the adjective describing people (or companies, I suppose) from the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu. The Republic of Vanuatu (pop. 189,618) holds the distinction of having more spoken languages per capita than any other country. If you'd like to visit there, see its National Tourism Office.
Searching Google for "PDF printer" yields a few promising results. One is Expert PDF 2. The standard edition appears to include the integrated-font and graphic-compression features you want. I've never heard of it before.
On Windows 2000, I use RedMon in conjunction with Ghostscript. RedMon is a generic port redirector, but it includes instructions on piping Postscript output from any Windows program into Ghostscript, which can export PDFs.
I don't know what RedMon's support system is like, but on the other hand, I haven't really needed it since it worked right away -- at least the first time, anyway.
I believe that if your printer driveris configured to include the fonts in its output, then Ghostscript will include them. It can compress graphics, and line art does not get pixelated.
Setting up Ghostscript for this purpose is simple; just accept the installer's defaults. RedMon is a little trickier since you need to set up the redirected port, the PDF script, and the printer driver yourself. It's not rocket science, but it's hardly the pinnacle of convenience, either.
When you print something on the indicated printer, a file-selection dialog box appears to prompt for the PDF destination file. Enter a file name (with the extension -- there are no defaults), and you're finished.
As I mentioned above, everything worked fine for me on Windows 2000. Windows XP is another story. RedMon seems to have problems with fast user switching. I think the file-selection dialog always appears on the first desktop, which isn't necessarily the desktop of the currently active user. The source appears to contain code to account for multiple desktops, but it's commented out, and I really haven't felt like tinkering with to investigate further.
RedMon and Ghostscript have all the functionality, but the system lacks the polish of a professional product. On the other hand, you can't beat the price, and it's not Acrobat.
<p>In two places, the article claims aerogel to have a density "1000 times less" than that of glass. If that's true, then that means it has <i>negative</i> density.</p> <p>Consider this: What would be the density of something 0 times less dense than glass? (The same as that of glass, of course.) How about something 1 time less dense than glass? (Multiply the density of glass by 1 and subtract: It has 0 density.) So anything beyond 1 multiple means <i>it isn't there</i>.</p>
Slashdot Mirror
The part you quote contains a link to another article describing levitating "ants, beetles, spiders, ladybugs, bees, tadpoles, and fish," but that levitation was done using ultrasound, not magnetism.
Better would be "Entertainment Weekly snubs science books in 100-best list."
EW isn't bemoaning anything. The article contains no analysis of the list. The entire article is nothing but the list. EW isn't claiming to have a standing to complain about anything about the list.
The headline at EW is "The New Classics: Books." That isn't making any suggestion at all. It's nothing but a couple of noun phrases.
Maybe the headline should have been "Slashdot article submitter bemoans lack of great science books on Entertainment Weekly's list."
At the Badger Herald, "UW" refers to UW-Madison. Elsewhere, "UW" is vague and might refer to the entire University of Wisconsin System. Sometimes that's a cause of confusion when reading the Herald, but most of the time, the context is clear enough, especially considering that the writers are writing to the local audience, not the worldwide audience brought in by Slashdot. It's a UW-Madison paper, so the abbreviation refers to the local school. The Herald frequently takes an informal tone like that.
"UW-M" doesn't refer to anything in Wisconsin; if you're talking about the Milwaukee campus, then it's UWM. None of the UW campuses use a hyphen in the shortened form: UWM, UWGB, UWEC, etc. We only use a hyphen when the city name is spelled out: UW-Milwaukee, UW-Green Bay, UW-Eau Claire, UW-Madison.
What's wrong with it is that the entire second sentence is superfluous if you simply make the text "webcammed about it" be the link. The very fact that there's a link implies that we can access it, so you don't need to make us read an additional sentence to tell us that.
You don't need to call special attention to a link. You don't even need to use the word "link." The browser already highlights the link for you with an underline, and links are the only things underlined on Slashdot. The link highlighting also serves as a beacon for the reader: "This is the important part of this article." When I read Slashdot, I read the headlines and the hyperlink text first because they are what stand out. When the hyperlinks I read just say "link," or "here," or even "article," there's nothing to draw me in to read the rest of it. Want me to read your summary? Then give me something that catches my eye.
Slashdot articles actually already go a long way toward doing that. There's the headline, possibly including a section name. There's also the "department" quip. The image bug indicates the broad topic of the article. But if there's no interesting text to capture my interest, I'll often skip over it. (I suspect the same works on the editors: If you want Taco to take notice of your article and post it, give him something interesting to work with.)
At Slashdot, the links are supposed to make you go somewhere else. The story on Slashdot is rarely anything more than a summary of someone else's text, so if you're reading the summary and interested enough to follow the link, do so. You're not going to miss anything by skipping the rest of the summary. The summary is often just an unattributed quote from the original article anyway.
Submissions get rejected from all sorts of places because of style preferences. It's not unique to Slashdot. Now that you know the style here, follow that style when you submit your next summary.
Yeah, but what legal document doesn't?
No. The sentence is saying "development of other software [...], distribution of other software [...], and use of other software [...], as 'development,' 'distribution,' and 'use' are defined under the terms of this license." Factor out the common "of other software [...]" from all three portions and put it at the end.
That particular sentence is fine. There are others, though, that don't have good parallel structure. Consider this passage from section 6:
It's saying that the distribution must be in a format that is publicly documents, that it must be in a format that is unencumbered by patents, and that it must be in a format that is must require no special password. Is must? The alternative reading of that sentence is that the distribution must be in a format that is publicly documented, the distribution unencumbered by patents, and the distribution must require no special password. Distribution unencumbered? There are either too many verbs or not enough.
I can only hope that the authors of the license simply haven't given it to a copy editor yet -- this is just a draft, after all.
It's neither the SEH syntax nor how the compiler works with the SEH syntax that's patented. In fact, the patent has nothing whatsoever to do with syntax.
The C++ language specification describes something that it calls "exceptions." It describes what is supposed to happen when you say throw X, and it says what happens when you say catch (Y). What the specification does not say is how a compiler implementer is supposed to make a program do what the specification says the program should do. The specification doesn't say, for instance, that i = 2 must be translated into the (Intel) machine code mov eax, 2, and it doesn't say what machine code the compiler should generate for throw X. Those choices are left to the compiler implementers, such as Microsoft, Borland, and the authors of GCC.
The patent describes how Borland managed to implement part of the C++ language by using Windows Structured Exception Handling.
(I think I should point out that there may be other kinds of exception-handling that are also structured, but the term "SEH" in this context refers to the particular way that exceptions work in Windows (and OS/2). An earlier comment refered to Matt Pietrek's 1997 Microsoft Systems Journal article, A Crash Course on the Depths of Win32(TM) Structured Exception Handling. Readers of that article will notice that there's really very little in it about C++. Instead, it describes how Microsoft's __try, __finally, and __except work, not the C++ try and catch. That's because Windows SEH and C++ exceptions are completely separate concepts. You can have each without the other. It's just unfortunate that they both use the term "exception," so many people think it's all the same thing. The Microsoft extensions allow the programmer to hook into the OS's SEH facilities.)
The patent does not cover SEH itself. For anyone reading the patent, you need to realize that nearly half the text of the patent is dedicated solely to background information. It gives an overview of what exceptions are; it briefly describes another way of implementing C++ exceptions by using special return codes that compiler-generated code interprets after every function returns; it goes to great length describing how SEH works in OS/2 and Windows.
Eventually, the patent document gets to the meat of the patent, describing exactly how Borland devised a way to use the native OS exception facilities to implement C++'s notion of exceptions. It's certainly not the only way to implement the feature, but it seems like a pretty good way, so I can see why someone would want to patent it.
(We now enter the part of my post that I'm unsure about; I welcome clarifications anyone cares to give.)
Now, how does this all apply to GCC and Winelib? I'm not really sure; I've never used Wine or Winelib. Winelib is for taking source code written to target Windows and instead compiling it for Linux without having to change all the code, right? The way I see it, unless that source code was taking advantage of SEH directly, there should be nothing to change. Direct use of SEH is just foolish; it's very complicated, and you're liable to get it wrong. Instead, the code should be using language features like throw and catch, which GCC is free to implement however it wants, or the code should be using API functions like RaiseException, which Winelib is free implement however it wants (but which should probably be compatible with how GCC implements exceptions).
And Wine itself is to make already-compiled Windows programs run on Linux, right? So its job is different from Winelib's. Wine needs to not only implement API functions, but also mimic various OS behavior that the programs will be expecting. Specifically, it needs to mimic Windows SEH so that the programs can raise and handle exceptions properly. I figure
No, I think he meant troll . That word is every bit as good as trawl . Where did you think the other sense of the word came from, after all?
The original Delphi through Delphi 4 used a language called Object Pascal. With the release of Delphi 5, the name of the language was changed to Delphi.
No Delphi compiler understands C++, although C++ Builder can compile Delphi code and Delphi supports compiler directives for exporting C++ headers for use by C++ Builder. Delphi 2005, the newest Delphi version, does not include C++ Builder; it includes C# Builder.
In the past, Delphi has included C++ Builder as a separate install. It was usually the previous release version, so Delphi 5 came with C++ Builder 4.
Delphi 2005 is three products in one. It handles Win32 development in the Delphi lanaguage, it handles .Net development in the Delphi language, and it handles .Net development in the C# language. It's all in a single IDE, not separate products. To my knowledge, Borland still uses Microsoft's C# compiler for that portion of the product.
I was wondering whether anyone else would catch that! The author meant to write "Vanuatian," not "Vaunatian." It's the adjective describing people (or companies, I suppose) from the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu. The Republic of Vanuatu (pop. 189,618) holds the distinction of having more spoken languages per capita than any other country. If you'd like to visit there, see its National Tourism Office.
Searching Google for "PDF printer" yields a few promising results. One is Expert PDF 2. The standard edition appears to include the integrated-font and graphic-compression features you want. I've never heard of it before.
On Windows 2000, I use RedMon in conjunction with Ghostscript. RedMon is a generic port redirector, but it includes instructions on piping Postscript output from any Windows program into Ghostscript, which can export PDFs.
I don't know what RedMon's support system is like, but on the other hand, I haven't really needed it since it worked right away -- at least the first time, anyway.
I believe that if your printer driveris configured to include the fonts in its output, then Ghostscript will include them. It can compress graphics, and line art does not get pixelated.
Setting up Ghostscript for this purpose is simple; just accept the installer's defaults. RedMon is a little trickier since you need to set up the redirected port, the PDF script, and the printer driver yourself. It's not rocket science, but it's hardly the pinnacle of convenience, either.
When you print something on the indicated printer, a file-selection dialog box appears to prompt for the PDF destination file. Enter a file name (with the extension -- there are no defaults), and you're finished.
As I mentioned above, everything worked fine for me on Windows 2000. Windows XP is another story. RedMon seems to have problems with fast user switching. I think the file-selection dialog always appears on the first desktop, which isn't necessarily the desktop of the currently active user. The source appears to contain code to account for multiple desktops, but it's commented out, and I really haven't felt like tinkering with to investigate further.
RedMon and Ghostscript have all the functionality, but the system lacks the polish of a professional product. On the other hand, you can't beat the price, and it's not Acrobat.
<p>In two places, the article claims aerogel to have a density "1000 times less" than that of glass. If that's true, then that means it has <i>negative</i> density.</p>
<p>Consider this: What would be the density of something 0 times less dense than glass? (The same as that of glass, of course.) How about something 1 time less dense than glass? (Multiply the density of glass by 1 and subtract: It has 0 density.) So anything beyond 1 multiple means <i>it isn't there</i>.</p>