The spirit of TFA seemed to be that sometimes a simple web app is better than a standalone application. The choice of server-side scripting tools wasn't discussed at all.
"c'mon, everyone uses windows, what are you a communist?"
It's funny that Americans say 'communism' when they refer to a centrally planned economy in a totalitarian government. Of course, there's nothing centrally planned or totalitarian about everyone using Windows.
Mine runs by burning baby seals alive. Sure, it costs a bit more,
Mine runs by clubbing baby seals. Sure, it costs a bit more to pay the DJ, and sometimes the neighbors complain about the noise, but they just don't appreciate good techno.
I think not. We didn't learn to fly by copying birds, and we didn't learn to go fast by copying cheetahs.
IIRC, the idea of using wings and the kind of profile used in wings did come from birds.
So far, neuroscience and psychology owe much more to computer science than the other way 'round.
This is partly what I'm trying to say. However, I think the hard part about AI is to understand what intelligence itself is, and I doubt that is something you can derive completely from computer science. There is an iterative process between understanding human thinking, and building better thinking machines. What I'm trying to say is that AI is about this whole problem, not just about the building machines part.
Understanding the human brain
on
Marvin Minsky On AI
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· Score: 2, Interesting
You know, AI is actually easy. You just have to have a complete understanding of the human brain, and then you use this model to build a functional duplicate;)
While studying educational psychology, I've found that a lot of AI research is being done to understand human behavior, with no intentions towards building actual AI systems. Hypotheses concerning some limited aspects of human thinking can be modeled on a computer, and compared against living subjects. This way we are gradually starting to understand the whole of thinking. As a byproduct you gain the tools to make AI itself.
When dealing with anti-trust suits, Microsoft's tactic seems to just ignore the verdict in the hope it'll go away. The strange thing is, it actually appears to work...
I too feel that the EU hasn't done any real harm to Microsoft so far. I'd love to see some real action, for example banning their software sales in the EU altogether for some time, say one month. That would show everyone that EU is being serious, but also force the customers to think about alternatives. It might kickstart a significant level of interest in OSS even after MS returned to the market.
Unfortunately, it may be that the EU organizations themselves are hopelessly bound to using MS products, and they are only after some discounts and/or money.
Why not? Beacause at some point you reach the point of diminishing returns.
If you start with CD quality audio (or any given uncompressed digital format), lossless is the absolute best you can do quality-wise while saving some space. There's nothing subjective about lossless formats, they don't try to second guess anything about human hearing or your audio gear. I like them for this concept, they're like unix in the sense that they do the job with no fuss.
There's no 'point' of diminishing returns about lossy formats, there's just a vast grey area that depends on lots of subjective factors.
Agreed. I think the whole point of using paper nowadays is that it's disposable, so you don't have to worry about it.
For example, the idea of newspapers downloaded onto an e-paper came up few years ago. Imagine the amount of fingerprints, coffee stains etc. accumulated on the paper over a year or so.
But once I actually tried to write a program in Python, I found I didn't mind it one bit. Within a few hours my eyes didn't get confused by the lack of braces. I think it's actually easier on the eyes once you get used to it.
Python was one of my first programming languages, and the whitespace thing made sense to me from the beginning. In most C-style code, people use both braces and indentation to denote blocks; isn't that redundant? It seems braces are for the compiler and indentation is for human readers. Shouldn't higher level languages be designed for humans rather than machines?
Biology, chemistry and phyiscs are man-made systems to describe the world around us. That's what math does. How does a physicist solve a problem without using math?
I agree with your general point. However, while mathematics and physics did start out as the same thing, modern mathematics is a completely abstract subject; it's neither a natural nor a social science. One key issue is that you can have 100% certainty about mathematical things, but science is never fully certain or complete.
Another facet of the modern separation of math/physics is that physical concepts are independent of math. You can use different kinds of mathematics for the same physical idea. Physicists do solve problems without using math every day; it's the numerical part that requires math, and it's often considered secondary to conceptual insight.
Computer science is as much a science as mathematics is, for whatever that's worth.
Many people would argue that mathematics is not a science, since it's a man-made system. Conversely, science is something like physics or biology where humans try to figure out something that exists independent of them.
For example, a bug in CS created by programmers, so they have inside knowledge on how to get rid of it. But a biological bug can only be studied from the outside perspective, using science. Of course, CS bugs are often so complicated that people resort to the scientific method when hunting them.
Apple definitely do not have the enough people to support numerous different hardwares like Windows. Limiting to one hardware platforms really cut a lot of driver work, reduce the bugs and improve the quality.
That's exactly the beauty of virtualization: the client OS faces the same virtual hardware, no matter where the host OS is running.
I wonder the same whenever some marketing genius mentions a dual-core processor. Of course, processors didn't have cores until Intel innovated the Core architecture;)
Even though I sing in a church choir, I don't listen to music much, and I don't own any kind of personal music player, except for my old Walkman, gathering dust in the back of a drawer somewhere.
Even worse, when I say, "I don't listen to music.", it's assumed that I am a completely uninteresting shlub who's leisure hours are filled with TV sitcom reruns.
I feel much the same, as an amateur musician, and I've noticed that musicians tend to value silence a lot more than music lovers do. It's partly a physical issue of saving your ears, and I also find that surrounding music interferes with my thinking of new musical ideas. Needless to say I don't use a portable music player, though I'm considering getting one with recording capabilities for quick and dirty field recording.
You should be able to turn the situation to your advantage. People who like music tend to appreciate those who make music, even if they're completely off their preferred genre.
Slashdot Mirror
The spirit of TFA seemed to be that sometimes a simple web app is better than a standalone application. The choice of server-side scripting tools wasn't discussed at all.
It's funny that Americans say 'communism' when they refer to a centrally planned economy in a totalitarian government. Of course, there's nothing centrally planned or totalitarian about everyone using Windows.
Mine runs by clubbing baby seals. Sure, it costs a bit more to pay the DJ, and sometimes the neighbors complain about the noise, but they just don't appreciate good techno.
IIRC, the idea of using wings and the kind of profile used in wings did come from birds.
So far, neuroscience and psychology owe much more to computer science than the other way 'round.This is partly what I'm trying to say. However, I think the hard part about AI is to understand what intelligence itself is, and I doubt that is something you can derive completely from computer science. There is an iterative process between understanding human thinking, and building better thinking machines. What I'm trying to say is that AI is about this whole problem, not just about the building machines part.
You know, AI is actually easy. You just have to have a complete understanding of the human brain, and then you use this model to build a functional duplicate ;)
While studying educational psychology, I've found that a lot of AI research is being done to understand human behavior, with no intentions towards building actual AI systems. Hypotheses concerning some limited aspects of human thinking can be modeled on a computer, and compared against living subjects. This way we are gradually starting to understand the whole of thinking. As a byproduct you gain the tools to make AI itself.
A programmer, networking consultant, and 3 IT managers have a serious technical debate. The bartender asks, "What is this, some kind of a joke?"
I too feel that the EU hasn't done any real harm to Microsoft so far. I'd love to see some real action, for example banning their software sales in the EU altogether for some time, say one month. That would show everyone that EU is being serious, but also force the customers to think about alternatives. It might kickstart a significant level of interest in OSS even after MS returned to the market. Unfortunately, it may be that the EU organizations themselves are hopelessly bound to using MS products, and they are only after some discounts and/or money.
"-1, bad spelling" for your "-1, innane"
If you start with CD quality audio (or any given uncompressed digital format), lossless is the absolute best you can do quality-wise while saving some space. There's nothing subjective about lossless formats, they don't try to second guess anything about human hearing or your audio gear. I like them for this concept, they're like unix in the sense that they do the job with no fuss.
There's no 'point' of diminishing returns about lossy formats, there's just a vast grey area that depends on lots of subjective factors.
With this solution the poster would have to switch to unix, but then he/she probably wouldn't need such obscene amounts of RAM.
But I'm sure that both in Europe and in the US, the average wii is bigger than in, say, Japan ;)
Agreed. I think the whole point of using paper nowadays is that it's disposable, so you don't have to worry about it. For example, the idea of newspapers downloaded onto an e-paper came up few years ago. Imagine the amount of fingerprints, coffee stains etc. accumulated on the paper over a year or so.
Python was one of my first programming languages, and the whitespace thing made sense to me from the beginning. In most C-style code, people use both braces and indentation to denote blocks; isn't that redundant? It seems braces are for the compiler and indentation is for human readers. Shouldn't higher level languages be designed for humans rather than machines?
Note to *nix users: You want to run *nix? Then shut up and choose your hardware sensibly.
I agree with your general point. However, while mathematics and physics did start out as the same thing, modern mathematics is a completely abstract subject; it's neither a natural nor a social science. One key issue is that you can have 100% certainty about mathematical things, but science is never fully certain or complete.
Another facet of the modern separation of math/physics is that physical concepts are independent of math. You can use different kinds of mathematics for the same physical idea. Physicists do solve problems without using math every day; it's the numerical part that requires math, and it's often considered secondary to conceptual insight.
Many people would argue that mathematics is not a science, since it's a man-made system. Conversely, science is something like physics or biology where humans try to figure out something that exists independent of them.
For example, a bug in CS created by programmers, so they have inside knowledge on how to get rid of it. But a biological bug can only be studied from the outside perspective, using science. Of course, CS bugs are often so complicated that people resort to the scientific method when hunting them.
But I thought time would go faster if I compiled my Gentoo kernel with --omg-optimize!!1
"It was a summer's tale: just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
(as seen on somebody's sig)
But isn't that the whole point? You can't build a 'distributed Youtube' with only one copy of each video.
The name's Cillin. Penis Cillin.
Oh, wait.. wrong Fleming.
That's exactly the beauty of virtualization: the client OS faces the same virtual hardware, no matter where the host OS is running.
I wonder the same whenever some marketing genius mentions a dual-core processor. Of course, processors didn't have cores until Intel innovated the Core architecture ;)
Even though I sing in a church choir, I don't listen to music much, and I don't own any kind of personal music player, except for my old Walkman, gathering dust in the back of a drawer somewhere.
Even worse, when I say, "I don't listen to music.", it's assumed that I am a completely uninteresting shlub who's leisure hours are filled with TV sitcom reruns.
I feel much the same, as an amateur musician, and I've noticed that musicians tend to value silence a lot more than music lovers do. It's partly a physical issue of saving your ears, and I also find that surrounding music interferes with my thinking of new musical ideas. Needless to say I don't use a portable music player, though I'm considering getting one with recording capabilities for quick and dirty field recording.
You should be able to turn the situation to your advantage. People who like music tend to appreciate those who make music, even if they're completely off their preferred genre.
The GP probably meant Latter Day Saints, not Lysergic Software Distribution ;)
I'd be more careful with these jokes if I were you, given that Mrs. Tove Torvalds happens to be a karate champion :)