I'm not sure if 2 probes is really enough. They should take more of a shotgun approach, and send several hundred probes in the general direction of Mars.
Some of you might say "That'll cost too much". But if you really think about it, it'd be a way to cut costs. For one thing, if you send enough probes, the guidance systems on each individual probe don't need to be that good, only one needs to get there. The same goes for reliability and physical reliability of the system.
I guess a shotgun's not the best analogy... perhaps ejaculation's a better model; Lots of poorly designed things set out in the hopes that one works. I'm sure I could somehow equate this to Microsoft; I'll leave that as an excercise to the reader.
It sounds to me like a great marketing idea. The average luser doesn't really have a clue about how fast a system is, or the fact that 500MHz is more than enough to read email and surf the web. They think that MHz=power. So, if you can make a chip that runs at 1GHZ cheaply, even if it only runs as fast as a 700MHz, you will sell units.
So, if the price of the VIA GHz chip is comparable to an Intel @800, even if it DOES perform like Intel's 700, they get a good market angle. Hell, they'll probably sell them in systems that are comparable in price to 900MHz systems.
Both AMD and Intel have impressive 64bit architectures coming in the near future. I don't really know enough about either to say if one is technically superior to the other, but as we've seen time and time again, that's not going to be the determining factor. Since the two aren't compatable, they'll be forced to compete, and I don't think the market has room for both of these platforms.
Technical merit won't really make a difference here; both Intel and AMD can make a good chip. It's going to come down to who gets to market first, who can buy the press coverage, and who's going to get the required software support.
I have some vague memory of an Intel sponsored 64bit Linux port; If AMD expects to succeed, they should be doing the same.
One of the advantages of Java's singly rooted object heirarchy is that all objects are subclasses of Object (for clarification object is just a thing, Object is the class to which all classes are subclasses of), so (with the exception of the primitive types) any object can be referenced as an Object.
Well, since we know most of these guys have there boxes overclocked and generating way too much heat, why don't we try using that to our advantage? I sufficiently hot CPU should be able to be used as an element in a vaporizer. =)
RPN is superior to the "normal" way (does it even have a name?).
Yes, it does. The "normal" way is called infix notation. RPN is Postfix notation, and a posibility exists to do prefix notation, but we just pretend that doesn't exist.
Hrmm.. maybe I am full of shit in my previous post. Whatever, Everyone's allowed a bit of karma whoring once in a while, eh?
Unfortunately, benchmarks for the Sun JVM are hard to come by. If anybody reads the licence on the JDK, there's a clause explicitly forbiding the publishing of benchmarks, so you're kinda stuck looking at the Sun ones.
One of the key differences between C# and.... Java, is that we tried to stay much closer to C++ in our design
I was under the impression that one of Java's big strengths was that it didn't stick too closely to C++, and actually had a coherent, consistant design.
Why are there no enums in Java, for example?
Granted, having type-safe enums would be nice; but is this really a big enough flaw to design a language around?
one of our key design goals was to make the C# language component-oriented
Great... they're making it easier for us to write stuff to sell to those VB guys...
C# is the first language to incorporate XML comment tags OOOER!!! XML tags. I'm glad Microsoft has decided that it's time to follow the industry standard hype. {MumbleMumbleJavaDocMumbleMumble}
Developers are building software components these days. They're not building monolithic applications or monolithic class libraries. trans: Why bother writing decent software, when some schmuck who's never heard of a linked list can do it in less than half the time with VB (and nobody'll notice the difference)? Might as well accept that, and sell him the bits he uses to do it with.
We focused hard on giving programmers all of the right solutions for interoperating with Internet standards, such as HTTP, HTML, XML, and with existing Microsoft technologies
Well, what else do you need? HTTP, HTML, XML and M$? I should have figured that out a long time ago, and just taken UDP out of my TCP/IP stack altogether.
. Unsafe code allows you to write inline C code with pointers... to pin down memory so it won't accidentally be garbage-collected.
If you need to write unsafe code to ensure that things don't get "accidentally garbage-collected" either the GC is worthless, or you're failing to fully utilize the paradigm. people seem to think we're on drugs or something. I think it's a misunderstanding
Yes... the guys at Berkely were doing drugs when they wrote BSD. They guys at M$ are obviously too sober to put ideals over profit.
Only on the.NET platform can you embed Fujitsu COBOL in an ASP page. I mean it's truly revolutionary.
The only revolution I want to involving COBOL very closely resembles the French revolution. Guilotines and all.
with C# we were able to start with a clean sheet of paper
Hrmm... earlier they were talking about how it stayed closer to C++ than Java did; now it's a "clean sheet of paper". I really wish they could make up their mind.
The unification of programming models, which the.NET framework offers....we always seemed to end up marrying a programming language to a particular API and a particular form of programming.
So, they've learned the error of their ways, and have decided to bring the new unified APIs into the world with a new language?
one of the key differences between our IL design and Java byte code...is that we made the decision up-front to not have interpreters. Our code will always run native
And this is important how? Are they saying you can't run it interpreted? Anyways, I'd like to see a JIT compiler do better than the Hotspot model (interpretation + realtime profiling to find sections of code to compile to native code).
you can name your source files anything you want.
For some reason they seem to think this is important. I fail to see it. Skinable filenames?
I think developers will find the release of Visual Studio.Net to be one of the highest quality releases in Microsoft's history
It's a little late for them to start worrying about quality now; they're getting their asses Ma-Belled.
While the US may be sliding away from the cutting edge of technology, we have one definate advantage over some other high-tech, industrialized nations:
Unmetered local telephone service.
I know that at least UK and Singapore still practice the barbaric practice of charging by the minute on local telephone calls; wheras there are places in the US where you can get your long distance at a flat rate.
So what if the rest of the world's got cell phones that let you read the news, have entire symphonies stored for the ringer, and let you play Quake. So what if they have fuzzy-logic washing machines. So what if they've got USB back-scratchers.
I'd much rather live in a country where I don't have to pay by the minute for the priviledge of being put on hold while trying to order Pizza on a friday night.
Oh yeah, M$ sucks. Linux rules. You wanna mod this up.
A lot of these suggestions are great ideas, many of them things I wish I had done in highschool. However, most of the interesting ones are either way outside the curiculum, or too advanced.
The goals of APCS are learning the language (presently, C++, but in the past, Pascal), proper programming methodolgy, common algorithms (sorting, searching), and abstract data types. The intent is to teach a class equivalent to a first year college CS class.
Of all the ideas here, I think the one best suited to the scope and goals of the class is the implimentation of the virtual computer. Not only is it something that can take advantage of some of the idea learned, but it would help prepare them for future classes in computer arcitechure.
A few other interesting ideas: - a maze navigating program:always taking a left turn is a fairly easy way of solving the maze. Depending on the system you're using, display may be the difficult part
- the BlackBox: an NxN box with some number of mirrors (at 45 degree angles: / & \) inside it, into which, at any point around the outside, a laser can be shot in, and where it exits is determined. One the lasers are implimented, you can make it a logic game, or an AI test bed...
Re:Katz writes about things without having 2 clues
on
Selfish Society
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· Score: 1
Yeah, great. Some guy in Somalia (admittedly this is the indefinate poor, starving african nation) could very well be working his ass off trying to make sure that his kids get fed; does this allow him an elitist viewpoint? Yeah, he doesn't worry about politics, unless the gun-toting hoodlums are coming around, trying to steal his share of the UN mandated rice shipment.
However, us as geeks don't need to sweat and toil from dusk 'til dawn in order to survive. Hell, we could make in a day what this poor somalian bastard makes in a year.
where's this going?
dunno, man... I just thought it'd be fun to start ranting about starving somalians.
Bill Gates is a lucky, unskilled monkey. please don't moderate me down...
Well, I'm somwhat in your situation... however, due to the license restrictions on Sun's JDK, I'm no allowed to code control systems for nuclear powerplants, so that's one bit of stress I don't have to worry about.
When they told me that Java would make my life easier, I never quite realized how true they were.
The problem with digital media is that people aren't thinking clearly. The industry wants some absolutely secure system for online distribution; why? Music distribution has never been secure. Somebody has always been able to duplicate things; from singing the song or writing down the score, to burning copies of the disc and sending MP3's across the net. There's not really a way to stop it without saying to the customer "We're greedy sons of bitches, and you're a low-down-dirty-theiving-not-worthy-of-being-truste d-with-that-two-dollar-crack-whore-I-had -last-night piece of trash". Such statements have not historically gone over well with consumers. (with the notable exception of the computer industry, where "you're stupid, we can help" is a good marketing line".
On the other hand, if the public wants commercial music, they should be willing to pay something for it. Making somebody like Britney Spears tolerable to listen to is not a cheap venture. Unfortunately, at the moment, a majority of the people giving the spiel about MP3 listening introducing them to new artists they'll pay for, and backing up things they own, manage to come across like the red-eyed hemp activist, sayting that they only think it should be used for paper, and not smoking.
Perhaps the record guys need to come up with an idea, that while not bulletproof, is Good Enough to make piracy difficult, and make it worth the publics time to use the system. I mean, if slashdot can make money, why couldn't something that actually interests people do the same?
The worst thing here is that the new Macs, with their Oh-So-Cool translucent cases will no longer be able to serve double duty as mouse pads in the ghetto-ass-non-ergonomic-OSHA-would-shit-themselve s office...
Re:Ahh, memories. (gambling and astronomy,)
on
Comet LINEAR Erupts
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· Score: 1
As I recall, an event of this nature from a space-based telescope was somewhere along the lines of 1 in 3.27e5 per year observed. A ground-based telescope would give you odds approximately one order of magnitude more favorable.
Now, I have to admit that a majority of my time in astronomy class was spent making the instructor look stupid, but, I seem to remember some little thing about orbital telescopes having significantly more resolution than terestrial ones. So, going under this (apparently mistaken) assumption, it would seem that an orbital telescope would give you better odds of observing something. Would anyone care to explain to me how a ground based scope would give you an order of magnitude greater chance of observing an event. The only explaination that comes to mind would be that a ground based scope could continuously monitor the object, while orbital scopes would have to be timeshared among the various research interests.
This is a great idea. I can the the RIAA, instead of going through legal means, setting up horde of clients with 2400bps dialup connections, and forcing ALL network trafic to flow through them. I'm not sure about a lot of the technical details of networking, but I think that 2400bps, for both up and downstream traffic, shared with any integer number of users is none too speedy.
Perhaps this is nitpicking, but how about Larry Ellison's 'net-top machine? You know, the one with the $300 price tag, no service agreements, and runs Linux off CD? It's been a while since I've done any complex math, but my rough estimates put it at 1/2 the cost... Granted there's no hard drive, or expansion ops, but...
But, if you think about it, the Good Times virus was a prophecy. Yet, even with the concept of this floating around so widely, and so far, Microsoft still shipped a product that allowed this to happen. Perhaps the Second Coming is a 'hoax' too?
Unlike the general linux mentality of, get it out the door if it barely works, the BSD mentality has alwasy been... it only goes out, if it's ready, and mature enough to go out... Hence the different release branches...
This must explain why so many kiddy porn sites run Linux.
Remember the judge is still a public servant. He probably doesn't want to cause any hassle, and make more work for himself than he has to. You know, if we weren't all such ubergeeks, we'd see this as an open and shut case. Large, respected corporation, responsible for a large portion of America's entertainment sues hacker group for copyright violations
I'd think that for such a system with such limited appeal it would be best if the developer were to consentrate on one system, and get that working properly.
Personally, I'm not going to run out and get myself one until they get X working on it.
And you have just managed to hit on one of the big differences between how Americans and Japanese think. Notice how Americans like to associate just ONE person with an idea/product? (Linus Torvalds, Bill Gate, Bill Clinton, Larry Wall, RMS, etc...) How many Japanese products are like that? The guy that invented the WALKMAN was just another loyal Sony employee. Can you name the individual behind any Japanese technology? I can't.
"Nobody ever built a monument to a Committee" --Somewhere off fortune(6)..
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure if 2 probes is really enough. They should take more of a shotgun approach, and send several hundred probes in the general direction of Mars.
Some of you might say "That'll cost too much". But if you really think about it, it'd be a way to cut costs. For one thing, if you send enough probes, the guidance systems on each individual probe don't need to be that good, only one needs to get there. The same goes for reliability and physical reliability of the system.
I guess a shotgun's not the best analogy... perhaps ejaculation's a better model; Lots of poorly designed things set out in the hopes that one works. I'm sure I could somehow equate this to Microsoft; I'll leave that as an excercise to the reader.
It sounds to me like a great marketing idea. The average luser doesn't really have a clue about how fast a system is, or the fact that 500MHz is more than enough to read email and surf the web. They think that MHz=power. So, if you can make a chip that runs at 1GHZ cheaply, even if it only runs as fast as a 700MHz, you will sell units.
So, if the price of the VIA GHz chip is comparable to an Intel @800, even if it DOES perform like Intel's 700, they get a good market angle. Hell, they'll probably sell them in systems that are comparable in price to 900MHz systems.
Technical merit won't really make a difference here; both Intel and AMD can make a good chip. It's going to come down to who gets to market first, who can buy the press coverage, and who's going to get the required software support.
I have some vague memory of an Intel sponsored 64bit Linux port; If AMD expects to succeed, they should be doing the same.
I can sum the whole post up in two words:
One of the advantages of Java's singly rooted object heirarchy is that all objects are subclasses of Object (for clarification object is just a thing, Object is the class to which all classes are subclasses of), so (with the exception of the primitive types) any object can be referenced as an Object.
The iMac's an underpowered joke. The G4 cube, on the other hand, now that's a marvel...
Well, since we know most of these guys have there boxes overclocked and generating way too much heat, why don't we try using that to our advantage? I sufficiently hot CPU should be able to be used as an element in a vaporizer. =)
RPN is superior to the "normal" way (does it even have a name?). Yes, it does. The "normal" way is called infix notation. RPN is Postfix notation, and a posibility exists to do prefix notation, but we just pretend that doesn't exist.
Hrmm.. maybe I am full of shit in my previous post. Whatever, Everyone's allowed a bit of karma whoring once in a while, eh?
Unfortunately, benchmarks for the Sun JVM are hard to come by. If anybody reads the licence on the JDK, there's a clause explicitly forbiding the publishing of benchmarks, so you're kinda stuck looking at the Sun ones.
One of the key differences between C# and .... Java, is that we tried to stay much closer to C++ in our design
... to pin down memory so it won't accidentally be garbage-collected.
.NET platform can you embed Fujitsu COBOL in an ASP page. I mean it's truly revolutionary.
.NET framework offers. ...we always seemed to end up marrying a programming language to a particular API and a particular form of programming.
...is that we made the decision up-front to not have interpreters. Our code will always run native
.Net to be one of the highest quality releases in Microsoft's history
I was under the impression that one of Java's big strengths was that it didn't stick too closely to C++, and actually had a coherent, consistant design.
Why are there no enums in Java, for example?
Granted, having type-safe enums would be nice; but is this really a big enough flaw to design a language around?
one of our key design goals was to make the C# language component-oriented
Great... they're making it easier for us to write stuff to sell to those VB guys...
C# is the first language to incorporate XML comment tags
OOOER!!! XML tags. I'm glad Microsoft has decided that it's time to follow the industry standard hype. {MumbleMumbleJavaDocMumbleMumble}
Developers are building software components these days. They're not building monolithic applications or monolithic class libraries.
trans: Why bother writing decent software, when some schmuck who's never heard of a linked list can do it in less than half the time with VB (and nobody'll notice the difference)? Might as well accept that, and sell him the bits he uses to do it with.
We focused hard on giving programmers all of the right solutions for interoperating with Internet standards, such as HTTP, HTML, XML, and with existing Microsoft technologies
Well, what else do you need? HTTP, HTML, XML and M$? I should have figured that out a long time ago, and just taken UDP out of my TCP/IP stack altogether.
. Unsafe code allows you to write inline C code with pointers
If you need to write unsafe code to ensure that things don't get "accidentally garbage-collected" either the GC is worthless, or you're failing to fully utilize the paradigm.
people seem to think we're on drugs or something. I think it's a misunderstanding
Yes... the guys at Berkely were doing drugs when they wrote BSD. They guys at M$ are obviously too sober to put ideals over profit.
Only on the
The only revolution I want to involving COBOL very closely resembles the French revolution. Guilotines and all.
with C# we were able to start with a clean sheet of paper
Hrmm... earlier they were talking about how it stayed closer to C++ than Java did; now it's a "clean sheet of paper". I really wish they could make up their mind.
The unification of programming models, which the
So, they've learned the error of their ways, and have decided to bring the new unified APIs into the world with a new language?
one of the key differences between our IL design and Java byte code
And this is important how? Are they saying you can't run it interpreted? Anyways, I'd like to see a JIT compiler do better than the Hotspot model (interpretation + realtime profiling to find sections of code to compile to native code).
you can name your source files anything you want.
For some reason they seem to think this is important. I fail to see it. Skinable filenames?
I think developers will find the release of Visual Studio
It's a little late for them to start worrying about quality now; they're getting their asses Ma-Belled.
While the US may be sliding away from the cutting edge of technology, we have one definate advantage over some other high-tech, industrialized nations:
Unmetered local telephone service.
I know that at least UK and Singapore still practice the barbaric practice of charging by the minute on local telephone calls; wheras there are places in the US where you can get your long distance at a flat rate.
So what if the rest of the world's got cell phones that let you read the news, have entire symphonies stored for the ringer, and let you play Quake. So what if they have fuzzy-logic washing machines. So what if they've got USB back-scratchers.
I'd much rather live in a country where I don't have to pay by the minute for the priviledge of being put on hold while trying to order Pizza on a friday night.
Oh yeah, M$ sucks. Linux rules. You wanna mod this up.
the APCS site
:always taking a left turn is a fairly easy way of solving the maze. Depending on the system you're using, display may be the difficult part
A lot of these suggestions are great ideas, many of them things I wish I had done in highschool. However, most of the interesting ones are either way outside the curiculum, or too advanced.
The goals of APCS are learning the language (presently, C++, but in the past, Pascal), proper programming methodolgy, common algorithms (sorting, searching), and abstract data types. The intent is to teach a class equivalent to a first year college CS class.
Of all the ideas here, I think the one best suited to the scope and goals of the class is the implimentation of the virtual computer. Not only is it something that can take advantage of some of the idea learned, but it would help prepare them for future classes in computer arcitechure.
A few other interesting ideas:
- a maze navigating program
- the BlackBox: an NxN box with some number of mirrors (at 45 degree angles: / & \) inside it, into which, at any point around the outside, a laser can be shot in, and where it exits is determined. One the lasers are implimented, you can make it a logic game, or an AI test bed...
Yeah, great. Some guy in Somalia (admittedly this is the indefinate poor, starving african nation) could very well be working his ass off trying to make sure that his kids get fed; does this allow him an elitist viewpoint? Yeah, he doesn't worry about politics, unless the gun-toting hoodlums are coming around, trying to steal his share of the UN mandated rice shipment.
However, us as geeks don't need to sweat and toil from dusk 'til dawn in order to survive. Hell, we could make in a day what this poor somalian bastard makes in a year.
where's this going?
dunno, man... I just thought it'd be fun to start ranting about starving somalians.
Bill Gates is a lucky, unskilled monkey. please don't moderate me down...
Well, I'm somwhat in your situation... however, due to the license restrictions on Sun's JDK, I'm no allowed to code control systems for nuclear powerplants, so that's one bit of stress I don't have to worry about.
When they told me that Java would make my life easier, I never quite realized how true they were.
The problem with digital media is that people aren't thinking clearly. The industry wants some absolutely secure system for online distribution; why? Music distribution has never been secure. Somebody has always been able to duplicate things; from singing the song or writing down the score, to burning copies of the disc and sending MP3's across the net. There's not really a way to stop it without saying to the customer "We're greedy sons of bitches, and you're a low-down-dirty-theiving-not-worthy-of-being-truste d-with-that-two-dollar-crack-whore-I-had -last-night piece of trash". Such statements have not historically gone over well with consumers. (with the notable exception of the computer industry, where "you're stupid, we can help" is a good marketing line".
On the other hand, if the public wants commercial music, they should be willing to pay something for it. Making somebody like Britney Spears tolerable to listen to is not a cheap venture. Unfortunately, at the moment, a majority of the people giving the spiel about MP3 listening introducing them to new artists they'll pay for, and backing up things they own, manage to come across like the red-eyed hemp activist, sayting that they only think it should be used for paper, and not smoking.
Perhaps the record guys need to come up with an idea, that while not bulletproof, is Good Enough to make piracy difficult, and make it worth the publics time to use the system. I mean, if slashdot can make money, why couldn't something that actually interests people do the same?
The worst thing here is that the new Macs, with their Oh-So-Cool translucent cases will no longer be able to serve double duty as mouse pads in the ghetto-ass-non-ergonomic-OSHA-would-shit-themselve s office...
So, going under this (apparently mistaken) assumption, it would seem that an orbital telescope would give you better odds of observing something. Would anyone care to explain to me how a ground based scope would give you an order of magnitude greater chance of observing an event.
The only explaination that comes to mind would be that a ground based scope could continuously monitor the object, while orbital scopes would have to be timeshared among the various research interests.
There was an article on /. about two weeks ago about somebody doing this. But I know a better way...
This is a great idea. I can the the RIAA, instead of going through legal means, setting up horde of clients with 2400bps dialup connections, and forcing ALL network trafic to flow through them.
I'm not sure about a lot of the technical details of networking, but I think that 2400bps, for both up and downstream traffic, shared with any integer number of users is none too speedy.
Perhaps this is nitpicking, but how about Larry Ellison's 'net-top machine? You know, the one with the $300 price tag, no service agreements, and runs Linux off CD?
It's been a while since I've done any complex math, but my rough estimates put it at 1/2 the cost... Granted there's no hard drive, or expansion ops, but...
You are wrong.
But, if you think about it, the Good Times virus was a prophecy. Yet, even with the concept of this floating around so widely, and so far, Microsoft still shipped a product that allowed this to happen.
Perhaps the Second Coming is a 'hoax' too?
Something about this sound's suprising similar to the way that the authorities reascted to HIV/AIDS when they were finding out about it...
Remember the judge is still a public servant. He probably doesn't want to cause any hassle, and make more work for himself than he has to. You know, if we weren't all such ubergeeks, we'd see this as an open and shut case.
Large, respected corporation, responsible for a large portion of America's entertainment sues hacker group for copyright violations
I'd think that for such a system with such limited appeal it would be best if the developer were to consentrate on one system, and get that working properly.
Personally, I'm not going to run out and get myself one until they get X working on it.
And you have just managed to hit on one of the big differences between how Americans and Japanese think. Notice how Americans like to associate just ONE person with an idea/product?
(Linus Torvalds, Bill Gate, Bill Clinton, Larry Wall, RMS, etc...)
How many Japanese products are like that? The guy that invented the WALKMAN was just another loyal Sony employee. Can you name the individual behind any Japanese technology? I can't.
"Nobody ever built a monument to a Committee"
--Somewhere off fortune(6)..