AC here is closer to the mark than the gp's strawman assertion.
This is the heart of Binstock's reasoning from TFA, with some of the more insightful parts bolded to make it easier to follow along.
If you didn't like TFA, please help me understand where he gets it wrong...
begin excerpt:
There's a big difference between poorly written code and complexity.
Unfortunately, parts of the Agile movement have tended to obfuscate the distinction.
A rule of thumb I've seen cited several times is that functions with a cyclomatic complexity number (CCN) of more than 30 or 35 must be rewritten.
This is patent nonsense and implies that all complex code is equivalent to badly written code.
Moreover, there's a peripheral problem with the assertion; namely, that every branch of a switch statement adds 1 to the CCN.
So, if your switch has 35 branches, you violate the threshold with no reasonable way to simplify your code.
(Sure, you could use some kind of table instead of the switch, but now you've taken logic that was easy to read and made it considerably more difficult to follow.)
Parent post:
No, I think you misunderstand his argument. Some people create metrics to determine a program's "complexity", then judge programs on an absolute scale based on that metric.
This argument is saying that those metrics are bullshit because they don't take into account the difficulty of the problem at hand.
Actually, in space nobody can hear the "woosh" (I know, Antimatt, I'm giving AC the (perhaps undeserved) benefit of the doubt).
Citation: White Hole (Red Dwarf) Excerpt:
As Kryten explains, a white hole is a very rare spacial phenomenon - for each action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and whereas black holes suck matter from the universe, white holes spew time back into it.
What if you didn't have to work for a living?
Suppose you inherit $5 billion from a long-lost uncle.
What would you do ?
Some people I ask say they would "Move to a tropical island and drink margaritas all day."
Some people I ask say they would "Travel around the world."
Fine... I have trouble imagining doing anything like that for more than 30 days tops.
What would you do with the rest of your life?
What cause would you work for?
What language (human, or programing) would you learn?
What skills would you learn (flying? martial arts? scuba?)
The point of the question isn't to give you a "single right answer".
Instead the point is to help put some boundaries around what you want to focus your life on, to get an idea of what interests you.
And then maybe help jump start some brainstorming about how to make it practical...
Good luck! Sounds like you have a neat opportunity here, do write back in a year and tell us what you did with it:-)
You don't patent ideas, you patent implemenations of an idea to perform a useful function.
You don't patent math, you patent uses of math to perform a useful function.
I think I see what you're driving at, but does it matter?
Example: Consider Amazon's One Click patent ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click excerpts below ).
So... Amazon patented an implementation instead of the idea of One Click.
If that matters, help me understand why Apple licensed that patent (Wiki excerpt 2,below) instead of just creating their own implementation?
----
Wiki Excerpt 1:
1-Click, also called one-click or one-click buying, is the technique of allowing customers to make online purchases with a single click, with the payment information needed to complete the purchase already entered by the user previously. More particularly, it allows an online shopper using an internet marketplace to purchase an item without having to use shopping cart software. Instead of manually inputting billing and shipping information for a purchase, a user can use one-click buying to use a predefined address and credit card number to purchase one or more items.
Wiki Excerpt 2:
Amazon.com in 2000 licensed 1-Click ordering to Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) for use on its online store. Apple subsequently added 1-Click ordering to the iTunes Store and iPhoto.
----
The mods who modded this up are morons who don't actually know anything about patents, but will happily parrot any idiotic thing they see on the interwebs if it happens to line up with their own idiotic thinking.
So... are you saying all is well in the Land of Patents then? Perhaps for the lawyers & trolls.
To my simple mind, it seems like a lot of headaches just go away if our society copyrighted software instead of trying to patent it.
Can copyright possibly be worse than patenting? Copyright seems better to me because
A patent locks down the idea: "Story Patent: hero rescues the princess from evil knight".
Copyright allows different versions of that story, e.g. Star Wars: Episode Four, A New Hope.
There are lots of books, songs, plays, movies, games (console, pc, online); the creative side of the entertainment industry manages.
Copyrighting software like we copyright books makes wayyy more sense to me than patenting software.
There are plenty of books about mathematics; programs too.
Patenting math seems... patently absurd?
A software-defined radio system, or SDR, is a radio communication system where components that have been typically implemented in hardware (e.g. mixers, filters, amplifiers, modulators/demodulators, detectors, etc.) are instead implemented by means of software on a personal computer or embedded system.[1] While the concept of SDR is not new, the rapidly evolving capabilities of digital electronics render practical many processes which used to be only theoretically possible.
A basic SDR system may consist of a personal computer equipped with a sound card, or other analog-to-digital converter, preceded by some form of RF front end. Significant amounts of signal processing are handed over to the general-purpose processor, rather than being done in special-purpose hardware. Such a design produces a radio which can receive and transmit widely different radio protocols (sometimes referred to as waveforms) based solely on the software used.
Software radios have significant utility for the military and cell phone services, both of which must serve a wide variety of changing radio protocols in real time.
My main gripe with it is that web apps written using Rails don't scale very well from an architectural/maintainable point of view.
Interesting (sincerely); I read this from time to time, but don't hear much about why people believe it (note: I'm RoR ignorant).
Question: at what point(s) does RoR start to not scale very well?
Long-tail reasoning would suggest the most web apps are pretty small and will never grow to operate at ebay or facebook scale; seems to be plenty of room for easy-to-build smaller apps that never need to scale.
But my belief is that is because of the encouragement to work within the framework and take a "pragmatic" approach makes developers unwilling (and sometimes unable) to design a better program. It isn't an inherent problem with the language.
(emphasis added)
So... if the language (Ruby) is fine, and the framework (Rails) doesn't scale, is that actually a problem?
My first thought is easily reaching the scale-point (where you need to start building from scratch, or maybe with a somehow stronger framework) to "grow to the next level" doesn't seem that bad.
(Not that you were making a value judgement about scaling being a problem; I just read you as stating an observation; a useful thing to know.)
When will those idiots running things realise disagreeing with your views doesn't make you an enemy?
The governments are doing more to destroy peace & safety of it's people than the terrorists ever did.
"Disagree" can cover quite a range; you make it sound like the "disagreement" is minor.
This situation sounds more complicated than "a minor disagreement."
If these Raub quotes are accurate (below), what would you do? People act surprised (and upset that "nobody did anything!") when shooters turn up in movie theaters or schools, or when bombers crash your marathon.
So on the one hand it looks like it was worth investigating. On the other hand, it sounds like the authorities involved here will have some motivation to be better about following due process once the lawyers are done.
All in all it sounds like the checks & balances are working as planned in this situation.
On Facebook, Raub talked about the Illuminati, a shadow organization in which "some of the leaders were involved with the bombing of the twin towers" and the "great amount of evil perpetrated by the American Government."
He said people may think he was going crazy, but a "civil war," the "Revolution" is coming.
"I'm starting the Revolution. I'm done waiting."
On July 24, he said he was at a "great crossroads. As if a storm of destiny is about to pick me up and take me to fight a great battle."
On August 9 he talked about severing heads and told the generals he was coming for them.
On August 13, he wrote, "Sharpen up my axe; I'm here to sever heads."
On August 14, Raub wrote, "The Revolution will come for me. Men will be at my door soon to pick me up to lead it."
On August 15, Raub wrote, "And they will say he said it to the NSA first."
> In short, you can like my little pony all you want. But when you go so far as to modify your life such that it now revolves around that show, and you feel compelled to convert others to your obcesson, then there is a problem.(emphasis added)
What about religious people whose lives revolve around the religion and they try to convert others to the religion?
education (ok to leave some children behind).
health (self care, health care, genetics, stem cells...)
energy (simply burning fossil fuels is stupid)
space (for starters, industry & mining would be better done off planet)
values: throw in a large dose of personal responsibility.
These are the things that matter, policy that improves them is a win.
Everything else is noise.
"We found some very interesting things, including that at the very lowest levels plant health improves. But that's not what we were looking for," said Frederick Dooley, a UW doctoral student in biology who led the research.
Evolution selects for people that don't get hung up on "why".
Just an observation.
I know it doesn't answer your question.
Philosophers have been working on it for some time,
maybe they'll figure it out some day.
(My personal answer to "why" is that life is fun and interesting; isn't that enough?)
HP bought WebOS as part of Palm in 2010; if the Pre phone and all that had stayed under Palm's control I think it would have have done well in the market. The only thing I trust HP to do is shoot themselves in the foot and then say setting a few billion dollars on fire was somehow "strategic".
I'll be quite surprised to see HP actively supporting this tablet thing in 2015. HP doesn't blink when deciding to flush a technology or an acquisition. "Oops we did it again!" would be a fine HP corporate motto.
After owning an orphaned phone and a orphaned color laser printer (yeah, why would I ever want a 64 bit windows driver, you bastards!) I would need a pretty amazing reason to buy anything from HP.
About the "system z" thing; IBM calls mainframes "z series", their aix machines "p series" and the intel servers "x series".
I don't know where the "z" came from for mainframe; I'm guessing "p" is for Power chips in the aix boxes, and "x" would be "x86".
Be aware that "mainframe" doesn't always mean IBM.
The most surprising mainframe I encountered last year was a Burroughs mainframe that is still in production for a large social services department (thankfully I just had to read data extracted from it, but the character conversions were sometimes surprising (no, it used Field Data, not EBCDIC nor Ascii in case you were wondering)).
Almost as surprising was a corporation that has a UNISYS mainframe at the center of their IT universe.
1) "Web Developer" can cover a rather broad spectrum.
If you want to do architecture for large sites then stay where you are; you will want the theory.
OTOH, the multidisciplinary thing could make sense. Maybe you want to get an Arts major (web design / graphic layout) or a Psych major (Human Factors / Ergonomics / User Interface design) and a computer minor?
Then again, don't overrate college. One of the smartest programmers I ever worked with never went to college. One of the best object oriented developers I worked with was an English Major. I guess I would ask if you want a degree to get you resume past Human Resources or whether you actually want to learn?
I have two questions about what you said here:
The fact is that web development has taken huge bounds in the last few years, and sadly most universities haven't caught up.
1) What giant leaps in state of the art are you talking about here?
2) Is it possible you're new to this and are mistaking the normal fast-paced evolution of computers, tools, and ecosystems as a one-time isolated event? (If so, give it another 5 years; things will be moving just as fast (if not faster) in 2018.)
Read the Graham quote, and there at the end - "How can you get anything done in them, I think, without macros?" is probably something that people without Lisp experience are not going to grok just because there are other languages that have a thing called 'macros'. And then I look in the link (having not read that article in a while) and find Graham explaining the difference.
It kind of reinforces the point of the portion you quoted, the way you quoted it, leaving out the further explanation of what Lisp macros are. If you already know, you'll get it immediately - if you don't, you might well sit there and say 'But... C has macros! C++ has macros!' and miss it completely.
Quite true; it was already getting to be a longish post.:-)
For the readers who may not know much about Lisp here are the next few sections: Graham's original essay is worth a read. http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html. Quite thought provoking.
Any way, here's the bit on macros:
Many languages have something called a macro. But Lisp macros are unique. And believe it or not, what they do is related to the parentheses. The designers of Lisp didn't put all those parentheses in the language just to be different. To the Blub programmer, Lisp code looks weird. But those parentheses are there for a reason. They are the outward evidence of a fundamental difference between Lisp and other languages.
Lisp code is made out of Lisp data objects. And not in the trivial sense that the source files contain characters, and strings are one of the data types supported by the language. Lisp code, after it's read by the parser, is made of data structures that you can traverse.
If you understand how compilers work, what's really going on is not so much that Lisp has a strange syntax as that Lisp has no syntax. You write programs in the parse trees that get generated within the compiler when other languages are parsed. But these parse trees are fully accessible to your programs. You can write programs that manipulate them. In Lisp, these programs are called macros. They are programs that write programs.
Operator precedence was your primary issue with Smalltalk?
I remember reading Alan Kay's starting goals with Smalltalk was to have a language syntax that would fit on a 3x5 index card. Instead wasting brain cells on that abortion known as C++ operator precedence (Java, C#, C aren't much better btw), you have a single rule that works everywhere: left to right. That's it.
Let's tie this back to the Fine Article: Checking in at 1979 (I don't see this in the article), I'd say Smalltalk has a good shot at being the first IDE:
Steve Jobs on Smalltalk Steve Jobs had co-founded Apple Computer in 1976. The first popular personal computer, the Apple 2, was a hit - and made Steve Jobs one of the biggest names of a brand-new industry.
At the height of Apple's early success in December 1979, Jobs, then all of 24, had a privileged invitation to visit Xerox Parc. (emphasis added)
This is what Steve had to say about his visit to Xerox Parc.
"And they showed me really three things.
But I was so blinded by the first one I didn't even really see the other two.
One of the things they showed me was object orienting programming they showed me that but I didn't even see that.
The other one they showed me was a networked computer system...they had over a hundred Alto computers all networked using email etc., etc., I didn't even see that.
I was so blinded by the first thing they showed me which was the graphical user interface. I thought it was the best thing I'd ever seen in my life. Now remember it was very flawed, what we saw was incomplete, they'd done a bunch of things wrong. But we didn't know that at the time but still though they had the germ of the idea was there and they'd done it very well and within you know ten minutes it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this some day."
You say we've moved "beyond" Smalltalk ?
Away from it, sure.
But beyond? Unless you're Smalltalk fluent, how would you know?
I'm not saying that to be rude: please consider what Paul Graham said about how programmers rate languages; he expressed this idea very well in Beating The Averages: here is the relevant excerpt:
Programmers get very attached to their favorite languages, and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, so to explain this point I'm going to use a hypothetical language called Blub. Blub falls right in the middle of the abstractness continuum. It is not the most powerful language, but it is more powerful than Cobol or machine language.
And in fact, our hypothetical Blub programmer wouldn't use either of them. Of course he wouldn't program in machine language. That's what compilers are for. And as for Cobol, he doesn't know how anyone can get anything done with it. It doesn't even have x (Blub feature of your choice).
As long as our hypothetical Blub programmer is looking down the power continuum, he knows he's looking down. Languages less powerful than Blub are obviously less powerful, because they're missing some feature he's used to. But when our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other direction, up the power continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up. What he sees are merely weird languages. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to Blub, but with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well. Blub is good enough for him, because he thinks in Blub.
When we switch to the point of view of a programmer using any of the languages higher up the power continuum, however, we find that he in turn looks down upon Blub. How can you get anything done in Blub? It doesn't even have y.
By induction, the only programmers in a position to see all the differences in power between the various languages are those who understand the most powerful one. (This is probably what Eric Raymond meant about Lisp making you a better programm
Geez, Cynical Sam. Save some room for me at the compound; I'll bring bullets and beans.
Not that there isn't plenty of depressing stuff going on:
Political gridlock? Can't get enough of that.
US Debt ceiling? Nope, sky is the limit, keep printing money.
Oil? The hell with global warming, we have this swell fracking thing that will let us out-produce Saudi Arabia. Carbon footprints be damned. Come on, what could go wrong?
Oh, Global Warming is just too hard of a problem... we can't do anything about it (assuming it was real...).
(But hey, if you are worried about the environment, let me tell you about Clean Coal...)
Income disparity? Hmm... could be larger; what could go wrong?
Meanwhile I'll just savor some hope for a bright future (at least parts of it).
It pleases me to see people working on cool long term possibilities like asteroid mining.
Maybe this asteroid / space thing will work out, maybe not.
Maybe the Civilization Starter Kit will work out, maybe not.
Looks like Khan Academy" is doing some cool stuff (cool because I see massive education as growing the economic pie).
I see things like these and I think "cool future".
It pleases me that our species can conceive cool things.
I do kind of hope the space thing gets traction soon. If our civilization tanks (world-war III or whatever), then post-collapse it gets hard to see where the next civilization (if any) would find enough raw materials to get going. Oil kicked in during 1850 when somebody saw it oozing out of the ground. If our great-great grandparents had to start by drilling miles underwater in the gulf for oil, or maybe invent fracking to pull it off, damn... its hard to see how our current civilization ever could have evolved.
Because of that it is abundantly unclear to me our species will get a "do-over" if anything serious should go wrong.
Anyway, yeah. I'll check up on the asteroid miners in a few years. Given this successful proof of concept about landing an SUV on Mars and driving it around, yeah... chasing down a smaller rock just might work.
This is hugely cool, it gives me hope for our species' future. I hope they're wildly successful.
Also cool was this blurb near the end of the article on zero-g 3D Printing
Deep Space's construction activities will be aided by a patent-pending 3D printer called the MicroGravity Foundry, officials said.
"The MicroGravity Foundry is the first 3D printer that creates high-density, high-strength metal components even in zero gravity," company co-founder and MicroGravity Foundry inventor Stephen Covey said in a statement. "Other metal 3D printers sinter powdered metal, which requires a gravity field and leaves a porous structure, or they use low-melting point metals with less strength."
r.e. original author: ok writing, though content / concepts seem like it would a better fit for the lifehacker.com crowd. Maybe take the constructive criticism from here, like the "portable charger" idea below, revise accordingly and see if lifehacker will publish it.
r.e. "news for morons who couldn't find their ass..."
There's an an app for that: blutracker-locator.
Attached ass or not, blutracker should help.
I think we just went from "news for nerds" to "news for morons who couldn't find their ass if it wasn't attached" in one post.
From the presenter: "Flying with a firearm requires you to lock your bags with non-TSA approved only-you-get-the-key locks. This is a wonderful way to work the system to your favor."
Eighteen minutes, seems well worth watching if you ever fly with expensive cameras or computers...
(yeah, I know this is off topic r.e. train travel, but I thought it would be a handy security tip.)
"The bunnie" says otherwise (from The Fine Article's comment section):
bunnie says:
December 16, 2012 at 3:20 am
Clarification: Wifi does not require a closed-source blob, if you use an Atheros 9k mPCI-x version. An example card is linked under the mPCIx feature bullet.
The USB card is provided as an option just in case you want to put something else in the mini PCI slot, or you wanted a second wifi interface for some reason. Also, the USB card is much cheaper than the mPCIx card, so it’s a cost-down option for those who don’t care as much about a small blob in the system. Basically, if you care about having no blob for wifi, you can pay for an option that is open source.
GPU, on the other hand, is probably out of reach. nvdia and ATI have set a pretty strong precedent for closed source drivers to use those elements, and the IP vendors for integrated GPUs (like Vivante) are following suit. However, GPU is non-essential IMO for a large application space.
An interesting project, I wish them luck. Even if it is never widely popular in the marketplace, who knows what spinoff projects this might launch?
Kind of depressing hearing about HP.
Step 1. Buy a really expensive company.
Step 2. Ignore it for a year or so.
Step 3. Rationalizing how to dramatically throw it away.
Step 4. Profit? Whats a few billion $ between friends?
Some of the more notable ones that caught my eye:
Verifone 1997 $1.1 (billions)
Compaq 2002 24.0
P&G IT: 2003 3.0
Peregrin 2005 0.4
MercuryInter. 2006 4.5
Knightsbridge 2006 ?
Opsware 2007 1.6
EDS 2008 13.9
3Com 2010 2.7
Palm, Inc 2010 1.2
3PAR 2010 2.3
ArcSight 2010 1.5
Autonomy 2011 11.0
So have any of these actually been profitable for HP ?
I knew that Palm tanked (bye bye, WebOS).
I haven't heard good things about Knightsbridge.
Compaq seems like it was a break-even deal.
Well, that's 85x stronger compared to their size, which isn't very large (see quote below). No need to worry about bone fractures just yet:
jamstar7 wrote: "85x stronger muscles are going to do some serious damage if the bones aren't reinforced."
From TFA, suggested initial applications include "precise facial expression in robots" and "movement in small toys like robotic fish":
"Compared to their size and weight, the performance of these muscles is spectacular," Baughman says. "And we can do all sorts of things with them: We can weave them; we can braid them; we can knit them; we can cut them in different lengths."
Baughman suggests that the muscles could be useful for providing power for microfluidics chips, generating precise facial expressions in robots, and providing movement in small toys such as robotic fish in an aquarium. For many other applications—such as those inside the human body and "smart fabrics" that could become more porous when the temperature heats up or contract around an open wound—the muscles will need to be improved and scaled up in size.
It is an interesting approach, but we're a ways off from powered armor or super-strong robots.
Slashdot Mirror
This is the heart of Binstock's reasoning from TFA, with some of the more insightful parts bolded to make it easier to follow along.
If you didn't like TFA, please help me understand where he gets it wrong...
begin excerpt:
There's a big difference between poorly written code and complexity.
Unfortunately, parts of the Agile movement have tended to obfuscate the distinction.
A rule of thumb I've seen cited several times is that functions with a cyclomatic complexity number (CCN) of more than 30 or 35 must be rewritten.
This is patent nonsense and implies that all complex code is equivalent to badly written code.
Moreover, there's a peripheral problem with the assertion; namely, that every branch of a switch statement adds 1 to the CCN.
So, if your switch has 35 branches, you violate the threshold with no reasonable way to simplify your code.
(Sure, you could use some kind of table instead of the switch, but now you've taken logic that was easy to read and made it considerably more difficult to follow.)
Parent post:
No, I think you misunderstand his argument. Some people create metrics to determine a program's "complexity", then judge programs on an absolute scale based on that metric.
This argument is saying that those metrics are bullshit because they don't take into account the difficulty of the problem at hand.
dom
Citation: White Hole (Red Dwarf)
Excerpt:
As Kryten explains, a white hole is a very rare spacial phenomenon - for each action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and whereas black holes suck matter from the universe, white holes spew time back into it.
What if you didn't have to work for a living?
:-)
Suppose you inherit $5 billion from a long-lost uncle.
What would you do ?
Some people I ask say they would "Move to a tropical island and drink margaritas all day."
Some people I ask say they would "Travel around the world."
Fine... I have trouble imagining doing anything like that for more than 30 days tops.
What would you do with the rest of your life?
What cause would you work for?
What language (human, or programing) would you learn?
What skills would you learn (flying? martial arts? scuba?)
The point of the question isn't to give you a "single right answer".
Instead the point is to help put some boundaries around what you want to focus your life on, to get an idea of what interests you.
And then maybe help jump start some brainstorming about how to make it practical...
Good luck! Sounds like you have a neat opportunity here, do write back in a year and tell us what you did with it
You don't patent ideas, you patent implemenations of an idea to perform a useful function.
You don't patent math, you patent uses of math to perform a useful function.
I think I see what you're driving at, but does it matter?
Example: Consider Amazon's One Click patent ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click excerpts below ).
So... Amazon patented an implementation instead of the idea of One Click.
If that matters, help me understand why Apple licensed that patent (Wiki excerpt 2,below) instead of just creating their own implementation?
----
Wiki Excerpt 1:
1-Click, also called one-click or one-click buying, is the technique of allowing customers to make online purchases with a single click, with the payment information needed to complete the purchase already entered by the user previously. More particularly, it allows an online shopper using an internet marketplace to purchase an item without having to use shopping cart software. Instead of manually inputting billing and shipping information for a purchase, a user can use one-click buying to use a predefined address and credit card number to purchase one or more items.
Wiki Excerpt 2:
Amazon.com in 2000 licensed 1-Click ordering to Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) for use on its online store. Apple subsequently added 1-Click ordering to the iTunes Store and iPhoto.
----
The mods who modded this up are morons who don't actually know anything about patents, but will happily parrot any idiotic thing they see on the interwebs if it happens to line up with their own idiotic thinking.
So... are you saying all is well in the Land of Patents then? Perhaps for the lawyers & trolls.
To my simple mind, it seems like a lot of headaches just go away if our society copyrighted software instead of trying to patent it.
Can copyright possibly be worse than patenting? Copyright seems better to me because
A patent locks down the idea: "Story Patent: hero rescues the princess from evil knight".
Copyright allows different versions of that story, e.g. Star Wars: Episode Four, A New Hope.
There are lots of books, songs, plays, movies, games (console, pc, online); the creative side of the entertainment industry manages.
Copyrighting software like we copyright books makes wayyy more sense to me than patenting software.
There are plenty of books about mathematics; programs too.
Patenting math seems... patently absurd?
computer programs which replace a mechanical or electromagnetic component
What would be realistic examples of this?
software based radio? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software-defined_radio
Excerpt:
A software-defined radio system, or SDR, is a radio communication system where components that have been typically implemented in hardware (e.g. mixers, filters, amplifiers, modulators/demodulators, detectors, etc.) are instead implemented by means of software on a personal computer or embedded system.[1] While the concept of SDR is not new, the rapidly evolving capabilities of digital electronics render practical many processes which used to be only theoretically possible.
A basic SDR system may consist of a personal computer equipped with a sound card, or other analog-to-digital converter, preceded by some form of RF front end. Significant amounts of signal processing are handed over to the general-purpose processor, rather than being done in special-purpose hardware. Such a design produces a radio which can receive and transmit widely different radio protocols (sometimes referred to as waveforms) based solely on the software used.
Software radios have significant utility for the military and cell phone services, both of which must serve a wide variety of changing radio protocols in real time.
My main gripe with it is that web apps written using Rails don't scale very well from an architectural/maintainable point of view.
Interesting (sincerely); I read this from time to time, but don't hear much about why people believe it (note: I'm RoR ignorant).
Question: at what point(s) does RoR start to not scale very well?
Long-tail reasoning would suggest the most web apps are pretty small and will never grow to operate at ebay or facebook scale; seems to be plenty of room for easy-to-build smaller apps that never need to scale.
But my belief is that is because of the encouragement to work within the framework and take a "pragmatic" approach makes developers unwilling (and sometimes unable) to design a better program. It isn't an inherent problem with the language.
(emphasis added)
So... if the language (Ruby) is fine, and the framework (Rails) doesn't scale, is that actually a problem?
My first thought is easily reaching the scale-point (where you need to start building from scratch, or maybe with a somehow stronger framework) to "grow to the next level" doesn't seem that bad.
(Not that you were making a value judgement about scaling being a problem; I just read you as stating an observation; a useful thing to know.)
When will those idiots running things realise disagreeing with your views doesn't make you an enemy?
The governments are doing more to destroy peace & safety of it's people than the terrorists ever did.
"Disagree" can cover quite a range; you make it sound like the "disagreement" is minor.
This situation sounds more complicated than "a minor disagreement."
If these Raub quotes are accurate (below), what would you do? People act surprised (and upset that "nobody did anything!") when shooters turn up in movie theaters or schools, or when bombers crash your marathon.
So on the one hand it looks like it was worth investigating. On the other hand, it sounds like the authorities involved here will have some motivation to be better about following due process once the lawyers are done.
All in all it sounds like the checks & balances are working as planned in this situation.
Excerpts from http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/81243/
On Facebook, Raub talked about the Illuminati, a shadow organization in which "some of the leaders were involved with the bombing of the twin towers" and the "great amount of evil perpetrated by the American Government."
He said people may think he was going crazy, but a "civil war," the "Revolution" is coming.
"I'm starting the Revolution. I'm done waiting."
On July 24, he said he was at a "great crossroads. As if a storm of destiny is about to pick me up and take me to fight a great battle."
On August 9 he talked about severing heads and told the generals he was coming for them.
On August 13, he wrote, "Sharpen up my axe; I'm here to sever heads."
On August 14, Raub wrote, "The Revolution will come for me. Men will be at my door soon to pick me up to lead it."
On August 15, Raub wrote, "And they will say he said it to the NSA first."
then there is a problem.
Here it is in context:
> In short, you can like my little pony all you want. But when you go so far as to modify your life such that it now revolves around that show, and you feel compelled to convert others to your obcesson, then there is a problem.(emphasis added)
What about religious people whose lives revolve around the religion and they try to convert others to the religion?
Particle Man would work.
education (ok to leave some children behind).
health (self care, health care, genetics, stem cells...)
energy (simply burning fossil fuels is stupid)
space (for starters, industry & mining would be better done off planet)
values: throw in a large dose of personal responsibility.
These are the things that matter, policy that improves them is a win.
Everything else is noise.
"We found some very interesting things, including that at the very lowest levels plant health improves. But that's not what we were looking for," said Frederick Dooley, a UW doctoral student in biology who led the research.
Evolution selects for people that don't get hung up on "why".
Just an observation.
I know it doesn't answer your question.
Philosophers have been working on it for some time,
maybe they'll figure it out some day.
(My personal answer to "why" is that life is fun and interesting; isn't that enough?)
HP bought WebOS as part of Palm in 2010; if the Pre phone and all that had stayed under Palm's control I think it would have have done well in the market. The only thing I trust HP to do is shoot themselves in the foot and then say setting a few billion dollars on fire was somehow "strategic".
I'll be quite surprised to see HP actively supporting this tablet thing in 2015. HP doesn't blink when deciding to flush a technology or an acquisition. "Oops we did it again!" would be a fine HP corporate motto.
After owning an orphaned phone and a orphaned color laser printer (yeah, why would I ever want a 64 bit windows driver, you bastards!) I would need a pretty amazing reason to buy anything from HP.
Here is a link to IBM's mainframe linux: Linux on System z - Why
About the "system z" thing; IBM calls mainframes "z series", their aix machines "p series" and the intel servers "x series".
I don't know where the "z" came from for mainframe; I'm guessing "p" is for Power chips in the aix boxes, and "x" would be "x86".
Be aware that "mainframe" doesn't always mean IBM.
The most surprising mainframe I encountered last year was a Burroughs mainframe that is still in production for a large social services department (thankfully I just had to read data extracted from it, but the character conversions were sometimes surprising (no, it used Field Data, not EBCDIC nor Ascii in case you were wondering)).
Almost as surprising was a corporation that has a UNISYS mainframe at the center of their IT universe.
Yeah, mainframes are hanging in there.
1) "Web Developer" can cover a rather broad spectrum.
If you want to do architecture for large sites then stay where you are; you will want the theory.
OTOH, the multidisciplinary thing could make sense. Maybe you want to get an Arts major (web design / graphic layout) or a Psych major (Human Factors / Ergonomics / User Interface design) and a computer minor?
Then again, don't overrate college. One of the smartest programmers I ever worked with never went to college. One of the best object oriented developers I worked with was an English Major. I guess I would ask if you want a degree to get you resume past Human Resources or whether you actually want to learn?
I have two questions about what you said here:
The fact is that web development has taken huge bounds in the last few years, and sadly most universities haven't caught up.
1) What giant leaps in state of the art are you talking about here?
2) Is it possible you're new to this and are mistaking the normal fast-paced evolution of computers, tools, and ecosystems as a one-time isolated event? (If so, give it another 5 years; things will be moving just as fast (if not faster) in 2018.)
Read the Graham quote, and there at the end - "How can you get anything done in them, I think, without macros?" is probably something that people without Lisp experience are not going to grok just because there are other languages that have a thing called 'macros'. And then I look in the link (having not read that article in a while) and find Graham explaining the difference.
It kind of reinforces the point of the portion you quoted, the way you quoted it, leaving out the further explanation of what Lisp macros are. If you already know, you'll get it immediately - if you don't, you might well sit there and say 'But ... C has macros! C++ has macros!' and miss it completely.
Quite true; it was already getting to be a longish post. :-)
For the readers who may not know much about Lisp here are the next few sections: Graham's original essay is worth a read. http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html. Quite thought provoking.
Any way, here's the bit on macros:
Many languages have something called a macro. But Lisp macros are unique. And believe it or not, what they do is related to the parentheses. The designers of Lisp didn't put all those parentheses in the language just to be different. To the Blub programmer, Lisp code looks weird. But those parentheses are there for a reason. They are the outward evidence of a fundamental difference between Lisp and other languages.
Lisp code is made out of Lisp data objects. And not in the trivial sense that the source files contain characters, and strings are one of the data types supported by the language. Lisp code, after it's read by the parser, is made of data structures that you can traverse.
If you understand how compilers work, what's really going on is not so much that Lisp has a strange syntax as that Lisp has no syntax. You write programs in the parse trees that get generated within the compiler when other languages are parsed. But these parse trees are fully accessible to your programs. You can write programs that manipulate them. In Lisp, these programs are called macros. They are programs that write programs.
I remember reading Alan Kay's starting goals with Smalltalk was to have a language syntax that would fit on a 3x5 index card. Instead wasting brain cells on that abortion known as C++ operator precedence (Java, C#, C aren't much better btw), you have a single rule that works everywhere: left to right. That's it.
Let's tie this back to the Fine Article: Checking in at 1979 (I don't see this in the article), I'd say Smalltalk has a good shot at being the first IDE:
Steve Jobs on Smalltalk
Steve Jobs had co-founded Apple Computer in 1976. The first popular personal computer, the Apple 2, was a hit - and made Steve Jobs one of the biggest names of a brand-new industry.
At the height of Apple's early success in December 1979, Jobs, then all of 24, had a privileged invitation to visit Xerox Parc. (emphasis added)
This is what Steve had to say about his visit to Xerox Parc.
"And they showed me really three things.
But I was so blinded by the first one I didn't even really see the other two.
One of the things they showed me was object orienting programming they showed me that but I didn't even see that.
The other one they showed me was a networked computer system...they had over a hundred Alto computers all networked using email etc., etc., I didn't even see that.
I was so blinded by the first thing they showed me which was the graphical user interface. I thought it was the best thing I'd ever seen in my life. Now remember it was very flawed, what we saw was incomplete, they'd done a bunch of things wrong. But we didn't know that at the time but still though they had the germ of the idea was there and they'd done it very well and within you know ten minutes it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this some day."
You say we've moved "beyond" Smalltalk ?
Away from it, sure.
But beyond? Unless you're Smalltalk fluent, how would you know?
I'm not saying that to be rude: please consider what Paul Graham said about how programmers rate languages; he expressed this idea very well in Beating The Averages: here is the relevant excerpt:
Programmers get very attached to their favorite languages, and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, so to explain this point I'm going to use a hypothetical language called Blub. Blub falls right in the middle of the abstractness continuum. It is not the most powerful language, but it is more powerful than Cobol or machine language.
And in fact, our hypothetical Blub programmer wouldn't use either of them. Of course he wouldn't program in machine language. That's what compilers are for. And as for Cobol, he doesn't know how anyone can get anything done with it. It doesn't even have x (Blub feature of your choice).
As long as our hypothetical Blub programmer is looking down the power continuum, he knows he's looking down. Languages less powerful than Blub are obviously less powerful, because they're missing some feature he's used to. But when our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other direction, up the power continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up. What he sees are merely weird languages. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to Blub, but with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well. Blub is good enough for him, because he thinks in Blub.
When we switch to the point of view of a programmer using any of the languages higher up the power continuum, however, we find that he in turn looks down upon Blub. How can you get anything done in Blub? It doesn't even have y.
By induction, the only programmers in a position to see all the differences in power between the various languages are those who understand the most powerful one. (This is probably what Eric Raymond meant about Lisp making you a better programm
Geez, Cynical Sam. Save some room for me at the compound; I'll bring bullets and beans.
Not that there isn't plenty of depressing stuff going on:
Political gridlock? Can't get enough of that.
US Debt ceiling? Nope, sky is the limit, keep printing money.
Oil? The hell with global warming, we have this swell fracking thing that will let us out-produce Saudi Arabia. Carbon footprints be damned. Come on, what could go wrong?
Oh, Global Warming is just too hard of a problem... we can't do anything about it (assuming it was real...).
(But hey, if you are worried about the environment, let me tell you about Clean Coal...)
Income disparity? Hmm... could be larger; what could go wrong?
Meanwhile I'll just savor some hope for a bright future (at least parts of it).
It pleases me to see people working on cool long term possibilities like asteroid mining.
Maybe this asteroid / space thing will work out, maybe not.
Maybe the Civilization Starter Kit will work out, maybe not.
Looks like Khan Academy" is doing some cool stuff (cool because I see massive education as growing the economic pie).
I see things like these and I think "cool future".
It pleases me that our species can conceive cool things.
I do kind of hope the space thing gets traction soon. If our civilization tanks (world-war III or whatever), then post-collapse it gets hard to see where the next civilization (if any) would find enough raw materials to get going. Oil kicked in during 1850 when somebody saw it oozing out of the ground. If our great-great grandparents had to start by drilling miles underwater in the gulf for oil, or maybe invent fracking to pull it off, damn... its hard to see how our current civilization ever could have evolved.
Because of that it is abundantly unclear to me our species will get a "do-over" if anything serious should go wrong.
Anyway, yeah. I'll check up on the asteroid miners in a few years. Given this successful proof of concept about landing an SUV on Mars and driving it around, yeah... chasing down a smaller rock just might work.
Also cool was this blurb near the end of the article on zero-g 3D Printing
Deep Space's construction activities will be aided by a patent-pending 3D printer called the MicroGravity Foundry, officials said. "The MicroGravity Foundry is the first 3D printer that creates high-density, high-strength metal components even in zero gravity," company co-founder and MicroGravity Foundry inventor Stephen Covey said in a statement. "Other metal 3D printers sinter powdered metal, which requires a gravity field and leaves a porous structure, or they use low-melting point metals with less strength."
r.e. "news for morons who couldn't find their ass..."
There's an an app for that: blutracker-locator.
Attached ass or not, blutracker should help.
I think we just went from "news for nerds" to "news for morons who couldn't find their ass if it wasn't attached" in one post.
From the presenter: "Flying with a firearm requires you to lock your bags with non-TSA approved only-you-get-the-key locks. This is a wonderful way to work the system to your favor."
Eighteen minutes, seems well worth watching if you ever fly with expensive cameras or computers...
(yeah, I know this is off topic r.e. train travel, but I thought it would be a handy security tip.)
bunnie says: December 16, 2012 at 3:20 am
Clarification: Wifi does not require a closed-source blob, if you use an Atheros 9k mPCI-x version. An example card is linked under the mPCIx feature bullet.
The USB card is provided as an option just in case you want to put something else in the mini PCI slot, or you wanted a second wifi interface for some reason. Also, the USB card is much cheaper than the mPCIx card, so it’s a cost-down option for those who don’t care as much about a small blob in the system. Basically, if you care about having no blob for wifi, you can pay for an option that is open source.
GPU, on the other hand, is probably out of reach. nvdia and ATI have set a pretty strong precedent for closed source drivers to use those elements, and the IP vendors for integrated GPUs (like Vivante) are following suit. However, GPU is non-essential IMO for a large application space.
An interesting project, I wish them luck. Even if it is never widely popular in the marketplace, who knows what spinoff projects this might launch?
Kind of depressing hearing about HP.
Step 1. Buy a really expensive company.
Step 2. Ignore it for a year or so.
Step 3. Rationalizing how to dramatically throw it away.
Step 4. Profit? Whats a few billion $ between friends?
Here's a longgg list of HP acquisitions.
Some of the more notable ones that caught my eye:
Verifone 1997 $1.1 (billions)
Compaq 2002 24.0
P&G IT: 2003 3.0
Peregrin 2005 0.4
MercuryInter. 2006 4.5
Knightsbridge 2006 ?
Opsware 2007 1.6
EDS 2008 13.9
3Com 2010 2.7
Palm, Inc 2010 1.2
3PAR 2010 2.3
ArcSight 2010 1.5
Autonomy 2011 11.0
So have any of these actually been profitable for HP ?
I knew that Palm tanked (bye bye, WebOS).
I haven't heard good things about Knightsbridge.
Compaq seems like it was a break-even deal.
jamstar7 wrote: "85x stronger muscles are going to do some serious damage if the bones aren't reinforced."
From TFA, suggested initial applications include "precise facial expression in robots" and "movement in small toys like robotic fish":
"Compared to their size and weight, the performance of these muscles is spectacular," Baughman says. "And we can do all sorts of things with them: We can weave them; we can braid them; we can knit them; we can cut them in different lengths."
Baughman suggests that the muscles could be useful for providing power for microfluidics chips, generating precise facial expressions in robots, and providing movement in small toys such as robotic fish in an aquarium. For many other applications—such as those inside the human body and "smart fabrics" that could become more porous when the temperature heats up or contract around an open wound—the muscles will need to be improved and scaled up in size.
It is an interesting approach, but we're a ways off from powered armor or super-strong robots.