"And why name it "dyslexia" instead of using a suitable palindrome?"
In classic geek form, I will refute your joke with an detailed analytical post.
I believe that the text 'lex' refers to spelling, or in general, having letters in the correct order. I have read in text comparison functions in programming languages that they do lexiographic comparisons of strings. (Can anyone confirm if it is more general than this, i.e. does it apply to more than letters?) And since dyslexia is generally associated to seeing words with letters disoriented or in the wrong order, putting dys in front of it means 'non-right-order' just like dysfunctional means non-functional.
"It's from Vivaldi's, The Four Seasons, and the rest of it is quite excellent and also used for commercials/other elevator type music."
There's more than one theme they use in the ads, and the one I was referring to was not from The Four Seasons. According to another responder it is Shadows by Karl Jenkins.
I am quite familiar with The Four Seasons (I have it on CD, I've heard my dad's LP since before I could walk.) It's actually one of my all-time favourite pieces of of music. Perhaps my belief that everyone knew what I referred to as the "Diamond is Forever Music" was off the mark.
"Has anyone ever learned X in 24 hours like the book title says?"
I think it's more about being able to put another bullet point on your resume before you send it with that job application that requires X skill as opposed to truly learning the language in depth. Any experienced coder can learn the basics of a programming language in under 24h but to actually competently code a large project, it takes a lot more practice an in depth study.
"I don't mean to be rude in any way, but what difference is this tool from using the Task Manager to set process affinity?"
Actually I wouldn't know... I have never used a dual processor windows machine in recent memory. (But I have used multiprocessor unix machines in the job many times.) Perhaps the tool I pointed out is redundant.
"I'm considering the Powermac G5 (Dual), but I'm not sure if the extra speed is worth the extra $$s. Especially since I don't have as much time to play with editing movies (the only application I use that needs the extra CPU) as I'd like."
Good point. If I was in your position I would wait until a lot of 3rd party reviews come out and use that data to determine whether or not getting a G5 machine is worthwhile.
"PCs, and actually, more specifically Windows suck at SMP. I have a dual Pentium3 800MHz system, and Windows insists on splitting as much time as possible between the two CPUs. Thus, even if I have one and only one thread running (say, Anarchy Online) it still splits it onto two processors."
Have you seen this free GPL SMP SeeSaw tool? It can let you manually balance CPU loads in dual cpu windows machines.
"On the PC, very very few games take advantage of SMP. DirectX itself seems to make zero effort, and games seem to be starting the draw from the same thread that runs the rest of the game logic. At best, you benefit a little (almost immeasurably) on I/O handling or some of the audio processing."
I would expect that DirectX would expect to have the graphics card take care of all those issues. Since when did any modern 3D rendering use the CPU as opposed to a GPU?
And now with modern audio cards that have built in DSPs and dolby digital encoders (heh, my motherboard has this) the dual processing CPUs shouldn't be highly utilised for multimedia in games. I would, however, expect them to be used a lot for AI and other things that don't simply rely on DirectX., OpenGL, EAC, Dolby, etc.
"Really, tell me, inform me as to who is currently torn between a 3GHz Dell and a Dual 2GHz Apple, and needs to know which one is faster."
Your neighbour of course. The guy who brags about his $5K new ultra-fast machine which will bring his to new heights of web-surfing, tax-crunching and e-mail-sending pleasure.
Oh, and people who do a lot of video encoding. If I can encode my video at 35fps instead of 29 fps, that is a large difference. It gives me more time to make sure I have tweaked all the settings nicely to give the best encode for the filesize.
"Even if the G5 was undeniably faster by a great margain, I doubt that fact would sell more than a few hundred units."
They already have 100,000 pre-orders. Of course I don't expect this rate of orders to stay steady. If you look at military enrollment statistics in Canada (and probably other countries affiiated with Britain) during the first world war, there was a large wave of fanatics joining in at the beginning and then reality set in and the numbers became more realistic.
"So I want to know how it compares to the G4. Because most of your sales aren't going to be from people who want to buy the fastest desktop computer. It's going to be from people who want to buy the fastest Apple."
I'm not entirely sure what you're implying here. Are you saying that the G4 might be faster than the G5? I find that hard to believe.
Btw: One thing that almost makes me cry is that the FSB on the 2 GHz G5 machines is faster than the CPU clock speed of my iBook. (Sniffle... )
MSNBC has published lots of MSFT-critical articles. It's nothing new. It's actually a good sign showing that they are not as biased as say, MSN Search, as a result of being affifiliated with Microsoft.
"There is no patch for SoBig. I think you're thinking of MSBlaster"
You are right, I was thinking of blaster, or more generally, the recent deluge of worms/trojans/etc. There if they had not come along, there was no way we were going to shut down legions of underwriters at the office for a day and disconnect all their machines to get them patched.
Of course when we were almost done our 'clean sweep' the power went out...
"In a word, no. The thing that gives diamonds their impressive sparkle is that diamond has an unreasonably high refractive index, which means that it is very good at bending light."
@#)*%&#(%*&fsck )@#(%#)(
Stupid stupid... I was thinking about swarovski crystals and the like. I stand corrected. *bangs head on IBM M-series keyboard*...
"So someones business plan is to admit to writing/distributing the worm and then rent out the affected boxes?"
I'd be more inclined to think it's a feasability study by some government or other to test for electronic warfare readiness. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the US government. Remember that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. A whole lot of machines that otherwise would never have been updated/patched were cleaned up because of this.
"Yeah well, not being from the US (North America)I never quite understood that tradition, for ten grand I knew better things to do than buy a ring."
The DeBeers marketing campaigns are brilliant. If you are exposed to them from a young age and see fictional weddings on TV and how they focus on the ring, you will understand. It is ground into North American minds from the very beginning. Most people in North America know what I'm talking about when I refer to the "A Diamond is Forever Music."
"Synthetic diamonds are 'too' perfect, and still (sort-of) detectable when looking at earth-mined stones."
Right. It's the imperfections and other trace elements that give earth-mined diamonds their appealing sparkle. The synthetic ones tend to lack these imperfections. Although I expect that there are many people in the artifical diamond industries working to perfect the process of making 'flawed' diamonds for public consumption.
Dogbert: So you're telling me that if I give you thousands of dollars, you'll give me a pebble you found on the ground? Store Owner: These are not just ordinary rocks! They're precious and virtually priceless diamonds! Dogbert: That's only because you chose to restrict the supply. Store Owner: Ok Ok you figured us out. I'll give you a bag of diamonds if you'll keep quiet.
(Dogbert walking away with a bag of diamonds)
Dogbert: Well now I'm a party to this dirty little secret...
Slashdot Mirror
In classic geek form, I will refute your joke with an detailed analytical post.
I believe that the text 'lex' refers to spelling, or in general, having letters in the correct order. I have read in text comparison functions in programming languages that they do lexiographic comparisons of strings. (Can anyone confirm if it is more general than this, i.e. does it apply to more than letters?) And since dyslexia is generally associated to seeing words with letters disoriented or in the wrong order, putting dys in front of it means 'non-right-order' just like dysfunctional means non-functional.
There's more than one theme they use in the ads, and the one I was referring to was not from The Four Seasons. According to another responder it is Shadows by Karl Jenkins.
I am quite familiar with The Four Seasons (I have it on CD, I've heard my dad's LP since before I could walk.) It's actually one of my all-time favourite pieces of of music. Perhaps my belief that everyone knew what I referred to as the "Diamond is Forever Music" was off the mark.
All of a sudden I felt this urge to stop coding and reload slashdot. Lo and behold a new article appears! And I have a new message too!
I think it's more about being able to put another bullet point on your resume before you send it with that job application that requires X skill as opposed to truly learning the language in depth. Any experienced coder can learn the basics of a programming language in under 24h but to actually competently code a large project, it takes a lot more practice an in depth study.
Actually I wouldn't know ... I have never used a dual processor windows machine in recent memory. (But I have used multiprocessor unix machines in the job many times.) Perhaps the tool I pointed out is redundant.
Good point. If I was in your position I would wait until a lot of 3rd party reviews come out and use that data to determine whether or not getting a G5 machine is worthwhile.
Perhaps the OS X marketing campaign has not been keeping up with you ...
"My name is Gianni Jacklone and I'm an IT director."
"My name is Gautam Godse and I'm a software projects manager."
"My name is Ellen Feiss and I'm a student." (how can this not be aimed at sex-starved geeks?
Aaron Adams / LAN Administrator
Dave Haxton: "I'm a programmer and I've been a die-hard PC and UNIX guy for years."
OS X is not just for people who think a computer is an appliance. I suggest you rethink you position.
Have you seen this free GPL SMP SeeSaw tool? It can let you manually balance CPU loads in dual cpu windows machines.
I would expect that DirectX would expect to have the graphics card take care of all those issues. Since when did any modern 3D rendering use the CPU as opposed to a GPU?
And now with modern audio cards that have built in DSPs and dolby digital encoders (heh, my motherboard has this) the dual processing CPUs shouldn't be highly utilised for multimedia in games. I would, however, expect them to be used a lot for AI and other things that don't simply rely on DirectX., OpenGL, EAC, Dolby, etc.
I've got my money on the Radon. Even a G5 can't beat a nuclear powered CPU, as long as trademark claims from ATI can be avoided ;-)
Your neighbour of course. The guy who brags about his $5K new ultra-fast machine which will bring his to new heights of web-surfing, tax-crunching and e-mail-sending pleasure.
Oh, and people who do a lot of video encoding. If I can encode my video at 35fps instead of 29 fps, that is a large difference. It gives me more time to make sure I have tweaked all the settings nicely to give the best encode for the filesize.
"Even if the G5 was undeniably faster by a great margain, I doubt that fact would sell more than a few hundred units."
They already have 100,000 pre-orders. Of course I don't expect this rate of orders to stay steady. If you look at military enrollment statistics in Canada (and probably other countries affiiated with Britain) during the first world war, there was a large wave of fanatics joining in at the beginning and then reality set in and the numbers became more realistic.
"So I want to know how it compares to the G4. Because most of your sales aren't going to be from people who want to buy the fastest desktop computer. It's going to be from people who want to buy the fastest Apple."
I'm not entirely sure what you're implying here. Are you saying that the G4 might be faster than the G5? I find that hard to believe.
Btw: One thing that almost makes me cry is that the FSB on the 2 GHz G5 machines is faster than the CPU clock speed of my iBook. (Sniffle ... )
That does work. Although I have already changed it to 'denotes.'
"Additionally, this 0-length string englifies that this form was not called from another."
I have no idea what that word was supposed to be ... Shame ... and my first language is English. :-)
You have made a false assumption. You assumed that I actually did RTFA ;-)
"Use the BIOS reset jumper JP12 to restore original manufacturer setting in BIOS. This jumper can save your life!"
Do not stop the chain using your hands or gentials.
MSNBC has published lots of MSFT-critical articles. It's nothing new. It's actually a good sign showing that they are not as biased as say, MSN Search, as a result of being affifiliated with Microsoft.
You are right, I was thinking of blaster, or more generally, the recent deluge of worms/trojans/etc. There if they had not come along, there was no way we were going to shut down legions of underwriters at the office for a day and disconnect all their machines to get them patched.
Of course when we were almost done our 'clean sweep' the power went out...
@#)*%&#(%*&fsck )@#(%#)(
Stupid stupid ... I was thinking about swarovski crystals and the like. I stand corrected. *bangs head on IBM M-series keyboard* ...
I'd be more inclined to think it's a feasability study by some government or other to test for electronic warfare readiness. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the US government. Remember that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. A whole lot of machines that otherwise would never have been updated/patched were cleaned up because of this.
Axis of Evil ;-)
The DeBeers marketing campaigns are brilliant. If you are exposed to them from a young age and see fictional weddings on TV and how they focus on the ring, you will understand. It is ground into North American minds from the very beginning. Most people in North America know what I'm talking about when I refer to the "A Diamond is Forever Music."
Right. It's the imperfections and other trace elements that give earth-mined diamonds their appealing sparkle. The synthetic ones tend to lack these imperfections. Although I expect that there are many people in the artifical diamond industries working to perfect the process of making 'flawed' diamonds for public consumption.
Dogbert: So you're telling me that if I give you thousands of dollars, you'll give me a pebble you found on the ground?
Store Owner: These are not just ordinary rocks! They're precious and virtually priceless diamonds!
Dogbert: That's only because you chose to restrict the supply.
Store Owner: Ok Ok you figured us out. I'll give you a bag of diamonds if you'll keep quiet.
(Dogbert walking away with a bag of diamonds)
Dogbert: Well now I'm a party to this dirty little secret...
Without viruses, your food chain is incomplete so it's not an ecosystem.