One thing to watch out for is the return policy. I used to buy a lot of DVDs from Amazon, but I ran into a few that were scratched and unplayable. Amazon would not return or exchange DVDs that have been opened. (I assume they still have this policy, but I'm not positive.) Because of this, I now try to buy popular titles from Walmart or Target (cheap but a poor selection), somewhat popular titles from Hastings (expensive, but a good selection for a retail store), and I only buy rare stuff from Amazon (amazingly awesome selection). I pay slightly more doing this, but knowing that I can just swing by and exchange a DVD that is bad is worth it.
The last DVD I bought that was bad was one of the disks in the third season of Avatar. If I had to replace the entire set (yes, I could just re-buy the offending disk), it would have cost me about $45, but Target let me replace the entire box set with no problems.
To be fair, the linked article was written by PC Magazine, not Fox News. Fox, like other news sites, hosts articles written by other sources and doesn't deserve credit or blame for them.
Not all Nvidia cards even have Vista support yet. I have a laptop with a GO 7900 GS, and Nvidia has released no Vista drivers for it (not even beta). Nvidia claims that they don't support laptops and that you need to get a driver from the laptop maker, but that is clearly not true since they offer drivers for 2000, XP, Linux, Solaris x86, and BSD. And I can confirm that the Nvidia XP driver is much better than what Dell provides.
If they had a true unified codebase, my card would be supported. Unfortunately, Nvidia doesn't support Vista on of their laptop cards, and no word when such support will finally arrive. (Pisses me off because I paid good money for the "superior" Nvidia graphics to play games with, and I develop Windows code that requires I use Vista, and now I can't play many games unless I dual-boot.)
For command line registry access, use reg.exe (type "reg/?" for usage information).
The command line tool is pretty well written, real easy to put in batch files, and can even handle changing individual values (something that you can't do with a.reg file, as they work on whole keys).
The registry is evil because it is a binary blob, not because of how difficult it is to work with.
I too started as an Emacs user, then found myself wanting to learn vi. vi is quick and easy to bring up in a terminal, and is present on nearly all Unix variant machines in existence. Learning vi was not all that difficult, like Emacs there is a lot of consistency in how the various key commands combine with each other, and once you understand how it works, you find yourself just using it. And once you know the vi basics, it is really easy to pick up on the cool features in vim.
Nowadays I use both pretty regularly. I use Emacs for programming and editing large documents. I also love that its shell buffer offers improvements to other terminal programs, and not just the shell (Oracle's sqlplus within an Emacs shell buffer is much better than from a regular terminal). I use vi for quick edits or when there isn't a good mode for Emacs.
One day I caught myself alt-tabbing between an Emacs window editing C and two vim windows for lex and yacc, using all the fancy keyboard shortcuts available within each editor. It is amazing how you get so used to something that you don't even think about how to use it.
Overall, I compare the two editors by their macro capabilities. Emacs can remember long sequences of keystrokes for later recall, and if that isn't enough, you can also write LISP code to modify a buffer however you want. vim doesn't have that level of capability (and vi somewhat less), but does offer the very inconvenient "." command to repeat the last edit. This parallels how I view the two editors - I use Emacs for most serious work, and vim when I want something quick and easy.
While you are there, check out their Kids Site. I can't make up my mind if this is funny, sad, or both.
NIMA changed their name to NGA when they realized that all the cool agencies have a Three Letter Acronym (TLA). Without a TLA, they weren't being invited to the best parties, so they changed their name to National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Using the dash to make a TLA out of four words is a great conversation starter at these kinds of parties.
Vista was in beta forever and a day. Beta 3 was out and the API was locked down for at least several months before RTM. In cases where any third party software does not now work under Vista, it is *entirely* the fault of that software company. Holding Microsoft responsible to any degree here is just plain stupid.
There is a lot of software that worked with the release candidates but don't work with RTM. I have some video software like that. What would be nice to know is if Blackboard worked with the release candidates or not. If it did, then the problem lies with Microsoft. If not, then the problem lies with the makers of Blackboard for not being ready with an update.
He is explicitly indicating the number of significant digits. 4.0x10^0 has two significant digits, but 4x10^0 has only one. Writing 4 would mean that the value was precise, and is useful for constants or values that are by nature integers instead of real numbers. The number is significant digits in a result is the lowest number of significant digits of any of the values used in the calculation. This is quite common in Engineering where you need to know how accurate a value really is. There are actually better ways to deal with the problem, but this is the easiest.
Yeah, though in actuality, recalculations of the earth surface cased the Greenwich line to no longer run where it used to. It is a few meters away now. The trouble is that the earth hasn't got an exact centre to base measurements on.
Not quite. No matter how good your measurements are, you still need an arbitrary line for dividing east and west. As for the distance offsets, because the earth isn't a perfect sphere, cartographers have used different spheroids, datums, and regions for different parts of the earth. The combination of the three is usually referred to simply as a datum, though the NGA sometimes uses spheroid. Some datums give more accurate results in some places than in others.
GPS uses WGS-84, which works pretty well everywhere. According to this, WGS-84 defines 0 longitude 102.5 meters different than the line traditionally used at Greenwich. That is because WGS-84 tried to preserve accurate longitudes with the older North American Datum at the expense of moving the prime meridian. Since WGS-84 was developed by the U.S. military, this makes sense.
The basic idea you describe is pretty generic and has probably been done by several authors.
Louis L'Amour wrote a book like this called The Haunted Mesa. Apparently the parallel universe is where the Anasazi went. Much different from the stuff he usually wrote, but it's not a bad read.
What Jeff Goldblum's character did was standard cross-platform development. He wrote the virus on his Mac, compiled it to an EvilAlienOS binary and uploaded it via the EvilAlienNetwork port on the captured spaceship.
Which wouldn't have worked if the aliens had properly configured their systems and installed the latest patches.
Of course. When thinking only of western culture, for example, it's important to remember that over 80% of the ancient world's (hand-written) knowledge was destroyed, irrevocably lost forever, when a crazed mob burned down the great Library Of Alexandria.
Or how about when the conquistadores destroyed all the written mayan documents they could get their filthy, pious hands on?
It would appear that Bishop Diego de Landa burned between 27 and 99 Mayan books, and up to 5,000 cult images, leaving only 10,000 Maya inscriptions left. Certaintly regrettable, but hardly an elimination of all the written mayan he could get his hands on. More regrettable, was the loss of how to read all that.
Re:the "pet rock" of programming languages
on
EiffelStudio Goes Open
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Wasn't java based off it?
Not even close. Java most resembles Object Pascal with C++ friendly syntax.
Effiel was the first language with garbage collection if I remember correctly.
Lisp is the first language that I'm aware of to use it, but I bet someone else did it even earlier. Most functional languages use garbage collection. Eiffel is the first statically typed language I'm aware of to use garbage collection (as part of the language itself, not implemented in a library). This is probably the area where Eiffel most influenced Java.
Eiffel's most notable features are Design by Contract, Multiple Inheritance, and Generics, and it's been doing all that for over fifteen years (as opposed to Java and C# which only recently figured out Generics). Design by Contract is particularly nice if you are willing to spend a little extra effort to write very reliable code, but it would be even better if there were good theorum provers out there to verify that contracts will always hold and warn if they don't. The would be much more developer friendly than the predicate calculus normally associated with formal methods.
Eiffel's biggest drawback (to me) is the horrible Pascal like syntax. Some of Meyer's philosophy has also made the API a little clumsy in places. His belief that a method should never return a value and have a side effect is particularly bad. Writing a stack with get_top() and remove_top() instead of pop() is a little weird.
If you are going to count the two Fliegender Zirkus episodes (#1 being much funnier than #2 IMHO), perhaps you should also count The Lost Python Mayday Special (probably should have stayed lost) or their 20th Anniversary special (worth watching).
Cleese is the one I actually find post-Python to be the most disappointing. I know that he, in particular, was far more interested in writing than in acting, but I think it's a little sad to see him doing almost self-parodying roles in Hollywood trash films.
I would agree with this except for Faulty Towers. It's a pity they only made twelve episodes.
If there's one thing I really don't think we have to worry about, it's that this will cause Slashdotters to start predicting the death of Microsoft.:-)
This is because in order to turn on anti-aliasing in Java, you must set a rendering hint. Hints are not required to be implemented, however. In general, if the platform supports anti-aliasing text, so does Java. If the platform doesn't, neither does Java.
This is actually pretty easy to do with Java2, if you know enough about the Java2D library.
One thing that noone has mentioned. France is a member of NATO, and because of this use a lot of our military systems. If they go through with this, they just might require that military systems comply, which would be very interesting. The choice would be, a system that not all of NATO would use (which probably wouldn't be bought by the US or UK governments either, interoperability is pretty important), don't sell military systems (which gives market share away), or comply.
Don't be surprised, however, if military systems are exempt.
Slashdot Mirror
Flash video works on my Linux box, but Flash audio doesn't. Am I considered in the working or non-working set?
True, but now you can Google using Bing!
Are you suggesting that those sites aren't commonplace?
One thing to watch out for is the return policy. I used to buy a lot of DVDs from Amazon, but I ran into a few that were scratched and unplayable. Amazon would not return or exchange DVDs that have been opened. (I assume they still have this policy, but I'm not positive.) Because of this, I now try to buy popular titles from Walmart or Target (cheap but a poor selection), somewhat popular titles from Hastings (expensive, but a good selection for a retail store), and I only buy rare stuff from Amazon (amazingly awesome selection). I pay slightly more doing this, but knowing that I can just swing by and exchange a DVD that is bad is worth it.
The last DVD I bought that was bad was one of the disks in the third season of Avatar. If I had to replace the entire set (yes, I could just re-buy the offending disk), it would have cost me about $45, but Target let me replace the entire box set with no problems.
You'd think they would have learned not to use Sony batteries.
To be fair, the linked article was written by PC Magazine, not Fox News. Fox, like other news sites, hosts articles written by other sources and doesn't deserve credit or blame for them.
Einstein: c^2? What kind of stupid lucky number is that?
Not all Nvidia cards even have Vista support yet. I have a laptop with a GO 7900 GS, and Nvidia has released no Vista drivers for it (not even beta). Nvidia claims that they don't support laptops and that you need to get a driver from the laptop maker, but that is clearly not true since they offer drivers for 2000, XP, Linux, Solaris x86, and BSD. And I can confirm that the Nvidia XP driver is much better than what Dell provides.
If they had a true unified codebase, my card would be supported. Unfortunately, Nvidia doesn't support Vista on of their laptop cards, and no word when such support will finally arrive. (Pisses me off because I paid good money for the "superior" Nvidia graphics to play games with, and I develop Windows code that requires I use Vista, and now I can't play many games unless I dual-boot.)
You must be new here.
For command line registry access, use reg.exe (type "reg
The command line tool is pretty well written, real easy to put in batch files, and can even handle changing individual values (something that you can't do with a
The registry is evil because it is a binary blob, not because of how difficult it is to work with.
I too started as an Emacs user, then found myself wanting to learn vi. vi is quick and easy to bring up in a terminal, and is present on nearly all Unix variant machines in existence. Learning vi was not all that difficult, like Emacs there is a lot of consistency in how the various key commands combine with each other, and once you understand how it works, you find yourself just using it. And once you know the vi basics, it is really easy to pick up on the cool features in vim.
Nowadays I use both pretty regularly. I use Emacs for programming and editing large documents. I also love that its shell buffer offers improvements to other terminal programs, and not just the shell (Oracle's sqlplus within an Emacs shell buffer is much better than from a regular terminal). I use vi for quick edits or when there isn't a good mode for Emacs.
One day I caught myself alt-tabbing between an Emacs window editing C and two vim windows for lex and yacc, using all the fancy keyboard shortcuts available within each editor. It is amazing how you get so used to something that you don't even think about how to use it.
Overall, I compare the two editors by their macro capabilities. Emacs can remember long sequences of keystrokes for later recall, and if that isn't enough, you can also write LISP code to modify a buffer however you want. vim doesn't have that level of capability (and vi somewhat less), but does offer the very inconvenient "." command to repeat the last edit. This parallels how I view the two editors - I use Emacs for most serious work, and vim when I want something quick and easy.
Learn them both, you will be better off for it.
While you are there, check out their Kids Site. I can't make up my mind if this is funny, sad, or both.
NIMA changed their name to NGA when they realized that all the cool agencies have a Three Letter Acronym (TLA). Without a TLA, they weren't being invited to the best parties, so they changed their name to National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Using the dash to make a TLA out of four words is a great conversation starter at these kinds of parties.
There is a lot of software that worked with the release candidates but don't work with RTM. I have some video software like that. What would be nice to know is if Blackboard worked with the release candidates or not. If it did, then the problem lies with Microsoft. If not, then the problem lies with the makers of Blackboard for not being ready with an update.
He is explicitly indicating the number of significant digits. 4.0x10^0 has two significant digits, but 4x10^0 has only one. Writing 4 would mean that the value was precise, and is useful for constants or values that are by nature integers instead of real numbers. The number is significant digits in a result is the lowest number of significant digits of any of the values used in the calculation. This is quite common in Engineering where you need to know how accurate a value really is. There are actually better ways to deal with the problem, but this is the easiest.
Not quite. No matter how good your measurements are, you still need an arbitrary line for dividing east and west. As for the distance offsets, because the earth isn't a perfect sphere, cartographers have used different spheroids, datums, and regions for different parts of the earth. The combination of the three is usually referred to simply as a datum, though the NGA sometimes uses spheroid. Some datums give more accurate results in some places than in others.
GPS uses WGS-84, which works pretty well everywhere. According to this, WGS-84 defines 0 longitude 102.5 meters different than the line traditionally used at Greenwich. That is because WGS-84 tried to preserve accurate longitudes with the older North American Datum at the expense of moving the prime meridian. Since WGS-84 was developed by the U.S. military, this makes sense.
Louis L'Amour wrote a book like this called The Haunted Mesa. Apparently the parallel universe is where the Anasazi went. Much different from the stuff he usually wrote, but it's not a bad read.
Which wouldn't have worked if the aliens had properly configured their systems and installed the latest patches.
The FCC is charged with regulating all non-Federal Government use of the radio spectrum. Since the military is part of the Federal Government, they don't have to play by the FCC rules. If you look at the radio spectrum, you will find that the military has their own dedicated frequencies, so they don't have to worry about interference from civilians.
Could you please supply a source for this? Many of the stories about the libraries destruction are actually myth, and historians are not certain about the details of the libraries destruction.
Or how about when the conquistadores destroyed all the written mayan documents they could get their filthy, pious hands on?
It would appear that Bishop Diego de Landa burned between 27 and 99 Mayan books, and up to 5,000 cult images, leaving only 10,000 Maya inscriptions left. Certaintly regrettable, but hardly an elimination of all the written mayan he could get his hands on. More regrettable, was the loss of how to read all that.
Not even close. Java most resembles Object Pascal with C++ friendly syntax.
Effiel was the first language with garbage collection if I remember correctly.
Lisp is the first language that I'm aware of to use it, but I bet someone else did it even earlier. Most functional languages use garbage collection. Eiffel is the first statically typed language I'm aware of to use garbage collection (as part of the language itself, not implemented in a library). This is probably the area where Eiffel most influenced Java.
Eiffel's most notable features are Design by Contract, Multiple Inheritance, and Generics, and it's been doing all that for over fifteen years (as opposed to Java and C# which only recently figured out Generics). Design by Contract is particularly nice if you are willing to spend a little extra effort to write very reliable code, but it would be even better if there were good theorum provers out there to verify that contracts will always hold and warn if they don't. The would be much more developer friendly than the predicate calculus normally associated with formal methods.
Eiffel's biggest drawback (to me) is the horrible Pascal like syntax. Some of Meyer's philosophy has also made the API a little clumsy in places. His belief that a method should never return a value and have a side effect is particularly bad. Writing a stack with get_top() and remove_top() instead of pop() is a little weird.
If you are going to count the two Fliegender Zirkus episodes (#1 being much funnier than #2 IMHO), perhaps you should also count The Lost Python Mayday Special (probably should have stayed lost) or their 20th Anniversary special (worth watching).
I would agree with this except for Faulty Towers. It's a pity they only made twelve episodes.
You mean Microsoft is still around?
This is because in order to turn on anti-aliasing in Java, you must set a rendering hint. Hints are not required to be implemented, however. In general, if the platform supports anti-aliasing text, so does Java. If the platform doesn't, neither does Java.
This is actually pretty easy to do with Java2, if you know enough about the Java2D library.
Don't be surprised, however, if military systems are exempt.