Which third world would that precisely be? The one where they can read English and have enough money to buy an encyclopedia with mainly useless entries (Startrek anyone)? Does this third world happen to be located between Canada and Mexico?
The dashboard itself uses some memory, but the widgets don't, until you activate them. At least, that was the way it was under 10.4.2. You can check it using the "Activity monitor" (in the Utilities folder).
Ok, since you're getting technical: my point is that I don't believe the BBC draws a representative sample of the population either. Too many English, to begin with...
Is slashdot large enough? I'm sure their statistics differ substantially. A slightly lower share of Explorer, I would hazard to guess.
An ethical question regarding privacy
on
Google Terror Threat
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I have a twisted question regarding privacy: if you argue that satellite imagery should be publically accessible, what's wrong with a camera in every street, and storing the images for a long time?
Re:Invasion of privacy...it better not be....
on
Google Terror Threat
·
· Score: 1
Yes, let's apply OSS to Google Maps. Everybody draw a map of their own piece of land, and let Linus Mercator put the pieces together. That will make a big impression.
Or, better, let everybody build their own rocket, launch pad, and imaging satellite, and start making all this public. Yeah, right!
I'm sure you were one of the people hoping that the neural cell growth by use of marijuana article were true...
The London terrorists went into the Underground without a map? That must certainly have been a suicide mission. I propose the police arrest/shoot anyone entering the underground without a map.
There have been several studies linking THC to forms of depression and schizophrenia. The study on neurogenesis in rats is the one that has not been replicated...
Yes, it is undefined and you don't need a calculator. Actually, you shouldn't. But the bottom line is that it approaches 1, in the limit: lim(x->0) x^0 = 1, and for x^x this holds as well; you can try both on a calculator with very small values for x, if you want. In some "practical" problems, such as fitting a polynomial on a set of points, you really need 0^0 to be 1.
However, if you're going to try the other limit, lim(x->0) 0^x, the answer would seem to be 0 (but since this function is not continuous, there is no need to make it equal 0).
The theoretical answer? it depends on the function you're looking at.
Question nr. 1. Can you? I think I might be able to pull it off, at a limited scale. I know it would take me quite a lot of time, and I've already written several smaller audio processing applications. Part of my job involves planning research & development work and I think I can quite confidently state that developing the core engine for such an application can take between one and two years of full-time programming. And then we haven't done anything else (no GUI, nothing).
Consequently, if the engine's main developer stops, it will be hard to find a replacement and he (she?) will face a rather daunting task, setting back the project one of two years. To think that the average Joe can tinker with such complex software in his spare time is almost preposterous.
If you buy commercial software, you get a (limited) support, but at least the company will usually (yes, usually) try to fix the bugs. So you simply buy something that you wouldn't be able to build yourself.
One of the analogies used before was that of the car. Sure, you can learn how to build a car, but it will take you years and years of hard work, and then you've got something that is inferior to the commercially available products.
It's very lucky that Linus Torvalds and RMS are such dedicated persons, but you need someone like that for every major project, and building a really decent audio-sequencer is quite a big undertaking. Or you could try to get a university department to develop it for you, of course.
And of course, a lot of OSS work still goes into the lower layers: general tools like the OS, compilers, windowing environments. Work on higher application levels is still scarce.
Stability and commerciality are certainly an issue.
The original poster said "I can do it myself if I find it lacking". Now, how many people do you think can manage to improve the code for real-time recording (with your insert effects, sub-group mixing and monitoring, whatever) if it isn't stable enough?
It's the commas. If the language designers had chosen to make the space significant (e.g. as an argument or statement separator, just like LISP), then C would have won. Fortunately, Kernighan and Richie had the decency to add some syntactic sugar to their hieroglyphic language. Otherwise, the result would have been Python, but with less keyword. Plus, the IOCCC would never have started, since nobody would have been able to read even
main(int a char* b[]) { int c for c = 1 c a c++ puts b[c] }
Perl may be an easy language for doing things on files for which grep is insufficient, but for more complex programs Perl Sucks.
The language has no design whatsoever (read the part on "local" vs. "my"; that makes every self-respecting computer scientist cringe) and at least version 5 implementations had such horrible bugs that even a simple program would do not execute properly.
The only reason Perl is so popular is because it's today's Basic: you open an editor, write something, type "perl..." and hey, it works. That kind of instant gratification is seldomly obtained when writing in Haskell or C++. And Perl has a lot of built-in functionality, which makes certain tasks a lot easier.
But the consequence is bad programming and trying to fit the whole world into a regular expression. And most programmers don't really understand regexps. I've seen people try to parse context-free languages with regexps and saying that they couldn't nail it completely, but delivering the code anyway.
Take it from me: I've written a full-coverage grammar cum spelling checker for Dutch, and a natural language question answering system (working on a smaller domain, but includes semantic reasoning), and I can tell you it's an incredible amount of work to write a good grammar checker.
It's the 90-10 rule in action: 90% of the work can be done in 10% of the time. A fairly large coverage can be obtained in relatively little time. However, the remaining bit takes very much time. E.g., the current dictionaries may cover many words, but they do not really make all semantic distinctions. If you would have them, you would need to obtain statistical distributions over all these distinctions and their combinations. Then you would have to fit this into your rules. Then,... ad infinitum.
And then, everybody has his pet linguistic theory in which he fits his dictionary and rules. So collaboration is not very fruitful.
And then, when you've got your basics completely covered, comes the hard part: understanding the whole text. Sentences that are difficult to read or outright nonsensical may be acceptable in another context. Well, that ultimately requires the equivalent of a human brain, not just a shallow NP parser...
Now ask yourself: would an open source project even get to first base? No, it takes too much time and effort and intelligence. It's like asking for an open source nuclear fusion reactor. Only the combined effort of a group of university research groups can slowly tackle something as complex as this. You'll have to wait for them to come up with something and make it freely accessible...
I'm looking at it from behind an OSX machine, and to me it doesn't look like OSX at all. It's plain old Windows style with a few new features (the Save dialog looks rather different). But for the rest they cramped the toolbars in the top of the window. Now that happens under OSX/Cocoa as well frequently, but the toolbars of Safari and Mail are a lot less crowded. For the rest it looks like they flattened every 3D aspect out of XP.
Yeah, I was trying to be short. But imagine the part where one gene produces an effect that triggers or changes the effect of another gene. That would count as a kind of combination. I think it has been shown such modifier genes exist, except I cannot remember the proper name.
There may not be that many single genes, but apparently, genes also code in combination. So combinations of two genes would give you the square of the number of currently identified genes, being 30.000 ^ 2 = 900.000.000. Think what triple combinations would do.
About the commonality of AAC lossless: if you don't have an iPod, why should you bother? And if you have iPod/iTunes, it will convert any format it knows into any of the formats the iPod supports, so there's absolutely no problem. Apparently, dBPowerAmp can do the conversion as well.
About the hiccough: I've never heard it, but I've never listened for a long time to the iPod (it belongs to my wife). Then again, it's a "mini", so perhaps it's a model related issue, or just someone who screwed up some settings somewhere...
Slashdot Mirror
Which third world would that precisely be? The one where they can read English and have enough money to buy an encyclopedia with mainly useless entries (Startrek anyone)? Does this third world happen to be located between Canada and Mexico?
chess
The dashboard itself uses some memory, but the widgets don't, until you activate them. At least, that was the way it was under 10.4.2. You can check it using the "Activity monitor" (in the Utilities folder).
My dual 2.5GHz G5 crashed after upgrading. Second time around, it booted well. Perhaps it was due to the fact that I had Q2DE turned on...
ID is evolution *plus* an "intelligent entity", so it's a worse theory.
Ok, since you're getting technical: my point is that I don't believe the BBC draws a representative sample of the population either. Too many English, to begin with...
Is slashdot large enough? I'm sure their statistics differ substantially. A slightly lower share of Explorer, I would hazard to guess.
I have a twisted question regarding privacy: if you argue that satellite imagery should be publically accessible, what's wrong with a camera in every street, and storing the images for a long time?
Yes, let's apply OSS to Google Maps. Everybody draw a map of their own piece of land, and let Linus Mercator put the pieces together. That will make a big impression.
Or, better, let everybody build their own rocket, launch pad, and imaging satellite, and start making all this public. Yeah, right!
I'm sure you were one of the people hoping that the neural cell growth by use of marijuana article were true...
The London terrorists went into the Underground without a map? That must certainly have been a suicide mission. I propose the police arrest/shoot anyone entering the underground without a map.
There have been several studies linking THC to forms of depression and schizophrenia. The study on neurogenesis in rats is the one that has not been replicated...
Yes, it is undefined and you don't need a calculator. Actually, you shouldn't. But the bottom line is that it approaches 1, in the limit: lim(x->0) x^0 = 1, and for x^x this holds as well; you can try both on a calculator with very small values for x, if you want. In some "practical" problems, such as fitting a polynomial on a set of points, you really need 0^0 to be 1.
However, if you're going to try the other limit, lim(x->0) 0^x, the answer would seem to be 0 (but since this function is not continuous, there is no need to make it equal 0).
The theoretical answer? it depends on the function you're looking at.
The pratical answer? Try 1.
Question nr. 1. Can you? I think I might be able to pull it off, at a limited scale. I know it would take me quite a lot of time, and I've already written several smaller audio processing applications. Part of my job involves planning research & development work and I think I can quite confidently state that developing the core engine for such an application can take between one and two years of full-time programming. And then we haven't done anything else (no GUI, nothing).
Consequently, if the engine's main developer stops, it will be hard to find a replacement and he (she?) will face a rather daunting task, setting back the project one of two years. To think that the average Joe can tinker with such complex software in his spare time is almost preposterous.
If you buy commercial software, you get a (limited) support, but at least the company will usually (yes, usually) try to fix the bugs. So you simply buy something that you wouldn't be able to build yourself.
One of the analogies used before was that of the car. Sure, you can learn how to build a car, but it will take you years and years of hard work, and then you've got something that is inferior to the commercially available products.
It's very lucky that Linus Torvalds and RMS are such dedicated persons, but you need someone like that for every major project, and building a really decent audio-sequencer is quite a big undertaking. Or you could try to get a university department to develop it for you, of course.
And of course, a lot of OSS work still goes into the lower layers: general tools like the OS, compilers, windowing environments. Work on higher application levels is still scarce.
And I don't think that's past prejudice.
Stability and commerciality are certainly an issue.
The original poster said "I can do it myself if I find it lacking". Now, how many people do you think can manage to improve the code for real-time recording (with your insert effects, sub-group mixing and monitoring, whatever) if it isn't stable enough?
Not that many, I bet.
Holy cow, I ain't never going to get them darn ampserpersands right.
But I'm posting in "plain old text". I suppose the TCP/IP stack eats the mathematical operators...
damn, the less than symbol fell out: read "c a" where you see "c a"
It's the commas. If the language designers had chosen to make the space significant (e.g. as an argument or statement separator, just like LISP), then C would have won. Fortunately, Kernighan and Richie had the decency to add some syntactic sugar to their hieroglyphic language. Otherwise, the result would have been Python, but with less keyword. Plus, the IOCCC would never have started, since nobody would have been able to read even
main(int a char* b[]) { int c for c = 1 c a c++ puts b[c] }
Yes, that is a cut down version of echo...
You're wrong: it's complaining (attributed to Lily Tomlin, I believe).
No, the parent has a point.
..." and hey, it works. That kind of instant gratification is seldomly obtained when writing in Haskell or C++. And Perl has a lot of built-in functionality, which makes certain tasks a lot easier.
Perl may be an easy language for doing things on files for which grep is insufficient, but for more complex programs Perl Sucks.
The language has no design whatsoever (read the part on "local" vs. "my"; that makes every self-respecting computer scientist cringe) and at least version 5 implementations had such horrible bugs that even a simple program would do not execute properly.
The only reason Perl is so popular is because it's today's Basic: you open an editor, write something, type "perl
But the consequence is bad programming and trying to fit the whole world into a regular expression. And most programmers don't really understand regexps. I've seen people try to parse context-free languages with regexps and saying that they couldn't nail it completely, but delivering the code anyway.
Take it from me: I've written a full-coverage grammar cum spelling checker for Dutch, and a natural language question answering system (working on a smaller domain, but includes semantic reasoning), and I can tell you it's an incredible amount of work to write a good grammar checker.
... ad infinitum.
It's the 90-10 rule in action: 90% of the work can be done in 10% of the time. A fairly large coverage can be obtained in relatively little time. However, the remaining bit takes very much time. E.g., the current dictionaries may cover many words, but they do not really make all semantic distinctions. If you would have them, you would need to obtain statistical distributions over all these distinctions and their combinations. Then you would have to fit this into your rules. Then,
And then, everybody has his pet linguistic theory in which he fits his dictionary and rules. So collaboration is not very fruitful.
And then, when you've got your basics completely covered, comes the hard part: understanding the whole text. Sentences that are difficult to read or outright nonsensical may be acceptable in another context. Well, that ultimately requires the equivalent of a human brain, not just a shallow NP parser...
Now ask yourself: would an open source project even get to first base? No, it takes too much time and effort and intelligence. It's like asking for an open source nuclear fusion reactor. Only the combined effort of a group of university research groups can slowly tackle something as complex as this. You'll have to wait for them to come up with something and make it freely accessible...
I'm looking at it from behind an OSX machine, and to me it doesn't look like OSX at all. It's plain old Windows style with a few new features (the Save dialog looks rather different). But for the rest they cramped the toolbars in the top of the window. Now that happens under OSX/Cocoa as well frequently, but the toolbars of Safari and Mail are a lot less crowded. For the rest it looks like they flattened every 3D aspect out of XP.
Yeah, I was trying to be short. But imagine the part where one gene produces an effect that triggers or changes the effect of another gene. That would count as a kind of combination. I think it has been shown such modifier genes exist, except I cannot remember the proper name.
Sure, you shouldn't convert lossy to lossy if you can avoid it, but I thought you would be more interested in converting lossless to lossless...
There may not be that many single genes, but apparently, genes also code in combination. So combinations of two genes would give you the square of the number of currently identified genes, being 30.000 ^ 2 = 900.000.000. Think what triple combinations would do.
About the commonality of AAC lossless: if you don't have an iPod, why should you bother? And if you have iPod/iTunes, it will convert any format it knows into any of the formats the iPod supports, so there's absolutely no problem. Apparently, dBPowerAmp can do the conversion as well.
About the hiccough: I've never heard it, but I've never listened for a long time to the iPod (it belongs to my wife). Then again, it's a "mini", so perhaps it's a model related issue, or just someone who screwed up some settings somewhere...