(Suaron) You're not ready for the orcs out there, You keep disappearing, but I know you're there, My Nazgul hunt you, no matter where, But I...
The ring has power, Mr. Underhill you can't destroy it, not with all your skill And I'm the reason that you never will But I...
I wish I could say the right words to bind you in Mordor wish I could send the Balrog, your hobbit head to gore, Wish I could sing But now I understand, I'm feeble, with no ring.
My Nazgul around you, can't find you at all 'Cuz you're a hobbit, not standing tall
I wish I could tie your feet down And let you die at last Wish I could send you demons But now that time has passed Wish I could flay your skin in a fiery blast But I'm just fading, away I'm just fading, away
Sorry, i was lazy and wrong;
its on the norm walsh site, see
http://nwalsh.com/emacs/docbookide/index.html
docbook does work, and works well
on
Writing Documentation
·
· Score: 5, Informative
We're using the preloaded docbook on RH7.2
and it works fine.
Grab some emacs elisp files from sourceforge
to round out the package and you are good to go
with tag completion and font color locking
in emacs.
Docbook advantages:
* no worries about formatting, just write content
* can generate html, postscript, possibly wml, carved stone tablets, etc.
* can be parsed by freely available xml parsers
to intelligently extract, say, all authors, all section titles. This could be done with raw
perl, but why rewrite an xml parser when so
many already exist?
* documents can be easily stored in an OODB,
using an xml->object marshaller, if you are
into that sort of thing. This allows
any number of documents to be subject to
the full power of the database querying
and indexing.
Latex (tex) is great, and I've used it for 20 years,
but its definitely not the same thing as docbook.
Latex
allows - encourages actually - one to think
about appearance while writing the document.
And you do get great looking output.
But you sacrifice everything that docbook/xml
offers in terms of document parsing for other
purposes.
CPAN is no reason to ignore Ruby
on
Programming Ruby
·
· Score: 2
Ruby isn't just another scripting
language - its a better one. And its
not marginally better. Its an order of
magnitude better.
People like perl for two reasons - easy
exploitation of regular expressions and
hash tables. That's exactly why I
started using perl five years ago, and
why I still use it once in a while.
But as has been pointed out by countless
people - a perl program shouldn't be any
longer than what you can rewrite from
scratch in an hour - because its just
not worth the expense of learning
someone else's big perl program. Its
cheaper to figure out what it does and
rewrite from scratch. These efforts to
extend perl, add OO, build up CPAN,
etc. are ridiculous. Like fitting
Concorde wings onto a Volkswagen beetle.
A reusable perl module is an oxymoron;
perl is about regexps and hashes - its
offers nothing to aid modular reusable
programming - and that's largely
exactly why its so good as duct
tape. It cannot be both good duct tape
and a secure, reliable environment for
writing reusable modules. Sure CPAN is
huge and heavily used. But its just a
big semi-organized pile of duct tape.
Citing the size of CPAN is like
saying there are so many Winblows
programs that Winblows must be the best
OS.
Python was is often presented as a pure
OO language - a better perl. But if you
like OO, python is just OO enough to
make you wish you really had OO. A
minor annoyance is that you have to
explicitly pass "self" to methods. A
major annoyance is that, as in java,
there are data structures that are not
objects - thus you have an unnecessary
and uncomfortable mix of methodologies.
Ruby nails it to the wall. Its is as
pure OO as a non-statically typed
language can be; if you like OO you'll
like Ruby, if you don't then move along.
But the real leap in Ruby is its
iteration control. This is where Ruby
truly is superior to Perl and Python and
worth switching to.
The iteration control is a dynamically
typed version of the "iters" introduced
in the Sather programming language from
Berkeley. Just as Ruby is the finest
scripting OO language, Sather is the
finest statically typed OO language.
My goal is to be a great programmer,
make lots of money and do cool stuff
with computers. Sather and Ruby have
helped me to do those things. CPAN just
wasted my time.
On your website, you propose turning Permanent Use and Resell Licenses (PURLs) for information property (IP; software, music, creative text) into tradeable securities. Although I agree 100% with your complaints about how things work now, this equity scheme cannot work because the IP which gives these PURL's their value can be infinitely duplicated. The PURL equity idea assumes a perfect copy protection scheme, but those always fail because at some point the encrypted data (music, video, an instruction stream) must be converted to "clear text" to be used - and at that point it can be copied. As soon as one clear text copy appeared on the internet, the market for the equity would collapse. How long would the gold equities market survive with a real King Midas walking around?
The bulk of the software economy is switching over to one of two schemes: servicing free/open software, or selling encrypted network access to applications housed on central servers (that one would only use if one didn't mind sending data to the ASP, either because of trust or privacy indifference).
In either case, traditional software licenses will no longer be sold. Only service contracts and / or ASP access.
Try Sather (do google or deja power search; its now part of gnu). Sather is a more promising language than java, and being GPL'd doesn't have Sun's lawyers lurking in the background.
Even if you don't use it, understanding Sather will greatly enhance your comprehension of OO techniques.
You get multiple windows, splitting vertically as well as horizontally.
Mice?! We don't need no stinkin mice!
Re:Criticizing molecular espresso machines
on
Nanosystems
·
· Score: 1
I was not commenting on Nanosystems, I was commenting on some of the molecular designs present in Drexler's earlier works, and commenting on the fact that "nanotechnology" is nothing more and nothing less than hard core chemistry and physics. If Drexler is the father of nanotech, then I guess he's the father of applied physics and chemistry, and all the people out there busting their ass in the lab trying to get protein to hang together are merely implementing his vision.
I like his older book, funny molecules and all, and this newer one looks great too, with much more background material, and I appreciate the review.
Criticizing molecular espresso machines
on
Nanosystems
·
· Score: 1
The reviewer (and others) make a point of saying that Drexler is responding to his critics with this book --- as if he is the champion of nanotech while others (traditional, stodgy old scientists) are dismissing his radical ideas.
The fact is that scientists have been doing nanotechnology for decades; its just that they call it chemistry, biochemisty, or solid state physics. If a chemist is annoyed by Drexler, its because he gets away with drawing ridiculous molecular structures (gears, levers, tiny espresso machines, etc.), ignoring very basic physics. One can criticize some of Drexler's specific examples without being against nanotech, just as one can criticize the "warp drive" in Star Trek without being against space travel.
Drexler's book Engines of Creation does a great service in that it eloquently raises awareness about the implications of tiny self-replicating machines. But the book is obviously not a scientific reference, and doesn't have enough of a plot to qualify as science fiction. I've not read the nanosystems book, but to anyone out there who wants to really get into nanotech, you've got to start by getting a good grounding in thermodynamics, statmech, quantmech and basic chemistry. At a bare minimum, you've got to get a good understanding of Brownian motion and other aspects of thermal noise. Then you'll see why chemists are annoyed by Drexler's ridiculous gears and such.
Its not just that things getting tinier; its not just that we need waldos manipulating smaller and smaller waldos. When you get down to the atomic level the rules change.
Size isn't the only criterion. What amazon is delivering here isn't merely a shopping cart and some SQL backend. Its delivering thousands of customers. A business wants a website to draw in customers; if customers come by some other means, a fancy website is just a waste of time. Even a big manufacturer like Panasonic might do far better selling through amazon than through its own site. In fact, it will have to sell through amazon. Or risk being ignored.
...and now I have a choice. I can take precious, irreplaceable time out from manufacturing whatever it is that I am selling, to try to install and use some complex ecommerce system... or i can just set myself up as one of these new Amazon zShops.
linux getting higher bids than windows98
on
Debian Laptops
·
· Score: 1
Shameless plug: I'm auctioning a Vaio505TS with RH6.0 plus updates, the same model being sold by linuxlaptops.
Their price: $2300. My current top bid: $1575.
I thought it would be hard to sell w/ linux, so in my ad I offered to reinstall windblows for the Buyer. Since I'm loath to do this, I offered a $50 rebate to those would take it as is (w/ linux). The incentive may not have been necessary; I'm getting higher bids than a professional reseller offering stock machines (windblows only).
Slashdot Mirror
(Suaron)
You're not ready for the orcs out there,
You keep disappearing, but I know you're there,
My Nazgul hunt you, no matter where,
But I...
The ring has power, Mr. Underhill
you can't destroy it, not with all your skill
And I'm the reason that you never will
But I...
I wish I could say the right words to bind you in Mordor
wish I could send the Balrog, your hobbit head to gore,
Wish I could sing
But now I understand,
I'm feeble, with no ring.
My Nazgul around you, can't find you at all
'Cuz you're a hobbit, not standing tall
I wish I could tie your feet down
And let you die at last
Wish I could send you demons
But now that time has passed
Wish I could flay your skin in a fiery blast
But I'm just fading, away
I'm just fading, away
Sorry, i was lazy and wrong;
its on the norm walsh site, see
http://nwalsh.com/emacs/docbookide/index.html
We're using the preloaded docbook on RH7.2
and it works fine.
Grab some emacs elisp files from sourceforge
to round out the package and you are good to go
with tag completion and font color locking
in emacs.
Docbook advantages:
* no worries about formatting, just write content
* can generate html, postscript, possibly wml, carved stone tablets, etc.
* can be parsed by freely available xml parsers
to intelligently extract, say, all authors, all section titles. This could be done with raw
perl, but why rewrite an xml parser when so
many already exist?
* documents can be easily stored in an OODB,
using an xml->object marshaller, if you are
into that sort of thing. This allows
any number of documents to be subject to
the full power of the database querying
and indexing.
Latex (tex) is great, and I've used it for 20 years,
but its definitely not the same thing as docbook.
Latex
allows - encourages actually - one to think
about appearance while writing the document.
And you do get great looking output.
But you sacrifice everything that docbook/xml
offers in terms of document parsing for other
purposes.
People like perl for two reasons - easy exploitation of regular expressions and hash tables. That's exactly why I started using perl five years ago, and why I still use it once in a while.
But as has been pointed out by countless people - a perl program shouldn't be any longer than what you can rewrite from scratch in an hour - because its just not worth the expense of learning someone else's big perl program. Its cheaper to figure out what it does and rewrite from scratch. These efforts to extend perl, add OO, build up CPAN, etc. are ridiculous. Like fitting Concorde wings onto a Volkswagen beetle. A reusable perl module is an oxymoron; perl is about regexps and hashes - its offers nothing to aid modular reusable programming - and that's largely exactly why its so good as duct tape. It cannot be both good duct tape and a secure, reliable environment for writing reusable modules. Sure CPAN is huge and heavily used. But its just a big semi-organized pile of duct tape. Citing the size of CPAN is like saying there are so many Winblows programs that Winblows must be the best OS.
Python was is often presented as a pure OO language - a better perl. But if you like OO, python is just OO enough to make you wish you really had OO. A minor annoyance is that you have to explicitly pass "self" to methods. A major annoyance is that, as in java, there are data structures that are not objects - thus you have an unnecessary and uncomfortable mix of methodologies.
Ruby nails it to the wall. Its is as pure OO as a non-statically typed language can be; if you like OO you'll like Ruby, if you don't then move along.
But the real leap in Ruby is its iteration control. This is where Ruby truly is superior to Perl and Python and worth switching to.
The iteration control is a dynamically typed version of the "iters" introduced in the Sather programming language from Berkeley. Just as Ruby is the finest scripting OO language, Sather is the finest statically typed OO language.
My goal is to be a great programmer, make lots of money and do cool stuff with computers. Sather and Ruby have helped me to do those things. CPAN just wasted my time.
The bulk of the software economy is switching over to one of two schemes: servicing free/open software, or selling encrypted network access to applications housed on central servers (that one would only use if one didn't mind sending data to the ASP, either because of trust or privacy indifference).
In either case, traditional software licenses will no longer be sold. Only service contracts and / or ASP access.
Refute this.
So that's why the internet is so fscked up! It's subject to all this horriblly uncontrolled software like sendmail, linux, apache, yada yada yada.
Even if you don't use it, understanding Sather will greatly enhance your comprehension of OO techniques.
Mice?! We don't need no stinkin mice!
I was not commenting on Nanosystems, I was commenting on some of the molecular designs present in Drexler's earlier works, and commenting on the fact that "nanotechnology" is nothing more and nothing less than hard core chemistry and physics. If Drexler is the father of nanotech, then I guess he's the father of applied physics and chemistry, and all the people out there busting their ass in the lab trying to get protein to hang together are merely implementing his vision.
I like his older book, funny molecules and all, and this newer one looks great too, with much more background material, and I appreciate the review.
The reviewer (and others) make a point of saying that Drexler is responding to his critics with this book --- as if he is the champion of nanotech while others (traditional, stodgy old scientists) are dismissing his radical ideas.
The fact is that scientists have been doing nanotechnology for decades; its just that they call it chemistry, biochemisty, or solid state physics. If a chemist is annoyed by Drexler, its because he gets away with drawing ridiculous molecular structures (gears, levers, tiny espresso machines, etc.), ignoring very basic physics. One can criticize some of Drexler's specific examples without being against nanotech, just as one can criticize the "warp drive" in Star Trek without being against space travel.
Drexler's book Engines of Creation does a great service in that it eloquently raises awareness about the implications of tiny self-replicating machines. But the book is obviously not a scientific reference, and doesn't have enough of a plot to qualify as science fiction. I've not read the nanosystems book, but to anyone out there who wants to really get into nanotech, you've got to start by getting a good grounding in thermodynamics, statmech, quantmech and basic chemistry. At a bare minimum, you've got to get a good understanding of Brownian motion and other aspects of thermal noise. Then you'll see why chemists are annoyed by Drexler's ridiculous gears and such.
Its not just that things getting tinier; its not just that we need waldos manipulating smaller and smaller waldos. When you get down to the atomic level the rules change.
Size isn't the only criterion. What amazon is delivering here isn't merely a shopping cart and some SQL backend. Its delivering thousands of customers. A business wants a website to draw in customers; if customers come by some other means, a fancy website is just a waste of time. Even a big manufacturer like Panasonic might do far better selling through amazon than through its own site. In fact, it will have to sell through amazon. Or risk being ignored.
Shameless plug: I'm auctioning a Vaio505TS with RH6.0 plus updates, the same model being sold by linuxlaptops.
Their price: $2300. My current top bid: $1575.
I thought it would be hard to sell w/ linux, so in my ad I offered to reinstall windblows for the Buyer. Since I'm loath to do this, I offered a $50 rebate to those would take it as is (w/ linux). The incentive may not have been necessary; I'm getting higher bids than a professional reseller offering stock machines (windblows only).