at it again.. the way everyone had to code everything twice.. once for explorer and once for netscape.. well its going to be even more fun for android and android-like devs.. then droid will fracture, leaving a more coherent market for ios dev.. allowing ios to hold on to 30% longer than it would.
maybe it works out w each of the big three (google, apple, microsoft) with a third of the market - with incompatible clouds and digital thunderstorms - more fun ahead!;-) 2cents from toronto island (snow and thunder tonight) jp
before you do algebra, you need to learn to multiply, and before that you need to learn to add and subtract. certain higher levels of abstract thinking require prior training in order to be of good use. getting a good grounding in the basics gives one better preparation to wield the forces of code.
for the earlier grades —when they're still learning to add and subtract, and count their ABCs.. up to grade two and three, you cant even really assume that kind of stuff yet — kids grow slow, just like plants, and you cant just stuff it into them like cabbages — give them time to develop basic skills like recognising the 26 letters of the alphabet before giving them the ASCII code 65, 66, and 67 — give them the simplest introductions of a subject area gives them a better ability to start a good core understanding which will help them for a lifetime.
a lot of what you learn in programming is not the requisite clear training in thought — but the semantics of a language, and the APIs which it is calling.. things which continuously change — distracting from the main thing — learning how to think clearly and logically.
stripping all the semantics and APIs away — and just left with the six rudiments of logic to contemplate — the motions and interactions of the king and queen — how the rook and bishop move along vectors; how how the knights intersect in circles, and how variables advance and pawn chains interact — these are the kind of things that get children to think in abstract arrays and logical collisions. i would start Chess in Schools in grade 2, and every year the classes play each other.. with as much reward given as they do for other sports activities.
train the national mind.. train the human mind. once they got chess down for a couple years — programming, starting in grade 7 and 8 should be a piece of cake.
you are right that it is unsurprising — as is the result of a game between a tennis champ and an amateur — but you are wrong in saying that the skills one squires in chess are unrelated to everything that matters in life.
you obviously have never taken up the sport, or you would soon see how it disciplines and trains the mind to meet everything else in life with more and better discrimination — just like science enables one to cut out a lot of the crap that people superstitiously believe — chess teaches your mind how to think clearly in a better way than anything else. it shows you how to overcome superstitious instincts, and train them towards better results — and this helps in almost every area of life.
As Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1750 in his article, The Morals of Chess — The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions; for life is a kind of Chess... By playing at Chess then, we may learn:
1st, Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers the consequences that may attend an action.
2nd, Circumspection, which surveys the whole Chess-board, or scene of action—the relation of the several pieces and their situations...
3rd, Caution, not to make our moves too hastily...
There are two fundamental questions in the life of the human soul towards which everything to be discussed in this book is directed. One is: Is it possible to find a view of the essential nature of man such as will give us a foundation for everything else that comes to meet us — whether through life experience or through science — which we feel is otherwise not self-supporting and therefore liable to be driven by doubt and criticism into the realm of uncertainty? The other question is this: Is man entitled to claim for himself freedom of will, or is freedom a mere illusion begotten of his inability to recognize the threads of necessity on which his will, like any natural event, depends?
regarded by c.s. lewis as his 'master' — contemporaries with lewis carrol — one of the most brilliant fantasy writers ever — george macdonald, 'phantastes' and 'lillith':
probably one of the most important books in western philosophy since kant's critique of pure reason — rudolf steiner's 'philosophy of freedom':
EVERYTHING DISCUSSED in this book centers around two problems which are fundamental to the human soul-life. One of these problems concerns the possibility of attaining such insight into human nature that knowledge of man can become the foundation of all human knowledge and experience of life. We often feel that our experiences and the results of scientific investigations are not self-supporting; further experiences or discoveries may shake our certitude. The other problem is Has man any right to ascribe freedom to his will, or is freedom of will an illusion arising out of his inability to recognize the threads of necessity on which his will depends, just like a process in nature? (Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom)
OSX mavericks is free — as in beer; but not free as in speech.
linux is free (as in speech), but may not be free as in beer (since open source companies typically charge for services and not software).
OSX is free (as in beer). but only employs 'free as in speech' to parts of the whole system — they lockdown the engine, and use & contribute to open source — significantly, the darwin kernel is actually open source, and they use open protocols (xml).
either of these is still better than windows 8.1 (which still uses closed NT filesystem, no open source kernel — and windows hood, and document formats are all bolted shut).
ya — iOS was designed for power management from the get-go, whereas windows is just DOS with a GUI bolted on, and then internet/network bolted on, and then windows NT grafted in, and then surface and mobile bolted on, and legacy background CPU processes and general bloat and cruftiness just cant keep down the CPU usage to match power dedicated hardware — and with the latest iOS 7 — time coalescing of tasks and threads so the power doesnt havent to run as continuously — windows 7 wont match that feature for years — take a look at your task manager, and look at all those crufty old DLLs and processes — you cant get rid of them, so you just need more battery juice — if you're running java — that's just extra processor juice over running native code, so things like that take a hit on battery life too. also — the typical CISC processors used by windows are more complex, and inherently require more power than processors like the ARM which were designed with power management in mind. you would have to recompile all your apps to work well with processor features and methods.
since we cant know the decision making process for an agent external to ourselves, we devise a turing test — which says nothing more than if it quacks like a duck, it IS a duck (and never mind that we decieve ourselves with decoys and clever ploys).
however, for our own agency, we can raise the exceptional condition and follow the path through introspection — which is fraught with subjective bias.. if we attain some objectivity in our own comiserations — we do find that almost everything we do is actually conditioned through habit and dispositions — if we just tested 90% of what we do, we would see that most of it actually is Not Free — but there's these times when occasions arise, when we have the ability to attain intuitive insight into our situation, and then we have the opportunity to add something new to the world — a decision based on a consciously based action — and we push that little pebble of freedom forward one more notch. like the dot on the 'i' — it may be a smallest part — barely a breath, but sometimes — for those who attain to it — it can make all the difference..
For debugging purposes, Thompson put a back-door into “login”. The way he did it was by modifying the C compiler. He took the code pattern for password verification, and embedded it into the C compiler, so that when it saw that pattern, it would actually generate code that accepted either the correct password for the username, or Thompson’s special debugging password. In pseudo-Python:
def compile(code):
if (looksLikeLoginCode(code)):
generateLoginWithBackDoor()
else:
compileNormally(code) With that in the C compiler, any time that anyone compiles login, the code generated by the compiler will include Ritchie’s back door.
Now comes the really clever part. Obviously, if anyone saw code like what’s in that example, they’d throw a fit. That’s insanely insecure, and any manager who saw that would immediately demand that it be removed. So, how can you keep the back door, but get rid of the danger of someone noticing it in the source code for the C compiler? You hack the C compiler itself:
def compile(code):
if (looksLikeLoginCode(code)):
generateLoginWithBackDoor(code)
elif (looksLikeCompilerCode(code)):
generateCompilerWithBackDoorDetection(code)
else:
compileNormally(code) What happens here is that you modify the C compiler code so that when it compiles itelf, it inserts the back-door code. So now when the C compiler compiles login, it will insert the back door code; and when it compiles the C compiler, it will insert the code that inserts the code into both login and the C compiler.
Now, you compile the C compiler with itself – getting a C compiler that includes the back-door generation code explicitly. Then you delete the back-door code from the C compiler source. But it’s in the binary. So when you use that binary to produce a new version of the compiler from the source, it will insert the back-door code into the new version.
So you’ve now got a C compiler that inserts back-door code when it compiles itself – and that code appears nowhere in the source code of the compiler.
without base cmyk support, programmes like (good ol lovable) gimp will never be serious contenders against photoshop for production houses. with this, they're just making and charging for a dozen mandatory micro-upgrades per year instead of one big chunk once a year - for those who need it, they'll probably ante up, cause the tools actually are really good, and designed by good designers, and designers appreciate good tools. - still, im old fashioned.. you pay for software, you own it, and it should keep on working without artificial expiry bombs built-in. oh, and you have a right to backup and copy what you've paid for. - or you *should* - no matter what those lawyer types say. photoshop is to imagery what word is to words, and excel to spreadsheets - its well designed, and subscriptions suck.
Slashdot Mirror
at it again.. the way everyone had to code everything twice.. once for explorer and once for netscape.. well its going to be even more fun for android and android-like devs.. then droid will fracture, leaving a more coherent market for ios dev.. allowing ios to hold on to 30% longer than it would.
maybe it works out w each of the big three (google, apple, microsoft) with a third of the market - with incompatible clouds and digital thunderstorms - more fun ahead! ;-)
2cents from toronto island (snow and thunder tonight)
jp
no slight against beautiful graphics — but to quote george bernard shaw — 'The quality of a play is the quality of its ideas'
i'd say the same is true for games — the quality of the game is in the quality of its ideas.
also there's also a certain rhythmic tempo which is pleasant to attain which makes gameplay satisfying.
the graphics can be great and everything, buts without a good gameplay, they fall flat.
when the ideas are good, and the gameplay is good — then the graphics just add to the special sauce and completes it. :-)
in the hyper quest for realism — we forget that all those perfect pixels doesnt improve the story nor the gameplay.
pac man was a hit without all the fancy graphics
before you do algebra, you need to learn to multiply, and before that you need to learn to add and subtract.
certain higher levels of abstract thinking require prior training in order to be of good use.
getting a good grounding in the basics gives one better preparation to wield the forces of code.
for the earlier grades —when they're still learning to add and subtract, and count their ABCs.. up to grade two and three, you cant even really assume that kind of stuff yet — kids grow slow, just like plants, and you cant just stuff it into them like cabbages — give them time to develop basic skills like recognising the 26 letters of the alphabet before giving them the ASCII code 65, 66, and 67 — give them the simplest introductions of a subject area gives them a better ability to start a good core understanding which will help them for a lifetime.
a lot of what you learn in programming is not the requisite clear training in thought — but the semantics of a language, and the APIs which it is calling.. things which continuously change — distracting from the main thing — learning how to think clearly and logically.
stripping all the semantics and APIs away — and just left with the six rudiments of logic to contemplate — the motions and interactions of the king and queen — how the rook and bishop move along vectors; how how the knights intersect in circles, and how variables advance and pawn chains interact — these are the kind of things that get children to think in abstract arrays and logical collisions. i would start Chess in Schools in grade 2, and every year the classes play each other.. with as much reward given as they do for other sports activities.
train the national mind.. train the human mind.
once they got chess down for a couple years — programming,
starting in grade 7 and 8 should be a piece of cake.
2cents from toronto island
john penner
you are right that it is unsurprising — as is the result of a game between a tennis champ and an amateur — but you are wrong in saying that the skills one squires in chess are unrelated to everything that matters in life.
you obviously have never taken up the sport, or you would soon see how it disciplines and trains the mind to meet everything else in life with more and better discrimination — just like science enables one to cut out a lot of the crap that people superstitiously believe — chess teaches your mind how to think clearly in a better way than anything else. it shows you how to overcome superstitious instincts, and train them towards better results — and this helps in almost every area of life.
As Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1750 in his article, The Morals of Chess — The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions; for life is a kind of Chess... By playing at Chess then, we may learn:
1st, Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers the consequences that may attend an action.
2nd, Circumspection, which surveys the whole Chess-board, or scene of action—the relation of the several pieces and their situations...
3rd, Caution, not to make our moves too hastily...
two cents from toronto island
j
Arsenal of Freedom 'to be totally armed is to be totally secure'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdMuO5XYLYs
a better translation:
There are two fundamental questions in the life of the human soul towards which everything to be discussed in this book is directed. One is: Is it possible to find a view of the essential nature of man such as will give us a foundation for everything else that comes to meet us — whether through life experience or through science — which we feel is otherwise not self-supporting and therefore liable to be driven by doubt and criticism into the realm of uncertainty? The other question is this: Is man entitled to claim for himself freedom of will, or is freedom a mere illusion begotten of his inability to recognize the threads of necessity on which his will, like any natural event, depends?
regarded by c.s. lewis as his 'master' — contemporaries with lewis carrol — one of the most brilliant fantasy writers ever — george macdonald, 'phantastes' and 'lillith':
http://web.archive.org/web/20131017224627/http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=MacPhan.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1
probably one of the most important books in western philosophy since kant's critique of pure reason — rudolf steiner's 'philosophy of freedom':
EVERYTHING DISCUSSED in this book centers around two problems which are fundamental to the human soul-life. One of these problems concerns the possibility of attaining such insight into human nature that knowledge of man can become the foundation of all human knowledge and experience of life. We often feel that our experiences and the results of scientific investigations are not self-supporting; further experiences or discoveries may shake our certitude. The other problem is Has man any right to ascribe freedom to his will, or is freedom of will an illusion arising out of his inability to recognize the threads of necessity on which his will depends, just like a process in nature? (Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom)
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/RSPI1963/GA004_preface1.html
aka how to remotely exploit everything that was never previously exploitable — and how your toaster now spies on you.
back in the day — with TRS80 300 baud cassette loading — we thought 300 bps was pretty SSSSLLLOOOWWW..
they managed the blazing speed 20bps (bits per second) at 3 meters using 18khz carrier frequency — and that had a faint clicking sound.
20 bps is slower than most people type — you're not going to be transmitting any high-res jpeg images this way..
good enough to capture and transmit a password though, or to do command-control type actions.
heh heh — transmitting a spy app between nodes as a payload could take weeks..
when they made it quieter so you couldnt hear the slight clicking sound — the range was http://www.jocm.us/uploadfile/2013/1125/20131125103803901.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzrZukr3mbU
he'd be arrested.. tomorrow. :-p
when it crashes my machine — it is done.
who needs to torrent anymore when its already all there..?
OSX mavericks is free — as in beer; but not free as in speech.
linux is free (as in speech), but may not be free as in beer (since open source companies typically charge for services and not software).
OSX is free (as in beer). but only employs 'free as in speech' to parts of the whole system — they lockdown the engine, and use & contribute to open source — significantly, the darwin kernel is actually open source, and they use open protocols (xml).
either of these is still better than windows 8.1 (which still uses closed NT filesystem, no open source kernel — and windows hood, and document formats are all bolted shut).
ya — iOS was designed for power management from the get-go, whereas windows is just DOS with a GUI bolted on, and then internet/network bolted on, and then windows NT grafted in, and then surface and mobile bolted on, and legacy background CPU processes and general bloat and cruftiness just cant keep down the CPU usage to match power dedicated hardware — and with the latest iOS 7 — time coalescing of tasks and threads so the power doesnt havent to run as continuously — windows 7 wont match that feature for years — take a look at your task manager, and look at all those crufty old DLLs and processes — you cant get rid of them, so you just need more battery juice — if you're running java — that's just extra processor juice over running native code, so things like that take a hit on battery life too. also — the typical CISC processors used by windows are more complex, and inherently require more power than processors like the ARM which were designed with power management in mind. you would have to recompile all your apps to work well with processor features and methods.
or as they say — never mistake motion for action. :-^
since we cant know the decision making process for an agent external to ourselves, we devise a turing test — which says nothing more than if it quacks like a duck, it IS a duck (and never mind that we decieve ourselves with decoys and clever ploys).
however, for our own agency, we can raise the exceptional condition and follow the path through introspection — which is fraught with subjective bias.. if we attain some objectivity in our own comiserations — we do find that almost everything we do is actually conditioned through habit and dispositions — if we just tested 90% of what we do, we would see that most of it actually is Not Free — but there's these times when occasions arise, when we have the ability to attain intuitive insight into our situation, and then we have the opportunity to add something new to the world — a decision based on a consciously based action — and we push that little pebble of freedom forward one more notch. like the dot on the 'i' — it may be a smallest part — barely a breath, but sometimes — for those who attain to it — it can make all the difference..
2cents from toronto island,
john penner
got a brain - but got no heart..
yeah, people like to live in a comfort zone — but i've found that some of the best friends come from right out of that comfort zone..
2cents
jp
A man needs a little madness, or else he never dares to cut the rope and be free.
(Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek)
well duh — nobody wants a gun that crashes when the other guy is there with a gun that doesnt have software to keep it from functioning.
2cents
jp
yeah — like ken thompson's C compiler exploit:
http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/04/15/strange-loops-dennis-ritchie-a/
For debugging purposes, Thompson put a back-door into “login”. The way he did it was by modifying the C compiler. He took the code pattern for password verification, and embedded it into the C compiler, so that when it saw that pattern, it would actually generate code
that accepted either the correct password for the username, or Thompson’s special debugging password. In pseudo-Python:
def compile(code):
if (looksLikeLoginCode(code)):
generateLoginWithBackDoor()
else:
compileNormally(code)
With that in the C compiler, any time that anyone compiles login,
the code generated by the compiler will include Ritchie’s back door.
Now comes the really clever part. Obviously, if anyone saw code like what’s in that
example, they’d throw a fit. That’s insanely insecure, and any manager who saw that would immediately demand that it be removed. So, how can you keep the back door, but get rid of the danger of someone noticing it in the source code for the C compiler? You hack the C compiler itself:
def compile(code):
if (looksLikeLoginCode(code)):
generateLoginWithBackDoor(code)
elif (looksLikeCompilerCode(code)):
generateCompilerWithBackDoorDetection(code)
else:
compileNormally(code)
What happens here is that you modify the C compiler code so that when it compiles itelf, it inserts the back-door code. So now when the C compiler compiles login, it will insert the back door code; and when it compiles
the C compiler, it will insert the code that inserts the code into both login and the C compiler.
Now, you compile the C compiler with itself – getting a C compiler that includes the back-door generation code explicitly. Then you delete the back-door code from the C compiler source. But it’s in the binary. So when you use that binary to produce a new version of the compiler from the source, it will insert the back-door code into
the new version.
So you’ve now got a C compiler that inserts back-door code when it compiles itself – and that code appears nowhere in the source code of the compiler.
without base cmyk support, programmes like (good ol lovable) gimp will never be serious contenders against photoshop for production houses. with this, they're just making and charging for a dozen mandatory micro-upgrades per year instead of one big chunk once a year - for those who need it, they'll probably ante up, cause the tools actually are really good, and designed by good designers, and designers appreciate good tools. - still, im old fashioned.. you pay for software, you own it, and it should keep on working without artificial expiry bombs built-in. oh, and you have a right to backup and copy what you've paid for. - or you *should* - no matter what those lawyer types say. photoshop is to imagery what word is to words, and excel to spreadsheets - its well designed, and subscriptions suck.
for all that fancy lab equipment.. ;->