it doesnt matter if your logic gates are made out of gears, tubes, transistors, memristors or pecking pigeons - if they satisfy the rules of logic -- AND, OR, NOT, and NAND -- then the qualities of the underlying hardware are abstracted from logical functioning, and are thus irrelevant to the qualities they claim in the article that machines constructed out of these components will posses -- this article is nothing more than more pie in the sky -- promising a magical change that results in self-aware qualities, simply because we make our logic circuits out of memristors instead of transistors or pigeons.. yes; i've heard this one before.. twenty years of hypberbole.:-P wake me up when they make a machine as smart as a slug (without borrowing bits of slug to do it).:-P
i remember reading hardy boys, narnia and tom swift novels when i was a kid - the tom swift stories always emphasized science, invention, and technology - great books. the tintin books are also science positive.:-D
if it is '50 million light-years from Earth' - then it must be something that happened at least fifty-million years ago - talk about old news - not even slashdot repeats news that's *that* old...;-P
and look what it did for the popularity of apple hardware.. they got so big, that ibm decided to make its own PC too.. stirring the behomoth into action.
the best thing steve jobs could do on his his death is to open-source Mac OSX (maybe..)
the software with good designers taken over by the company with the bad designers.. ugh. please, no. com'on - apple - adobe - please forget about your flash/html5 differences -- the creative suite would die the death of a thousand papercuts if it became run by the people who designed microsoft word. ugh. please, no.
i've been working in IT/computers since before the ibm pc, before the (classic) macintosh, before dos, before windows, before the internet, before the imac, and before the ipod -- and the more things change, the more they stay the same.
the particular technologies and interfaces change, or increase (hugely) in capacity -- but the concepts remain the same. you've got to be interested in what you're doing - you got to love it, and read about it, and breathe it - learn to apply troubleshooting principles -- divide and conquer, isolate reproducable phenomenon..
"A vulgar mechanick can practice what he has been taught or seen done,
but if he is in error, he knows not how to find it out and correct it;...
Whereas he that is able to reason nimbly and judiciously about figure,
force, and motion, is never at rest till he gets over every rub."
(Isaak Newton, in a letter to Nathaniel Hawes)
running an xserve, OD user configured, with their email address in the open directory 'info' pane. user receives.ics calendar invites - double-click - and these always get added to her default local calendar - any geeks out there know any way to get invites to default to a CalDAV calendar? i think its not a feature, but if you can ctrl-click to select which calendar to belong to - but is there no way to make the CalDAV calendar the default instead of a local calendar? any leads much appreciated.
j
sorry for the OT post - but i read the documentation, and its just not in therw -- and this is a functional mac calDAV question
as a kid - this was my favourite exhibit at the science centre - it was the first time i'd ever seen machine speech synthesis.. and its many inflections of the word 'coffee' really stuck. i'd love to hear if anyone knows more about this machine.:-D
ya know.. as a canadian, i love many things about the brits: the music, the literature, the history.. it is all rich - but what i've never understood is this seemingly ingrained tendency to always want to put people down in clever ways - WTF!?!?
> having used apple's developer tools after spending years using microsoft's, > let me assure you that apple's ease of use advantage ends when..
you're used to a homogenous environment for years, and then when you enter a new land -- nothing in a sensible world makes sense to you -- because you're already pre-damaged by borg-think.;->
-- even every strange land is a home for someone else (jrp)
oh - and that is only thinking about usability, openness, and cost.
the other factor is.. you're running a computer lab in a high school -- and you do know that is the worst-case scenario for getting all the viruses and malware and bloatware you can imagine..
such a lab is a breeding ground for such things -- just make sure the lab is running Windows XP and IE, and you're going to have to have your IT staff regularly wipe and reinstall XP everytime they bog down with too much crap -- IT will be spending their days plugging holes in the firewall with security updates, and disinfecting trojaned XP boxxen.. and they'll be as busy as bees, and feeling real productive.. doing crap they wouldn't have to deal with if it was a Mac with OSX. yeah, and you know it.:-P
or use ubuntu linux -- as any time a machine gets owned (which too is less likely than under windows).. you can wipe and reinstall ubuntu with less clicks than it takes to reinstall with the (prehistoric) XP installer.
windows XP is a dead-end why o why would you seriously want to invest more in a dead-end?? at least use windows 7 -- but you probably cant, because you have old machines.
as gabe newell said in a slashdot story yesterday -- "We need to target platforms that do a better job of looking like where we want to be in a few years." (Gabe Newell, 5BY5.TV Interview)
you'd be doing your students a real disservice if you stuck them with XP while the applications they're going to be using in the field are moving away from XP.. at least to windows7 (and beyond) -- but windows XP is a dead and sorry past.. good riddance.
if you want your students to be able to learn -- dont force an operating system on them that cripples them with the hood bolted shut -- science is about learning how things work, and this spirit requires access to source code -- now the osx crown jewels are far from open, but the darwin kernal, and the fact that XCode comes with every copy of OSX make it much more friendly to inquisitive science minded folk that like to be able to do it themselves -- OSX has a stable, cleanly implemented unix underbelly, and also a lot of independent development. its got a good balance of: i) much of the linuxy openess -- and ii) commercial application development and support (like MS Office, and Adobe CS, and yes, quite a lot of scientific development apps) -- more, at least than you may find on Linux.
if you cant afford new machines with windows7 or OSX -- and you're stuck with your old machines -- well, Ubuntu has got to be a better world to live in for a scientist than windows XP.. anything anything except windows XP.. please dont force that $%it on them.. and keep them stuck in the digital dark-ages. ugh.:-P
walk anywhere on earthy - and if you're not a good consumer, the drones will come down and hunt you like in THX-1138.. or like the robo-hover-bots in star wars..
you can run, but you cant hide.. lasers coming down from heaven to zap you...
this story is thousands of years old..
| Then I saw another beast, coming out of the earth. | He had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon. | He exercised all the authority of the first beast on his behalf, | and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, | whose fatal wound had been healed. And he performed great and | miraculous signs, even CAUSING FIRE TO COME DOWN FROM HEAVEN TO EARTH | in full view of men. (Revelation 13:11-13)
when you think of basic - you talk of GOTO statements & line numbers. but modern Basics just havent used Goto statements or Line numbers in almost 2.5 decades!
except for some syntactical curiosities - the code you write with basic supports the same structures as C, pascal, or java for decades already.
when's the last time you've seen Basic code? did it have line numbers or goto statements? how about variable records (structs), function passing, and C-like dimensioning:
| local FN generateRawMoves(board as ^boardRecord, moves(0) as moveRecord) | | dim as long pieceMoves, numMoves, querySquare | | numMoves = 0 | | for querySquare = 1 to 64 | pieceMoves = 0 | long if board.square[querySquare] 0 | pieceMoves = FN pieceTree(board, moves(0), querySquare) | end if | | numMoves = numMoves++ | next querySquare | | end FN = numMoves
basic as it was 20-30 years ago is not what basic has become.
on the mac, there's currently a very useful (free!) futurebasic5 to C cross-compiler available here, with an active 20yr+ user community:
FBtoC: http://www.4toc.com/fb/ | | FBtoC 5.4.4 creates Mac OS X universal applications | (Mach-O executables) from FutureBasic source.
real basic allows object oriented (cocoa) code, and is cross-platform:
basic has also been adopted to some new paradigms. it used to be that basic wasn't compiled, and interpreted languages were considered too slow -- now basic is compiled, and java abounds.
or -- instead of using csh for scripting -- how about basic??
Apple I BASIC as a Mac OS X Scripting Language http://www.pagetable.com/?p=35 | | $ cat reverse.bas | #!/usr/bin/apple1basic | 10 DIM A$(100) | 20 INPUT A$ | 30 FOR I = LEN(A$) TO 1 STEP -1 | 40 PRINT A$(I,I); | 50 NEXT I | 60 PRINT | 70 END | $ chmod a+x reverse.bas | $ echo MICHAEL STEIL |./reverse.bas | LIETS LEAHCIM
basic aint what it was - so stop this thirty-year old gripe against goto & line numbers... aaargh.
the nobel prize winner, john eccles - brain neurologist considers the known/experienceable world to actually be comprised of three 'worlds' -- i) that of matter, ii) that of states of consciousness, and iii) objective knowledge -- 'the sum total of human culture':
there is not only an evolution of the physical human form, but also an evolution in the states of consciousness mankind has achieved in order to attain to the states of consciousness which prevail in order to, for example make scientific and logical judgements -- evolution of consciousness, and its consequences must be taken be taken into account, because all that you see as the effects of HUIMANS -- cities, bridges, buildings -- is all due to a change in the consditions of consciousness that humans have developed.
in fact, the social organization may be more important than the material organization. there are enough physical resources and technological expertise on this planet to feed every woman, child and man on this planet -- given that we are adequately socially organized -- this is not yet the case, so war and poverty are not necessarily a lack-of-resources issue -- but a social one.
Slashdot Mirror
it doesnt matter if your logic gates are made out of gears, tubes, transistors, memristors or pecking pigeons - if they satisfy the rules of logic -- AND, OR, NOT, and NAND -- then the qualities of the underlying hardware are abstracted from logical functioning, and are thus irrelevant to the qualities they claim in the article that machines constructed out of these components will posses -- this article is nothing more than more pie in the sky -- promising a magical change that results in self-aware qualities, simply because we make our logic circuits out of memristors instead of transistors or pigeons.. yes; i've heard this one before.. twenty years of hypberbole. :-P :-P
wake me up when they make a machine as smart as a slug (without borrowing bits of slug to do it).
i remember reading hardy boys, narnia and tom swift novels when i was a kid - the tom swift stories always emphasized science, invention, and technology - great books. the tintin books are also science positive. :-D
all the best
john p
if it is '50 million light-years from Earth' - then it must be something that happened at least fifty-million years ago - talk about old news - not even slashdot repeats news that's *that* old... ;-P
Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it.
(John Lennon)
its apple ][ clones all over again..
and look what it did for the popularity of apple hardware.. they got so big, that ibm decided to make its own PC too.. stirring the behomoth into action.
the best thing steve jobs could do on his his death is to open-source Mac OSX (maybe..)
2cents from toronto
jp
they should be building their own crystal radio sets - they still need to get the 101 of what they are using with wifi and cell-phones.
the software with good designers taken over by the company with the bad designers.. ugh. please, no. com'on - apple - adobe - please forget about your flash/html5 differences -- the creative suite would die the death of a thousand papercuts if it became run by the people who designed microsoft word. ugh. please, no.
i've been working in IT/computers since before the ibm pc, before the (classic) macintosh, before dos, before windows, before the internet, before the imac, and before the ipod -- and the more things change, the more they stay the same.
the particular technologies and interfaces change, or increase (hugely) in capacity -- but the concepts remain the same. you've got to be interested in what you're doing - you got to love it, and read about it, and breathe it - learn to apply troubleshooting principles -- divide and conquer, isolate reproducable phenomenon..
"A vulgar mechanick can practice what he has been taught or seen done,
but if he is in error, he knows not how to find it out and correct it;...
Whereas he that is able to reason nimbly and judiciously about figure,
force, and motion, is never at rest till he gets over every rub."
(Isaak Newton, in a letter to Nathaniel Hawes)
digital plumber since 1982.
jp
running an xserve, OD user configured, with their email address in the open directory 'info' pane. user receives .ics calendar invites - double-click - and these always get added to her default local calendar - any geeks out there know any way to get invites to default to a CalDAV calendar? i think its not a feature, but if you can ctrl-click to select which calendar to belong to - but is there no way to make the CalDAV calendar the default instead of a local calendar? any leads much appreciated.
j
sorry for the OT post - but i read the documentation, and its just not in therw -- and this is a functional mac calDAV question
as a kid - this was my favourite exhibit at the science centre - it was the first time i'd ever seen machine speech synthesis.. and its many inflections of the word 'coffee' really stuck. i'd love to hear if anyone knows more about this machine. :-D
ya know.. as a canadian, i love many things about the brits: the music, the literature, the history.. it is all rich - but what i've never understood is this seemingly ingrained tendency to always want to put people down in clever ways - WTF!?!?
> having used apple's developer tools after spending years using microsoft's,
> let me assure you that apple's ease of use advantage ends when..
you're used to a homogenous environment for years, and then when you enter a new land -- nothing in a sensible world makes sense to you -- because you're already pre-damaged by borg-think. ;->
--
even every strange land is a home for someone else (jrp)
hope he doesnt pull one of these!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc
oh - and that is only thinking about usability, openness, and cost.
the other factor is.. you're running a computer lab in a high school -- and you do know that is the worst-case scenario for getting all the viruses and malware and bloatware you can imagine..
such a lab is a breeding ground for such things -- just make sure the lab is running Windows XP and IE, and you're going to have to have your IT staff regularly wipe and reinstall XP everytime they bog down with too much crap -- IT will be spending their days plugging holes in the firewall with security updates, and disinfecting trojaned XP boxxen.. and they'll be as busy as bees, and feeling real productive.. doing crap they wouldn't have to deal with if it was a Mac with OSX. yeah, and you know it. :-P
or use ubuntu linux -- as any time a machine gets owned (which too is less likely than under windows).. you can wipe and reinstall ubuntu with less clicks than it takes to reinstall with the (prehistoric) XP installer.
windows XP is a dead-end why o why would you seriously want to invest more in a dead-end?? at least use windows 7 -- but you probably cant, because you have old machines.
as gabe newell said in a slashdot story yesterday -- "We need to target platforms that do a better job of looking like where we want to be in a few years." (Gabe Newell, 5BY5.TV Interview)
you'd be doing your students a real disservice if you stuck them with XP while the applications they're going to be using in the field are moving away from XP.. at least to windows7 (and beyond) -- but windows XP is a dead and sorry past.. good riddance.
if you want your students to be able to learn -- dont force an operating system on them that cripples them with the hood bolted shut -- science is about learning how things work, and this spirit requires access to source code -- now the osx crown jewels are far from open, but the darwin kernal, and the fact that XCode comes with every copy of OSX make it much more friendly to inquisitive science minded folk that like to be able to do it themselves -- OSX has a stable, cleanly implemented unix underbelly, and also a lot of independent development. its got a good balance of: i) much of the linuxy openess -- and ii) commercial application development and support (like MS Office, and Adobe CS, and yes, quite a lot of scientific development apps) -- more, at least than you may find on Linux.
if you cant afford new machines with windows7 or OSX -- and you're stuck with your old machines -- well, Ubuntu has got to be a better world to live in for a scientist than windows XP.. anything anything except windows XP.. please dont force that $%it on them.. and keep them stuck in the digital dark-ages. ugh. :-P
the problem is all the light coming out of the screen you're reading.
this is because most modern GUIs have this horrible predisposition to black on white text.
mac users can use: Cmd-Option-Shift-8 to INVERT the screen to white on black
viola -- no more staring into a lightbulb. :-D :-D
i've used this often to keep my eyes from burning out before bed.
2cents from toronto island
jp
not done with drones - but how much easier it would be if you're even :-P
one more level detached from the reality?? when killing is like a videogame..
wiki-leaks video of airstrikes on reporters
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/05/wikileaks-video-of-u.html#more
walk anywhere on earthy - and if you're not a good consumer,
the drones will come down and hunt you like in THX-1138..
or like the robo-hover-bots in star wars..
you can run, but you cant hide.. lasers coming down from heaven to zap you...
this story is thousands of years old..
| Then I saw another beast, coming out of the earth.
| He had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon.
| He exercised all the authority of the first beast on his behalf,
| and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast,
| whose fatal wound had been healed. And he performed great and
| miraculous signs, even CAUSING FIRE TO COME DOWN FROM HEAVEN TO EARTH
| in full view of men. (Revelation 13:11-13)
this is what they do with cellphones in class now... ;-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwv8rXb3ha0
You watch television to turn your brain off
and you work on your computer
when you want to turn your brain on.
(Steve Jobs, Macworld, Feb 2004)
when you think of basic - you talk of GOTO statements & line numbers.
but modern Basics just havent used Goto statements or Line numbers in almost 2.5 decades!
except for some syntactical curiosities - the code you write with basic
supports the same structures as C, pascal, or java for decades already.
when's the last time you've seen Basic code? did it have line numbers or goto statements?
how about variable records (structs), function passing, and C-like dimensioning:
| local FN generateRawMoves(board as ^boardRecord, moves(0) as moveRecord)
|
| dim as long pieceMoves, numMoves, querySquare
|
| numMoves = 0
|
| for querySquare = 1 to 64
| pieceMoves = 0
| long if board.square[querySquare] 0
| pieceMoves = FN pieceTree(board, moves(0), querySquare)
| end if
|
| numMoves = numMoves++
| next querySquare
|
| end FN = numMoves
basic as it was 20-30 years ago is not what basic has become.
on the mac, there's currently a very useful (free!) futurebasic5 to C
cross-compiler available here, with an active 20yr+ user community:
FBtoC: http://www.4toc.com/fb/
|
| FBtoC 5.4.4 creates Mac OS X universal applications
| (Mach-O executables) from FutureBasic source.
real basic allows object oriented (cocoa) code, and is cross-platform:
RealBasic:
http://www.realsoftware.com/realbasic/
basic has also been adopted to some new paradigms.
it used to be that basic wasn't compiled, and interpreted languages
were considered too slow -- now basic is compiled, and java abounds.
or -- instead of using csh for scripting -- how about basic??
Apple I BASIC as a Mac OS X Scripting Language ./reverse.bas
http://www.pagetable.com/?p=35
|
| $ cat reverse.bas
| #!/usr/bin/apple1basic
| 10 DIM A$(100)
| 20 INPUT A$
| 30 FOR I = LEN(A$) TO 1 STEP -1
| 40 PRINT A$(I,I);
| 50 NEXT I
| 60 PRINT
| 70 END
| $ chmod a+x reverse.bas
| $ echo MICHAEL STEIL |
| LIETS LEAHCIM
basic aint what it was - so stop this thirty-year old gripe against goto & line numbers... aaargh.
Apple WWDC 2002-The Death Of Mac OS 9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl7xQ8i3fc0
You can't say civilization doesn't advance,
for in every war they kill you a new way. (Will Rogers)
the nobel prize winner, john eccles - brain neurologist considers the known/experienceable world to actually be comprised of three 'worlds' -- i) that of matter, ii) that of states of consciousness, and iii) objective knowledge -- 'the sum total of human culture':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Eccles_(neurophysiologist)#Philosophy
there is not only an evolution of the physical human form, but also an evolution in the states of consciousness mankind has achieved in order to attain to the states of consciousness which prevail in order to, for example make scientific and logical judgements -- evolution of consciousness, and its consequences must be taken be taken into account, because all that you see as the effects of HUIMANS -- cities, bridges, buildings -- is all due to a change in the consditions of consciousness that humans have developed.
in fact, the social organization may be more important than the material organization. there are enough physical resources and technological expertise on this planet to feed every woman, child and man on this planet -- given that we are adequately socially organized -- this is not yet the case, so war and poverty are not necessarily a lack-of-resources issue -- but a social one.
2cents from toronto island
jrp