The one thing that the JVM doesn't do as well as.NET is supporting languages other than Java. This has been its Achilles' heel. Although you can sort of coerce other languages to run on the JVM, the match isn't very nice. The CIL and CLR provide a much more friendly interface to languages other than C# and, thanks to our friends at the Mono project,.NET will soon have the platform interoperability that once only Java could boast of. If Sun wants to remain relevant in the portable VM space, they need to embrace languages other than Java.
That is because the software on Voyager was written by a real programmer...
Too true. The IMP-8 processor in use on the probe was a real bear to program, too. The main issue was that it used an internal stack that was a fixed depth and had no stack overflow signal until it dropped the last address in the stack on the floor. We ended up shoving a fake sentinel address onto the stack every time we had to empty it. OTOH, that just turned that bug into others (too many operands on the stack, too many pops popping funny data,...). Definitely a bear to program.
Like the three blind men and the elephant, the definition of AI seems to shift depending on whom you talk to. To some, it's approximate reasoning, to others it's heuristics and analogical research, to others it's connectionism, and to still others it's whatever we're not sure how to do yet.
So, what does the term AI mean to you and what do you see as the next big application of AI techniques?
Re:Arbiters... Something doesn't make sense.
on
Clockless Computing
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· Score: 2
Isn't it true, though that only truly unbiased arbiters take a potentially infinite amount of time? By using a preferential arbiter, you can trade off maximum arbitration delay vs. fairness. In most cases, simultaneous signal arrival (i.e., within the time needed to drive an arbiter into a metastable state) would be rare enough that an unfair, but bounded-time, arbiter would work just as well. Or am I mis-remembering some old crud from my past?
We want media with the same diameter as a CD/DVD from here on out whenever possible. Why? They're easy to keep track of...
Speak for yourself, bub. CD's have a really crappy form factor. They're too big to fit inside a pocket, need specially designed carrying cases, and have crappy latency characteristics. Give me a non-rotating piece of storage the size of a credit card. These would fit in standard-sized pockets, we already have specialized carrying cases for them (called wallets), and they wouldn't have the rotational latency issues. Now all we need is the density...
All we need is for normal people to type "headache, sneezing, aches, tiredness" into a computer and see things like Bubonic Plague, Ebola, Haunta Virus, and other such things.Except we all know that most people have other symptoms (or lack thereof) that explicitly rule out those diagnoses. And since a well-designed KB would be sure to check on these symptoms before issuing a diagnosis, there is very little real chance that these types of diseases would show up as possible on a final diagnosis or would show up at such a low probability that it would either be discounted by a patient or would, in itself, be a good finding supporting a diagnosis of hypochondria.
As a writer, I would assume that how your works are formated would be important to you.
Actually, although you are correct about the importance, but incorrect about the result. The text layout is so important that it is not left to a machine. In general, only the text and draft diagrams are sent to the publisher. A real graphics design artist redoes the diagrams (if any - usually none are there in fictional works and authors are actually discouraged from their use), an actual typographer does the page arranging, galleys are passed back to the author for any last-minute corrections and it's off to an actual printing press. Believe it or not, this labor-intensive system turns out a much nicer looking book than most automated publication processes produce.
Of course, you are also dealing with an author who can probably guarantee a few 10K's of HB sales and a couple 100K's of PB sales. Most authors aren't worth going to this much trouble to typeset nicely. Basically, they get a graphics designer chapter layout that matches the book and it's into the paginator with them. Often, they don't even get a thorough proofread:-).
I've never said anything, JonKatz, about your unwarranted rantings, but this is too far.
Well, I live outside Milwaukee and this media junkie hasn't heard word one about Ms. Patterson's kidnapping. I also live outside Salt Lake and the airwaves are filled with Ms. Smart's story. What Katz says in this case is spot on.
I wish people such as yourself would stop and think before posting a knee-jerk anti-Katz response. Sometimes he does say stuff that's worthwhile and this is one of those times.
So, are these lawsuits meant as compensation to the consumer, a conduit for a lawyer's SUV fund, or as punishment to the defendant?
Yes...
In reality, it's supposed to be the first and last. However, even lawyers deserve to be paid something. So all you're doing is arguing over the fee.
On one hand, $5 IS significantly smaller than $150. On the other hand, without the lawyer and his quick thinking you would have had $0 and the company would have seen NO consequences. All-in-all, I'd say you got a pretty good payday for filling out a form and mailing it in.
It sounds funny, but just wait till they buy and try to install something made for Windows. Much to their surprise, it won't work, and they'll be calling up Wal-Mart asking them what kind of shinanigans they were trying to pull.
Actually, that's NOT what the customer will do - they'll try to call the software company that MADE the product, whose 800# is right in the user manual and ask why the software isn't running. This software manufacturer will have one of a few unpalatable choices...
He can tell the user to FO, causing user to return said package, causing WalMart to return said package , reducing revenues for himself.
He can blame WalMart for selling "ersatz" Windows, getting WalMart PO'ed at him about finking them out to the user, ultimately losing the distro channel.
They can get a copy of Lindows and rewrite their code so that it runs under Wine (maybe even contribute to Wine to get their software to run).
All of this happens because the little software fish (other than King Daddy MSFT, itself) ain't got the legs to run away from Big Wally's distro behemoth. They'll cave because the first law of business is "Cash is king" and Wally makes the cash for these guys.
Of course, all of this is predicated on the user's being able to get through to customer service in the first place...
A coup d'etat, huh? Is that anything like a Caddie Coup D'eville? That's what the generation that grew up with Star Wars'll be drivin' soon. Peerin' through the steerin' wheel with their cataract-clouded eyes viewin' the hood of the Caddie, unless they have to settle for sumthin' downscale like a Buick. Yeah, things change. Big deal.
P.S. I really like your writing, Jon. But how about trying to find some relevant fodder in something less trivial than a couple of fscking movies - and ones no-one will remember in a couple decades' time at that? Riffing on dumb movies is a waste of your talent.
Kinesis keyboards rock! I got into one because the way the key bowls are positioned help to keep the shoulders spread (a normal keyboard pinches the shoulders together). That single change helped the herniated disc in my neck immensely. I credit this keyboard (and the egonomist who recommended it) with preventing a third surgical repair on my neck. If you need a REALLY good keyboard, the Kinesis ones are worth every penny...
Use a language that reduces the need for comments.
Let's take for example, C++. If a variable is passed by pointer or reference, you need to document whether it is being passed that way because it is altering the contents of the object or for efficiency (Yes, I know about const. Do you know about the debate over logical const-ness, that destrys the usefulness of the idea?) You have to document allocation and deallocation strategies. You have to document how array limits are passed. If something points to an interior of a structure, you have to document that, too. Old coding habits pop up - like allocating booleans as bits in a word - you need to document those. And, oh yeah, make sure that you document whether the int you are returning is really being interpreted as a boolean, too. There are more examples, but that's enough to make the point. C++ requires more documentation because it has a richer set of ways to do things at the micro-level of the system, any of which that can be translated to the macro-level, where it has very little effect on the logic of the system, but huge effect on the way the system is coded and interpreted.
So my first recommendation is to use a language where less needs to be documented. Lisp or Smalltalk come to mind immediately; Java or Python in a pinch.
Kind of ironic, a reviewer panning the film for being too shallow while writing an utterly shallow review.
When there's no "there" there, you have to make your own entertainment. You cannot delve into a once-river that is now only a muddy trickle without bringing up some dirt. Given what he had to work with, the reviewer did a masterful job...
... often contain proprietary business logic. The first step would be to convince me that nothing like this would leak out of the app and be used by my competitors to gain advantage.
Next, you'd have to show me that releasing the code would not open me to any liability nor to any security breach. Saying that "more eyes see more bugs" is not an answer either, because I'd still have to pay someone to integrate fixes or, at least, re-install on my system each time an eye found a bug.
Finally, you'd have to show me that I couldn't profitably sell this as a product - probably not a big deal, as software doesn't appear to be your customer's area of expertise, but small businesses live and die on cash flow and, if I can keep it proprietary, not do anything to support it, and still charge money for it (i.e., the Microsoft strategy:-), I'd still do it...
Why do people bother trying to 'reinvent' themselves when they are already making a profit and will likely continue to do so in that fashion for as long as the eye can see?
Because it's no longer about making a profit - it's about growth.
If you continue to make only a steady profit, year after year, the stock price stays where it is or falls due to people migrating to stocks that might grow. It's the beauty of capitalism.
If you were a CEO today and had a division that had a mature product in a saturated market that brought in 5% a year ROI and another one that needed that money to grow at 20% a year to be 5X as big as the first within five years with a 50% chance of success, the numbers tell you to go with the second because the expected rate of return more than makes up for the risk.
Yeah, it sucks, but if you like capitalism, you like the process. You can argue with the estimates, but not with the process. Capitalism has no morality - it doesn't care if it's good, only if it makes money. And mo' money is mo' betta...
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The one thing that the JVM doesn't do as well as .NET is supporting languages other than Java. This has been its Achilles' heel. Although you can sort of coerce other languages to run on the JVM, the match isn't very nice. The CIL and CLR provide a much more friendly interface to languages other than C# and, thanks to our friends at the Mono project, .NET will soon have the platform interoperability that once only Java could boast of. If Sun wants to remain relevant in the portable VM space, they need to embrace languages other than Java.
Too true. The IMP-8 processor in use on the probe was a real bear to program, too. The main issue was that it used an internal stack that was a fixed depth and had no stack overflow signal until it dropped the last address in the stack on the floor. We ended up shoving a fake sentinel address onto the stack every time we had to empty it. OTOH, that just turned that bug into others (too many operands on the stack, too many pops popping funny data,...). Definitely a bear to program.
Even without the Herbal Viagra you can get from fine net vendors everywhere?
Like the three blind men and the elephant, the definition of AI seems to shift depending on whom you talk to. To some, it's approximate reasoning, to others it's heuristics and analogical research, to others it's connectionism, and to still others it's whatever we're not sure how to do yet.
So, what does the term AI mean to you and what do you see as the next big application of AI techniques?
Isn't it true, though that only truly unbiased arbiters take a potentially infinite amount of time? By using a preferential arbiter, you can trade off maximum arbitration delay vs. fairness. In most cases, simultaneous signal arrival (i.e., within the time needed to drive an arbiter into a metastable state) would be rare enough that an unfair, but bounded-time, arbiter would work just as well. Or am I mis-remembering some old crud from my past?
Speak for yourself, bub. CD's have a really crappy form factor. They're too big to fit inside a pocket, need specially designed carrying cases, and have crappy latency characteristics. Give me a non-rotating piece of storage the size of a credit card. These would fit in standard-sized pockets, we already have specialized carrying cases for them (called wallets), and they wouldn't have the rotational latency issues. Now all we need is the density...
All we need is for normal people to type "headache, sneezing, aches, tiredness" into a computer and see things like Bubonic Plague, Ebola, Haunta Virus, and other such things.Except we all know that most people have other symptoms (or lack thereof) that explicitly rule out those diagnoses. And since a well-designed KB would be sure to check on these symptoms before issuing a diagnosis, there is very little real chance that these types of diseases would show up as possible on a final diagnosis or would show up at such a low probability that it would either be discounted by a patient or would, in itself, be a good finding supporting a diagnosis of hypochondria.
Everyone knows the smartest users are still on their Symbolics Lisp machines...
Who's going to get to direct the Mace Windu Kwanzaa Special for TV?
Actually, although you are correct about the importance, but incorrect about the result. The text layout is so important that it is not left to a machine. In general, only the text and draft diagrams are sent to the publisher. A real graphics design artist redoes the diagrams (if any - usually none are there in fictional works and authors are actually discouraged from their use), an actual typographer does the page arranging, galleys are passed back to the author for any last-minute corrections and it's off to an actual printing press. Believe it or not, this labor-intensive system turns out a much nicer looking book than most automated publication processes produce.
Of course, you are also dealing with an author who can probably guarantee a few 10K's of HB sales and a couple 100K's of PB sales. Most authors aren't worth going to this much trouble to typeset nicely. Basically, they get a graphics designer chapter layout that matches the book and it's into the paginator with them. Often, they don't even get a thorough proofread :-).
Well, I live outside Milwaukee and this media junkie hasn't heard word one about Ms. Patterson's kidnapping. I also live outside Salt Lake and the airwaves are filled with Ms. Smart's story. What Katz says in this case is spot on.
I wish people such as yourself would stop and think before posting a knee-jerk anti-Katz response. Sometimes he does say stuff that's worthwhile and this is one of those times.
I had a cage of Giant Australian Walking Sticks once. They were pretty neat...
Yes...
In reality, it's supposed to be the first and last. However, even lawyers deserve to be paid something. So all you're doing is arguing over the fee.
On one hand, $5 IS significantly smaller than $150. On the other hand, without the lawyer and his quick thinking you would have had $0 and the company would have seen NO consequences. All-in-all, I'd say you got a pretty good payday for filling out a form and mailing it in.
Well, we at least install it and see if it works right. We do this on machines that have AV protection.
Bottom line, ther is NO excuse for this type of FU. Whoever is in charge of MS's QA should be fired. Immediately.
Actually, that's NOT what the customer will do - they'll try to call the software company that MADE the product, whose 800# is right in the user manual and ask why the software isn't running. This software manufacturer will have one of a few unpalatable choices...
He can tell the user to FO, causing user to return said package, causing WalMart to return said package , reducing revenues for himself.
He can blame WalMart for selling "ersatz" Windows, getting WalMart PO'ed at him about finking them out to the user, ultimately losing the distro channel.
They can get a copy of Lindows and rewrite their code so that it runs under Wine (maybe even contribute to Wine to get their software to run).
All of this happens because the little software fish (other than King Daddy MSFT, itself) ain't got the legs to run away from Big Wally's distro behemoth. They'll cave because the first law of business is "Cash is king" and Wally makes the cash for these guys.
Of course, all of this is predicated on the user's being able to get through to customer service in the first place...
I'd rather see them on Celebrity Boxing. Or maybe not. They'd both be pretty boring in the ring, given their current state.
What!? Three!? I've only heard Stairway to Heaven and Black Dog! I thought there were only two sides of a record!
Hello! Why don't you talk to IBM about this? It's called Domino.
A coup d'etat, huh? Is that anything like a Caddie Coup D'eville? That's what the generation that grew up with Star Wars'll be drivin' soon. Peerin' through the steerin' wheel with their cataract-clouded eyes viewin' the hood of the Caddie, unless they have to settle for sumthin' downscale like a Buick. Yeah, things change. Big deal.
P.S. I really like your writing, Jon. But how about trying to find some relevant fodder in something less trivial than a couple of fscking movies - and ones no-one will remember in a couple decades' time at that? Riffing on dumb movies is a waste of your talent.
Kinesis keyboards rock! I got into one because the way the key bowls are positioned help to keep the shoulders spread (a normal keyboard pinches the shoulders together). That single change helped the herniated disc in my neck immensely. I credit this keyboard (and the egonomist who recommended it) with preventing a third surgical repair on my neck. If you need a REALLY good keyboard, the Kinesis ones are worth every penny...
Let's take for example, C++. If a variable is passed by pointer or reference, you need to document whether it is being passed that way because it is altering the contents of the object or for efficiency (Yes, I know about const. Do you know about the debate over logical const-ness, that destrys the usefulness of the idea?) You have to document allocation and deallocation strategies. You have to document how array limits are passed. If something points to an interior of a structure, you have to document that, too. Old coding habits pop up - like allocating booleans as bits in a word - you need to document those. And, oh yeah, make sure that you document whether the int you are returning is really being interpreted as a boolean, too. There are more examples, but that's enough to make the point. C++ requires more documentation because it has a richer set of ways to do things at the micro-level of the system, any of which that can be translated to the macro-level, where it has very little effect on the logic of the system, but huge effect on the way the system is coded and interpreted.
So my first recommendation is to use a language where less needs to be documented. Lisp or Smalltalk come to mind immediately; Java or Python in a pinch.
Those green screens can't be beat for reliability and security!
When there's no "there" there, you have to make your own entertainment. You cannot delve into a once-river that is now only a muddy trickle without bringing up some dirt. Given what he had to work with, the reviewer did a masterful job...
Next, you'd have to show me that releasing the code would not open me to any liability nor to any security breach. Saying that "more eyes see more bugs" is not an answer either, because I'd still have to pay someone to integrate fixes or, at least, re-install on my system each time an eye found a bug.
Finally, you'd have to show me that I couldn't profitably sell this as a product - probably not a big deal, as software doesn't appear to be your customer's area of expertise, but small businesses live and die on cash flow and, if I can keep it proprietary, not do anything to support it, and still charge money for it (i.e., the Microsoft strategy :-), I'd still do it...
Because it's no longer about making a profit - it's about growth.
If you continue to make only a steady profit, year after year, the stock price stays where it is or falls due to people migrating to stocks that might grow. It's the beauty of capitalism.
If you were a CEO today and had a division that had a mature product in a saturated market that brought in 5% a year ROI and another one that needed that money to grow at 20% a year to be 5X as big as the first within five years with a 50% chance of success, the numbers tell you to go with the second because the expected rate of return more than makes up for the risk.
Yeah, it sucks, but if you like capitalism, you like the process. You can argue with the estimates, but not with the process. Capitalism has no morality - it doesn't care if it's good, only if it makes money. And mo' money is mo' betta...