Isn't this exactly what Transmeta does? Introduce a translation layer between software and the processor?
Not to mention that at least partial implementations of the JVM _are_ available in hardware. Targetted JVMs come up a lot in the lists for 4th year projects at my unversity, for example.
How long did it take you to get used to the 5 button mouse? Whenever I have to use one I find myself accidentally hitting the side buttons all the time.
The problem with this is many smart people are also 'meta-smart', in the sense that they know how to get the most gain with the least effort. So they're not going to want to do all this 'extra' stuff, that's not really getting them any immediate feedback, while still having to do all the boring-ass regular school stuff.
The worst programming teacher (or for any subject, for that matter) I ever had once tried to give my partner and I an extra assignment because we had finished the normal one. Why the hell should we be 'punished' (i.e. by doing extra work) for doing well? I could accept doing a harder/more interesting assignment INSTEAD OF the boring-ass one, but not in ADDITION to.
That's why streaming is so essential, and not just taking on 'extra requirements' to courses. Because what 'smart' person is going to want to do more work, but end up with the same report card with the same marks in the same level of course in the end? They'll quickly learn not to bother, and go do something fun instead.
Among other things, it maintains a synchronized clock (8 kHz base), even across oceans and continents.
It's actually plesiochronus, and only synchronized within certain (relatively large) regions. And I don't know where you're getting that 8 kHz figure from.
Basic relativity (not to mention propogation) will tell you that what you're describing is impossible.
"but language is about communicating an idea and the point got across so it is considered acceptable"
See, this is the REAL reason there's hundreds/thousands of languages on earth - people don't give a shit about getting things right, because 'i got my point across'. Over a few generations the language you're speaking bears no resemblance to the original, and the one on the other side of the mountains has diverged entirely differently to the point where the two are mutually unrecognizable.
Language IS about communicating ideas. But you can only communicate with someone if you're speaking the same language. So have respect for the language, and get it right.
Excuse me? Isn't the whole point of the LKML/CVS/BitKeeper process that every line that goes into the kernel (at the least) is traceable to somebody? Do any major projects give out anonymous CVS access? Or even access to people who aren't at least somewhat known by other developers?
Meanwhile, at many commercial companies you could have employees who worked there for a few months and got fired/quit. Depending on their internal code tracking it might be hard to tell what code they submitted, and whether it should be changed. And I really doubt they keep track of the employees after they leave.
Most OSS projects you probably have at least an e-mail for all the contributors.
But what I'm saying is if EVERYONE stops spending and EVERYONE'S stock price goes down and there's no trade barriers there's always going to be someone with slightly more money than everyone else somewhere in the world who will start buying all the cheap stock.
Admittedly, I haven't taken any economics, but it seems to be that if everything is devalued at once, it really doesn't make a difference. Because money is only really a handy fiction to represent relative value, if everything changes proportionally, there is no real change.
The only problem I could really see happening is if everyone stopped believing that money is worth something. Now that could be a problem, especially because it really isn't, and we all rely on that fiction. Look at that whole sacageawa (sp?) coin debacle in the US. It's only real money if people believe it is.
DRM folks are talking about "closing the analog hole"--so that isn't farfetched.
The thing is, it is farfetched. They were actually trying to pass a law saying ALL DSPs would have to have watermarking detection in them. Which sounds somewhat reasonable, until you think about it.
Some guys (whose webpage I can't find at the moment) started a blog of devices that have DSPs in them that would have to comply. Forget sound cards, temperature sensors, car instruments, and all the obvious stuff. Take hearing aids, for example, if you want farfetched.
Also, it would inherently limit the maximum speed and/or introduce latency to DSPs because of the checking. And since they're still nowhere near fast enough at the resolutions/frequencies we want them, the DSP industry wouldn't stand for it, nor would (by extension) the telecom industry, who pretty much dwarf the content industry.
Imagine if no one could have CDMA cell phones any more because any DSPs we could make fast enough were illegal? Get real. That's farfetched.
The problem is embedded players are not what most users want. And you have to design for the common case.
A friend of mine asserted that he things every website should have a 3 minute intro flash movie with lots of loud sound, and then another 5-20 second movie between each page within the site. Which - I think you'll agree - is not what anyone sane would want.
Sure he could argue that they could just put a "skip this flash" button there for everyone else, but you'd be annoying 99.99% of users for a few seconds, to make 0.01% of people a bit happier. Not worth it.
Also, speaking as a former web designer, getting embedded stuff to look/work right in every browser is so hard it may as well be impossible. Especially when there's so many choices of player for each media type.
Sorry, but it ain't gonna happen. Separate players were a step forward, in this case. What you should do is ask for/write a plugin for your browser that lets you have a player bar or tab or something that you could default stuff to load into. I think there's something like that for IE with either WMP or Real. Then it's optional for you to turn on, and doesn't annoy everybody else.
Yes, digital computers may use analog signals, but the basic operations of a digital computer (AND, OR, XOR, etc.) are fundamentally digital operations. They quantize the analog signals into 1s and 0s, and output quantized signals based on those digital values (of course, with some amount of analog error).
An analog computer does no such thing. If it wants to add two signals, it adds them. In analog. You can do integrals and derivations in analog as well, amongst other things.
A digital computer may have to use analog signals to operate on some level, but that does not make it an analog computer.
How can the whole world go into depression at once? What would this be measured relative to? If everyone's dollar is going up, if everyone's buying power is going down, isn't it just status quo, because everyone's on the level?
For the whole world to go into depression it would mean that we weren't actually able to support ourselves. And if that's true, there shouldn't be so many of us around.
Putting a cap on consumption so that its even accross the board is called communism. Everyone is equal and everyone consumes exactly what they need, no more and no less.
I don't believe the parent was talking about putting a cap on consumption, he's saying that as wages approach an equilibrium (a theoretical end result of wide-open capitalism), consumption will reach equilibrium. This is, of course, on the average, not enforced as in communism. There will always be some "have some more"s and some "have some less"es, but this should even out over time, all things considered.
Well, actually, wait a second. People of equal skill/talent/whatever will be equal, not everyone. And that was his point. That an equally skilled/successful/driven Indian should be able to live at the same standard as a similiarly s/s/d American. Under the capitalist system.
Not being case-sensitive is a big advantage for newbies.
How so? As long at their compiler/interpreter is catching the errors, this will in fact teach them good habits early, so they don't have to unlearn them later.
My grade 11 intro to programming teacher, bless his anal soul, wouldn't let us use any global variables. Amongst other things. And I'm a better coder for having learned the right way than the wrong way.
I still have people at work who will ask me to look at some code that's not working, and the first thing I notice is that they're class name isn't capitalized or something, and their defense is "oh, but this is just a quick thing to test something". The whole reason for style is that so you can tell what's going on, which is something that should be taught early.
I know a guy whose last name is "Vanden Hoven", with a space. His department of electronics account (FirstnameLastname) at university would never work, so he'd always have to use his partner's.
Personally I have an uppercase in the middle of my last name, MacLeod, and that often gets filtered to lowercase, especially if an entry form is ALL CAPS and there's no real way to represent it.
I think you've got me wrong...I'm arguing the same point as you - that too much design is ridiculous.
Did you even read what I wrote?
For the record, I'm an engineer, but a Communications Engineer, who writes a lot of software. And I think most software engineering practices are hooey. But that OOP is awesome.
And most of the engineers I deal with (generally electricals) tend to write everything in c with no design whatsoever. So I don't think you're stereotypes are accurate.
I think that implementing software doesn't take as much time as designing it and the design phase is independant of the implementation language. Therefor total design time is hardly affected by the chosen language unless you design on the fly (design while you type code), which is a bad thing in my opinion anyways.
So you ALWAYS design your ENTIRE PROGRAM before you start coding? You obviously haven't worked on any sort of real project, with intermediate deadlines, changing requirements, extensibility requirements, etc., etc.
If you're trying to do a 2 year project and after the first 1.5 years you still have no code, and therefore nothing even resembling a prototype, because you're still designing, don't think you're going to get funded.
My point was that Intel uses a circuit that's exactly as efficient as the G5: a P4 does four floating point add/multiply operations per clock cycle, just like the G5. When it comes down to absolute performance, using a well optimized compiler and the same algorithm, there's no difference between a P4, Athlon, or G5. I have actually tested this, using some linear algebra benchmarks that really depend on CPU power. Apple and AMD are lying when they claim superior performance.
Real math is more than just adds and multiplies. Try doing vector operations, or multiple input instructions, or any other number of complex operations. THIS is where the CPUs different.
Also, notice that most DSPs (and the G4/5s) have multiply and add instructions, that take one clock cycle, because that operation occurs so frequently in DSP. That's certainly not in base x86, and I'm not sure if it is or is not in any of the SSE instructions.
Also, your mention of compilers is telling. It takes 5 or 10 years for compilers to really mature on any given architecture. So when we're talking about processors that are only a year or two old, compilers can make a HUGE difference.
Not to mention all the scheduling of operations that takes place on the CPU, and the differences in how many parallel things they can do.
Just because the most efficient multiplier circuit may be well known doesn't mean there aren't still tradeoffs in CPU design.
I am perhaps a Troll or someone of little faith, but i think they will sell them the same price as the dead tree ones and take the magin profit for them. As an excuse, you know, everybody will copy them like MP3 !!! bouhou:(
Nah...there's already textbooks available as/with webpages that are cheaper if you only get the web version. The only drawback is that it's usually a limited subscription.
Man...don't you know anyone who uses Hotmail? It was down for hours a few fridays ago. A lot of net semi-literates (e.g. my girlfriend and her roommate) assumed their whole connection was down because hotmail and msn are the first two things their computers load.
What's even worse is when they install the colourful evil software on systems that were built to handle the simple text only screen. Nothing like a 1.5 frame per second (and i do mean half, it didn't draw the other half every other time) full-screen rotating logo to brighten your day!
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't this exactly what Transmeta does? Introduce a translation layer between software and the processor?
Not to mention that at least partial implementations of the JVM _are_ available in hardware. Targetted JVMs come up a lot in the lists for 4th year projects at my unversity, for example.
How long did it take you to get used to the 5 button mouse? Whenever I have to use one I find myself accidentally hitting the side buttons all the time.
The problem with this is many smart people are also 'meta-smart', in the sense that they know how to get the most gain with the least effort. So they're not going to want to do all this 'extra' stuff, that's not really getting them any immediate feedback, while still having to do all the boring-ass regular school stuff.
The worst programming teacher (or for any subject, for that matter) I ever had once tried to give my partner and I an extra assignment because we had finished the normal one. Why the hell should we be 'punished' (i.e. by doing extra work) for doing well? I could accept doing a harder/more interesting assignment INSTEAD OF the boring-ass one, but not in ADDITION to.
That's why streaming is so essential, and not just taking on 'extra requirements' to courses. Because what 'smart' person is going to want to do more work, but end up with the same report card with the same marks in the same level of course in the end? They'll quickly learn not to bother, and go do something fun instead.
Among other things, it maintains a synchronized clock (8 kHz base), even across oceans and continents.
It's actually plesiochronus, and only synchronized within certain (relatively large) regions. And I don't know where you're getting that 8 kHz figure from.
Basic relativity (not to mention propogation) will tell you that what you're describing is impossible.
"but language is about communicating an idea and the point got across so it is considered acceptable"
See, this is the REAL reason there's hundreds/thousands of languages on earth - people don't give a shit about getting things right, because 'i got my point across'. Over a few generations the language you're speaking bears no resemblance to the original, and the one on the other side of the mountains has diverged entirely differently to the point where the two are mutually unrecognizable.
Language IS about communicating ideas. But you can only communicate with someone if you're speaking the same language. So have respect for the language, and get it right.
Excuse me? Isn't the whole point of the LKML/CVS/BitKeeper process that every line that goes into the kernel (at the least) is traceable to somebody? Do any major projects give out anonymous CVS access? Or even access to people who aren't at least somewhat known by other developers?
Meanwhile, at many commercial companies you could have employees who worked there for a few months and got fired/quit. Depending on their internal code tracking it might be hard to tell what code they submitted, and whether it should be changed. And I really doubt they keep track of the employees after they leave.
Most OSS projects you probably have at least an e-mail for all the contributors.
But what I'm saying is if EVERYONE stops spending and EVERYONE'S stock price goes down and there's no trade barriers there's always going to be someone with slightly more money than everyone else somewhere in the world who will start buying all the cheap stock.
Admittedly, I haven't taken any economics, but it seems to be that if everything is devalued at once, it really doesn't make a difference. Because money is only really a handy fiction to represent relative value, if everything changes proportionally, there is no real change.
The only problem I could really see happening is if everyone stopped believing that money is worth something. Now that could be a problem, especially because it really isn't, and we all rely on that fiction. Look at that whole sacageawa (sp?) coin debacle in the US. It's only real money if people believe it is.
DRM folks are talking about "closing the analog hole"--so that isn't farfetched.
The thing is, it is farfetched. They were actually trying to pass a law saying ALL DSPs would have to have watermarking detection in them. Which sounds somewhat reasonable, until you think about it.
Some guys (whose webpage I can't find at the moment) started a blog of devices that have DSPs in them that would have to comply. Forget sound cards, temperature sensors, car instruments, and all the obvious stuff. Take hearing aids, for example, if you want farfetched.
Also, it would inherently limit the maximum speed and/or introduce latency to DSPs because of the checking. And since they're still nowhere near fast enough at the resolutions/frequencies we want them, the DSP industry wouldn't stand for it, nor would (by extension) the telecom industry, who pretty much dwarf the content industry.
Imagine if no one could have CDMA cell phones any more because any DSPs we could make fast enough were illegal? Get real. That's farfetched.
The problem is embedded players are not what most users want. And you have to design for the common case.
A friend of mine asserted that he things every website should have a 3 minute intro flash movie with lots of loud sound, and then another 5-20 second movie between each page within the site. Which - I think you'll agree - is not what anyone sane would want.
Sure he could argue that they could just put a "skip this flash" button there for everyone else, but you'd be annoying 99.99% of users for a few seconds, to make 0.01% of people a bit happier. Not worth it.
Also, speaking as a former web designer, getting embedded stuff to look/work right in every browser is so hard it may as well be impossible. Especially when there's so many choices of player for each media type.
Sorry, but it ain't gonna happen. Separate players were a step forward, in this case. What you should do is ask for/write a plugin for your browser that lets you have a player bar or tab or something that you could default stuff to load into. I think there's something like that for IE with either WMP or Real. Then it's optional for you to turn on, and doesn't annoy everybody else.
Yes, digital computers may use analog signals, but the basic operations of a digital computer (AND, OR, XOR, etc.) are fundamentally digital operations. They quantize the analog signals into 1s and 0s, and output quantized signals based on those digital values (of course, with some amount of analog error).
An analog computer does no such thing. If it wants to add two signals, it adds them. In analog. You can do integrals and derivations in analog as well, amongst other things.
A digital computer may have to use analog signals to operate on some level, but that does not make it an analog computer.
PS: MS practically gives away software to universities.
.NET and Visio for free if we're in certain classes, and XP for the cost of shipping. It's just ridiculous. They're definitely feeling the heat.
Carleton University student access for the MSDNAA software.
We get
To be fair first year we did get WordPerfect Office and RedHat for $20, but hey, we're Ottawa based.
How can the whole world go into depression at once? What would this be measured relative to? If everyone's dollar is going up, if everyone's buying power is going down, isn't it just status quo, because everyone's on the level?
For the whole world to go into depression it would mean that we weren't actually able to support ourselves. And if that's true, there shouldn't be so many of us around.
Putting a cap on consumption so that its even accross the board is called communism. Everyone is equal and everyone consumes exactly what they need, no more and no less.
I don't believe the parent was talking about putting a cap on consumption, he's saying that as wages approach an equilibrium (a theoretical end result of wide-open capitalism), consumption will reach equilibrium. This is, of course, on the average, not enforced as in communism. There will always be some "have some more"s and some "have some less"es, but this should even out over time, all things considered.
Well, actually, wait a second. People of equal skill/talent/whatever will be equal, not everyone. And that was his point. That an equally skilled/successful/driven Indian should be able to live at the same standard as a similiarly s/s/d American. Under the capitalist system.
Not being case-sensitive is a big advantage for newbies.
How so? As long at their compiler/interpreter is catching the errors, this will in fact teach them good habits early, so they don't have to unlearn them later.
My grade 11 intro to programming teacher, bless his anal soul, wouldn't let us use any global variables. Amongst other things. And I'm a better coder for having learned the right way than the wrong way.
I still have people at work who will ask me to look at some code that's not working, and the first thing I notice is that they're class name isn't capitalized or something, and their defense is "oh, but this is just a quick thing to test something". The whole reason for style is that so you can tell what's going on, which is something that should be taught early.
I know a guy whose last name is "Vanden Hoven", with a space. His department of electronics account (FirstnameLastname) at university would never work, so he'd always have to use his partner's.
Personally I have an uppercase in the middle of my last name, MacLeod, and that often gets filtered to lowercase, especially if an entry form is ALL CAPS and there's no real way to represent it.
I think you've got me wrong...I'm arguing the same point as you - that too much design is ridiculous.
Did you even read what I wrote?
For the record, I'm an engineer, but a Communications Engineer, who writes a lot of software. And I think most software engineering practices are hooey. But that OOP is awesome.
And most of the engineers I deal with (generally electricals) tend to write everything in c with no design whatsoever. So I don't think you're stereotypes are accurate.
I think that implementing software doesn't take as much time as designing it and the design phase is independant of the implementation language. Therefor total design time is hardly affected by the chosen language unless you design on the fly (design while you type code), which is a bad thing in my opinion anyways.
So you ALWAYS design your ENTIRE PROGRAM before you start coding? You obviously haven't worked on any sort of real project, with intermediate deadlines, changing requirements, extensibility requirements, etc., etc.
If you're trying to do a 2 year project and after the first 1.5 years you still have no code, and therefore nothing even resembling a prototype, because you're still designing, don't think you're going to get funded.
My point was that Intel uses a circuit that's exactly as efficient as the G5: a P4 does four floating point add/multiply operations per clock cycle, just like the G5. When it comes down to absolute performance, using a well optimized compiler and the same algorithm, there's no difference between a P4, Athlon, or G5. I have actually tested this, using some linear algebra benchmarks that really depend on CPU power. Apple and AMD are lying when they claim superior performance.
Real math is more than just adds and multiplies. Try doing vector operations, or multiple input instructions, or any other number of complex operations. THIS is where the CPUs different.
Also, notice that most DSPs (and the G4/5s) have multiply and add instructions, that take one clock cycle, because that operation occurs so frequently in DSP. That's certainly not in base x86, and I'm not sure if it is or is not in any of the SSE instructions.
Also, your mention of compilers is telling. It takes 5 or 10 years for compilers to really mature on any given architecture. So when we're talking about processors that are only a year or two old, compilers can make a HUGE difference.
Not to mention all the scheduling of operations that takes place on the CPU, and the differences in how many parallel things they can do.
Just because the most efficient multiplier circuit may be well known doesn't mean there aren't still tradeoffs in CPU design.
RTF (which is, by the way, an older standard than Word), it would have looked fine in either word processor.
Have you ever actually LOOKED at a RTF file? It never, ever looks fine.
Also, from the doxygen manual.:
"Note that the RTF output probably only looks nice with Microsoft's Word 97. If you have success with other programs, please let me know."
RTF is clearly not completely standard, and in my experience most often looks like hell (our co-op office used to make us submit resumes in it).
I am perhaps a Troll or someone of little faith, but i think they will sell them the same price as the dead tree ones and take the magin profit for them. As an excuse, you know, everybody will copy them like MP3 !!! bouhou :(
Nah...there's already textbooks available as/with webpages that are cheaper if you only get the web version. The only drawback is that it's usually a limited subscription.
Man...don't you know anyone who uses Hotmail?
Nope, dont' use hotmail.
Neither do I, but I find it hard to believe that you don't know anyone who does. If not you really need to get out more.
But doesn't hotmail still run on FreeBSD? Or did they finally manage to migrate it to Windows Server?
And I wasn't commenting on the reliability of Windows Server, but rather on your comment that:
Well, for one, their servers always seem to be up.
I love that the first two comments on this said the complete opposite thing. Who's the troll?
Man...don't you know anyone who uses Hotmail? It was down for hours a few fridays ago. A lot of net semi-literates (e.g. my girlfriend and her roommate) assumed their whole connection was down because hotmail and msn are the first two things their computers load.
And not to mention the former used car salesman who was made Minister of Transportation.
What's even worse is when they install the colourful evil software on systems that were built to handle the simple text only screen. Nothing like a 1.5 frame per second (and i do mean half, it didn't draw the other half every other time) full-screen rotating logo to brighten your day!