I'd never heard of TimeCube, and I'm not disapointed by his webpage... if there is a Nobel prize in stupidity and mediocrity, it should be awarded to that guy (or was this all generated by an Eliza engine ?).
Which brings to mind, putting a link to such a website from Slashdot (or anywhere) actually enhances the guy's popularity with websites like Google. Isn't there a way to do an antilink: link to the page, but in a way that shows that you disaprove of the content and that the web search engines should lower the site's rating ? I have a hunch that this has been discussed before, if not I'm running to the nearest patent office...
I have been in this situation many time before, albeit in a different setting: in Antarctica where the PCs are for scientific purpose. Which does not mean they are state of the art. On the opposite, scientists back on 'earth' seem to think that sending their oldest PCs for year round data acquisition is the way to go...
So the most usefool... ooops I mean useful tools were:
The MSDN which contains the entire Microsoft Knowledge base, all versions of all MS operating systems, patches and more (yes, it's $$$ but well worth it in that case).
A serial cable and a floppy of the old (circa '95) DOS based Norton Commander. You can remotely access files with the serial cable.
A bunch of compilers which might not be needed in your case
And lately I'd add a CD of Knoppix for a quick system test.
Modern physicist using renormalization: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is... 9/3 is prime, 11 is prime, 13 is prime, 15 is... 15/3 is prime, 17 is prime, 19 is prime, 21 is... 21/3 is prime...
Quantum Physicist: All numbers are equally prime and non-prime until observed.
Professor: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, and the rest are left as an exercise for the student.
Confused Undergraduate: Let p be any prime number larger than 2. Then p is not divisible by 2, so p is odd. QED
Measure nontheorist: There are exactly as many odd numbers as primes (Euclid, Cantor), and exactly one even prime (namely 2), so there must be exactly one odd nonprime (namely 1).
Cosmologist: 1 is prime, yes it is true....
Computer Scientist: 1 is prime, 10 is prime, 11 is prime, 101 is prime...
Programmer: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 will be fixed in the next release,...
C programmer: 01 is prime, 03 is prime, 05 is prime, 07 is prime, 09 is really 011 which everyone knows is prime,...
BASIC programmer: What's a prime?
COBOL programmer: What's an odd number?
Windows programmer: 1 is prime. Wait...
Mac programmer: Now why would anyone want to know about that? That's not user friendly. You don't worry about it, we'll take care of it for you.
Bill Gates: 1. No one will ever need any more than 1.
ZX-81 Computer Programmer: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, Out of Memory.
Pentium owner: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 8.9999978 is prime...
GNU programmer: % prime usage: prime [-nV] [--quiet] [--silent] [--version] [-e script] --catenate --concatenate | c --create | d --diff --compare | r --append | t --list | u --update | x -extract --get [ --atime-preserve ] [ -b, --block-size N ] [ -B, --read-full-blocks ] [ -C, --directory DIR ] [--checkpoint ] [ -f, --file [HOSTNAME:]F ] [ --force-local ] [ -F, --info-script F --new-volume-script F ] [-G, --incremental ] [ -g, --listed-incremental F ] [ -h, --dereference ] [ -i, --ignore-zeros ] [ --ignore-failed-read ] [ -k, --keep-old-files ] [ -K, --starting-file F ] [ -l, --one-file-system ] [ -L, --tape-length N ] [ -m, --modification-time ] [ -M, --multi-volume ] [ -N, --after-date DATE, --newer DATE ] [ -o, --old-archive, --portability ] [ -O, --to-stdout ] [ -p, --same-permissions, --preserve-permissions ] [ -P, --absolute-paths ] [ --preserve ] [ -R, --record-number ] [ [-f script-file] [--expression=script] [--file=script-file] [file...] prime: you must specify exactly one of the r, c, t, x, or d options For more information, type "prime --help''
Unix programmer: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime,... Segmentation fault, Core dumped.
Computer programmer: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime, 9 is prime, 9 is prime, 9 is...
In Antarctica, 1997. I had two rugged military laptops (Kontron) for data acquisition and an HP Vectra desktop for use indoors. One of the laptops video fried when a snow machine started a few feet from it and the other didn't have the right connectors. I had to program an eprom on some equipment outside and just put the Vectra+Monitor on a box. For 4 hours at -45C and it worked fine. I even have a picture. So it's not because there's a thicker case around a motherboard that it makes it more reliable...
New ?!? I used it 10 years ago in Antarctica and it was considered old unreliable tech at the time ! Half of the frames (32 bytes) just disapeared... Wrote custom Pascal prog on the field to make sure I got all the data.
I've been polishing up on my network skills lately, but I don't underrstand the need for IP addresses if all MACs are different. Why don't we just route according to MAC and forget about IPv4 and 6 ? That's probably a naive question, so why not ? Is it only because the routers/DNS would have to remember every single MAC under them ?
A little twang of nostalgy, remembering learning 6502 assembler on an Oric-1 back in 1981 when I was 12... The Basic was so slow and I couldn't wrap my brain around the stupid Forth.
How did the 6502 evolve ? Does it still have some descendants that can use the same machine code ?
Those of you interested in long term projects might want to read about the Millenium Clock project headed by Danny Hillis, the guy who designed the Connection Machines series of supercomputer in the 80s.
I see lots of replies that should have been marked as funny, comparing war-like aliens to GW, but what depresses me is that they are all modded as 'insightful'. It's frightening to imagine him as a Vogon...
On a more serious note, anyone knows, with our current radio-telescope technology, from what distance could we still detect the current background noise (TV, radio...) that the Earth emits ? 1 light-year ? One Hundred ? It's an inverse square law, yes, but you also get plenty of same freqs from different countries interfering together once you get far enough. My guess is that satellite transmissions would go pretty far since they are targetted beams...
Now I've been programming for 25 years (and I'm only 34), so I know a shovelful of languages. Last year I needed to interface some scientific package to the web, so I used Perl as it seemed the right thing to do.
If C has taught me something it is that it can be obfuscated, but also with some discipline ('software engineering') it can be made quite clear and maintainable. No such thing in Perl. Two months later, I couldn't understand anything I'd written. Now I've never heard of Python before, so are there some kind souls who can tell me why they switched from one to the other, personally ?
I wintered over in Antarctica a couple years ago, so you bet we had to take tons of personality tests as the 2nd step of the selection process. I filled them up exactly as I knew they wanted them. So did everyone else who was selected.
After that, for a while, an interesting ongoing discussion was the various ways we'd lied our way through it. So was lying the wrong thing to do ? I'd say no, everything went well, except for the doctor/psychologist who blew a fuse during the winter and was for two months in a straightjacket. That guy had designed many such tests, so he knew exactly what to answer on them...
But consider yourself fortunate (with a little cunning it's easy to fake tests), in other countries they have much worse methods: in France the big craze is handwriting psychology (or whatever that utter stupidity is called). You have to send handwritten resume and cover letters and they pay contractors to determine your psychologic profile from your handwriting (not from the content of the letters, heavens no) !!! Not only do you have to waste hours to write those by hand, but imagine an IT pro who's been using a 'puter for 20 years and haven't touched a pen since then... I can't even read myself, what does it have to do with my IT ability ? It's the exact opposite, the more you use a computer, the less you can write with a pen...
What I want is passive screen technology. I'm tired of having a light bulb shining in my face, be it LCD, LEDs or CRT. I want something passive, that only reflects light. Yes it won't work in the dark, but so does a book. It'll be a lot more relaxing fo the eyes.
I know there's been some research on that (ePaper ?) but what's the current state of it ?
Back in 1981, I had an Oric 1 and was fiddling with the internals, motherboard upside down. Then I plugged the power in to test it, forgetting that it was upside down and put the power plug inside the video out... A huge spark came out, my hair briefly caught fire and I was scared I'd just busted my first computer in which two years of savings had just gone. Plugged it properly and it works fine.
2nd story in Antarctica, 1997. I had two rugged military laptops for data acquisition and an HP Vectra desktop for use inside. One of the laptops video fried when a snow machine started a few feet from it and the other didn't have the right connectors. I had to program an eprom on some equipment outside and just put the Vectra+Monitor on a box. For 4 hours at -45C and it worked fine. I even have a picture.
One: European governments are subsidizing Airbus development costs, which according to the U.S. violates WTO rules [wto.org] on subsidies.
Now the americans use this argument against Airbus all the time and it's begining to piss me off. How many know that the Boeing 747 development was entirely funded by the DOD for building the AWACS. Yes, Boeing made the AWACS with 100% government money, then made a copy without the big radar on top and plenty of seats inside. But it's not called subsidizing ?!?
Re:Useless size comparisons part 1
on
Building the A380
·
· Score: 1
Also known as FIFTY METERS.
Gosh, the metric system will never catch in this country, besides the widesread use of the 9mm bullet.
This break-in and look around thing brought an analogy to my mind: in Europe houses are designed to keep unwanted people out: hard doors with multiple locks, strong brick walls, metal curtains on windows, double reinforced glass windows, metal bars on small windows and more. But you are not allowed to own guns.
In the US, houses are built in a very unsecure way: windows open from the outside with little force, doors that you can kick in with a single toe, simple locks that any beginer thieve can pick. Hell, you could even break directly through most of those light plaster walls in two minutes with an axe. But they have gun and they shoot you if you enter.
So the computer world with the harch sentences is akin to shooting someone because he walked through the garden door. Do we want the European method of keeping everyone out ? Can we ?
"Evolution is a '
theory', just like gravity. If you don't like it, go jump off a bridge."
"Evolution is cleverer than you are."
"I have encountered a few 'creationists' and because they were usually nice, intelligent people, I have been unable to decide whether they were
really mad or only pretending to be mad. If I was a religious person, I would consider creationism nothing less than blasphemy. Do its adherents imagine that God is a cosmic hoaxer who has created the whole vast fossil record for the sole purpose of misleading humankind?" -Arthur C. Clarke.
"Geology shows that fossils are of different ages. Paleontology shows a fossil sequence, the list of species represented changes through time. Taxonomy shows biological relationships among species. Evolution is the explanation that threads it all together. Creationism is the practice of squeezing one's eyes shut and wailing: 'does not!'" -Dr.Pepper.
"If those folks in Kansas are right about evolution never having happened, I sure hope it happens soon." -Michael Sheinbaum.
"The creationists have this creator who is evil, who is small-minded, who is malevolent, and who is not very bright and can't even get his science right. Creationists have made their creator in their own image, in my view." -Ian Plimer, The Skeptic.
"Believe in Darwin; cancer cures smoking." -Bumper sticker.
After 10 reboots and kernel recompiles today, I wonder if there's ever been research on an OS that would never (re)boot. Obviously part of it needs to be in some permanent memory. Turn the machine off and on and it keeps going from where it was. Updates change parts of it, live, without ever restarting. I wonder about something truly without a 'start'. I mean even embedded devices have a boot.
Well, that idea was my entry attempt for the google programming contest, inpired by the Google Zeitgeist which I personally find was too infrequent (and not to say static).
But finally they've put exactly that system for use in Google news. Keywords that suddenly appear in many news sources get sent to the top of the front page. That's where I learnt of Columbia, a few minutes after it happened, and the first headlines didn't make sense at first.
...when I was programming in assembler, I mean in hex machine language, on the good old Oric 1 back in 1981, I was using the reset button a lot. It was under the computer (which was just a keyboard wired directly onto the motherboard), so I had to turn it each time, which was delicate with about 10 wires and plugs sticking out of the back.
After a while I drilled a hole through the keyboard to add a push button to act as instant reset. A sort of Ctrl-Alt-Del with only one key (it'd have saved on finger wear if I'd done the same thing at the time of Win98).
Slashdot Mirror
Which brings to mind, putting a link to such a website from Slashdot (or anywhere) actually enhances the guy's popularity with websites like Google. Isn't there a way to do an antilink: link to the page, but in a way that shows that you disaprove of the content and that the web search engines should lower the site's rating ? I have a hunch that this has been discussed before, if not I'm running to the nearest patent office...
So the most usefool... ooops I mean useful tools were:
Why don't you try it on your neighbor's pet ?
Haa, at least there's one person listening during courses...
Slightly OT, but anyone knows if ATT broadband has been blocking Net2Phone lately ? I haven't been able to connect from home in the last few months.
Well, the problem "How to prove that all odd numbers are prime" has different solutions whether you are a:
Mathematician: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, and by induction we have that all the odd integers are prime.
Physicist: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is an experimental error...
Engineer: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime...
Chemist: 1 prime, 3 prime, 5 prime... hey, let's publish!
Modern physicist using renormalization: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is ... 9/3 is prime, 11 is prime, 13 is prime, 15 is ... 15/3 is prime, 17 is prime, 19 is prime, 21 is ... 21/3 is prime...
Quantum Physicist: All numbers are equally prime and non-prime until observed.
Professor: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, and the rest are left as an exercise for the student.
Confused Undergraduate: Let p be any prime number larger than 2. Then p is not divisible by 2, so p is odd. QED
Measure nontheorist: There are exactly as many odd numbers as primes (Euclid, Cantor), and exactly one even prime (namely 2), so there must be exactly one odd nonprime (namely 1).
Cosmologist: 1 is prime, yes it is true....
Computer Scientist: 1 is prime, 10 is prime, 11 is prime, 101 is prime...
Programmer: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 will be fixed in the next release, ...
C programmer: 01 is prime, 03 is prime, 05 is prime, 07 is prime, 09 is really 011 which everyone knows is prime, ...
BASIC programmer: What's a prime?
COBOL programmer: What's an odd number?
Windows programmer: 1 is prime. Wait...
Mac programmer: Now why would anyone want to know about that? That's not user friendly. You don't worry about it, we'll take care of it for you.
Bill Gates: 1. No one will ever need any more than 1.
ZX-81 Computer Programmer: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, Out of Memory.
Pentium owner: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 8.9999978 is prime...
GNU programmer: % prime
usage: prime [-nV] [--quiet] [--silent] [--version] [-e script] --catenate --concatenate | c --create | d --diff --compare | r --append | t --list | u --update | x -extract --get [ --atime-preserve ] [ -b, --block-size N ] [ -B, --read-full-blocks ] [ -C, --directory DIR ] [--checkpoint ] [ -f, --file [HOSTNAME:]F ] [ --force-local ] [ -F, --info-script F --new-volume-script F ] [-G, --incremental ] [ -g, --listed-incremental F ] [ -h, --dereference ] [ -i, --ignore-zeros ] [ --ignore-failed-read ] [ -k, --keep-old-files ] [ -K, --starting-file F ] [ -l, --one-file-system ] [ -L, --tape-length N ] [ -m, --modification-time ] [ -M, --multi-volume ] [ -N, --after-date DATE, --newer DATE ] [ -o, --old-archive, --portability ] [ -O, --to-stdout ] [ -p, --same-permissions, --preserve-permissions ] [ -P, --absolute-paths ] [ --preserve ] [ -R, --record-number ] [ [-f script-file] [--expression=script] [--file=script-file] [file...]
prime: you must specify exactly one of the r, c, t, x, or d options
For more information, type "prime --help''
Unix programmer: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, ...
Segmentation fault, Core dumped.
Computer programmer: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime, 9 is prime, 9 is prime, 9 is ...
Well, seriously, I'd like to meet the guy who invented sex and see what he's working on now...
In Antarctica, 1997. I had two rugged military laptops (Kontron) for data acquisition and an HP Vectra desktop for use indoors. One of the laptops video fried when a snow machine started a few feet from it and the other didn't have the right connectors. I had to program an eprom on some equipment outside and just put the Vectra+Monitor on a box. For 4 hours at -45C and it worked fine. I even have a picture. So it's not because there's a thicker case around a motherboard that it makes it more reliable...
I've been polishing up on my network skills lately, but I don't underrstand the need for IP addresses if all MACs are different. Why don't we just route according to MAC and forget about IPv4 and 6 ? That's probably a naive question, so why not ? Is it only because the routers/DNS would have to remember every single MAC under them ?
How did the 6502 evolve ? Does it still have some descendants that can use the same machine code ?
Those of you interested in long term projects might want to read about the Millenium Clock project headed by Danny Hillis, the guy who designed the Connection Machines series of supercomputer in the 80s.
On a more serious note, anyone knows, with our current radio-telescope technology, from what distance could we still detect the current background noise (TV, radio...) that the Earth emits ? 1 light-year ? One Hundred ? It's an inverse square law, yes, but you also get plenty of same freqs from different countries interfering together once you get far enough. My guess is that satellite transmissions would go pretty far since they are targetted beams...
If I say 'Vogon Poetry', I wonder if I'll get modded up or down...
If C has taught me something it is that it can be obfuscated, but also with some discipline ('software engineering') it can be made quite clear and maintainable. No such thing in Perl. Two months later, I couldn't understand anything I'd written. Now I've never heard of Python before, so are there some kind souls who can tell me why they switched from one to the other, personally ?
I wintered over in Antarctica a couple years ago, so you bet we had to take tons of personality tests as the 2nd step of the selection process. I filled them up exactly as I knew they wanted them. So did everyone else who was selected.
After that, for a while, an interesting ongoing discussion was the various ways we'd lied our way through it. So was lying the wrong thing to do ? I'd say no, everything went well, except for the doctor/psychologist who blew a fuse during the winter and was for two months in a straightjacket. That guy had designed many such tests, so he knew exactly what to answer on them...
But consider yourself fortunate (with a little cunning it's easy to fake tests), in other countries they have much worse methods: in France the big craze is handwriting psychology (or whatever that utter stupidity is called). You have to send handwritten resume and cover letters and they pay contractors to determine your psychologic profile from your handwriting (not from the content of the letters, heavens no) !!! Not only do you have to waste hours to write those by hand, but imagine an IT pro who's been using a 'puter for 20 years and haven't touched a pen since then... I can't even read myself, what does it have to do with my IT ability ? It's the exact opposite, the more you use a computer, the less you can write with a pen...
...and I married a psychologist... ;-)
I know there's been some research on that (ePaper ?) but what's the current state of it ?
Back in 1981, I had an Oric 1 and was fiddling with the internals, motherboard upside down. Then I plugged the power in to test it, forgetting that it was upside down and put the power plug inside the video out... A huge spark came out, my hair briefly caught fire and I was scared I'd just busted my first computer in which two years of savings had just gone. Plugged it properly and it works fine.
2nd story in Antarctica, 1997. I had two rugged military laptops for data acquisition and an HP Vectra desktop for use inside. One of the laptops video fried when a snow machine started a few feet from it and the other didn't have the right connectors. I had to program an eprom on some equipment outside and just put the Vectra+Monitor on a box. For 4 hours at -45C and it worked fine. I even have a picture.
Now the americans use this argument against Airbus all the time and it's begining to piss me off. How many know that the Boeing 747 development was entirely funded by the DOD for building the AWACS. Yes, Boeing made the AWACS with 100% government money, then made a copy without the big radar on top and plenty of seats inside. But it's not called subsidizing ?!?
Also known as FIFTY METERS.
Gosh, the metric system will never catch in this country, besides the widesread use of the 9mm bullet.
This break-in and look around thing brought an analogy to my mind: in Europe houses are designed to keep unwanted people out: hard doors with multiple locks, strong brick walls, metal curtains on windows, double reinforced glass windows, metal bars on small windows and more. But you are not allowed to own guns.
In the US, houses are built in a very unsecure way: windows open from the outside with little force, doors that you can kick in with a single toe, simple locks that any beginer thieve can pick. Hell, you could even break directly through most of those light plaster walls in two minutes with an axe. But they have gun and they shoot you if you enter.
So the computer world with the harch sentences is akin to shooting someone because he walked through the garden door. Do we want the European method of keeping everyone out ? Can we ?
After 10 reboots and kernel recompiles today, I wonder if there's ever been research on an OS that would never (re)boot. Obviously part of it needs to be in some permanent memory. Turn the machine off and on and it keeps going from where it was. Updates change parts of it, live, without ever restarting. I wonder about something truly without a 'start'. I mean even embedded devices have a boot.
Well, that idea was my entry attempt for the google programming contest, inpired by the Google Zeitgeist which I personally find was too infrequent (and not to say static).
But finally they've put exactly that system for use in Google news. Keywords that suddenly appear in many news sources get sent to the top of the front page. That's where I learnt of Columbia, a few minutes after it happened, and the first headlines didn't make sense at first.
So as usual, just search google !
After a while I drilled a hole through the keyboard to add a push button to act as instant reset. A sort of Ctrl-Alt-Del with only one key (it'd have saved on finger wear if I'd done the same thing at the time of Win98).