Rather than talk about inventing Fortran, wouldn't it be slightly more impressive to have invented the first widely used high level programming language?
FORTRAN is not my favorite language either, but it is a high level programming language. Plug boarding is low level programming. Flipping toggle switches to enter binary op-codes is low level programming. Entering hex codes at a terminal is low level programming.
Writing in assembly language mnemonics is mid-level programming. Heck, before FORTRAN, macro assemblers and a few specialized tool libraries were the bees knees.
What do you consider high level? Java? 4GL?
The second screen isn't a gimmick. When you are playing games which require an analog control stick (such as Mario 64 DS), you need to use the touch screen with your thumb. If this was the same screen you were looking at, your thumb might cover up a useful door, or a threat. In that case, you would be screaming "why didn't they add a second screen!". That's not gimmicky, that's Good Design.
Yes, it's the title of the Philip K. Dick novella that Blade Runner was based on. The people in the story had little rotary phone type contraptions which would adjust their emotional state. There were several known combinations that people would dial in, from "giddy" to "serene". The hero of the story was slightly irritated by his wife, who had experimented with combinations and created her own states - "morose" and "malaise". It's a shame that never made in into the movie. I thought somebody else would have pointed that out, or at least modded me up. Oh, well. Life, don't talk to me about life.
This is even worse with local charities such as the volunteer firemans' fund and the fund for deceased police spouses. One year, I got a call from one of these and decided to donate $25. Within a week I got a call from the other and donated $25.
From then on, I was bombarded with at least two calls a week from every single local charity you could think of. It took three years for the calls to go away. As it turns out, all of the calls were being made by the same group of 15 people working from a windowless building about 15 miles from where I live. These people are not associated with any of these charities, they make a business of doing all the cold calling for those charities. And of course they take a huge cut.
It's not that I'm against supporting the police or fire departments, but please realize what you might be lining yourself up for if your charity system is like ours.
I'm willing to give Mr. Whedon a chance, but a movie generally has a different pacing and flow to it then a episodic TV series. With each hour of a series, you have to develop a conflict, resolve it, then show how it chains to the next episode with some "twist" ending.
I just don't know if a movie like that would be appealing, even with special effects, interesting characters, and lots of action/fights.
Oh, and the formula I described above is nearly everyepisode of "Buffy" and "Angel", and "Fantastic Four".
Bruce, since nobody else has said it yet: Thanks for the fine article. I finally read it about three months ago when I managed to get some older Byte issues from Ebay. It was very thorough compared to the coverage of other magazines, which either took the position of "ooh, shiny!" or "what a silly toy".
Also, I completely agree with your post on the chip instruction formats. I was doing assembly language from 85-92 and had the chance to work on Z80, 6502, 8086 and 68000. The segment register overrides alone for the 8086 could drive you bonkers.
I probably will get this book to read up on the general purpose parallel processing. Hook up a cluster of hacked X-Boxes, use the CPUs and GPUs together = Massively Parallel Processing.
I have been noticing for some time that the level of knowledge required by CS degrees has been dropping. But this is not just a matter of devaluation of all degrees, CS programs everywhere lowered the level of educational requirements when the ".com" revolution was occurring in the late 1990s. Colleges saw the opportunity to bring in large new revenue streams from corporate "sponsors" and new (naive) enrollments who wanted to get rich overnight.
My newest rant is the number of "night course" programs that have popped up recently to teach *everyone* how to "learn to be a computer technician and make lots of money" in "just six months". I have worked around these people, and usually, I get picked by management to "help" them with their code problems. Don't get me started on what I found there.
Alright already, enough curmudgeoning...
Constructive advice to new CS students:
Don't take the easy classes, take the hard ones. If given as an elective the choice between "Object Oriented Workshop" and "Theory of Compiler Design", guess which you should sign up for? And you won't have any trouble finding a seat!
Computer science is more tightly wound up with mathematics that almost *any* other course of study. (The exception being of course, mathematics). Don't just stop at the math you are given, read up on math that you see being used in engineering as well.
Many CS degree programs have physics as a requirement for graduation. Don't wait until the end of your coursework to take it. It may not help you pass "Java 101", but you'll have a better understanding of scientific programming when you get into the later CS courses.
Check out the CS section at the college library! Not only will you find a wealth of material to answer your questions, you will find *lots* more to give you entirely *new* questions. The difference between a college library CS section and the Barnes & Noble CS section is beyond credulity.
A software company pays taxes to support the municipality and state. It does so as a company. All companies pay taxes to support the services you speak of. This is not a matter of software companies not wanting to pay any taxes, just not more than their fair share. Why would WA state be considering such a mandate? Hmm... is it because one the most wealthy companies in the world resides in their domain? Could it be they are trying to find a fast way to increase the golden coffers of the tax base?
This is as repugnant as the 'bit tax' proposed in the early nineties. If you don't remember, legislators were considering taxing every digital transmission that related to business. That's right, every fax transmission, every X-Y-ZModem upload and download, every corporate communication on CompuServe or Delphi. It never made it into law because everyone realized how insidious it was.
Or, if you prefer, consider the continuing debates about whether or not to tax commerce via the internet. If we allow this, we open the door to taxing everyone who purveys the internet, in order to assure the state that they will recieve the required money not provided by rogue internet brokerages.
From a human rights point of view, this law is about as nasty as you can get. What's next, taxing mathematics! Remember, software is just controlled mathematics.
Well, I could be wrong, but a co-worker at a previous job told me that the tax break for R&D was eliminated back in the early seventies. He had both an MSEE and MBA, so I tend to believe him.
Aha, a Sartre fan. Seriously though, I don't think any of the characters in 'No Exit' could be considered heroes, tragic or otherwise. One killed her lover, one was a deserter, and one killed an infant. These were not heroic actions, which landed them in their situation during the play. Remember, Sartre was an existentialist of the most severe kind -- he was arguing constantly that people had the right to self-terminate (I can't remember what he called it).
Anyway, not a criticism of your post, just a clarification
How do you think Borland became so big in the first place? Because they never really had anything bigger than their Pascal and C/C++ compilers. They started out with Sidekick and Turbo Pascal. Sidekick sold really well for a year, and then sank into the swamp. They either purchased or developed Quattro Pro. That sank into the swamp. They purchased FoxPro and improved it. That sold ok until Access took off, and then it sank into the swamp. they developed their own database engine, Paradox, and sold it. That burned down, fell over and sank into the swamp. But the compilers always kept them afloat.
Also, if your company is mid-sized, you can make quite a bit of money making compilers for embedded processors. Check out Hi-Tech for a 68000 C compiler - $1150 cha-ching or an 8051 compiler - $850 cha-ching or a Z80 compiler - $850 cha-ching.
And that's only the first company that came up in my google search for "embedded c compiler". There are dozens more. Not a dozen more, dozens.
uh huh.
I remember an argument I had with one of these self-taught CS *professionals* about seven years ago. Seems he had just read about this great new technique for coordinating parallel processes.
He called them "sephmores".
I replied "you mean semaphores".
No, he assured me, it was "sephmores".
I asked him to explain the concept to me, and it seemed that he had discovered only binary semaphores, which are nothing more than mutexes (which had already been invented well before Dijkstra solved the more general problem).
At this point I gave up. No use trying to educate someone who already knew everything.
Sorry it took me so long to reply to this. Okay! (rolls up sleeves)...
You are going to need some training in arithmetic and geometric series. You can get this in most high school algebra II classes, or just take calculus (trust me).
You should also learn some statistics, since he uses those theories in his coverage of pseudo random number generators. You should also take a discrete mathematics class. Believe me, there is a lot more to that class than predicate and propositional logic.
But really, these are required courses for every CS major, so relax, check out the math listings for the CS curriculum, and take those.
Regarding your request for nonvolatile displays, they already have that! Check this for details. For those who don't want to leave slashdot, here is the relevant portion.
Low Power-- Electronic ink is a real power miser. It displays an image even when the power is turned off and it's even legible in low light reducing the need for a backlight. This can significantly extend battery life for portable devices.
But I am also looking forward to OLED technology, because of the fast switching times and full color. Now if only they can get the lifetimes of the displays up...
A three dimensional object should be measured in volume, not area. Plugging the numbers into the equation yields a volume about 10 times the volume of the sun. Also, I don't see how 2.95*10^6 == (1.39*10^6)*4. It seems to be twice the radius, not four times.
Slashdot Mirror
FORTRAN is not my favorite language either, but it is a high level programming language. Plug boarding is low level programming. Flipping toggle switches to enter binary op-codes is low level programming. Entering hex codes at a terminal is low level programming.
Writing in assembly language mnemonics is mid-level programming. Heck, before FORTRAN, macro assemblers and a few specialized tool libraries were the bees knees.
What do you consider high level? Java? 4GL?
Sure, it can't walk your Nintendogs, or pick up their Nintendpoop.
The second screen isn't a gimmick. When you are playing games which require an analog control stick (such as Mario 64 DS), you need to use the touch screen with your thumb. If this was the same screen you were looking at, your thumb might cover up a useful door, or a threat. In that case, you would be screaming "why didn't they add a second screen!".
That's not gimmicky, that's Good Design.
Has anybody got a link to a description of the UI? I can't see it (graphic link is broken).
Yes, it's the title of the Philip K. Dick novella that Blade Runner was based on. The people in the story had little rotary phone type contraptions which would adjust their emotional state. There were several known combinations that people would dial in, from "giddy" to "serene". The hero of the story was slightly irritated by his wife, who had experimented with combinations and created her own states - "morose" and "malaise". It's a shame that never made in into the movie.
I thought somebody else would have pointed that out, or at least modded me up. Oh, well. Life, don't talk to me about life.
From then on, I was bombarded with at least two calls a week from every single local charity you could think of. It took three years for the calls to go away. As it turns out, all of the calls were being made by the same group of 15 people working from a windowless building about 15 miles from where I live. These people are not associated with any of these charities, they make a business of doing all the cold calling for those charities. And of course they take a huge cut.
It's not that I'm against supporting the police or fire departments, but please realize what you might be lining yourself up for if your charity system is like ours.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Dial in your own emotions.
I just don't know if a movie like that would be appealing, even with special effects, interesting characters, and lots of action/fights.
Oh, and the formula I described above is nearly everyepisode of "Buffy" and "Angel", and "Fantastic Four".
Worked for "Buffy", but not "Fantastic Four".
"Starbuck is supposed to be a womanizing man, not a womanizing woman!
Mass produced massive online play for everyone, even the casual gamers.
Call it a McMOG!
Also, I completely agree with your post on the chip instruction formats. I was doing assembly language from 85-92 and had the chance to work on Z80, 6502, 8086 and 68000. The segment register overrides alone for the 8086 could drive you bonkers.
I probably will get this book to read up on the general purpose parallel processing. Hook up a cluster of hacked X-Boxes, use the CPUs and GPUs together = Massively Parallel Processing.
Fifth Generation Project
Well, with Steve Jobs, you better, becuase you'll be working there every damn minute of your waking life.
Apple T-shirts: working 90 hours a week and loving it!
I have been noticing for some time that the level of knowledge required by CS degrees has been dropping. But this is not just a matter of devaluation of all degrees, CS programs everywhere lowered the level of educational requirements when the ".com" revolution was occurring in the late 1990s. Colleges saw the opportunity to bring in large new revenue streams from corporate "sponsors" and new (naive) enrollments who wanted to get rich overnight.
My newest rant is the number of "night course" programs that have popped up recently to teach *everyone* how to "learn to be a computer technician and make lots of money" in "just six months". I have worked around these people, and usually, I get picked by management to "help" them with their code problems. Don't get me started on what I found there.
Alright already, enough curmudgeoning...
Constructive advice to new CS students:
Don't take the easy classes, take the hard ones. If given as an elective the choice between "Object Oriented Workshop" and "Theory of Compiler Design", guess which you should sign up for? And you won't have any trouble finding a seat!
Computer science is more tightly wound up with mathematics that almost *any* other course of study. (The exception being of course, mathematics). Don't just stop at the math you are given, read up on math that you see being used in engineering as well.
Many CS degree programs have physics as a requirement for graduation. Don't wait until the end of your coursework to take it. It may not help you pass "Java 101", but you'll have a better understanding of scientific programming when you get into the later CS courses.
Check out the CS section at the college library! Not only will you find a wealth of material to answer your questions, you will find *lots* more to give you entirely *new* questions. The difference between a college library CS section and the Barnes & Noble CS section is beyond credulity.
Ok, ok, end rant.
Moderators - Please mod parent up
This is as repugnant as the 'bit tax' proposed in the early nineties. If you don't remember, legislators were considering taxing every digital transmission that related to business. That's right, every fax transmission, every X-Y-ZModem upload and download, every corporate communication on CompuServe or Delphi. It never made it into law because everyone realized how insidious it was.
Or, if you prefer, consider the continuing debates about whether or not to tax commerce via the internet. If we allow this, we open the door to taxing everyone who purveys the internet, in order to assure the state that they will recieve the required money not provided by rogue internet brokerages.
From a human rights point of view, this law is about as nasty as you can get. What's next, taxing mathematics! Remember, software is just controlled mathematics.
Okay, okay, end rant
Well, I could be wrong, but a co-worker at a previous job told me that the tax break for R&D was eliminated back in the early seventies. He had both an MSEE and MBA, so I tend to believe him.
Argh, is this going to add yet ANOTHER set of addressing modes? Now we will have:
mov ah, #1
mov ax, #1
mov eax, #1
mov eeax, #1
Seriously, I wonder how they have modified the register addressing field of the instructions to handle this.
Aha, a Sartre fan. Seriously though, I don't think any of the characters in 'No Exit' could be considered heroes, tragic or otherwise. One killed her lover, one was a deserter, and one killed an infant. These were not heroic actions, which landed them in their situation during the play. Remember, Sartre was an existentialist of the most severe kind -- he was arguing constantly that people had the right to self-terminate (I can't remember what he called it).
Anyway, not a criticism of your post, just a clarification
I might have one, but I'll have to check the book when I get home. If I find anything, I'll post here again tomorrow. Thai food rocks!
My friend, what have you been smoking?
How do you think Borland became so big in the first place? Because they never really had anything bigger than their Pascal and C/C++ compilers. They started out with Sidekick and Turbo Pascal. Sidekick sold really well for a year, and then sank into the swamp. They either purchased or developed Quattro Pro. That sank into the swamp. They purchased FoxPro and improved it. That sold ok until Access took off, and then it sank into the swamp. they developed their own database engine, Paradox, and sold it. That burned down, fell over and sank into the swamp. But the compilers always kept them afloat.
Also, if your company is mid-sized, you can make quite a bit of money making compilers for embedded processors. Check out Hi-Tech for a 68000 C compiler - $1150 cha-ching or an 8051 compiler - $850 cha-ching or a Z80 compiler - $850 cha-ching.
And that's only the first company that came up in my google search for "embedded c compiler". There are dozens more. Not a dozen more, dozens.
uh huh. I remember an argument I had with one of these self-taught CS *professionals* about seven years ago. Seems he had just read about this great new technique for coordinating parallel processes. He called them "sephmores". I replied "you mean semaphores". No, he assured me, it was "sephmores". I asked him to explain the concept to me, and it seemed that he had discovered only binary semaphores, which are nothing more than mutexes (which had already been invented well before Dijkstra solved the more general problem). At this point I gave up. No use trying to educate someone who already knew everything.
Sorry it took me so long to reply to this. Okay! (rolls up sleeves)...
You are going to need some training in arithmetic and geometric series. You can get this in most high school algebra II classes, or just take calculus (trust me).
You should also learn some statistics, since he uses those theories in his coverage of pseudo random number generators. You should also take a discrete mathematics class. Believe me, there is a lot more to that class than predicate and propositional logic.
But really, these are required courses for every CS major, so relax, check out the math listings for the CS curriculum, and take those.
Low Power-- Electronic ink is a real power miser. It displays an image even when the power is turned off and it's even legible in low light reducing the need for a backlight. This can significantly extend battery life for portable devices.
But I am also looking forward to OLED technology, because of the fast switching times and full color. Now if only they can get the lifetimes of the displays up...
A three dimensional object should be measured in volume, not area. Plugging the numbers into the equation yields a volume about 10 times the volume of the sun. Also, I don't see how 2.95*10^6 == (1.39*10^6)*4. It seems to be twice the radius, not four times.