I still think sending them laptops is a better idea for the same goal. This way they can *act* to cut violence and crime, by becoming better educated, instead of just *hear* what they should be doing.
I thought one of the advantages of the Pixel Qi screens were its low price, as it was initially targeted to the OLPC. This thing is $275.00 without an attached laptop behind it.
Is this because that's the retail price for the public at large, or are there some major differences with respect to the OLPC screen that justify the higher price?
...for those trying to defend the scientific method saying that a pseudoscience "cannot possibly work" because "there aren't any known methods through which it could operate".
The way to disprove a non-effect is by showing it indistinguishable from chance. Not by declaring that we can't think of any possible explanations.
Seriously, all of these types of attacks rely on the user having the mental capacity of a damp shoelace. Maybe letting them get bitten every so often will teach them to pay more attention to what's going on
Sure, and maybe throwing people from high enough cliffs will eventually teach them how to fly.
Short-term memory is one of the well known shortcomings of the human brain. You don't design your security procedures to rely on a long human attention span, for the same reasons that you don't design memory-hungry data structures for the algorithms that run on your smartphone. If your design does it, it's not a problem with the platform.
Link 1: It's a map of the Internet. I remember seeing similar IP address distribution diagrams in the 1970s and 1980s. Up until about 1990, anyone working in IT at a university or large corporation would've seen similar diagrams daily. So this comic isn't even funny. Informational, perhaps. But there's no humor there.
This doesn't seem so much like a "fourth dimension" as a form of "subspace" or an alternate 3D reality (then again I haven't played the game and maybe am picking things up wrong from the video).
Of course you're not going to see the 4 dimensions at once, but it's there.
The game is using a camera rotation to switch between the 3rd and 4th dimensions, so that only 3 of them are seen projected onto the pseudo-3D visual representation.
It seems to be switching the left-right dimension with the 4th perpendicular one, keeping the up-down and the near-far dimensions intact.
Some early computer games did the same trick to represent 3D maps using just a 2D representation - search videos of Tir-na-nog and Dun Darach to see how the perpendicular camera trick was used to move through the 3D map while showing only one plane at a time.
A good model to program GUIs is the hierarchical state machine, which resembles the solution you suggest but in a much more controlled, less error-prone way. It's like a high-level approach to your low-level "arbitrary Lisp list of events".
HSMs basically allow you to state the relations between all the different parts of your interface as their context change, so that independent events can be truly be handled in parallel. The best thing is that you can centralize the main application flow in one place in advance with a simple model, delegating just the specific details local to a particular widget to be written later. See these slides for an introduction.
Most of the time I just close the lid and let it sleep, so wake-to-use time is under 5 seconds I'm sure this would qualify as "boot-up time" with respect to that particular usability test.
I come from an imperative background myself. Let's see if my explanation of I/O and state handling in pure funtional languages, based on imperative metaphors, makes more sense for you. Please let me know if you find the following useful, I might expand it to my own personal "monad tutorial" (this seems to be a tradition when learning Haskell).
- Monads are program structures that represent processes (and one particular kind of process for each kind of monad), but in a different way than functions represent processes. Actually I think of monads as little virtual machines embedded in the functional language, that encapsulate all the boring bookkeeping and boilerplate that must be done in any program alongside the interesting business logic.
- A monad is used as a framework: you will program a sequence (or 'pipeline') of instructions in an imperative style (the do-block), using some vocabulary defined by the monad (the monadic type constructor, and return and bind operators). These blocks can then be instantiated and passed to the monad, to be executed according to the control logic programmed in the monad definition. Side effects during the sequence of actions in the do-block are instructions evaluated outside the do-block, but inside the (functional) monad code.
- As for the I/O and state handling, remember that you have IO and State monads, and that each monad represent one kind of computation. IO represents *processes that interact with the real world*, and state monads represent *processes that depend on an internal state, that changes as the process evolves*. The trick to use them in a pure functional language is that the actual side-effect is not spread all over your programming language, it's encapsulated inside the monad definition.
- The good thing of all this programming style is that you can actually *do* imperative programming, but in a much more controlled manner: instead of relying on the "generic VM" embedded in your imperative programming language (with all its risk of incorrect side-effects) you can execute it in your controled micro-VM defined by the monad. In that way, the only side-effects allowed inside the do-block are those that you enable yourself. Monads work as aspects in OOP: they represent one particular kind of unrelated logic (such as exceptions, concurrency...) that must be processed in the background of your main computation, and can alter its control flow. If you want your block to handle several aspects at once, you can always wrap several monads one inside another.
As for your questions, as I see it:
1) Haskell is pure functional, but that means "everything can be described as functions, even side-effects". Side effects happen inside do-blocks during the monad pipeline evaluation, but are side-effects only with respect to the do-block, not with respect to the language (the language views them as function calls over the monadic values).
2) True. Thanks to monads, you can embed side-effects to the do-block inside the IO monad (whose low-level system calls are then defined as a language primitive embedded in the read/write functions, the same way as it's done in imperative languages with read/write subroutines). If you expand the syntactic sugar of the do-block it gets transformed into a series of function calls, in which the monad state is one input parameter and the new state is in the result. In order to understand how this works, I'm affraid you should also learn about continuations, which complement monads in order to describe imperative execution in terms of functions.
For the last questions, we must get a bit philosophical here, in the sense that it depends on how you define "computation". It's been demostrated somewhere that imperative and functional programming are mathematically equivalent (i.e. both have the power of Turing machines). This means that you can represent functional languages using an imperative program, but also that you
The problem with games is that they're full of very carefully created content; places and storylines, to the point that the designers make sure that you get to see all of their content.
You want to see a great NPC in a game full of content, and whose author doesn't care that you don't get to see it all? Try Galatea for a great storyline. In that old-style IF game, immersion is achieved both through a writing full of detail aimed to the senses (sound, light, touch, smell) plus the engaging personality of the main character.
Deemed the best NPC ever, she will react to the way you play - if you just stand there contemplating the details of the scenary, the game will develop slowly and a bit boring. But if you investigate her background and ask the right questions, the narrative will flow in a way that just makes sense, all while reacting to your actions and style of gaming.
So you were upset because the Wikipedia worked as intended? The other guy was as justified in removing that content as you were in adding it; that's the nature of the wiki, anybody can add or remove as they please. If it was intended for only adding content, it would be a blog instead.
If you're not willing to spend time convincing others that your edits have merit, don't complain that other don't see them valuable.
2) "Following" people on Twitter is necessarily superficial compared to other media, which offer the same benefits without the message size limit.
Bzzzz! Wrong analysis.
You fail to realize that this size limit is the differentiating feature that makes Twitter stand out from the other media. By being limited, it offers a lower barrier to participation (overcoming procastination and the "empty page" syndrome), thus increasing the volume of posts and unique participants and therefore making it more valuable. (Yes, technically you could limit yourself to post 140 character messages through other media, but the human brain doesn't work that way).
What's wrong with platformers on the Wii? Zelda had some levels that were pure hardcore 3D platformer, and they where played extremely well with the nunchuck to walk and wiimote to aim and move camera.
Nintento put *a lot* of thought into their motion sensing controler, they didn't abandon the clasic gameplay - just improved it.
All of the changes you mentioned about movies were actually taken by everyone or nearly everyone to be an improvement -- no question about it.
Except for the naysayers that considered sound in movies as "gimmicky" or "just a fad"?
Right now it's sluggish, inaccurate, and often difficult to learn to play and develop for.
...and the studios and theaters that should adopt a too complicated technology. And (oh yes) movie stars that thought their public would appreciate their mime, and wouldn't want them to talk and sing!
Actually, Nielsen is *the* usability expert with the biggest empirical research group. Nielsen Consulting has published some really HUGE usability studies.
Slashdot Mirror
So you say we should send them propaganda?
I still think sending them laptops is a better idea for the same goal. This way they can *act* to cut violence and crime, by becoming better educated, instead of just *hear* what they should be doing.
I thought one of the advantages of the Pixel Qi screens were its low price, as it was initially targeted to the OLPC. This thing is $275.00 without an attached laptop behind it.
Is this because that's the retail price for the public at large, or are there some major differences with respect to the OLPC screen that justify the higher price?
If people doesn't now what they want of the software, how do you know you're building the right architecture for them?
...for those trying to defend the scientific method saying that a pseudoscience "cannot possibly work" because "there aren't any known methods through which it could operate".
The way to disprove a non-effect is by showing it indistinguishable from chance. Not by declaring that we can't think of any possible explanations.
Seriously, all of these types of attacks rely on the user having the mental capacity of a damp shoelace. Maybe letting them get bitten every so often will teach them to pay more attention to what's going on
Sure, and maybe throwing people from high enough cliffs will eventually teach them how to fly.
Short-term memory is one of the well known shortcomings of the human brain. You don't design your security procedures to rely on a long human attention span, for the same reasons that you don't design memory-hungry data structures for the algorithms that run on your smartphone. If your design does it, it's not a problem with the platform.
Play minesweeper?
Link 1: It's a map of the Internet. I remember seeing similar IP address distribution diagrams in the 1970s and 1980s. Up until about 1990, anyone working in IT at a university or large corporation would've seen similar diagrams daily. So this comic isn't even funny. Informational, perhaps. But there's no humor there.
So you didn't read the ALT text on mouseover?
Of course you're not going to see the 4 dimensions at once, but it's there.
The game is using a camera rotation to switch between the 3rd and 4th dimensions, so that only 3 of them are seen projected onto the pseudo-3D visual representation.
It seems to be switching the left-right dimension with the 4th perpendicular one, keeping the up-down and the near-far dimensions intact.
Some early computer games did the same trick to represent 3D maps using just a 2D representation - search videos of Tir-na-nog and Dun Darach to see how the perpendicular camera trick was used to move through the 3D map while showing only one plane at a time.
A good model to program GUIs is the hierarchical state machine, which resembles the solution you suggest but in a much more controlled, less error-prone way. It's like a high-level approach to your low-level "arbitrary Lisp list of events".
HSMs basically allow you to state the relations between all the different parts of your interface as their context change, so that independent events can be truly be handled in parallel. The best thing is that you can centralize the main application flow in one place in advance with a simple model, delegating just the specific details local to a particular widget to be written later. See these slides for an introduction.
There are two reasons why I'm not considering an iPad, lack of Flash support and lack of openness. And it doesn't have any USB ports.
Ok, there are three reasons why I'm not considering an iPad: lack of Flash support, lack of openness, and lack of USB ports. And no webcam.
Oh wait...
Most of the time I just close the lid and let it sleep, so wake-to-use time is under 5 seconds
I'm sure this would qualify as "boot-up time" with respect to that particular usability test.
It's the same beast. Fennec was the project internal codename, Mozilla Browser is the final commercial name.
Either Apple is first, or Apple iSlate.
*ducks*
There's a trick for that - don't use the eyepiece! :-P
I come from an imperative background myself. Let's see if my explanation of I/O and state handling in pure funtional languages, based on imperative metaphors, makes more sense for you. Please let me know if you find the following useful, I might expand it to my own personal "monad tutorial" (this seems to be a tradition when learning Haskell).
- Monads are program structures that represent processes (and one particular kind of process for each kind of monad), but in a different way than functions represent processes. Actually I think of monads as little virtual machines embedded in the functional language, that encapsulate all the boring bookkeeping and boilerplate that must be done in any program alongside the interesting business logic.
- A monad is used as a framework: you will program a sequence (or 'pipeline') of instructions in an imperative style (the do-block), using some vocabulary defined by the monad (the monadic type constructor, and return and bind operators). These blocks can then be instantiated and passed to the monad, to be executed according to the control logic programmed in the monad definition. Side effects during the sequence of actions in the do-block are instructions evaluated outside the do-block, but inside the (functional) monad code.
- As for the I/O and state handling, remember that you have IO and State monads, and that each monad represent one kind of computation. IO represents *processes that interact with the real world*, and state monads represent *processes that depend on an internal state, that changes as the process evolves*. The trick to use them in a pure functional language is that the actual side-effect is not spread all over your programming language, it's encapsulated inside the monad definition.
- The good thing of all this programming style is that you can actually *do* imperative programming, but in a much more controlled manner: instead of relying on the "generic VM" embedded in your imperative programming language (with all its risk of incorrect side-effects) you can execute it in your controled micro-VM defined by the monad. In that way, the only side-effects allowed inside the do-block are those that you enable yourself. Monads work as aspects in OOP: they represent one particular kind of unrelated logic (such as exceptions, concurrency...) that must be processed in the background of your main computation, and can alter its control flow. If you want your block to handle several aspects at once, you can always wrap several monads one inside another.
As for your questions, as I see it:
1) Haskell is pure functional, but that means "everything can be described as functions, even side-effects". Side effects happen inside do-blocks during the monad pipeline evaluation, but are side-effects only with respect to the do-block, not with respect to the language (the language views them as function calls over the monadic values).
2) True. Thanks to monads, you can embed side-effects to the do-block inside the IO monad (whose low-level system calls are then defined as a language primitive embedded in the read/write functions, the same way as it's done in imperative languages with read/write subroutines). If you expand the syntactic sugar of the do-block it gets transformed into a series of function calls, in which the monad state is one input parameter and the new state is in the result. In order to understand how this works, I'm affraid you should also learn about continuations, which complement monads in order to describe imperative execution in terms of functions.
For the last questions, we must get a bit philosophical here, in the sense that it depends on how you define "computation". It's been demostrated somewhere that imperative and functional programming are mathematically equivalent (i.e. both have the power of Turing machines). This means that you can represent functional languages using an imperative program, but also that you
You want to see a great NPC in a game full of content, and whose author doesn't care that you don't get to see it all? Try Galatea for a great storyline. In that old-style IF game, immersion is achieved both through a writing full of detail aimed to the senses (sound, light, touch, smell) plus the engaging personality of the main character.
Deemed the best NPC ever, she will react to the way you play - if you just stand there contemplating the details of the scenary, the game will develop slowly and a bit boring. But if you investigate her background and ask the right questions, the narrative will flow in a way that just makes sense, all while reacting to your actions and style of gaming.
-1 Failed Quine
So you were upset because the Wikipedia worked as intended? The other guy was as justified in removing that content as you were in adding it; that's the nature of the wiki, anybody can add or remove as they please. If it was intended for only adding content, it would be a blog instead.
If you're not willing to spend time convincing others that your edits have merit, don't complain that other don't see them valuable.
Not if that child had N times more survival chance than a relative who could have N children.
Bzzzz! Wrong analysis.
You fail to realize that this size limit is the differentiating feature that makes Twitter stand out from the other media. By being limited, it offers a lower barrier to participation (overcoming procastination and the "empty page" syndrome), thus increasing the volume of posts and unique participants and therefore making it more valuable. (Yes, technically you could limit yourself to post 140 character messages through other media, but the human brain doesn't work that way).
Available here
and better yet...
- Slashdot readers DO profit!!!!
What's wrong with platformers on the Wii? Zelda had some levels that were pure hardcore 3D platformer, and they where played extremely well with the nunchuck to walk and wiimote to aim and move camera.
Nintento put *a lot* of thought into their motion sensing controler, they didn't abandon the clasic gameplay - just improved it.
Except for the naysayers that considered sound in movies as "gimmicky" or "just a fad"?
Actually, Nielsen is *the* usability expert with the biggest empirical research group. Nielsen Consulting has published some really HUGE usability studies.