This poster is right, the parent is wrong, the Atari 2600 used a variant of the 6502. I know this because (1) I've learned a little bit of 2600 assembly and read a lot about it and (2) because I've opened up my 2600 a bunch of times to fiddle and see how it works.
Openoffice.org...
Open office is really nice. I just started using it a few months ago when one night I finally got fed-up with Word's autoformatting (fuck you, it can't be turned off and that's the truth) so I finally said "screw it, the open source office alternatives can't be this bad". I downloaded Open Office (like 5 mins on my cable modem) and installed it (like 2 minutes) and I had something that worked at least as well as and in my opinion, better than MS Office. I've been telling my friends about it ever since and a lot of them are sold on it too.
Tron wasn't that far off for its day, at that time there were a lot fewer large programming projects and as such a lot fewer teams of developers. It was much more common for a programmer to work by himself or herself than it is today.
Also, while War Games obviously wasn't 100% accurate, it was definitely more realistic than the Net, Hackers and a lot of other movies featuring programmers.
Movies aren't even meant to be 100% accurate, they're meant to be entertaining, it just happens that Firefighting and law enforcement are professions that are more entertaining than computer programming so they have to be changed less. Even those professions aren't portrayed accurately though like the article claimed, firemen spend most of their time waiting for fires, not putting them out and when they do put out fires more often than not they don't actually have to save people. Cops are the same way, they're not usually doing drug busts, catching robbers, using their keen investigative wit, going on high speed car chases, getting in shootouts or anything, most police work is driving around and filing papers.
This is true, but Python's development cycle is definitely faster.
Everybody realizes the value of fast code, but far too often the value of fast code writing is ignored, there are just as many cases where how long it takes to write a program is more important than how fast it runs as there are cases where the opposite is true.
Also, like the other person said, Python's garbage collection has changed to be better, and even before it was included as part of the standard language (I believe at 2.0) the modification that allowed for more sophisticated and complete garbage collection was available before then (I think it came around when Python was on like version 1.7, I really don't remember though).
I can't believe this actually made it on Slashdot, there's already a COMMERCIAL for this on TV, it's narrated by Alec Baldwin and he talks all about it and then at the end tells you GE is cool.
I can see it now, soon there's going to be a slashdot article "NEW AXE BODY SPRAY WILL REVOLUTIONIZE SMELL SCIENCE!" and "NEW SPRAY AND SWEEP SWIFFER SWEEPER ADVANCES STATIC ATTRACTIVE DUST SCIENCE!
The biggest problem I see with charging per computer (besides the arguable unethicalness) is that really, even I don't know how many computers I have connected all the time. At any given time on my home network I'll have as few as 2 (usually) but as many as 7 or 8. Should I have to pay for 8 licenses when I'm only going to be using 2 or 3 most of the time? I hope not... and if I do, I would probably drop my cable service.
Willy Higinbotham's tennis game is actually very different from pong, it's from a side view and you can hit the ball at any point during the time it is on your side of the net. This pretty much makes it a game that is impossible to lose or win.
I hardly ever have a problem with Mozilla distorting a webpage and when I have it's always very minor and the page is always still usable. Speaking as someone who has designed a lot of webpages and taken the time to make sure they work across different browsers (I usually use Mozilla, IE and Opera) IE seems to be, by far, the most quirky, if something didn't look right in one of the browsers like 95% of the time it was something that looked right in Mozilla and Opera, but came out weird in IE.
Personally though, I do find Mozilla to be a little slow. I use Opera, I know it's not Open Source and that makes Richard Stallman hate me for using it but it is (1) better than IE (2) not MS (3) free as in beer (if you don't mind the banner ad, I don't) and (4) available in Linux.
Ever wonder what VHS stands for?
It stands for Vertical Helix Scan
now you know and knowing is half the battle...
The article misses the point entirely
on
Why VHS Was Better
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· Score: 1
The whole significance of "Betamax vs. VHS" and why it's remembered is because it shows that a technically superior product won't always be the most popular. Without this point there is no significance of the events, all the author does is restate what's been said a thousand times. This is a terrible article.
It's become a verb like Kleenex and hoover? I've never used either of those as a verb. Xerox definitely is a company name that's become a verb though. Another computer related one is "Photoshop" it's now common place to hear people say "he photoshopped that picture" even occasionally in reference to the GIMP, Corel Draw, Jasc Paint Shop Pro or another similar picture editting program.
How valuable is a RHCE in a Windows only shop? Or an Apple only shop?
I know what you mean, but I think in general, an RHCE is more valuable. An MCSE and an RHCE might each be better on their respective platforms, but I would bet the average RHCE would be better with Windows than the average MCSE would be with Red Hat. It's kind of immaterial to the discussion and I don't have any numbers or studies to back me up, but I think it's true.
Score 0: Flamebait? WTF? The first sentence could easily be seen as a little incendiary, but from there on this is a great comment that brings up a good point. I wish I had some mod points and I hope whoever gets this in Metamoderation cares enough to mark it unfair. Geez.
Re:Yeah, we need this for lightbulbs...
on
More 3D Printer News
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· Score: 3, Informative
yeah, they have argon in them, but they're also of a lower pressure than the air outside of them, a.k.a. being vaccuous inside.
I can confirm this. I found bookpool.com and they have by far the cheapest prices on technical books, they were really consistently at least a couple bucks cheaper than Amazon.com's prices (which are usually pretty similar to on-the-shelf prices) and I'm sure their shipping charges change, but I got some books from them recently where it was (I think) free shipping if you ordered over $50.
Also, in some cases the differences in their prices and bookstores off-the-shelf prices were really dramatic, like one of the books I ordered from them, The Art of Electronics, is ~$70 in any bookstore and about the same on Amazon, but they sold it for only $50. That is an awesome discount.
I want to know what they would do with the statue of liberty because it's made of copper so any repairs made to it would be bright shiny copper with the rest of it being the green corroded copper. I suppose they'd more likely knock the whole statue down and rebuild it. I think if there were large salvagable pieces of the feet, torch or face that they should be preserved some way as a monument instead of rebuilding it though.
alright then, I guess I meant works on an immediate scale, where as quantum mechanics would be a more distant abstract scale.
Re:Even if he was off..
on
E ~ mc^2
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Exactly, gravity in the way Newton theorized has also proven to have many shortcomings and to not be adequate for everything, but it works on a small scale, so it IS useful.
Granted I am not a physics expert, but isn't this pretty old news? There have been good theories around for a long while that require either ammendments or nullification of Einstein's E=MC^2 to exist.
It was as good as confirmed months ago, but this confirmed confirmation isn't really breaking news either, considering the Cartoon Network has already started airing ads for Futurama.
Christmas does sort of have an X in it, doesn't it... and we all know that anything with X in it is related to Unix.
Follow me on this for a second, the X in "Xmas" stands for christ and the X is also the part that relates to Unix so Unix must have a very close corolation with the son of God. Just as I suspected. Unix is a religion.
Slashdot Mirror
umm... maybe I'm alone on this, but I find the first one much easier to read.
"All warez copies of Windows actually fake versions distributed by the Chinese"
"Microsoft Source Code leaked world-wide"
"Microsoft discontinues entire software division and focuses full force on their Mouse and Keyboard division"
This poster is right, the parent is wrong, the Atari 2600 used a variant of the 6502. I know this because (1) I've learned a little bit of 2600 assembly and read a lot about it and (2) because I've opened up my 2600 a bunch of times to fiddle and see how it works.
Openoffice.org... Open office is really nice. I just started using it a few months ago when one night I finally got fed-up with Word's autoformatting (fuck you, it can't be turned off and that's the truth) so I finally said "screw it, the open source office alternatives can't be this bad". I downloaded Open Office (like 5 mins on my cable modem) and installed it (like 2 minutes) and I had something that worked at least as well as and in my opinion, better than MS Office. I've been telling my friends about it ever since and a lot of them are sold on it too.
Tron wasn't that far off for its day, at that time there were a lot fewer large programming projects and as such a lot fewer teams of developers. It was much more common for a programmer to work by himself or herself than it is today.
Also, while War Games obviously wasn't 100% accurate, it was definitely more realistic than the Net, Hackers and a lot of other movies featuring programmers.
Movies aren't even meant to be 100% accurate, they're meant to be entertaining, it just happens that Firefighting and law enforcement are professions that are more entertaining than computer programming so they have to be changed less. Even those professions aren't portrayed accurately though like the article claimed, firemen spend most of their time waiting for fires, not putting them out and when they do put out fires more often than not they don't actually have to save people. Cops are the same way, they're not usually doing drug busts, catching robbers, using their keen investigative wit, going on high speed car chases, getting in shootouts or anything, most police work is driving around and filing papers.
Everybody realizes the value of fast code, but far too often the value of fast code writing is ignored, there are just as many cases where how long it takes to write a program is more important than how fast it runs as there are cases where the opposite is true.
Also, like the other person said, Python's garbage collection has changed to be better, and even before it was included as part of the standard language (I believe at 2.0) the modification that allowed for more sophisticated and complete garbage collection was available before then (I think it came around when Python was on like version 1.7, I really don't remember though).
I can't believe this actually made it on Slashdot, there's already a COMMERCIAL for this on TV, it's narrated by Alec Baldwin and he talks all about it and then at the end tells you GE is cool.
I can see it now, soon there's going to be a slashdot article "NEW AXE BODY SPRAY WILL REVOLUTIONIZE SMELL SCIENCE!" and "NEW SPRAY AND SWEEP SWIFFER SWEEPER ADVANCES STATIC ATTRACTIVE DUST SCIENCE!
The biggest problem I see with charging per computer (besides the arguable unethicalness) is that really, even I don't know how many computers I have connected all the time. At any given time on my home network I'll have as few as 2 (usually) but as many as 7 or 8. Should I have to pay for 8 licenses when I'm only going to be using 2 or 3 most of the time? I hope not... and if I do, I would probably drop my cable service.
Willy Higinbotham's tennis game is actually very different from pong, it's from a side view and you can hit the ball at any point during the time it is on your side of the net. This pretty much makes it a game that is impossible to lose or win.
I hardly ever have a problem with Mozilla distorting a webpage and when I have it's always very minor and the page is always still usable. Speaking as someone who has designed a lot of webpages and taken the time to make sure they work across different browsers (I usually use Mozilla, IE and Opera) IE seems to be, by far, the most quirky, if something didn't look right in one of the browsers like 95% of the time it was something that looked right in Mozilla and Opera, but came out weird in IE.
Personally though, I do find Mozilla to be a little slow. I use Opera, I know it's not Open Source and that makes Richard Stallman hate me for using it but it is (1) better than IE (2) not MS (3) free as in beer (if you don't mind the banner ad, I don't) and (4) available in Linux.
you're right, it is helical, my mistake. Try to convince the average person that DVD stands for "Digital Versatile Disc" and not "Digital Video Disc"
Ever wonder what VHS stands for?
It stands for Vertical Helix Scan
now you know and knowing is half the battle...
The whole significance of "Betamax vs. VHS" and why it's remembered is because it shows that a technically superior product won't always be the most popular. Without this point there is no significance of the events, all the author does is restate what's been said a thousand times. This is a terrible article.
It's become a verb like Kleenex and hoover? I've never used either of those as a verb. Xerox definitely is a company name that's become a verb though. Another computer related one is "Photoshop" it's now common place to hear people say "he photoshopped that picture" even occasionally in reference to the GIMP, Corel Draw, Jasc Paint Shop Pro or another similar picture editting program.
Score 0: Flamebait? WTF? The first sentence could easily be seen as a little incendiary, but from there on this is a great comment that brings up a good point. I wish I had some mod points and I hope whoever gets this in Metamoderation cares enough to mark it unfair. Geez.
yeah, they have argon in them, but they're also of a lower pressure than the air outside of them, a.k.a. being vaccuous inside.
I can confirm this. I found bookpool.com and they have by far the cheapest prices on technical books, they were really consistently at least a couple bucks cheaper than Amazon.com's prices (which are usually pretty similar to on-the-shelf prices) and I'm sure their shipping charges change, but I got some books from them recently where it was (I think) free shipping if you ordered over $50.
Also, in some cases the differences in their prices and bookstores off-the-shelf prices were really dramatic, like one of the books I ordered from them, The Art of Electronics, is ~$70 in any bookstore and about the same on Amazon, but they sold it for only $50. That is an awesome discount.
I want to know what they would do with the statue of liberty because it's made of copper so any repairs made to it would be bright shiny copper with the rest of it being the green corroded copper. I suppose they'd more likely knock the whole statue down and rebuild it. I think if there were large salvagable pieces of the feet, torch or face that they should be preserved some way as a monument instead of rebuilding it though.
alright then, I guess I meant works on an immediate scale, where as quantum mechanics would be a more distant abstract scale.
Exactly, gravity in the way Newton theorized has also proven to have many shortcomings and to not be adequate for everything, but it works on a small scale, so it IS useful.
Granted I am not a physics expert, but isn't this pretty old news? There have been good theories around for a long while that require either ammendments or nullification of Einstein's E=MC^2 to exist.
It was as good as confirmed months ago, but this confirmed confirmation isn't really breaking news either, considering the Cartoon Network has already started airing ads for Futurama.
Christmas does sort of have an X in it, doesn't it... and we all know that anything with X in it is related to Unix.
Follow me on this for a second, the X in "Xmas" stands for christ and the X is also the part that relates to Unix so Unix must have a very close corolation with the son of God. Just as I suspected. Unix is a religion.
Took me a second, but I got what you meant.