Having worked in construction for 8+ years, and having worked with both old wood (from renovating old homes) and new wood, I *much* prefer the old stuff... much more solid.
As always, the old ones you've worked with are the ones that survived, not representative of the norm of the day.
They just brute-forced it! This is remarkable achievement, but moreso from tech implementation standpoint than a brain understanding standpoint.
Well how could you not do it this way? Reality is statistical. We expect the sun to rise every day because it always has done so, and we've constructed our theories of the universe based upon observations, not special extra-sensory "understanding" that precedes observing the facts.
You have to go out and make measurements, produce a lot of data. Sounds like what they were doing to me. Understanding will follow.
It's one thing to provide a type of input that the brain is familiar with - it's got to be able to learn to interpret all our normal senses when we're children. But can it learn how to use something that has never been 'standard equipment' in our ancestors?
You mean like, say, adding 802.11b support to your brain? Another set of arms? A third eye? Infrared or ultraviolet vision? Wings? Tentacles? Actually, this reminds me of the Oliver Sacks books. One story was the guy who all of a sudden got an incredible boost in smell sensitivity, and he ended up loosing his marriage, job, etc. because he couldn't stop reveling in his new found sense. Like a blind man being given sight. Animals of course learn much more through their sense of smell than we do. Kind of an awakening of past abilities or something. Standard equipment in our very distant ancestors.
MS won by being "good enough". Now we have to make something *significantly* better in order to gain a big market share. But can we make something significantly better? What big innovations are possible in a mature product?
Who cares? I'm afraid such questions are pointless. Probably nothing will cause IE users to switch, since many of the ones I've met don't even know they are using IE or that there even can be alternatives. It's a sad situation if you are an underfunded competitor, not withstanding the difficulting of, as you are pointing out, maing major changes to a mature product.
However, Mozilla is a platform in a way that IE is not. I hope that the whole XUL application platform thing takes off. That is a real innovation that is already there, just waiting for, well, a killer app.
Well obviously, this is political gerrymandering at its worst. First, the Plutonians lose their precious "planet" status. Next we'll see toxic chemical plants relocating from Beaumont, Texas and East St. Louis to Pluto. pretty soon, it's a prison-industrial wasteland.
The gist of this article seems to be that it is innovations that deviate from established standards, rather than innovation per se, that are harmful.
I don't think so.. I think the author is basically saying that people choose conservatively and are annoyed by innovations that don't actually add value, and companies try to protect their market share with lock-in technologies and patents/copyrights. OOoo!! I see nothing of significance in the article about innovation for the sake of innovation. Defensive "innovation", sure. Crush the competition and control customers, sure, I see that in the article.
I'm all for breaking standards for reasons of actual innovation - that's how we got everything important. But that's not what the article is about.
Moreover, many think it's profoundly unlikely any alien races would be interested in conquering us. Even assuming others out there are hostile, the effort and expenditure of resources to get from there to here would probably mean the payoff for attacking us wouldn't be worth the trip.
But we have weapons of mass destruction, and have ignored the wishes united federation of planets for far too long.
No, Macs are not blatantly overpriced, because PCs are a commodity whereas Macs are not. A commodity, as you and the entire Slashdot community are well aware, I trust, is a product differentiated only by price. Like PCs. Whereas a Mac is an entirely different beast.
Good lord, it's not as if Jack himself manages the efx people. shops are hired for the quality of their work, the money they charge, how fast they can work, not for what fricking tools they use.
I like the blank, resigned stare of the stock photography model in the corner, who says "I never knew a keyboard could do so much. Now I can get my work done faster, giving me time for more important things." How can it speed you up if you have to look at the keyboard more? Surely you can't remember which button so far from the home row is cut, copy, paste, back, forward, vol up, vol down, etc. meta key combos are way easier to do without looking.
Mousing, of course, way faster than a) stop, b) engage brain to hunt and peck, c) wait for eyes to ajust to different distance to keyboard or tilt laptop screen down to illuminate keys, d) locate proper key, e) try to remember what you wanted to do in the first place, f) look back at screen, g) wait for eyes to adjust, h) aha, i) look back at keyboard knowing where key is, j) push key with abandon, k) look back to screen, l) feel tears of joy well up at remarkable computer-enhanced productivity, m) with new found free time reload slashdot
Yeah and one more thing... as a Mac user, I've always wondered - does a "save" key autorepeat? (we don't have one).
I could write an app on a Un*x/Linux box that would behave similarly if I wanted. In fact, I know lots of programs that won't execute unless you are root and they are intended to be that way - not just through file permissions but through userid checks.
You do, huh? Well, news to you: Unix has been an actual multiuser system since (time_t)0
that, and often the wrong thing is built due to poor planning, product management, requirements, etc. I'll bet that in the article, the techies didn't want to be in those meetings, either. In fact, if it was up to them, they'd probably have built the system differently anyway. Been there, done that. It's like what is often said about Hollywood movies - nobody has creative control; everyone is frustrated by a sucky script. It's a lot easier to do your technical work well - eg good effects, etc - than it is to 1) have the good idea and 2) have the power to execute it.
Well, well, well. I agree sort of... but ideally a programmer starts much younger than university age. IMHO, by the time intellectual learning has overtaken sensory learning, it's in many cases too late to be a great programmer, or great software designer (whichever term is better) I don't think most of us solve problems by being logical intellectual problem solvers; I would say that our intuition built up from experience is most critical. It is the foundation on which we can use logic. Thus, quantity, quantity, quantity - especially when your mind is young and free to experiment without fear.
As well as ClarisWorks and Microsoft Works, there was LotusWork and PerfectWorks (from the old WordPerfect company), plus a few others whose names escape me.
BeagleWorks.. became PerfectWorks when *sniff* Beagle Bros. closed. And the original Works was, of course, AppleWorks on the Apple//e.
There is a number of interesting activities going on in this area, such as the Slocum Glider. I read about that in a Navy SBIR topic last year sometime but can't find it right now.
Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) proposes to develop marine propulsion concepts that employ biologically inspired aerodynamic mechanisms to enhance propulsor thrust and decrease the propeller rotation rate necessary to maintain a specified forward speed. Flying animals take advantage of three unsteady aerodynamic mechanisms to generate lift and propulsive power greater than that predicted from quasi-steady conventional airfoil theory. The three mechanisms are delayed stall, rotational circulation (including the clap and fling mechanism), and wake capture. In Phase I we will formulate three propulsion concepts, each incorporating one or more biomimetic unsteady aerodynamic mechanisms. Using phenomenological models and experimental data from literature, the concepts will be evaluated for lift production, efficiency, simplicity, and ease of practical implementation. Key physical and non-dimensional flow parameters will be identified for each concept. The most promising propulsion concept will be experimentally investigated in the PSI low speed wind tunnel to understand unsteady flow mechanisms. Phase I will conclude with a recommendation of which of the proposed designs, or modified designs, should be further studied in Phase II. In Phase II various models of promising concepts will be fabricated and the propulsive forces produced by these models will be measured in a wind or water tunnel. The proposed propulsion concept will allow military marine vehicles and devices including UUVs, ROVs, torpedoes, and Anti-Torpedo Torpedoes to travel at a specific speed with a lower propeller rotation rate, hence radiating less detectable noise. This will increase the stealth of these devices. The proposed mechanisms may also increase the fuel economy of these vehicles as well as surface ships. Potential applications of this device include commercial UUVs and ROVs as well as recreational boating.
To most people, if a program doesn't "look right", then it doesn't "feel right", so it must not "work right". And when people reach this point, they've decided that the program is a "piece" of "crap", and to hell with the "functionality", they just "know" that it "blows large ass".
Slashdot Mirror
As always, the old ones you've worked with are the ones that survived, not representative of the norm of the day.
Well how could you not do it this way? Reality is statistical. We expect the sun to rise every day because it always has done so, and we've constructed our theories of the universe based upon observations, not special extra-sensory "understanding" that precedes observing the facts.
You have to go out and make measurements, produce a lot of data. Sounds like what they were doing to me. Understanding will follow.
You mean like, say, adding 802.11b support to your brain? Another set of arms? A third eye? Infrared or ultraviolet vision? Wings? Tentacles? Actually, this reminds me of the Oliver Sacks books. One story was the guy who all of a sudden got an incredible boost in smell sensitivity, and he ended up loosing his marriage, job, etc. because he couldn't stop reveling in his new found sense. Like a blind man being given sight. Animals of course learn much more through their sense of smell than we do. Kind of an awakening of past abilities or something. Standard equipment in our very distant ancestors.
those who can't handle LISP parens are doomed to reimplement it, with a different syntax
Who cares? I'm afraid such questions are pointless. Probably nothing will cause IE users to switch, since many of the ones I've met don't even know they are using IE or that there even can be alternatives. It's a sad situation if you are an underfunded competitor, not withstanding the difficulting of, as you are pointing out, maing major changes to a mature product.
However, Mozilla is a platform in a way that IE is not. I hope that the whole XUL application platform thing takes off. That is a real innovation that is already there, just waiting for, well, a killer app.
Well obviously, this is political gerrymandering at its worst. First, the Plutonians lose their precious "planet" status. Next we'll see toxic chemical plants relocating from Beaumont, Texas and East St. Louis to Pluto. pretty soon, it's a prison-industrial wasteland.
What about huge queries? Or even querying across objects (like we would do joins in a table).
the simple answer is: it's not a relational model.
I assome that while this can work, there will be some major shifts in thinking in order to get it to be accepted. People like their databases.
Not people who would consider this an acceptable alternative.
The gist of this article seems to be that it is innovations that deviate from established standards, rather than innovation per se, that are harmful.
I don't think so.. I think the author is basically saying that people choose conservatively and are annoyed by innovations that don't actually add value, and companies try to protect their market share with lock-in technologies and patents/copyrights. OOoo!! I see nothing of significance in the article about innovation for the sake of innovation. Defensive "innovation", sure. Crush the competition and control customers, sure, I see that in the article.
I'm all for breaking standards for reasons of actual innovation - that's how we got everything important. But that's not what the article is about.
Speaking of which... slashdot should have a Repost category so I could turn it off.
But we have weapons of mass destruction, and have ignored the wishes united federation of planets for far too long.
No, Macs are not blatantly overpriced, because PCs are a commodity whereas Macs are not. A commodity, as you and the entire Slashdot community are well aware, I trust, is a product differentiated only by price. Like PCs. Whereas a Mac is an entirely different beast.
Good lord, it's not as if Jack himself manages the efx people. shops are hired for the quality of their work, the money they charge, how fast they can work, not for what fricking tools they use.
Mousing, of course, way faster than a) stop, b) engage brain to hunt and peck, c) wait for eyes to ajust to different distance to keyboard or tilt laptop screen down to illuminate keys, d) locate proper key, e) try to remember what you wanted to do in the first place, f) look back at screen, g) wait for eyes to adjust, h) aha, i) look back at keyboard knowing where key is, j) push key with abandon, k) look back to screen, l) feel tears of joy well up at remarkable computer-enhanced productivity, m) with new found free time reload slashdot
Yeah and one more thing... as a Mac user, I've always wondered - does a "save" key autorepeat? (we don't have one).
You do, huh? Well, news to you: Unix has been an actual multiuser system since (time_t)0
and Microsoft has money and ambition where others do not. Bill has an itch the size of the planet.
that, and often the wrong thing is built due to poor planning, product management, requirements, etc. I'll bet that in the article, the techies didn't want to be in those meetings, either. In fact, if it was up to them, they'd probably have built the system differently anyway. Been there, done that. It's like what is often said about Hollywood movies - nobody has creative control; everyone is frustrated by a sucky script. It's a lot easier to do your technical work well - eg good effects, etc - than it is to 1) have the good idea and 2) have the power to execute it.
everything is proceeding according to plan!
On the other hand, Microsoft is a for-profit environment, where constraints are entirely different than they are in government.
% jar jar ...
Illegal option: j
Usage: jar {ctxu}[vfm0M] [jar-file] [manifest-file] [-C dir] files
Well, well, well. I agree sort of... but ideally a programmer starts much younger than university age. IMHO, by the time intellectual learning has overtaken sensory learning, it's in many cases too late to be a great programmer, or great software designer (whichever term is better) I don't think most of us solve problems by being logical intellectual problem solvers; I would say that our intuition built up from experience is most critical. It is the foundation on which we can use logic. Thus, quantity, quantity, quantity - especially when your mind is young and free to experiment without fear.
that's all any computer user ever does.
BeagleWorks.. became PerfectWorks when *sniff* Beagle Bros. closed. And the original Works was, of course, AppleWorks on the Apple //e.
here is an interesting related one from the Navy's Phase I Selections from the 02.1 Solicitation:
Hey, that's how I judge tech books.