This is interesting, but somwhat deceptive. IBM has created a framework, not an actual search engine. The framework is effectively a data layout combined with a processing pipeline and query engine that gives emphasis to semantic processing of information, rather than strictly textual. See IBM's FAQ regarding Annotations.
You still have to buy the software that will plug into the framework in order to actually process the information, though some open source projects are certain to come along.
This is interesting stuff, but not as thrilling as the article would suggest. Imagine if google open sourced their systems software, except the part that does the whole PageRank thing.
Use UML object models and do all of your high level comments (Object, Method) in there. Use a code generator (or write your own, a UML designer with XML file format makes this actually quite simple) that spits your comments into the code.
In this way, you get a nicely documented design that's written right where the developers need it (in the code), you enforce your (presumably good) design with the team as a whole by laying out all the important objects and functions ahead of time, you remain at a high level in comments (since no code is written yet) that is more likely to include information about how functions are used and interact, and you don't force the developer into the position where they have to explain what you, the designer, were thinking.
When you get down to coding, you block out the code in pseudocode comments before you start to coding. I usually like a comment every 10-12 lines of code.
The only pain in the ass is keeping comments up to date as the design evolves, but until there is such a thing as a true Visual IDE (think UML compiler) not much to be done about it except to hound people to do it.
I've used a lot of different things professionally but I consistently find that large projects go a lot smoother with Java. It's easier to find skilled developers, especially web developers.
The platform is effectively free (Tomcat, MySQL, Eclipse). I never have trouble finding JARs or examples of solutions to any and all common problems.
There's a wealth of work being done on high-level design and patterns (Struts, J2EE, personal info fave: The Server Side).
When you're trying to juggle a dozen coders: Java's OO roots, built-in documentation generation and relative ease-of-use all contribute to making things run smoothly.
And while a great development team is the best resource of all, the reality is you sometimes get stuck with un-experienced, un-talented and/or lazy programmers. If there's an easier language to teach, understand and use than Java, I haven't yet found it.
I've long thought that I was an undiagnosed Asperger's case, though a moderate one. I think we all have to realize that there is a spectrum behind all this, towards one end is Einstein and Newton, towards the other is Jay Leno and Shakespeare.
I feel sure there's an unnamed complement to Aspergers, which gives extrodinary social grace, but an utter lack of technical skill. Just think back to high school...
And before this discussion gets too paranoid, we should always remember that there will forever be lots of people who can't afford or for moral reasons won't use in utero testing, genetic manipulation, etc. That will be the nice big genetic stew from which to brew genius.
In the end though, this really is a discussion about stability/safety vs. evolution/exploration. IMO, genius thrives on the borders of sanity, poverty and strife, but those are all things any moral person would wipe away from the world if they could.
I'm one of the RPG curmudgeons that learned early on what an RPG is supposed to be, so think that anything that doesn't fit that mold is automatically junk. I'd love to see them take a step back and create a newer prettier FFI, but I realize that perhaps the more sophisticated gamers of today might not want that. My hope is they do both.
I think it's a little bit scary that many people of my generation probably know more about the Vietnam war from Battlefield Vietnam loading screens than they retained from their studies at school. While the information contained there is relatively unbiased, they could just as well inserted politically motivated propaganda there. This would have easily slipped below the radars of the historians who keep such published material from straying too far away from reality.
You can get all the books in the HG2G series in unabridged audio form, read by the man himself. They were my first purchase on audible.com and they have lived happily on my iPod ever since (in converted mp3 form).
This is a great idea, and takes one of those annoying corporate menial tasks into something interesting and enjoyable. But, let's hope to god nobody figures out how to write the corporate management RTS game.
I don't want to be a naysayer, but I'd be a little careful about how an application like this will convince a user of the metaphor so well that they may start to come up with invalid conclusions. That's not altogether bad, it could help a designer think outside the box, but imagine your PHB deciding that your web-site is too crowded.
Surely this could have some harmful effect on the processor of your laptop. That heat has to go somewhere. Although even less practical, I've often considered something like this for my Athlon laptop. What would truly be innovative would be an insulator on the bottom and some sort of heat spreader on top.
Amen brother. I wish I knew the answer to this. The best solution I know of is to not live with her. That way you can indulge all you like on your own time. If you shack up, it's much more difficult. The only time I ever took that plunge, our relationship crashed and burned, in part because of my gaming "habit". In hind-sight though, it really came down to the fact that I only liked hanging out with her because it got me laid, so maybe that's for the best.
Really, this comes down to personal space. IMO a relationship isn't really all that healthy if you can't spend a certain amount of time alone without one or the other of you becoming unhappy. Women just need to realize that at certain times in a guy's life she is going to have to share top-priority, or even be runner-up for a short while. In other words:
Attention to all women: Guys fixate on stupid crap once in a while. Let us burn ourselves out on it and we will always come back to you happier and perhaps smarter.
I used to work at a Perkins as a cook, and only one person about every week got non-recycled oil. The first person after we cleaned the fryers out.
On a side note, the oil trap they had out back was royally nasty, especially since it would attract squirrels and things who would drown in it when it was left open.
I doubt that 40 cents per gallon includes the amount of work needed and having to work with disgusting materials.
Er, this article is talking about replacing the Telco as your ISP, and only touches on VOIP briefly.
The problem with this is that a big ISP buys $500,000 Cisco routers to keep the internet flowing. If you think a bunch of $70 wireless routers (even $500,000 worth) is going to replace a mega-router, you're kidding yourself.
Our goal here should be to create reliable grassroots networks. I have phone service because if I need to call 911, I NEED to call 911, whether my neighbor accidentally kicked the wall blister of his router out of the wall socket or not. I've got no love for Telcos, but I do like their reliability.
Mainly, I stand on the side of freedom of expression. I prefer to live in a world where ideas aren't hampered by what someone else determines is vulgar or devisive. But this is a compromise, not an end in-and-of itself. I'm compromising having to look at things that offend me with ensuring that I myself will never be censored.
That said, I defintely feel there is something wrong with the amount and vugarity of violence in games, especially when considering that this is an ongoing trend. Are we kidding ourselved that the same human instinct that drove the Romans to kill people for sport in an arena is not the same one which keeps me glued to the screen playing Far Cry?
Perhaps as a species we are cursed that whenever a society reaches a level where we no longer have to struggle, people turn to ugly and vicious pursuits.
Wow, I hadn't realized this was a "laughing stock", I thought this was just mismanagement by the start-ups. I LOVED this service. It is one of the primary things I miss since moving from the Bay. I still have 5 of those plastic crates they deliver stuff in (which are great for storage BTW).
I loved the searchable selection, the ability to pre-build shopping lists, and coolest of all was the one-click recipe ingredient ordering. I especially miss not waiting in line during the 5:30p grocery rush.
I live in a smaller town now (100,000) so I'm not holding my breath until I can get access to this again, but I'd be quite willing to pay 10% more to have this service.
Article with Pictures...
on
Video T-shirts
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Here you are. The picture with reference to "active camouflage" is also very intriguing.
c > 11,000,000 miles per second. Passenger planes travel 700 mph tops. That's less than 0.007%.
Please refrain from coming up with bullshit theories until doing at least a cursory search for information. An "I'm feeling lucky" search on "airlines cell phone ban" brought up this article.
Perhaps I'm an odd data point, but half-way through college I decided that I wanted to quit my crappy convenience store job that I worked to pay my college tuition. (No student loans or parent's money here, just 40 hours at work and 20 at class.) So I decided to lie on my resume and apply for a job mid-way through the summer term after my second year. I did NOT lie about experience, just my degree which I was honestly pursuing and was getting A marks in to that point. I figured that if it didn't work out, I'd just sing up for classes the next semester.
I put my resume out there and I got numerous job offers and ended up taking one. Still with the reservation that if it didn't work out, I'd quit before the next term started. It worked out just fine. Turns out, in an entry-level programming position you end-up learning a whole new skillset and rarely get to apply anything you learned (or missed) in college.
5 years later, I'm doing great. I still haven't missed anything from college, except the social aspect that I was mostly missing anyways. I will continue to lie on my resume about my college education too, as I see no reason to handicap myself simply because I was able to successfully short-circuit the system.
Further, I'm now responsible for selecting applicants at my company when we occasionally hire, and my primary filter on resumes is a nasty coding problem I email to them. If they show brains in trying to figure that out, I interview them, regardless of education. (To be fair though, I don't know that I've ever gotten a resume that did not claim a college-level education.) If I found out they lied about their education I WOULD have ethical concerns, but I'd give shot nonetheless. No doubt though, if HR found out they were lying they wouldn't let the door hit them on the ass.
I had a similar dilemma, where I used to carry pen and paper around to make notes or write down observations. Innevitably, these notes all end up in a box in my closet which I'm sure I'll lug around until the end of time without ever seriously going through. Upon buying a PDA, I realized that electronic notes are just as bad, in that, I still needed to weed through them, and they lacked the visceral context that a pen & paper provides (small spills, crumpled pages, shaky writing) which I found I enjoyed quite as much as the text. I then tried using my cellphone, which got back some of the context (noisy bar, excited voice, 3am) but put me deeper into the transcribing hole.
In the end, I'm back to pen and paper and decided that if it isn't important enough that I'm not willing to transcribe it, then off it goes to the 'black hole of ideas' box. Maybe when I die, someone will edit and publish it. More likely, it will mislead a future team of archealogists into thinking we were all a bunch of crazy bastards.
I'd try the phone thing though, if you're traveling locally. Get familiar with a sound editor and you can give your audience something a little cooler than text.
Anybody else think it's ironic that after thousands of years of human invention whose culmination is a square inch of pure processing power that can process information at speeds approaching the theoretical limits of information at sub-atomic levels, and we 'discover' a 'new' form of communication, wherein we say what's on our minds on a semi-daily basis and keep it in the order in which it was said.
The narrative is the oldest form of communication, pre-dating written language as the medium of choice for passing information down through generations of people. Any wonder that it still works pretty darn well to this day?
I mean sheesh, am I the only one who feels like a caveman whenever I say 'blog' or 'plog' in public.
If there are really parallel universes, specifically if these universes are a result of divergent (branching) histories, can we prove that we all will live forever? Think of it this way:
There are an infinite number of possible futures.
At any given instant, there is a divergent universe where you die and one where you keep on living.
Your stream of consciousness will always follow the path where you lived (rather than died).*
Of course, this does not preclude everybody else dying, since the path you happen to be on likely isn't the one where everybody gets to live forever (since there are also infinite possible futures where you live forever).
It also says nothing about how good your life will be. It may turn out that Viagra stops working after 175.
* - No doubt, this is where people will disagree. I think you should consider this alternate question before coming to a conclusion: If somebody invented matter transportation which broke you into atoms and transmitted those atoms to another place and then reconstructed them perfectly, would that construction be you? What if they substitute different atoms of the same element? Would it be different if just the atoms of the brain were preserved and no others?
My opinion is that your stream of conciousness is just the conglomerate of your memories. The answers are yes, yes and no. In all cases, YOU are the memories, not the matter. Since your memories are preserved YOU are preserved.
I used to support using the metric system in the US after going through converting the different units in physics during high school and college, but I've since reconsidered.
I was once talking with some of family and I happened to say something like: 'It was 2 meters from me...' Immediately, one of my uncles interjected a joking comment about how I was the 'product' of the 'new' Math. We then proceeded to go off on a tangent about the merits of the two systems and how expensive it would be to switch to metric.
At that point though, I was struck by how his comment was loaded with negative connotation, which obviously did not stem simply from an aversion to the cost of a hypothetical switch to metric. I realized that the source of his distaste for metric was really just the instinctive reaction social animals use to build communities. The 'Us Vs. Them' filter that we all use to clump ourselves into social groups.
From this perspective, a human perspective, it makes complete sense to have differing systems of measurement. There would be obvious advantages if we all spoke the same language, but no one is proposing that we make everyone learn Chinese (quit being ethnocentric!). Even if everyone DID speak Chinese, people would still use their native languages at home, en familia. Why? Because the stratification of languages helps us to identify our social groups. In this way, we're 'The people who use miles', and they're/you're 'The people who use kilometers'. Communities, when you come down to it, are just sets of these bifurcations.
Taking all that into consideration, I've thrown in with the english system curmudgeons. Why? For the same reason I'm in favor of driver's tests in 16 languages. Because being human ain't about being efficient, it's about communities.
Slashdot Mirror
You still have to buy the software that will plug into the framework in order to actually process the information, though some open source projects are certain to come along.
This is interesting stuff, but not as thrilling as the article would suggest. Imagine if google open sourced their systems software, except the part that does the whole PageRank thing.
In this way, you get a nicely documented design that's written right where the developers need it (in the code), you enforce your (presumably good) design with the team as a whole by laying out all the important objects and functions ahead of time, you remain at a high level in comments (since no code is written yet) that is more likely to include information about how functions are used and interact, and you don't force the developer into the position where they have to explain what you, the designer, were thinking.
When you get down to coding, you block out the code in pseudocode comments before you start to coding. I usually like a comment every 10-12 lines of code.
The only pain in the ass is keeping comments up to date as the design evolves, but until there is such a thing as a true Visual IDE (think UML compiler) not much to be done about it except to hound people to do it.
I've used a lot of different things professionally but I consistently find that large projects go a lot smoother with Java. It's easier to find skilled developers, especially web developers.
The platform is effectively free (Tomcat, MySQL, Eclipse). I never have trouble finding JARs or examples of solutions to any and all common problems.
There's a wealth of work being done on high-level design and patterns (Struts, J2EE, personal info fave: The Server Side).
When you're trying to juggle a dozen coders: Java's OO roots, built-in documentation generation and relative ease-of-use all contribute to making things run smoothly.
And while a great development team is the best resource of all, the reality is you sometimes get stuck with un-experienced, un-talented and/or lazy programmers. If there's an easier language to teach, understand and use than Java, I haven't yet found it.
My head's so damn big that I have to cut the bands off hats to make them fit.
It's so big my mother couldn't bear to look at me for the first year of my life.
Oh yes, my headbutting skills are truly devastating and apparently my mental prowess is as well.
Now if only I could get a date...
...oh the sweet irony of natural selection.
[bow]
Made that one up myself :)
Bob Jamison
I've long thought that I was an undiagnosed Asperger's case, though a moderate one. I think we all have to realize that there is a spectrum behind all this, towards one end is Einstein and Newton, towards the other is Jay Leno and Shakespeare.
I feel sure there's an unnamed complement to Aspergers, which gives extrodinary social grace, but an utter lack of technical skill. Just think back to high school...
And before this discussion gets too paranoid, we should always remember that there will forever be lots of people who can't afford or for moral reasons won't use in utero testing, genetic manipulation, etc. That will be the nice big genetic stew from which to brew genius.
In the end though, this really is a discussion about stability/safety vs. evolution/exploration. IMO, genius thrives on the borders of sanity, poverty and strife, but those are all things any moral person would wipe away from the world if they could.
I'm one of the RPG curmudgeons that learned early on what an RPG is supposed to be, so think that anything that doesn't fit that mold is automatically junk. I'd love to see them take a step back and create a newer prettier FFI, but I realize that perhaps the more sophisticated gamers of today might not want that. My hope is they do both.
I think it's a little bit scary that many people of my generation probably know more about the Vietnam war from Battlefield Vietnam loading screens than they retained from their studies at school. While the information contained there is relatively unbiased, they could just as well inserted politically motivated propaganda there. This would have easily slipped below the radars of the historians who keep such published material from straying too far away from reality.
You can get all the books in the HG2G series in unabridged audio form, read by the man himself. They were my first purchase on audible.com and they have lived happily on my iPod ever since (in converted mp3 form).
I don't want to be a naysayer, but I'd be a little careful about how an application like this will convince a user of the metaphor so well that they may start to come up with invalid conclusions. That's not altogether bad, it could help a designer think outside the box, but imagine your PHB deciding that your web-site is too crowded.
Surely this could have some harmful effect on the processor of your laptop. That heat has to go somewhere. Although even less practical, I've often considered something like this for my Athlon laptop. What would truly be innovative would be an insulator on the bottom and some sort of heat spreader on top.
Really, this comes down to personal space. IMO a relationship isn't really all that healthy if you can't spend a certain amount of time alone without one or the other of you becoming unhappy. Women just need to realize that at certain times in a guy's life she is going to have to share top-priority, or even be runner-up for a short while. In other words:
Attention to all women: Guys fixate on stupid crap once in a while. Let us burn ourselves out on it and we will always come back to you happier and perhaps smarter.
On a side note, the oil trap they had out back was royally nasty, especially since it would attract squirrels and things who would drown in it when it was left open.
I doubt that 40 cents per gallon includes the amount of work needed and having to work with disgusting materials.
The problem with this is that a big ISP buys $500,000 Cisco routers to keep the internet flowing. If you think a bunch of $70 wireless routers (even $500,000 worth) is going to replace a mega-router, you're kidding yourself.
Our goal here should be to create reliable grassroots networks. I have phone service because if I need to call 911, I NEED to call 911, whether my neighbor accidentally kicked the wall blister of his router out of the wall socket or not. I've got no love for Telcos, but I do like their reliability.
That said, I defintely feel there is something wrong with the amount and vugarity of violence in games, especially when considering that this is an ongoing trend. Are we kidding ourselved that the same human instinct that drove the Romans to kill people for sport in an arena is not the same one which keeps me glued to the screen playing Far Cry?
Perhaps as a species we are cursed that whenever a society reaches a level where we no longer have to struggle, people turn to ugly and vicious pursuits.
I loved the searchable selection, the ability to pre-build shopping lists, and coolest of all was the one-click recipe ingredient ordering. I especially miss not waiting in line during the 5:30p grocery rush.
I live in a smaller town now (100,000) so I'm not holding my breath until I can get access to this again, but I'd be quite willing to pay 10% more to have this service.
Here you are. The picture with reference to "active camouflage" is also very intriguing.
c > 11,000,000 miles per second. Passenger planes travel 700 mph tops. That's less than 0.007%.
Please refrain from coming up with bullshit theories until doing at least a cursory search for information. An "I'm feeling lucky" search on "airlines cell phone ban" brought up this article.
I put my resume out there and I got numerous job offers and ended up taking one. Still with the reservation that if it didn't work out, I'd quit before the next term started. It worked out just fine. Turns out, in an entry-level programming position you end-up learning a whole new skillset and rarely get to apply anything you learned (or missed) in college.
5 years later, I'm doing great. I still haven't missed anything from college, except the social aspect that I was mostly missing anyways. I will continue to lie on my resume about my college education too, as I see no reason to handicap myself simply because I was able to successfully short-circuit the system.
Further, I'm now responsible for selecting applicants at my company when we occasionally hire, and my primary filter on resumes is a nasty coding problem I email to them. If they show brains in trying to figure that out, I interview them, regardless of education. (To be fair though, I don't know that I've ever gotten a resume that did not claim a college-level education.) If I found out they lied about their education I WOULD have ethical concerns, but I'd give shot nonetheless. No doubt though, if HR found out they were lying they wouldn't let the door hit them on the ass.
In the end, I'm back to pen and paper and decided that if it isn't important enough that I'm not willing to transcribe it, then off it goes to the 'black hole of ideas' box. Maybe when I die, someone will edit and publish it. More likely, it will mislead a future team of archealogists into thinking we were all a bunch of crazy bastards.
I'd try the phone thing though, if you're traveling locally. Get familiar with a sound editor and you can give your audience something a little cooler than text.
The narrative is the oldest form of communication, pre-dating written language as the medium of choice for passing information down through generations of people. Any wonder that it still works pretty darn well to this day?
I mean sheesh, am I the only one who feels like a caveman whenever I say 'blog' or 'plog' in public.
- There are an infinite number of possible futures.
- At any given instant, there is a divergent universe where you die and one where you keep on living.
- Your stream of consciousness will always follow the path where you lived (rather than died).*
Of course, this does not preclude everybody else dying, since the path you happen to be on likely isn't the one where everybody gets to live forever (since there are also infinite possible futures where you live forever).It also says nothing about how good your life will be. It may turn out that Viagra stops working after 175.
* - No doubt, this is where people will disagree. I think you should consider this alternate question before coming to a conclusion: If somebody invented matter transportation which broke you into atoms and transmitted those atoms to another place and then reconstructed them perfectly, would that construction be you? What if they substitute different atoms of the same element? Would it be different if just the atoms of the brain were preserved and no others?
My opinion is that your stream of conciousness is just the conglomerate of your memories. The answers are yes, yes and no. In all cases, YOU are the memories, not the matter. Since your memories are preserved YOU are preserved.
I was once talking with some of family and I happened to say something like: 'It was 2 meters from me...' Immediately, one of my uncles interjected a joking comment about how I was the 'product' of the 'new' Math. We then proceeded to go off on a tangent about the merits of the two systems and how expensive it would be to switch to metric.
At that point though, I was struck by how his comment was loaded with negative connotation, which obviously did not stem simply from an aversion to the cost of a hypothetical switch to metric. I realized that the source of his distaste for metric was really just the instinctive reaction social animals use to build communities. The 'Us Vs. Them' filter that we all use to clump ourselves into social groups.
From this perspective, a human perspective, it makes complete sense to have differing systems of measurement. There would be obvious advantages if we all spoke the same language, but no one is proposing that we make everyone learn Chinese (quit being ethnocentric!). Even if everyone DID speak Chinese, people would still use their native languages at home, en familia. Why? Because the stratification of languages helps us to identify our social groups. In this way, we're 'The people who use miles', and they're/you're 'The people who use kilometers'. Communities, when you come down to it, are just sets of these bifurcations.
Taking all that into consideration, I've thrown in with the english system curmudgeons. Why? For the same reason I'm in favor of driver's tests in 16 languages. Because being human ain't about being efficient, it's about communities.
GROan, that was awFuL.
No offense, just had to share that.