Having worked with Forth from time to time over the last 22 years, I would say that it's badly-written Forth programs that are hard to understand - in other words, the same as any other language.
The key to understanding Forth is that it is really a language for writing application-specific languages, in which you then write your program. All the words you define become part of the language with the same status as any other word, but for preference you use the low-level words to define high-level words which don't contain many of the "noise" words relating to stack manipulation.
As an example, when I worked as a games programmer in the 1980s I implemented Forth on the Atari ST, and then implemented a conversion of a C64 game in Forth. One particular aspect of this abstract puzzle game was that when time ran out, everything on the playfield blew up. The Forth word that did this was:
: kill-everything ( - ) player explodes mine explodes pod explodes toprim explodes siderim explodes bubble bursts;
(Slashdot's useless formatting messes up the indentation in these examples; why don't they support <pre>?)
The word "explodes" did a bunch of low-level stuff resetting animations to their start positions and assigning the relevant frame sequences to them; but you could read the high-level words and understand exactly what was going on.
For what it's worth, I could have said "bubble explodes", but bubbles don't explode, they burst. So I defined one extra word:
Exactly. As it's time for the Shipping Forecast, I will refer you to my reply to the preceding sibling post, but I will have a look at the project to which you link.
That's a good point, but I'd probably be mildly annoyed if I was looking for information about the use of metaphor, and was instead given factual descriptions of the feeding habits of Drosophila. I think the "canonical problem" (which I originally encountered in the works of either Douglas Hofstadter or Daniel Dennett, but which Google tells me originally comes from Groucho Marx, of all people) is relevant because, when a system which offers some kind of Holy Grail of automated semantic interpretation of human-created text is announced (twice on Slashdot) to the world, it's important to remember that it simply won't turn out to be as good as it seemed it was going to be. In the context of this kind of research, "topic" has a rather different interpretation than that which is normally used by the layman. Of course, I haven't yet read the paper linked to by the page cited, and may find that such issues are adequately addressed by some emergent behaviour of the system - in which case, this is a remarkable breakthrough. To be honest, I only posted in the first place because I was stuck in a hotel room miles from home, had just come back from the pub, and there wasn't anything on the telly. Oh, and I thought I might get FP - the one time I shouldn't have used the "Preview" button:-)
This message brought to you via overpriced wireless from a hotel that's still miles from home.
Ah, but the point of the example is that the system must either understand or otherwise be able to derive the fact that there are animals called "fruit flies" but not animals called "time flies", that "like" can be a verb or an adverb depending on the context, and most importantly, that in the first case the relationship between subject and object is metaphorical, and in the second, factual. It's how the programs "understand that flies can be a verbs or a noun and correctly parse this info out from a sentence" that makes the difference between yet another failed attempt and a meaningful breakthrough. In fact, your reply begs the question - a correct use of that phrase, for a change:-)
Just today I had somebody asking "Have you seen the email about that little problem?" I replied that no, I hadn't, but I had seen the one about the bloody big problem.
That is how ASBOs work, but TFA isn't about them: it's about the proposals in a Home Office green paper to introduce legislation allowing a new kind of order called a "Serious Crime Prevention Order". I reckon HMG is spinning these as being "similar to ASBOs" because that way people think it's no worse than banning some 14 year old shoplifter from a town centre, but if you read the article, or even better [PDF warning] the green paper, you'll find this is very different in scope and implementation. The mention of ASBOs in relation to this is a red herring which has done a very effective job of throwing the ZDnet journalist off the scent.
That may be true of ASBOs, but these proposals go a long way beyond that. From TFA, they want to have the power to confiscate property (including people's homes and businesses), wide-ranging powers to acquire and analyse data from both private and public databases, and even limit the amount of cash one is allowed to carry while preventing one from using anything other than "approved" credit cards or bank accounts - and all of this is "where the police do not have enough evidence to bring a criminal prosecution".
Basically, this would give the police arbitrary powers to drag anyone they want before the courts, say "We have no evidence whatsoever that they've done anything wrong but we happen to think they're a bit dodgy" and reduce them to homelessness and penury. You don't have to be a student of jurisprudence to see that this is very far from the concept of due process.
Somebody says he made bets on the truth of the assertion "C is not a high level language".
Respondent replies that "C is not a low level language".
I respond to 2, pointing out that 1 never said anything that could logically be construed as "C is a low level language", meaning 2 is denying something that was not said.
You post telling me that "He [meaning 1] didn't call C a 'low-level language' at all", which is just repeating what I have already said.
The statement "C is not a high level language" is not logically equivalent to the statement "C is a low level language", so the OP is still entitled to his beer money:-)
Good times indeed. I remember the first time I saw a TV ad with the URL of the first commercial site I'd worked on. My (ex-)girlfriend got totally fed up with me pointing at the screen whenever it came on, or at the associated billboard posters in the street, saying "Look! I did that!"
Strange to think it was 9 years ago. Tempus fugit, and all that.
I would also like to know when firefox is going to allow its users to turn off the cursor going to the first text box on a page by default. It is a security risk.
That's not Firefox; at least, I never see this behaviour on any of the various versions I run on Mac , Windows or Knoppix. It sounds like the owner of the relevant page has stuck a bit of JavaScript in there to do this; that's the only way I've ever seen this behaviour implemented on any browser. Complain to the owner of the site(s) where you see this (as you say) risky behaviour.
I think people see Google doing this and think "Oh, it must be OK, Google do it". They are morons, because behaviour that enhances usability on Google's home page (where one wants to type in a search query, otherwise one wouldn't be there) can, as in the case you cite, actually detract from usability in other circumstances.
(I suppose the culprit might also be an extension: people have been known to dump irrelevant and unnecessary "cool" features like this in them, too.)
IE7 is IE7 - it's the same code whichever operating system it's running on. As far as enhancements to standards support: the improvements to HTML and CSS support have been restricted to bug fixes since Beta 2, in which the major changes/improvements were introduced. Improvements to DOM support will probably come in a later version (7.5, 8, 8.5...).
You can keep up with what they're doing on the IE Team's blog.
This beta does not install on Windows Vista Beta 2; a new version of IE7+ in Windows Vista will be available with the next public Windows Vista release soon.
Slashdot Mirror
Obligatory Apple user comment that Safari loads it just fine. Link to Apple but lacking "http://www." resulting in it giving a Slashdot 404.
Which one's on the left? My spaceship just rolled over, and now I can't work out if it's the north or south one :-(
Re 1: Apparent to whom? I've never heard of them. Did you mean "Apparent to Americans"? ;-)
Having worked with Forth from time to time over the last 22 years, I would say that it's badly-written Forth programs that are hard to understand - in other words, the same as any other language.
The key to understanding Forth is that it is really a language for writing application-specific languages, in which you then write your program. All the words you define become part of the language with the same status as any other word, but for preference you use the low-level words to define high-level words which don't contain many of the "noise" words relating to stack manipulation.
As an example, when I worked as a games programmer in the 1980s I implemented Forth on the Atari ST, and then implemented a conversion of a C64 game in Forth. One particular aspect of this abstract puzzle game was that when time ran out, everything on the playfield blew up. The Forth word that did this was:
(Slashdot's useless formatting messes up the indentation in these examples; why don't they support <pre>?)
The word "explodes" did a bunch of low-level stuff resetting animations to their start positions and assigning the relevant frame sequences to them; but you could read the high-level words and understand exactly what was going on.
For what it's worth, I could have said "bubble explodes", but bubbles don't explode, they burst. So I defined one extra word:
: bursts (a - ) explodes ;
because it reads better that way :-)
Exactly. As it's time for the Shipping Forecast, I will refer you to my reply to the preceding sibling post, but I will have a look at the project to which you link.
That's a good point, but I'd probably be mildly annoyed if I was looking for information about the use of metaphor, and was instead given factual descriptions of the feeding habits of Drosophila. I think the "canonical problem" (which I originally encountered in the works of either Douglas Hofstadter or Daniel Dennett, but which Google tells me originally comes from Groucho Marx, of all people) is relevant because, when a system which offers some kind of Holy Grail of automated semantic interpretation of human-created text is announced (twice on Slashdot) to the world, it's important to remember that it simply won't turn out to be as good as it seemed it was going to be. In the context of this kind of research, "topic" has a rather different interpretation than that which is normally used by the layman. Of course, I haven't yet read the paper linked to by the page cited, and may find that such issues are adequately addressed by some emergent behaviour of the system - in which case, this is a remarkable breakthrough. To be honest, I only posted in the first place because I was stuck in a hotel room miles from home, had just come back from the pub, and there wasn't anything on the telly. Oh, and I thought I might get FP - the one time I shouldn't have used the "Preview" button :-)
This message brought to you via overpriced wireless from a hotel that's still miles from home.Ah, but the point of the example is that the system must either understand or otherwise be able to derive the fact that there are animals called "fruit flies" but not animals called "time flies", that "like" can be a verb or an adverb depending on the context, and most importantly, that in the first case the relationship between subject and object is metaphorical, and in the second, factual. It's how the programs "understand that flies can be a verbs or a noun and correctly parse this info out from a sentence" that makes the difference between yet another failed attempt and a meaningful breakthrough. In fact, your reply begs the question - a correct use of that phrase, for a change :-)
"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana."
I wonder how well it can deal with a query relating to "flies" ;-)
Just today I had somebody asking "Have you seen the email about that little problem?" I replied that no, I hadn't, but I had seen the one about the bloody big problem.
The directory containing that file also has an Office 2003 key :-)
That is how ASBOs work, but TFA isn't about them: it's about the proposals in a Home Office green paper to introduce legislation allowing a new kind of order called a "Serious Crime Prevention Order". I reckon HMG is spinning these as being "similar to ASBOs" because that way people think it's no worse than banning some 14 year old shoplifter from a town centre, but if you read the article, or even better [PDF warning] the green paper, you'll find this is very different in scope and implementation. The mention of ASBOs in relation to this is a red herring which has done a very effective job of throwing the ZDnet journalist off the scent.
That may be true of ASBOs, but these proposals go a long way beyond that. From TFA, they want to have the power to confiscate property (including people's homes and businesses), wide-ranging powers to acquire and analyse data from both private and public databases, and even limit the amount of cash one is allowed to carry while preventing one from using anything other than "approved" credit cards or bank accounts - and all of this is "where the police do not have enough evidence to bring a criminal prosecution".
Basically, this would give the police arbitrary powers to drag anyone they want before the courts, say "We have no evidence whatsoever that they've done anything wrong but we happen to think they're a bit dodgy" and reduce them to homelessness and penury. You don't have to be a student of jurisprudence to see that this is very far from the concept of due process.
What are you talking about?
The statement "C is not a high level language" is not logically equivalent to the statement "C is a low level language", so the OP is still entitled to his beer money :-)
Good times indeed. I remember the first time I saw a TV ad with the URL of the first commercial site I'd worked on. My (ex-)girlfriend got totally fed up with me pointing at the screen whenever it came on, or at the associated billboard posters in the street, saying "Look! I did that!"
Strange to think it was 9 years ago. Tempus fugit, and all that.
From Surfin' Safari, April 15 2005:
If you've installed Apple's OS X updates, you should be on Safari 1.3 even if you're still running Panther. Tiger has Safari 2 by default (IIRC).
No, this is the pet rock all over again.
Yes.
That's not Firefox; at least, I never see this behaviour on any of the various versions I run on Mac , Windows or Knoppix. It sounds like the owner of the relevant page has stuck a bit of JavaScript in there to do this; that's the only way I've ever seen this behaviour implemented on any browser. Complain to the owner of the site(s) where you see this (as you say) risky behaviour.
I think people see Google doing this and think "Oh, it must be OK, Google do it". They are morons, because behaviour that enhances usability on Google's home page (where one wants to type in a search query, otherwise one wouldn't be there) can, as in the case you cite, actually detract from usability in other circumstances.
(I suppose the culprit might also be an extension: people have been known to dump irrelevant and unnecessary "cool" features like this in them, too.)
From the answer to the first question:
Funnily enough, I wrote about this a few weeks ago: have a read of my post on determining rendering mode.
It's basically just a JS bookmarklet which displays the value of the document.compatMode property. Works for me on IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari. HTH.
Oops, my mistake: it was IE5/Mac that introduced DOCTYPE switching; the first Windows version to have it was IE6 in 2001.
Sorry :-)
Is that the box model problem that was sorted out in IE6, back in 2001?
IE7 is IE7 - it's the same code whichever operating system it's running on. As far as enhancements to standards support: the improvements to HTML and CSS support have been restricted to bug fixes since Beta 2, in which the major changes/improvements were introduced. Improvements to DOM support will probably come in a later version (7.5, 8, 8.5...).
You can keep up with what they're doing on the IE Team's blog.
According to the announcement on the IE Team's blog: