Linux Insider is running a couple of editorials speculating about running Linux on the 'Cell'. The bold prediction? 'the Linux developer community will, virtually en masse, abandon the x86 in favor of the new machine.'
So, if I go to this library with a fake ID and they take my fingerprints how are they going to make sure that I am who I claim I am, if they're not crossreferencing any other fingerprint databases?
Hmmm... I guess someone needs to go to your library, tell them that they are you - they can even print a fake barcode on any old library card since barcode techology is open and freely available to anyone and everyone.
Either that, or they take a digital picture of your fingerprint (touched anything lately?) and use that that to gain access to the library. Don't think that's plausible? Tell it to Tsutomu Matsumoto.
Not to put a damper on things, but there's at least one guy (from google cache) who didn't like it.
...But the real loss in the immediate sequels was the cantankerous sexual triangle of Han Solo, Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia that had given Star Wars a recognizable and genuinely compelling psychological frisson. This was partly a casting problem: Neither Mr. Ford nor Ms. Fisher seemed to take much interest in the later endeavors, and Mark Hamill couldn't carry the movies' ever-more attenuated storylines on his own. The problem stemmed from the fact that Mr. Lucas seemed all too aware that the big money was made not through ticket sales to adults or even teenagers, but through toy sales to children (his decision to forgo his director's salary on the first movie in exchange for a piece of merchandizing is one of Hollywood's fondest myths of its own beneficence)...
Exactly. I've had those type of un-oh moments before. I was once debugging an analog IC under the probe station microscope. Except it wasn't behaving at all like what was on my test board. Turn off the microscope light, and presto! things were back to normal. That's one of those lessons you learn the hard way (but you'll never forget again).
Except not all p-n junctions rectify current. In fact, your own link refers to such a thing as "Non-rectifying Junctions".
Well, that's what I deserve for linking to a low-quality Wikipedia article I guess. The "Non-rectifying Junctions" they talk about are Schottky barrier (metal-semiconductor) junctions. They are not p-n junctions. To prevent the rectifying action of the metal-semiconductor interface, you heavily dope the semiconductor side, so it acts more like an ohmic contact. Here are some better references on semiconductor physics and Schottky diodes to help you out.
If it generates electricity by catching electrons resulting from nuclear fission, then how do you turn it off?
First off, its beta decay (a neutron in the nucleus in turn into a proton and ejects an electron), not fission. And you're correct, there no turning it off.
Is it always generating electricity?
Yes.
Do you have to have a constant connection to ground so that it can sink any current that's not being used?
You can just burn off extra power in a resistor (generating heat). Or you could charge a conventional battery (or run a fuel cell backwards) and use that extra power for when you need a speed boost (think of how currently, some laptops use a lower-powered/lower-speed mode when running on battery, and use a high-power/higher-speed mode when plugged in)
You don't call two p-n junctions in the transistor a diode. You don't call the p-n junction in the solar cell a diode...
Sure you do. Any electrical engineer would. Saying things like "don't forward bias the base-collector diode" or "the emitter-base diode has a low reverse breakdown voltage" is common.
The term "diode" can also be applied to a vacuum diode, Schotky diode, etc. neither of which is composed of a p-n junction.
You're correct on the vacuum tube diode. As for Schottky barrier diodes, it's been a while since my semiconductor physics class, but while it may be technically incorrect to classify it as p-n, it most certainly is a junction.
Now, I don't see how any other language (that isn't Lisp based itself) could actually support true macros without adopting the same syntax Lisp uses.
You might like to check into the Joy language. It may not have macros, but its syntax (even simpler than lisp!) make meta-programming a breeze. Also, the Forth guys don't think programs that write programs are anything new.
Haskell & DSLs [was: Are you trying to be obtu
on
Practical Common Lisp
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· Score: 1
Since when can you write a domain specific language/interpreter in just about a day or two???
This book teaches functional programming as a way of thinking and problem solving, using Haskell, the most popular purely functional language. Rather than using the conventional mathematical examples commonly found in other programming language textbooks, the author draws examples from multimedia applications, including graphics, animation, and computer music, thus rewarding the reader with working programs for inherently more interesting applications. Aimed at both beginning and advanced programmers, this tutorial begins with a gentle introduction to functional programming and moves rapidly on to more advanced topics. An underlying theme is the design and implementation of domain specific languages, using three examples: FAL (a Functional Animation Language), IRL (an Imperative Robot Language), and MDL (a Music Description Language)...
And it seems like there's quite a few people doing DSLs in languagesother than lisp.
We might not want to break out the champagne quite yet. There's at least one person who isn't impressed...
It opens next week. I saw it, and here's the thing: It's unbelievably bad. Oh I'm telling you this because movie critics won't. So far all the early reviews -- all of them, from Variety to the Hollywood Reporter to Time magazine -- have been favorable. Why? Because while the movie critics of my long-ago youth were middlebrow snobs suspicious of populist entertainment, today's critics have turned into toadies. They are afraid of being on an audience's bad side, afraid that a movie they will pan might really strike a chord. Since it's a foregone conclusion that the final Star Wars is going to make a jillion dollars, the safe thing for critics to do is say nice things about it. The only nice thing I can think to say about it is that it's not quite as mindspinningly wretched as its predecessor, Attack of the Clones, but it's plenty awful anyway. Even Yoda gives a rotten performance. Go see it if you must when it opens next week, but at least you got one fair warning here.
Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network.
...as a macro call is identical to a function call, which is really why I never found macros that confusing).
But of course that overlooks the fact that macros aren't first class citizens (unlike functions). You can't in general pass them to higher order functions like map. And here's an unrelated question, does CL have any hygenic macros system similar to Scheme's "syntax-case"?
Prolog-in-Lisp is an academic exercise designed to impress students. A PROLOG compiler is 99% optimizer. Prolog-in-Lisp embeds an unoptimized constraint solver and then interprets it. There are 4 or 5 orders of magnitude speed difference, which is the difference between a tool and a toy.
KANREN is a declarative logic programming system with first-class relations, embedded in a pure functional subset of Scheme. The system has a set-theoretical semantics, true unions, fair scheduling, first-class relations, lexically-scoped logical variables, depth-first and iterative deepening strategies. The system achieves high performance and expressivity without cuts.
Template Haskell is an extension to Haskell 98 that allows you to do type-safe compile-time meta-programming, with Haskell both as the manipulating language and the language being manipulated.
Intuitively Template Haskell provides new language features that allow us to convert back and forth between concrete syntax, i.e. what you would type when you write normal Haskell code, and abstract syntax trees. These abstract syntax trees are represented using Haskell datatypes and, at compile time, they can be manipulated by Haskell code. This allows you to reify (convert from concrete syntax to an abstract syntax tree) some code, transform it and splice it back in (convert back again), or even to produce completely new code and splice that in, while the compiler is compiling your module.
...
Which functional language lets you redefine stuff in a running image?
Erlang supports change of code in a running system. Code replacement is done on module level.
The code of a module can exist in two variants in a system: current and old. When a module is loaded into the system for the first time, the code becomes 'current'. If then a new instance of the module is loaded, the code of the previous instance becomes 'old' and the new instance becomes 'current'.
Both old and current code is valid, and may be evaluated concurrently. Fully qualified function calls always refer to current code. Old code may still be evaluated because of processes lingering in the old code...
Slashdot Mirror
Linux Insider is running a couple of editorials speculating about running Linux on the 'Cell'. The bold prediction? 'the Linux developer community will, virtually en masse, abandon the x86 in favor of the new machine.'
Exactly. I've had those type of un-oh moments before. I was once debugging an analog IC under the probe station microscope. Except it wasn't behaving at all like what was on my test board. Turn off the microscope light, and presto! things were back to normal. That's one of those lessons you learn the hard way (but you'll never forget again).
More bad news here.
- A diode is anything that rectifies current.
- A p-n junction rectifies current
- Therefore: A p-n junction is a diode
Now if the poster had stated that all diodes are p-n junction, I'd agree with you.Food for thought. Has Lucas ever created a good movie that didn't involve Harrison Ford?
Maybe in their spurt of generosity, they'll consider a better license for Squeak Smalltalk?