Stroustrup's book on C++ is big, but that's because it's a big language. The content is just as dense as K&R. It's an example of a huge technical book that is not worthless. I admit that most of the monstrosities you see in the bookshop are not worth buying (unless they come with a free Linux CD, and probably not even then).
Having the schema description itself be XML is one motivation, but it wasn't the only one - otherwise it would have been better to just code up a simple DTD-like schema language in XML markup.
But an error like an IP address 'foobar' is (IMHO) less likely to occur, easier for a human to spot, and easier to give an error message for in the application than a badly-structured document. It must depend on the application, but I feel that DTD does a good job of warning about those mistakes that are likely to occur. It doesn't catch them all, depending on the details of your file format, but then neither does XML Schema. The question is how much extra complexity you are prepared to accept to catch the additional few percent of errors. I feel I would rather use DTD and write program code to check IP addresses, it is certainly easier to write some code in your favourite programming language than to learn the monstrosity which is XML Schema. YMMV.
My point was that many apps don't really need the extra features. In all the hype over schemas, plain old DTD doesn't really get the coverage it deserves.
Re:How about the Intel Compiler?
on
GCC 3.2.1 Released
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
This is the old argument that RMS addressed in the GNU manifesto. If companies want support for the compiler, and are willing to pay for compiler plus support, surely they would be willing to buy support and get the compiler as free software.
No, it must be the case that there isn't enough demand for support to make it economical to make the compiler free and sell support. Intel has to make the compiler itself payware in order to get the most money from it.
My recommendation: 0845 2066050, totalserve/totalserve. I think this is now run by BT also. You can also sign up with UKFSN free of charge (apparently all profits go to Linux development and they plan to publish accounts; at any rate, it's no worse than any other local-rate ISP).
I haven't yet seen convincing explanations of why the new schema languages like XML Schema are needed at all. Or at least, I can't see that 'nice to have' features like specifying restrictions on textual element content outweigh the huge extra complexity compared to its predecessor.
There is already an XML schema description language, called DTD. It is less powerful than XML Schema or Relax NG or DSD or a dozen other edifices of overengineering, but by the 80/20 rule it's likely to do what you need. The tools to validate against a DTD (nsgmls) are already included with most Linux systems. And you can learn all you need to know in about one page.
XML Schema might be useful for some applications, and being a W3C standard does give it some extra clout (DTD is a W3C standard too, part of the XML specification), but it looks like second-system syndrome to me.
Yeah, as if it makes a difference whether your word size is a power of two or not. A 32-bit word is no 'easier to work with' than a 42-bit or 27-bit word. Lots of things in computing are most easily handled with powers of two, but bits-per-word is not one of them - either for hardware or software reasons.
And they could have the Watcom and Borland compilers too... ideally a single front end 'cc' with common command-line flags which can run any of the four compilers. I think that Watcom is now free software, so it might be a better choice than Intel's compiler if not quite as fast.
Re:How about the Intel Compiler?
on
GCC 3.2.1 Released
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Then you have to ask, if Intel has its own compiler, why do they not release it as free software? They must think that the money they make from compiler sales outweighs the increased sales of Intel processors from having a good free compiler for them. I can imagine this is true for IA-32 since code optimized for a P4 also runs well on an Athlon, so Intel wouldn't particularly be promoting their own chips (except for those choosing between say SPARC and i386 for their new supercomputer, and there aren't many of those).
I'd say that NT 3.51 was the pinnacle of Microsoft OS development, and it's been downhill from there. But you may be right that 2k was good too. Perhaps it is cyclic and we will see the next 'good' NT version in 2005 or so.
Sure, C# is a good language compared to C and all that. But then that's true of a whole bunch of languages out there. You could easily enthuse just as much about OCaml or Scheme or Ruby or Smalltalk. It doesn't seem that C# is the best language out there, just that it is 'better than C most of the time' (which isn't difficult, now that CPUs are so fast) and 'what other people seem to be using', in other words herd mentality. Which is fine - and the reason why I use Perl - but it's a mistake to think that technical merit and expressivity are something magically invented with C#, any more than the graphical user interface suddenly came along when Windows was released. Although some journalists do seem to have that idea.
*Every* browser reformats the text to fit the screen width. That's exactly what HTML is about. I don't see how Opera has done anything special, unless the existing small-screen browsers are really screwing up. (FWIW Dillo does work very nicely on small screens such as Ipaqs.)
There could be a problem with absolute widths specified in CSS styles ('width: 500cm') but I don't think many web pages do that. And if you do find absolute widths or pixel widths, well just ignore them. It's not hard to do if you already have a working HTML display engine.
Re:Please, Deep Blue is not AI, chess is a limited
on
Behind Deep Blue
·
· Score: 1
Seriously? If you are playing as white you can choose who goes first? I never heard of that rule, but then I am not a big chess player.
The fact that this option is so seldom exercised suggests that moving first does have an advantage, at least in the minds of experienced players. (And who is going to argue with them?)
Re:Please, Deep Blue is not AI, chess is a limited
on
Behind Deep Blue
·
· Score: 2
I didn't say a computer can 'never' do AI. Some things like composing music may one day be satisfactorily performed by a computer. But at that point they will no longer be considered AI.
If they can afford to give you a special 10% 'discount' on peanut butter and still sell it at a profit, they're clearly not that keenly priced to start with. The shops which offer the best value for money will not have such special deals targeted at particular consumers, though they might offer volume discounts.
Re:Please, Deep Blue is not AI, chess is a limited
on
Behind Deep Blue
·
· Score: 3
If you could work out all possible games of chess, you'd be able to determine the optimum strategy for each player, and 'solve' the game of chess. You'd find one of three results:
- The game is a win for white.
- The game is a win for black.
- The game is a draw or stalemate.
Some games have been solved like this: certainly 3x3 noughts and crosses, and there was a Slashdot story about Owari a while ago. Chess is a long way off because the space of possible games is so vast.
Re:Please, Deep Blue is not AI, chess is a limited
on
Behind Deep Blue
·
· Score: 2
Anything that a computer can do is not AI. Therefore, chess is not AI. But it used to be, a long time ago.
The computers will not have artificial intelligence, and scientists remain many years away from building one that matches even the abilities of a simple mouse brain.
So I imagine that IBM will not be Taking Over The World in the near future.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you have a link to Prof. Knuth's acceptance speech?
I thought you could make a flat board and Uri Geller it into a 3D L shape. But I suppose that even if the plastic can bend, the traces won't.
Stroustrup's book on C++ is big, but that's because it's a big language. The content is just as dense as K&R. It's an example of a huge technical book that is not worthless. I admit that most of the monstrosities you see in the bookshop are not worth buying (unless they come with a free Linux CD, and probably not even then).
Is there a benchmark you can use that is OpenGL-based? 3DMark2001 seems to use DirectX.
Can someone summarize the differences between ATX, mini-ITX, mini-ATX and whatever other form factors are out there?
PS why does a motherboard have to be flat? Why not L-shaped?
Having the schema description itself be XML is one motivation, but it wasn't the only one - otherwise it would have been better to just code up a simple DTD-like schema language in XML markup.
But an error like an IP address 'foobar' is (IMHO) less likely to occur, easier for a human to spot, and easier to give an error message for in the application than a badly-structured document. It must depend on the application, but I feel that DTD does a good job of warning about those mistakes that are likely to occur. It doesn't catch them all, depending on the details of your file format, but then neither does XML Schema. The question is how much extra complexity you are prepared to accept to catch the additional few percent of errors. I feel I would rather use DTD and write program code to check IP addresses, it is certainly easier to write some code in your favourite programming language than to learn the monstrosity which is XML Schema. YMMV.
My point was that many apps don't really need the extra features. In all the hype over schemas, plain old DTD doesn't really get the coverage it deserves.
This is the old argument that RMS addressed in the GNU manifesto. If companies want support for the compiler, and are willing to pay for compiler plus support, surely they would be willing to buy support and get the compiler as free software.
No, it must be the case that there isn't enough demand for support to make it economical to make the compiler free and sell support. Intel has to make the compiler itself payware in order to get the most money from it.
My recommendation: 0845 2066050, totalserve/totalserve. I think this is now run by BT also. You can also sign up with UKFSN free of charge (apparently all profits go to Linux development and they plan to publish accounts; at any rate, it's no worse than any other local-rate ISP).
I haven't yet seen convincing explanations of why the new schema languages like XML Schema are needed at all. Or at least, I can't see that 'nice to have' features like specifying restrictions on textual element content outweigh the huge extra complexity compared to its predecessor.
There is already an XML schema description language, called DTD. It is less powerful than XML Schema or Relax NG or DSD or a dozen other edifices of overengineering, but by the 80/20 rule it's likely to do what you need. The tools to validate against a DTD (nsgmls) are already included with most Linux systems. And you can learn all you need to know in about one page.
XML Schema might be useful for some applications, and being a W3C standard does give it some extra clout (DTD is a W3C standard too, part of the XML specification), but it looks like second-system syndrome to me.
If this thing fits on a single FPGA, then it could be made into a handheld called the PDA8.
Yeah, as if it makes a difference whether your word size is a power of two or not. A 32-bit word is no 'easier to work with' than a 42-bit or 27-bit word. Lots of things in computing are most easily handled with powers of two, but bits-per-word is not one of them - either for hardware or software reasons.
Three-state or base-3 computing systems have nothing to do with it. 12-bit machines use 12 *binary* digits. They are still base-2 hardware.
And they could have the Watcom and Borland compilers too... ideally a single front end 'cc' with common command-line flags which can run any of the four compilers. I think that Watcom is now free software, so it might be a better choice than Intel's compiler if not quite as fast.
Then you have to ask, if Intel has its own compiler, why do they not release it as free software? They must think that the money they make from compiler sales outweighs the increased sales of Intel processors from having a good free compiler for them. I can imagine this is true for IA-32 since code optimized for a P4 also runs well on an Athlon, so Intel wouldn't particularly be promoting their own chips (except for those choosing between say SPARC and i386 for their new supercomputer, and there aren't many of those).
When you upgrade gcc on your Gentoo box, does it recompile everything with the new gcc?
I'd say that NT 3.51 was the pinnacle of Microsoft OS development, and it's been downhill from there. But you may be right that 2k was good too. Perhaps it is cyclic and we will see the next 'good' NT version in 2005 or so.
Sure, C# is a good language compared to C and all that. But then that's true of a whole bunch of languages out there. You could easily enthuse just as much about OCaml or Scheme or Ruby or Smalltalk. It doesn't seem that C# is the best language out there, just that it is 'better than C most of the time' (which isn't difficult, now that CPUs are so fast) and 'what other people seem to be using', in other words herd mentality. Which is fine - and the reason why I use Perl - but it's a mistake to think that technical merit and expressivity are something magically invented with C#, any more than the graphical user interface suddenly came along when Windows was released. Although some journalists do seem to have that idea.
*Every* browser reformats the text to fit the screen width. That's exactly what HTML is about. I don't see how Opera has done anything special, unless the existing small-screen browsers are really screwing up. (FWIW Dillo does work very nicely on small screens such as Ipaqs.)
There could be a problem with absolute widths specified in CSS styles ('width: 500cm') but I don't think many web pages do that. And if you do find absolute widths or pixel widths, well just ignore them. It's not hard to do if you already have a working HTML display engine.
Seriously? If you are playing as white you can choose who goes first? I never heard of that rule, but then I am not a big chess player.
The fact that this option is so seldom exercised suggests that moving first does have an advantage, at least in the minds of experienced players. (And who is going to argue with them?)
I didn't say a computer can 'never' do AI. Some things like composing music may one day be satisfactorily performed by a computer. But at that point they will no longer be considered AI.
If they can afford to give you a special 10% 'discount' on peanut butter and still sell it at a profit, they're clearly not that keenly priced to start with. The shops which offer the best value for money will not have such special deals targeted at particular consumers, though they might offer volume discounts.
If you could work out all possible games of chess, you'd be able to determine the optimum strategy for each player, and 'solve' the game of chess. You'd find one of three results:
- The game is a win for white.
- The game is a win for black.
- The game is a draw or stalemate.
Some games have been solved like this: certainly 3x3 noughts and crosses, and there was a Slashdot story about Owari a while ago. Chess is a long way off because the space of possible games is so vast.
Anything that a computer can do is not AI. Therefore, chess is not AI. But it used to be, a long time ago.