Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.
(1) He obviously can't tell the difference between pure and applied mathematics and
(2) How come all the loser mathematicians who can't hack it end up becoming programmers?.
I've never had much respect for Dijkstra. I have even less now.
(1) Yes, unlike most readers of/.
(2) I'm paid a lot more than him/her, I'm pretty sure of that , but I have to work for my money
(3) Cut and paste, silly. I didn't actually type much myself.
Defeat the defects...here are some ways you can overcome the pitfalls
Pitfall 1: Vibration. Many robots vibrate due to their fast motors. Vibration can cause a robot to move from its designated location and not perform its task successfully. Solution: Test the robot for stability and reliability and change parts when necessary.
Since when is vibration a big problem? Printers, scanners and all sorts of other devices have vibrating motors and can still work accurately at over 1000dpi. They can also be damn quiet.
Pitfall 2: Overload. A robot can overload when it underutilizes tasks with respect to its speed. Solution: Change the design to properly balance out the tasks and the speeds needed to perform those tasks.
Uh!?? You have to be a moron to make a robot that can't handle underutilization. Come on! Is this article a spoof?
Pitfall 3: Development. Using C and C++ to program your robot might cause problems with arrays and pointers. Solution: Use Ada to help you apply software-engineering principles and better track the progress in each life cycle stage, from concept to deployment. (See "Using Ada-Based Robotics to Teach Computer Science" in Resources.)
Use Ada? This isn't for real. Here's news for you: your OS was probably written in C and does it blow up all the time. Even XP is stable these days and it has millions of lines of C. What in heaven's name are you talking about?
Pitfall 4: Security. Hackers can exploit a robot's vulnerabilities and turn it into a weapon or completely disable it. Solution: Install safeguards to counter these vulnerabilities.
You must be one of those overpaid consultants. We're under threat from terrorism. Hey! Easy! Just install safeguards doh!
Pitfall 5: User Expectations. Users sometimes unrealistically expect that robots can make decisions. Solution: Educate users on what robots can do (learning tasks and motions) and cannot do (reasoning and making decisions).
Er? Is this a robotics problem? Sounds like a marketing problem to me.
Pitfall 6: Viruses. PCs that are wirelessly communicating with robots might contain viruses. Solution: Install anti-virus programs and present security awareness programs for programmers and users.
See 4 above.
Pitfall 7: Dimensions. The mouse can only provide two-dimensional positioning for a three-dimensional robot. Solution: Use a program that lets you create and view a three-dimensional robot or a game of robots in progress.
And a keyboard lets you type only at a certain speed. Solution: invent a faster input method. Wow! Can I get paid to write articles like this.
Pitfall 8: Batteries. Battery power can wear off and slow down, for example, the speed of the arm and the agility of its fingers. It can cause the fingers to accidentally drop an egg, creating a mess on the floor. Solution: Implement power management software that can sound an alert when the robot reaches a low power level; redesign the robot to lengthen the battery life; or switch to better-grade batteries.
Batteries can run out? You don't say. And the way to deal with it is do design the robot so the battery lasts longer? Wow! Never thought of that one!
Pitfall 9: Analog to Digital Conversion. When using wireless technology for robot communication, human agents and external objects are impacted by the technological limitations in converting analog inputs into digital outputs. For instance, the conversion process can distort soft sounds in voice recognition (analog "hear" converted to digital "held"). Solution: Take advantage of conversions not significantly affected by technological limitations.
Now you're really making stuff up. I'm not even going to comment. I think a 5 year old wrote this
I suppose searching for the '+' could be automated
That's the problem. It only takes one person to automate something and the tools spread like wildfire. Dammit! I had people hammering on my domain with a list of common names trying to find usernames to spam on my server. These people are evil and my tin-foil hat is well justified!
But then the senders can guess your underlying email address by deleting the '+' and what follows. You really want a completely different account for each vendor you deal with.
He gives the illusion of parity by using the same compiler on both platforms. But the back ends to these compilers are different pieces of code written by different people. There is no parity.
But by now you've read the story on the front page! We're talking about hand crafted assembler routines compared to non-hand-crafted routines on the Dells. Apples and pears!
Apple have been working for the last 3 or 4 years on that photoshop filter routine. Probably several million dollars of R&D have been poured into optimizing that one little routine. They use it in every single statement of specs they have. Of course a hand-crafted Altivec routine is going to perform well. Lets see how that scales up to large software projects. Last I saw their high-end compositing package, Shake, was dog-slow on a Mac compared to a Xeon.
...but I know where you can go to see the original. Well, you can't see all of it but nonetheless it's better than some fake that's millions of times smaller.
Whoever read that article needs the new high speed Easy-Flo-Z Stick-Wedged-Up-Ass remover. Lighten up for God's sake! Having a web browser in your phone, or a superlight stereo or a robot that mows the lawn is fun. Didn't they get the hint? One of the items under discussion was in fact an X-box after all. Not everything we humans do has to be noble. Some of us like to have fun. Hell, even cats and dogs like to have fun too. There's nothing weird or shameful about it. And for some of us having fun with gadgets is only one aspect of our lives.
That's nothing. Give a human a little stick connected to a base in such a way that you can waggle about the other and, and connect it via an electronic gizmo called a 'console' to a display and you can make some humans waggle that stick almost continuously until they need food and/or sleep.
Irrational is merely rational in the short term - sometimes very short.
Look, when you weigh up what to do next (and I don't necessarily mean consciously) you can imagine that you're averaging your benefit minus cost to yourself over a period of time. If that time (call it T) is long then that's called 'rational'. If that time is short 'irrational'.
So what's the optimal time? Make that time long and you won't even be alive. But what's the standard by which you make a judgement about T? You can't use the cost-benefit analysis above because that itself refers to T. There is no optimal T. T is something that has been selected by natural selection and is part of your genes (and acquired from culture too). For some people it is long. For some people it is short. There is no external judge of who is right.
Dijkstra is a typical programming Nazi. As far as he is concerned there is one way to program and that is that. There are many programming languages and models: Turing machines, assembler, neural networks, Pascal, FORTRAN, BASIC, C++, Smalltalk, FORTH, finite state machines and Haskell among others. Only one of these look like Pascal, and that's Pascal.
Each of these languages and models has a domain in which it solves a problem well - programmers have to work from systems ranging from multi-CPU servers with many Gigs of RAM down to tiny embedded systems with a few bytes of RAM. These people are all still programmers. Learning each new model opens your mind to a new way of doing things. Once you have enough experience you'll extract useful computation out of any complex enough system. Hell, to write software for a language like BASIC, without complex datastructures or pointers took a lot of fucking ingenuity and problem solving skills. So people like Dijkstra making ex cathedra declarations that GOTOs and BASIC are bad are a hindrance to solving real-world problems, not a help.
Slashdot Mirror
(2) How come all the loser mathematicians who can't hack it end up becoming programmers?.
I've never had much respect for Dijkstra. I have even less now.
(1) Yes, unlike most readers of /.
(2) I'm paid a lot more than him/her, I'm pretty sure of that
, but I have to work for my money (3) Cut and paste, silly. I didn't actually type much myself.
Why only quote one "pitfall"? You've ignored the other 90% which I assure you are just as brilliant!
Since when is vibration a big problem? Printers, scanners and all sorts of other devices have vibrating motors and can still work accurately at over 1000dpi. They can also be damn quiet.
Uh!?? You have to be a moron to make a robot that can't handle underutilization. Come on! Is this article a spoof?
Use Ada? This isn't for real. Here's news for you: your OS was probably written in C and does it blow up all the time. Even XP is stable these days and it has millions of lines of C. What in heaven's name are you talking about?
You must be one of those overpaid consultants. We're under threat from terrorism. Hey! Easy! Just install safeguards doh!
Er? Is this a robotics problem? Sounds like a marketing problem to me.
See 4 above.
And a keyboard lets you type only at a certain speed. Solution: invent a faster input method. Wow! Can I get paid to write articles like this.
Batteries can run out? You don't say. And the way to deal with it is do design the robot so the battery lasts longer? Wow! Never thought of that one!
Now you're really making stuff up. I'm not even going to comment. I think a 5 year old wrote this
But then the senders can guess your underlying email address by deleting the '+' and what follows. You really want a completely different account for each vendor you deal with.
And why has a character assassination been posted to /. as a story?
He gives the illusion of parity by using the same compiler on both platforms. But the back ends to these compilers are different pieces of code written by different people. There is no parity.
But by now you've read the story on the front page! We're talking about hand crafted assembler routines compared to non-hand-crafted routines on the Dells. Apples and pears!
Apple have been working for the last 3 or 4 years on that photoshop filter routine. Probably several million dollars of R&D have been poured into optimizing that one little routine. They use it in every single statement of specs they have. Of course a hand-crafted Altivec routine is going to perform well. Lets see how that scales up to large software projects. Last I saw their high-end compositing package, Shake, was dog-slow on a Mac compared to a Xeon.
What's not 'personal' about an O2?
...SGIs fitted on my desktop. In fact, they have a smaller footprint than PCs. Can we sue Apple for misrepresentation in advertising?
Damn! The evil pirates are worse than I thought. They're responsible for a decline in the entire economy!
Does anyone out there know?
...but I know where you can go to see the original. Well, you can't see all of it but nonetheless it's better than some fake that's millions of times smaller.
Whoever read that article needs the new high speed Easy-Flo-Z Stick-Wedged-Up-Ass remover. Lighten up for God's sake! Having a web browser in your phone, or a superlight stereo or a robot that mows the lawn is fun. Didn't they get the hint? One of the items under discussion was in fact an X-box after all. Not everything we humans do has to be noble. Some of us like to have fun. Hell, even cats and dogs like to have fun too. There's nothing weird or shameful about it. And for some of us having fun with gadgets is only one aspect of our lives.
That's nothing. Give a human a little stick connected to a base in such a way that you can waggle about the other and, and connect it via an electronic gizmo called a 'console' to a display and you can make some humans waggle that stick almost continuously until they need food and/or sleep.
Look, when you weigh up what to do next (and I don't necessarily mean consciously) you can imagine that you're averaging your benefit minus cost to yourself over a period of time. If that time (call it T) is long then that's called 'rational'. If that time is short 'irrational'.
So what's the optimal time? Make that time long and you won't even be alive. But what's the standard by which you make a judgement about T? You can't use the cost-benefit analysis above because that itself refers to T. There is no optimal T. T is something that has been selected by natural selection and is part of your genes (and acquired from culture too). For some people it is long. For some people it is short. There is no external judge of who is right.
Usually the people who say that are old. Funny that.
...The Moron's Guide to Switching on your Apple IIe and the Loser's Guide to Inserting a Cassette Tape into your Commodore Pet.
...but "Open Group" seems to me like a misnomer.
Shouldn't that be: GNUEOAT's Not Unix...except on alternate tuesdays?
Each of these languages and models has a domain in which it solves a problem well - programmers have to work from systems ranging from multi-CPU servers with many Gigs of RAM down to tiny embedded systems with a few bytes of RAM. These people are all still programmers. Learning each new model opens your mind to a new way of doing things. Once you have enough experience you'll extract useful computation out of any complex enough system. Hell, to write software for a language like BASIC, without complex datastructures or pointers took a lot of fucking ingenuity and problem solving skills. So people like Dijkstra making ex cathedra declarations that GOTOs and BASIC are bad are a hindrance to solving real-world problems, not a help.
I'll check when I get home tonight. There is a fix as it works 100% perfectly for me - I definitely don't get scrollback and I'm using Terminal.app.