I don't know about you, but I bought my iBook from Apple.com, and in the iBook box, I had 3 green coupons that I can exchange in an official Apple retailer for software. So, you bring your green coupon, get a copy of Panther off the shelf, give the coupon to the clerk and you can walk out.
Totally agree. +1 to you. Lisp is an extremely advanced language, but some of the stuff scares people off (and I'm not talking only about parens).
Let's hope some day people see the light and understand what Lisp is about and work to bring all the neat Lisp features (and hopefully new neat features) to all programmers.
Yes. There's this GNU/Laser system and the source of the laser is open (Open Source Laser). SCO stole this "laser" and they hope to tell Goliath he has stolen their "laser".
It had a very nice GUI, it was fast and responsive, it was very light. I liked its design and feel, but I sticked to Debian due to the eternal problems that plague most new OSes:
Lack of 3rd party apps
Lack of drivers
Lack of documentation
Lack of some useful features (multi-user for example)
This Zeta looks nice, but it won't be successful as long as it carries these problems.
This horrible, horrible, horrible. In the books, I always skipped the singing parts because they were far too boring, and now they want to make a musical? Maybe people who have sleeping troubles will go there, and maybe a couple midgets, but not me, no, not me, NO, NOT ME, *NO*, *NOT*ME*, _*NO*_, _*NOT*_*_*ME*_!!!!!!!!!!
Check out POPFile. It's a filtering proxy, so you use their great documentation to learn how to set it up (easy) and it works with any email client. The only thing that makes it somewhat hard is first time configuration (buckets and classifying the first messages yourself), but once that's done, you forget about it and it just works.
Quote: (Incidentally, you'll probably find Octave or Perl/PDL a more convenient language for implementing this stuff than Lisp.)
I don't know if you are aware, but Paul Graham is an absolute Lisp genius. The first book he wrote was called On Lisp, and it talked how to write software in Lisp. He explains a technique called bottom-up programming (which, of course, can be used in many other programming languages). With that technique, you don't address the problem directly first: you start by writing a set of operators for your problem. So, once you have those functions/operators/primitives, you have the best language for the job you are going to be doing. So, what Paul did when he wrote Viaweb (Yahoo! Stores), was to first write a language to write WYSIWYG web editors. Now, he's in the spam filtering business, so certainly wrote all the stuff he needs to be as efficient as possible in his programming.
No, because if they have a lot of legitimate mails with words like "sex", "sexy", "penis", "vagina", "viagra", etc., the filter will adapt. That's the whole point. For PG, "sexy" is a sure sign of spam, but for a sexologist, it is not. You train the filter to recognize your spam. So if "sex" appears as much in your legitimate mail than in your spam, "sex" will not be considered a trace of a spam.
Bayesian filters adapt, that's why they work so well.
1. I think features are a big problem. Let's take ICQ, that thing is so loaded with crappy, useless features! But these features contribute to fragilize the application. Follow the "KISS" principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid), don't add stupid/useless features to your applications.
2. Testing. Recently, I started writing unit tests for my applications, and I can tell you that this is something that should pushed more! They can definitly help discover bugs in your application. I think schools should teach unit testing and encourage students to always use them.
These two points could help make applications somewhat stabler. Also, using "safe" languages (Lisp, Python, Ruby, ML, Smalltalk, etc.) is another step in the right direction; let the compiler/interpreter worry about low-level details, you just make sure that your code does what is expected.
Apple is mainly a hardware company, so don't expect them to release an x86 version of MacOS X. And anyway, what's the big deal? You can get a eMac (w/ a G4 processor) for $749. That's pretty cheap and it's gonna work well: my G3 800Mhz iBook runs just fine. Stop crying about prices: iMacs, iBooks and eMacs are good machines and are pretty cheap (in price). On the other hand, PowerMacs and PowerBooks are power machines, and it's natural that they cost more
Am I the only one that woke up in the middle of the night because I was dreaming I was playing a tetris game? Or am I the only one who when I have nothing (but really NOTHING) to do, I imagine a tetris game? It hurts the brain bad...!
They write software that can be used on many, many different kinds of computers.
Hum... their software works on x86 computers running Windows. That's not many, many different kinds of computers: that's a whole lot of identical computers.
Emacs is an editor that has been around for 20+ years, it is so extensible that you can use it as your debugger, you can use it to compile stuff, you can modify EVERY behaviour of it. You can also add lots of stuff like a doctor, a tetris game, an interface to gnuchess, etc.
Emacs is also extremely stable, safe (no buffer overflows or stuff like that).
Even if I don't use Emacs (I prefer Vim), I think it's one of the most extreme programs ever designed.
The world is getting faster and faster and faster (and so are computers) and people want things faster. So the speed of C will not be as important as the speed of development of a software:
Boss: I want this software written in 2 hours!
C programmer: Hum... 2 hours on Pluto?
Blub programmer: It'll be done in one hour!
Also, we will want safer languages, because more and more things will rely on software and we don't want crackers to mess things up, do we?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about you, but I bought my iBook from Apple.com, and in the iBook box, I had 3 green coupons that I can exchange in an official Apple retailer for software. So, you bring your green coupon, get a copy of Panther off the shelf, give the coupon to the clerk and you can walk out.
Let's hope some day people see the light and understand what Lisp is about and work to bring all the neat Lisp features (and hopefully new neat features) to all programmers.
He's probably talking about the book ANSI Common Lisp written by Paul Graham :)
Yes. There's this GNU/Laser system and the source of the laser is open (Open Source Laser). SCO stole this "laser" and they hope to tell Goliath he has stolen their "laser".
Why exactly can't you write simple text/graphic games or whatever with Scheme or Lisp?
Hum... that would make a nice addition to paintball games
Linux was open, so instead of whining, people wrote their own drivers. With BeOS being closed-source, the same is not true.
Lack of 3rd party apps
Lack of drivers
Lack of documentation
Lack of some useful features (multi-user for example)
This Zeta looks nice, but it won't be successful as long as it carries these problems.
This horrible, horrible, horrible. In the books, I always skipped the singing parts because they were far too boring, and now they want to make a musical? Maybe people who have sleeping troubles will go there, and maybe a couple midgets, but not me, no, not me, NO, NOT ME, *NO*, *NOT*ME*, _*NO*_, _*NOT*_*_*ME*_!!!!!!!!!!
Check out POPFile. It's a filtering proxy, so you use their great documentation to learn how to set it up (easy) and it works with any email client. The only thing that makes it somewhat hard is first time configuration (buckets and classifying the first messages yourself), but once that's done, you forget about it and it just works.
(Incidentally, you'll probably find Octave or Perl/PDL a more convenient language for implementing this stuff than Lisp.)
I don't know if you are aware, but Paul Graham is an absolute Lisp genius. The first book he wrote was called On Lisp, and it talked how to write software in Lisp. He explains a technique called bottom-up programming (which, of course, can be used in many other programming languages). With that technique, you don't address the problem directly first: you start by writing a set of operators for your problem. So, once you have those functions/operators/primitives, you have the best language for the job you are going to be doing. So, what Paul did when he wrote Viaweb (Yahoo! Stores), was to first write a language to write WYSIWYG web editors. Now, he's in the spam filtering business, so certainly wrote all the stuff he needs to be as efficient as possible in his programming.
Bayesian filters adapt, that's why they work so well.
2. Testing. Recently, I started writing unit tests for my applications, and I can tell you that this is something that should pushed more! They can definitly help discover bugs in your application. I think schools should teach unit testing and encourage students to always use them.
These two points could help make applications somewhat stabler. Also, using "safe" languages (Lisp, Python, Ruby, ML, Smalltalk, etc.) is another step in the right direction; let the compiler/interpreter worry about low-level details, you just make sure that your code does what is expected.
Apple is mainly a hardware company, so don't expect them to release an x86 version of MacOS X. And anyway, what's the big deal? You can get a eMac (w/ a G4 processor) for $749. That's pretty cheap and it's gonna work well: my G3 800Mhz iBook runs just fine. Stop crying about prices: iMacs, iBooks and eMacs are good machines and are pretty cheap (in price). On the other hand, PowerMacs and PowerBooks are power machines, and it's natural that they cost more
His first name is Marvin and he is depressed about the lack of progress in AI. Is that guy an intelligent robot that was in Douglas Adams' books?
Move all zigs?
Am I the only one that woke up in the middle of the night because I was dreaming I was playing a tetris game? Or am I the only one who when I have nothing (but really NOTHING) to do, I imagine a tetris game? It hurts the brain bad...!
Hum... their software works on x86 computers running Windows. That's not many, many different kinds of computers: that's a whole lot of identical computers.
http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/4015_15 1.png
Emacs is an editor that has been around for 20+ years, it is so extensible that you can use it as your debugger, you can use it to compile stuff, you can modify EVERY behaviour of it. You can also add lots of stuff like a doctor, a tetris game, an interface to gnuchess, etc. Emacs is also extremely stable, safe (no buffer overflows or stuff like that). Even if I don't use Emacs (I prefer Vim), I think it's one of the most extreme programs ever designed.
Cure voting apathy? Not if you have the I don't want to cast a vote you insensitive clod! option in there
should be read according to the sun's position. Who needs minutes and seconds?
Boss: I want this software written in 2 hours!
C programmer: Hum... 2 hours on Pluto?
Blub programmer: It'll be done in one hour!
Also, we will want safer languages, because more and more things will rely on software and we don't want crackers to mess things up, do we?
\ Word definitions ; ; ; ;
." years of prison" ;
: convicted-of 0 ; \ To convict someone
: murder 25 +
: arson 10 +
: robbery 2 +
: music-copying 40 +
: sentenced-to .
And to use it:
convicted-of music-copying robbery
sentenced-to
Output: 42 years of prison
This looks quite like english. Of course, you can do that in many languages, but it feels more natural in Forth I think
\ Word definitions : convicted-of 0 ; \ To convict someone : murder 25 + ; : arson 10 + ; : robbery 2 + ; : music-copying 40 + ; : sentenced-to . ." years of prison" ;
And to use it:
convicted-of music-copying robbery sentenced-to
Output: 42 years of prison This looks quite like english. Of course, you can do that in many languages, but it feels more natural in Forth I think.