I'm a dyed-in-the-wool HP48G user. In my mind, the TI is the calculator of Johnny-come-lately kids, the same sort of kids who only started using a computer when it stopped being considered nerdy (and when 3D games came out). Where I went to school, the AP and Gifted kids (and in college, the Honours students) used HP calcs, and the mundanes on the football team used TI calcs. Yes, I'm biased.;-)
So... what I would like to hear is a serious, geekly discussion of why HP users should take note at the ever more powerful plastic doodads coming out from TI. I never met a TI geek in school, but given the facts that (A) TI's hardware is much more powerful than HP's, (B) SlashDotters are speed freaks and would appreciate this, and (C) SlashDotters are geeks, I'm sure there are quite a few geeks who can give a sound technical discussion of why they prefer the TI (other than the obvious "lol its faster".)
Blah blah, more words, more words, blah blah blah
on
Synthetic Life In The Lab
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Given the fact that we haven't even yet created a single bacterium from scratch (the closest we've come is to "bum out" all the optional instructions from one of the simplest known naturally-occuring bacteria to create the simplest possible bacterium we could think of), how long will it be before we have this hot new vapourware biotech? Wake me when it's over... oh, in about 20 YEARS. Yet more speculative flimflam.
Incidentally, what in the heck does this tech have to do with Blade Runner? Blade Runner replicants were seemingly composed of individual organs and tissues grown de novo in labs and vats (e.g. the eyes in Chu's "Eye World"). Blade Runner replicants are built of "organ bricks", not "DNA bricks" as being discussed here. Jesus Christ...
I love RPN. Many of the posters here love RPN. But to the average user, RPN is like "lol i dont get it its all BACKWREDZ". I remember offering to loan my HP48G to people who handed it right back to me after trying (and failing) to comprehend RPN.
Is there a paper somewhere on why RPN is a Good Thing(TM), and not just "lol teh math is backwardz"? Cuz to the average user, RPN is like "speak like Yoda do I!" It seems pointless to them, and only slows comprehension.
Fifty bucks buys you a calculator with rubbery keys (in a weird 'newbie-friendly' pattern), a two-line (!!!) screen, and 31KB (!!!) of "RAM user memory"? What the fuck are they smoking? How is this better than a used HP48G that you could get for probably the same price?
Jesus Christ, it's 2004. We should have HP48G-looking units with 64MB of RAM, double-high-res colour transflective screens (think GBA), USB ports, AND full backwards-compatibility with all the wonderful HP48[G/GX/S/SX] software out there (think of how the newer Palm devices can run older Palm software), but no, we get this pile of steamed monkey dung...
I guess this is what we can expect from..... Compaq.
There is no correlation between pricing and piracy, and I challenge you to find any evidence to the contrary.
Yeah, I suppose all those penniless students studying in fields that are gonna require AutoCAD skills really have the option to buy AutoCAD for the low, low price of $3,470. Which, I might add, is more than most students pay for a car, a computer and all the software on it-- combined.
You can't really be so stupid to forget that not all software costs $99.95 or less...
I'm allowed to rant if I want to. This is an ongoing problem. Every goddamned day, SlashDot posts a new "$NEWTECH coming soon" or "research breakthrough could lead to $NEWTECH", and I'm fucking sick of it. If I wanted to read about small advances towards large goals that, by themselves, don't actually increase anyone's standard of living, I'd read scientific journals, not SlashDot.
Look, what good is a flying car if there's only a few of them in the whole world, they're only for demonstration purposes, and no one can buy them? What good is a fusion reactor if it takes in more energy than it puts out? What good is AI that doesn't work? Nanotechnology that can only produce little weensy gears and levers? Quantum teleportation technology that can only transport a single subatomic particle at a time? WHOOPTEESHIT. Stop wasting my time with stories about this sort of crap, and publish stories when these projects are actually FINISHED.
Look, this is all well and good, but I'm sick and fucking tired of reading stories like "Scientists working on new method for fusion" and "Flying cars almost ready?" and "Men on Mars sooner than we think". I am a pessimist, and as the psychological literature will show, pessimism is realism. I assume that nothing is going to change in the 'status quo' until it has already changed.
Geeks like us, and researchers looking to get more grant money, have been babbling about fusion, flying cars, a return to the moon, a trip to Mars, terraforming Mars, anti-gravity devices, transporters, replicators, eternal life, brain transplantation and human cloning for-fucking-ever. YOU KNOW WHAT? I AM FUCKING SICK OF READING ABOUT SPECULATIVE FLIMFLAM. I want to read, for once, a story like:
Flying cars being sold from reputable Web site for $20,000 RIGHT NOW
Holy shit: Man lands on Mars!
Fusion reactor perfected; lauded as "great success". Test reactor already tethered to power grid generating $BIGNUM megawatts; construction on fullscale reactor underway.
AND...
Silent supersonic airliner makes first of new daily Transatlantic flights wearing $MAJOR_AIRLINE colours. Book tickets at $URL.
Stop wasting my fucking time until something is actually AVAILABLE NOW. God, I'm fucking sick of reading this kind of pie-in-the-sky bullshit! It's all over SlashDot and, to a lesser extent, all over the "mainstream" news media. Fuck this shit, I don't want to hear about how "at some point in the "near" future" we "may" have such-and-such. I want a fucking link to buy one on walmart.com.
Fucking Christ, are all research organisations just like us geeks-- starting projects but never finishing them?
Oh, and you over there at moller.com: STOP BABBLING ABOUT YOUR GOD-DAMNED FLYING CARS AND START SELLING THE FUCKING THINGS ALREADY!!! YOU'RE ALREADY 10 YEARS LATE, YOU FUCKWITS! And if the FAA won't let you sell them in the US, SELL THEM ELSEWHERE. RIGHT FUCKING NOW!
What is the point of scanning at such a high res?
on
600 PowerMacs Make One DVD
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It's not like these are crisp, sharp modern prints. Jesus, at 4000 dpi, the film grains will be dozens of pixels in diameter...
Do we REALLY need more things fighting Java?
on
A Taste of Qt 4
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Already, Java is being threatened by Microsoft (for obvious reasons) and by Sun themselves (for almost-as-obvious reasons-- i.e. Sun getting into bed with Microsoft). Remember that the software field does not look like "Microsoft versus Sun versus Apple versus...." at present. Rather, it looks like "Microsoft versus everybody else.."
Until the marketplace is more open, with no gigantic 95+% monopolies in any given field, I'd like to see the non-Microsoft players cooperate in an effort to cut MS down to size. Then, and only then, should they focus on competing amongst themselves!
...do these security robots run?
I just know I'm going to get modded Troll for this, but with all due respect, I wouldn't feel terribily comfortable with a company whose security bots run Windows. I'll feel especially freaked out when the security bots advance to the point where they are actually armed. Can you imagine Windows BSoDing on one of these things, and causing a gun to fire? Gives me the shivers. And I'm sure it's only a matter of time before it happens... (shit, if the Navy can base an entire warship around Windows...)
I'm dead serious. I grew up deeply resenting school, feeling like I was on a treadmill, and (disregarding all the non-academic factors, e.g. bureaucracy, asshole teachers, schoolyard bullies, etc. etc.) 90% of what I hated was grades.
I'm a National Merit Scholar. SAT score 1540. #4 in my HS class (a LARGE one). The works... however, as "smart" as the "system" seems to think I am, I detested school due to the constant pressure to get good grades.
To this day, I've found that-- particularly in math and the 'hard sciences', where there is Only One Right Answer, I can only truly focus on learning anything when I am not being graded. FOR WHEN I AM BEING GRADED, I ONLY THINK ABOUT THE GRADES...
Note that to this very day, I have nightmares about failing Calculus classes. Literally, nightmares. Truly I'm not the only one out there? The stereotype about "school nightmares" is that they all revolve around one being naked in school. My "school nightmares" are about failing Calculus and Physics!
"The Amiga OS 4.0 SDK will allow near effortless migration of existing Amiga OS 3.x source-code to OS 4.0 as well as the creation of altogether new content."
Well, that's great. So, in other words, they can play their old Amiga games on it... if they can convince the makers to come out of retirement and port them. Or they can run their wonderful old Amiga graphics manipulation apps... if they can convince the makers to come out of retirement and port them. Or.... well, you get the point.
This is going to really really upset the old-school Amiga fans. For all intents and purposes, it isn't AmigaOS at all!
It is as if the Linux kernel received no updates at all for ten years after 2.8 was finished... then suddenly, wow, "Linux 3.0" was announced! But it said that it wouldn't run old apps compiled under Linux 2.x-- oh, but it "would make it trivial to port apps originally coded for Linux 2.x". By which time, of course, none of said source code would even be in general circulation...
How the heck can they call this "AmigaOS" if it has essentially ZERO backwards-compatibility with previous AmigaOSes? Jesus. This is worse than those non-commercial/FOSS efforts to create a "new AmigaOS". I could have sworn one of them can at least run old AmigaOS apps, if only in emulation...
The LEAST they could have done was provide a "Classic AmigaOS layer", like what Apple did with Mac OS X to allow it to run "Classic" (pre-X) Mac OS apps...
I maintain a file, quotes.txt, in my home directory. When I read something catchy, pithy or-- especially-- wise, I copy the quote to the file (with a citation of who said it).
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a dyed-in-the-wool HP48G user. In my mind, the TI is the calculator of Johnny-come-lately kids, the same sort of kids who only started using a computer when it stopped being considered nerdy (and when 3D games came out). Where I went to school, the AP and Gifted kids (and in college, the Honours students) used HP calcs, and the mundanes on the football team used TI calcs. Yes, I'm biased. ;-)
So... what I would like to hear is a serious, geekly discussion of why HP users should take note at the ever more powerful plastic doodads coming out from TI. I never met a TI geek in school, but given the facts that (A) TI's hardware is much more powerful than HP's, (B) SlashDotters are speed freaks and would appreciate this, and (C) SlashDotters are geeks, I'm sure there are quite a few geeks who can give a sound technical discussion of why they prefer the TI (other than the obvious "lol its faster".)
Given the fact that we haven't even yet created a single bacterium from scratch (the closest we've come is to "bum out" all the optional instructions from one of the simplest known naturally-occuring bacteria to create the simplest possible bacterium we could think of), how long will it be before we have this hot new vapourware biotech? Wake me when it's over... oh, in about 20 YEARS. Yet more speculative flimflam.
Incidentally, what in the heck does this tech have to do with Blade Runner? Blade Runner replicants were seemingly composed of individual organs and tissues grown de novo in labs and vats (e.g. the eyes in Chu's "Eye World"). Blade Runner replicants are built of "organ bricks", not "DNA bricks" as being discussed here. Jesus Christ...
Is that someone who discriminates against people on the basis of their face?
So they're gonna ban carpenters' tools? You know what they say... when wood screws are outlawed, only criminals will have wood screws...
I love RPN. Many of the posters here love RPN. But to the average user, RPN is like "lol i dont get it its all BACKWREDZ". I remember offering to loan my HP48G to people who handed it right back to me after trying (and failing) to comprehend RPN.
Is there a paper somewhere on why RPN is a Good Thing(TM), and not just "lol teh math is backwardz"? Cuz to the average user, RPN is like "speak like Yoda do I!" It seems pointless to them, and only slows comprehension.
Fifty bucks buys you a calculator with rubbery keys (in a weird 'newbie-friendly' pattern), a two-line (!!!) screen, and 31KB (!!!) of "RAM user memory"? What the fuck are they smoking? How is this better than a used HP48G that you could get for probably the same price?
Jesus Christ, it's 2004. We should have HP48G-looking units with 64MB of RAM, double-high-res colour transflective screens (think GBA), USB ports, AND full backwards-compatibility with all the wonderful HP48[G/GX/S/SX] software out there (think of how the newer Palm devices can run older Palm software), but no, we get this pile of steamed monkey dung...
I guess this is what we can expect from..... Compaq.
I'm not a driver, dumbfuck. I live in a big city. I ride the subway.
There is no correlation between pricing and piracy, and I challenge you to find any evidence to the contrary.
Yeah, I suppose all those penniless students studying in fields that are gonna require AutoCAD skills really have the option to buy AutoCAD for the low, low price of $3,470. Which, I might add, is more than most students pay for a car, a computer and all the software on it-- combined.
You can't really be so stupid to forget that not all software costs $99.95 or less...
The Concorde was not a commercial success, mainly because no real human being could afford to fly on it.
I'm allowed to rant if I want to. This is an ongoing problem. Every goddamned day, SlashDot posts a new "$NEWTECH coming soon" or "research breakthrough could lead to $NEWTECH", and I'm fucking sick of it. If I wanted to read about small advances towards large goals that, by themselves, don't actually increase anyone's standard of living, I'd read scientific journals, not SlashDot.
Look, what good is a flying car if there's only a few of them in the whole world, they're only for demonstration purposes, and no one can buy them? What good is a fusion reactor if it takes in more energy than it puts out? What good is AI that doesn't work? Nanotechnology that can only produce little weensy gears and levers? Quantum teleportation technology that can only transport a single subatomic particle at a time? WHOOPTEESHIT. Stop wasting my time with stories about this sort of crap, and publish stories when these projects are actually FINISHED.
Geeks like us, and researchers looking to get more grant money, have been babbling about fusion, flying cars, a return to the moon, a trip to Mars, terraforming Mars, anti-gravity devices, transporters, replicators, eternal life, brain transplantation and human cloning for-fucking-ever. YOU KNOW WHAT? I AM FUCKING SICK OF READING ABOUT SPECULATIVE FLIMFLAM. I want to read, for once, a story like:
Flying cars being sold from reputable Web site for $20,000 RIGHT NOW
Holy shit: Man lands on Mars!
Fusion reactor perfected; lauded as "great success". Test reactor already tethered to power grid generating $BIGNUM megawatts; construction on fullscale reactor underway. AND...
Silent supersonic airliner makes first of new daily Transatlantic flights wearing $MAJOR_AIRLINE colours. Book tickets at $URL.
Stop wasting my fucking time until something is actually AVAILABLE NOW. God, I'm fucking sick of reading this kind of pie-in-the-sky bullshit! It's all over SlashDot and, to a lesser extent, all over the "mainstream" news media. Fuck this shit, I don't want to hear about how "at some point in the "near" future" we "may" have such-and-such. I want a fucking link to buy one on walmart.com.
Fucking Christ, are all research organisations just like us geeks-- starting projects but never finishing them?
Oh, and you over there at moller.com: STOP BABBLING ABOUT YOUR GOD-DAMNED FLYING CARS AND START SELLING THE FUCKING THINGS ALREADY!!! YOU'RE ALREADY 10 YEARS LATE, YOU FUCKWITS! And if the FAA won't let you sell them in the US, SELL THEM ELSEWHERE. RIGHT FUCKING NOW!
You rule. I thought I was the only GK fan. :)
It's not like these are crisp, sharp modern prints. Jesus, at 4000 dpi, the film grains will be dozens of pixels in diameter...
Already, Java is being threatened by Microsoft (for obvious reasons) and by Sun themselves (for almost-as-obvious reasons-- i.e. Sun getting into bed with Microsoft). Remember that the software field does not look like "Microsoft versus Sun versus Apple versus...." at present. Rather, it looks like "Microsoft versus everybody else.."
Until the marketplace is more open, with no gigantic 95+% monopolies in any given field, I'd like to see the non-Microsoft players cooperate in an effort to cut MS down to size. Then, and only then, should they focus on competing amongst themselves!
...do these security robots run? I just know I'm going to get modded Troll for this, but with all due respect, I wouldn't feel terribily comfortable with a company whose security bots run Windows. I'll feel especially freaked out when the security bots advance to the point where they are actually armed. Can you imagine Windows BSoDing on one of these things, and causing a gun to fire? Gives me the shivers. And I'm sure it's only a matter of time before it happens... (shit, if the Navy can base an entire warship around Windows...)
I'm dead serious. I grew up deeply resenting school, feeling like I was on a treadmill, and (disregarding all the non-academic factors, e.g. bureaucracy, asshole teachers, schoolyard bullies, etc. etc.) 90% of what I hated was grades.
I'm a National Merit Scholar. SAT score 1540. #4 in my HS class (a LARGE one). The works... however, as "smart" as the "system" seems to think I am, I detested school due to the constant pressure to get good grades.
To this day, I've found that-- particularly in math and the 'hard sciences', where there is Only One Right Answer, I can only truly focus on learning anything when I am not being graded. FOR WHEN I AM BEING GRADED, I ONLY THINK ABOUT THE GRADES...
Note that to this very day, I have nightmares about failing Calculus classes. Literally, nightmares. Truly I'm not the only one out there? The stereotype about "school nightmares" is that they all revolve around one being naked in school. My "school nightmares" are about failing Calculus and Physics!
That would be, what, 90% of them? :P
"The Amiga OS 4.0 SDK will allow near effortless migration of existing Amiga OS 3.x source-code to OS 4.0 as well as the creation of altogether new content."
.... well, you get the point.
Well, that's great. So, in other words, they can play their old Amiga games on it... if they can convince the makers to come out of retirement and port them. Or they can run their wonderful old Amiga graphics manipulation apps... if they can convince the makers to come out of retirement and port them. Or
This is going to really really upset the old-school Amiga fans. For all intents and purposes, it isn't AmigaOS at all!
It is as if the Linux kernel received no updates at all for ten years after 2.8 was finished... then suddenly, wow, "Linux 3.0" was announced! But it said that it wouldn't run old apps compiled under Linux 2.x-- oh, but it "would make it trivial to port apps originally coded for Linux 2.x". By which time, of course, none of said source code would even be in general circulation...
How the heck can they call this "AmigaOS" if it has essentially ZERO backwards-compatibility with previous AmigaOSes? Jesus. This is worse than those non-commercial/FOSS efforts to create a "new AmigaOS". I could have sworn one of them can at least run old AmigaOS apps, if only in emulation...
The LEAST they could have done was provide a "Classic AmigaOS layer", like what Apple did with Mac OS X to allow it to run "Classic" (pre-X) Mac OS apps...
You said: "about there G4 iMacs."
You meant: "about their G4 iMacs."
The plural of "Mac" is "Macs", not "Mac's". "Mac's" means "Mac is", as in "My Mac's such a sweet machine", or "Your Mac's been upgraded AGAIN?"
No. They'll call it "two-ply".
Isn't that an oxymoron? Cray Canada's CTO says so. Then again, Borland's CTO said "OS X is my favorite Linux distribution.", so maybe CTOs aren't so smart about Technology after all ;)
That would almost CERTAINLY be a EULA and/or Copyright and/or "Trade Secrets" and/or DMCA violation...
I maintain a file, quotes.txt, in my home directory. When I read something catchy, pithy or-- especially-- wise, I copy the quote to the file (with a citation of who said it).
Evidently I am now a freaking criminal for this?
...I don't know him from a hole in the wall. But his cousin, E. Pluribus Unum.... that guy, I trust. :)