I missed the multiple independent lines of text part. I still feel this should be at least half-way solved, there's a ton of work that has been vested in finding efficient algorithms to transform large strings under various conditions and circumstances.
Seriously, give Squeak a chance. It's a Smalltalk-80 implementation that is very friendly to newbie programmers. Use it and learn some basic object-orientation and see what it can do for you.
Then you can move on to basically any modern imperative language.
Developing a web browser in Java would take several weeks? Oh please. Dude, you just embedded an IE control in your window. Do you really think that's gonna take that long time in Java (or C++)?
Any decent language have API:s making image viewers, email clients, etc. fast to make. Try writing an application where there is no control you can drag and drop in the GUI (which by the way you can do in ANY decent IDE in ANY decent programming language), then get back to me on the greatness of VB.
Anyway, the step separting VB6 from VB.NET is object-orientation basically. I would advise any VB programmer to go to C# instead of VB.NET though (if you must code using MS products).
Use the edit distance algorithm and find all traces transforming the source string into the target string. Then go through all traces and try to chunk them into as big "editing chunks" as possible, which depends on whatever the editing operations they permit.
Until Java 1.5 (and the java.util.concurrent API) Java didn't do that much to make it easier to produce multi-threaded programs, the built-in synchronization just tricks new programmers into writing dangerous applications. For example reading a long is not guaranteed to be atomic, there are no built-in facilities for semaphores, etc.
And regarding your raning on lazy programmers, programs actually do a lot more stuff now than they used to do. Accessibility, i18n, flexible underlaying toolkits and API:s, better graphics, more features in general, etc.
Agreed, my parents have very little clue on stuff like that. Actually I think awareness of scams and security basics like an URL is an "address" and things you type in a search engine are search times should probably be on the priority list for an "learning to use computers" curricullum, esp. for older users.
And why would that be the case considering how long time it takes to be proficient in typing? Surely, it is possible that an alternative text entry interface would emerge in the future.
For example Dasher
is pretty cool, and there are other (in fact numerous) alternative interfaces. See for example Masui's on-line bibliography.
40 hour week is not a basic legal right in Europe. Maybe if you work for the goverment or an international corporation (which have special deals with the unions). Most engineers and scientists can just forget about compensation. You work as much as you have to or you're laid off. And it's not easy to get a new job in Europe either...
Maybe... but how would it burst? A small company may need a patent to get VC fundend, then they get bought by one of these patent portfolio companies that sue the small companies competitors who can't afford to fight in court. Sounds to me, the only way to change that is to change the laws, there is no economics in it that will make things like this go away.
Also, the EU will probably adapt the US patent system. So the mess in the US will probably transfer to Europe and I can't see any reason why any bubble would burst there either (we already got messy patent litigations over here too).
Ok, that's not fair though. I happen to have seen it demoed live and tried by a friend of mine. Of course it does not work as good as they claim it to do (you can basically only do hunt and peck typing, not touch-typing), but still, it does exist.
Is this really new technology? The Canesta keyboard already projects an image of a keyboard on any surface. This seems to be the same thing, except the Canesta keyboard exists in reality, and this site has a (well looks like anyway) photoshoped image. It could of course differ in resolution, etc.
Nah, he's talking about a Python hack that was posted on slashdot a while ago, which made it possible to mount a connection to google mail and use it as storage.
The recognition part is not the "core" of the patetnt, the core is a specialized alphabet that 1. allows faster text entry and 2. easy to recognize since it's "unistroke" e.g. one single stroke per character.
However the patent is riddiculously general, the recognition part IS 1. obvious and 2. known in the science since the 60s, it's really not novel. And specialized simplified alphabets like Unistrokes have been known since the 17th century in various shorthand alphabets in UK and Germany.
So in summary, it's excellent that the patent is invalidated.
Good point, but it is not okay to copy code from O'Reilly however you want. It is NOT in the public domain. While they may let you, they may also sue you. So even copying code snippets from technical books can be infringing on copyright (or rather IS infringing on copy right).
Re:seriously, the problem I don't see an answer to
on
Searching by Shape...
·
· Score: 1
Well I assume they measure similarity invariant of affine transforms
You are forgetting the fact that the rest of the world is quick to be "compatible" with the U.S. and E.U. patents systems (which are by the way in the process of merging, pracically the E.U. patent system will be like the U.S. one). WTO et. al. will ensure that all booming tech country prospects will be compatible with an aggressive patent system.
Actually the merits of DVORAK is of some debate still in QWERTYnomics, an economic theory stating that every damn thing follows another, meaning that since QWERTY is/was de facto standard DVORAK never succedded replacing QWERTY. The opponents refer to the experiments showing superior performance using the DVORAK layout were seriously flawed and suffered great conflict of interest. So the advantage of DVORAK may not be all that great.
I just love the intro. calc. book by Courant: Introduction to Calculus and Analysis vol. 1. It is clear and precise. The downside is that almost all problems are proofs and there are no solutions. So for self-study you need to complement the material with a solutions book.
Slashdot Mirror
I completely agree, time to meta mod again.
I missed the multiple independent lines of text part. I still feel this should be at least half-way solved, there's a ton of work that has been vested in finding efficient algorithms to transform large strings under various conditions and circumstances.
Seriously, give Squeak a chance. It's a Smalltalk-80 implementation that is very friendly to newbie programmers. Use it and learn some basic object-orientation and see what it can do for you.
Then you can move on to basically any modern imperative language.
Squeak website
Developing a web browser in Java would take several weeks? Oh please. Dude, you just embedded an IE control in your window. Do you really think that's gonna take that long time in Java (or C++)?
Any decent language have API:s making image viewers, email clients, etc. fast to make. Try writing an application where there is no control you can drag and drop in the GUI (which by the way you can do in ANY decent IDE in ANY decent programming language), then get back to me on the greatness of VB.
Anyway, the step separting VB6 from VB.NET is object-orientation basically. I would advise any VB programmer to go to C# instead of VB.NET though (if you must code using MS products).
So what's the deal with this?
Use the edit distance algorithm and find all traces transforming the source string into the target string. Then go through all traces and try to chunk them into as big "editing chunks" as possible, which depends on whatever the editing operations they permit.
Until Java 1.5 (and the java.util.concurrent API) Java didn't do that much to make it easier to produce multi-threaded programs, the built-in synchronization just tricks new programmers into writing dangerous applications. For example reading a long is not guaranteed to be atomic, there are no built-in facilities for semaphores, etc.
And regarding your raning on lazy programmers, programs actually do a lot more stuff now than they used to do. Accessibility, i18n, flexible underlaying toolkits and API:s, better graphics, more features in general, etc.
Maybe, but don't you think users in general would appreciate a small quiet elegant PC instead of a huge ugly noisy beige box?
Agreed, my parents have very little clue on stuff like that. Actually I think awareness of scams and security basics like an URL is an "address" and things you type in a search engine are search times should probably be on the priority list for an "learning to use computers" curricullum, esp. for older users.
I think it depends on the skill of the engineers and designers of the application. For example traditional linear menus have obvious limitations that get around. Also, speech recognition has serious problems with accuracy. How much do humans use their context and commonsense understanding to make sense of the acoustic signal? My take is that really great speech recognition would probably require a serious leap in AI. That said, an efficient interface in the future is probably multimodal combining speech, hand gestures, and point and click actions to create a comfortable work environment for the particular task one is working on.
And why would that be the case considering how long time it takes to be proficient in typing? Surely, it is possible that an alternative text entry interface would emerge in the future.
For example Dasher is pretty cool, and there are other (in fact numerous) alternative interfaces. See for example Masui's on-line bibliography.
40 hour week is not a basic legal right in Europe. Maybe if you work for the goverment or an international corporation (which have special deals with the unions). Most engineers and scientists can just forget about compensation. You work as much as you have to or you're laid off. And it's not easy to get a new job in Europe either...
Maybe... but how would it burst? A small company may need a patent to get VC fundend, then they get bought by one of these patent portfolio companies that sue the small companies competitors who can't afford to fight in court. Sounds to me, the only way to change that is to change the laws, there is no economics in it that will make things like this go away.
Also, the EU will probably adapt the US patent system. So the mess in the US will probably transfer to Europe and I can't see any reason why any bubble would burst there either (we already got messy patent litigations over here too).
Ok, that's not fair though. I happen to have seen it demoed live and tried by a friend of mine. Of course it does not work as good as they claim it to do (you can basically only do hunt and peck typing, not touch-typing), but still, it does exist.
Is this really new technology? The Canesta keyboard already projects an image of a keyboard on any surface. This seems to be the same thing, except the Canesta keyboard exists in reality, and this site has a (well looks like anyway) photoshoped image. It could of course differ in resolution, etc.
Nah, he's talking about a Python hack that was posted on slashdot a while ago, which made it possible to mount a connection to google mail and use it as storage.
Dude, the software factory concept is way older than 1996. I don't think MS give a shit about whatever crap you dreamed up.
The recognition part is not the "core" of the patetnt, the core is a specialized alphabet that 1. allows faster text entry and 2. easy to recognize since it's "unistroke" e.g. one single stroke per character. However the patent is riddiculously general, the recognition part IS 1. obvious and 2. known in the science since the 60s, it's really not novel. And specialized simplified alphabets like Unistrokes have been known since the 17th century in various shorthand alphabets in UK and Germany. So in summary, it's excellent that the patent is invalidated.
Good point, but it is not okay to copy code from O'Reilly however you want. It is NOT in the public domain. While they may let you, they may also sue you. So even copying code snippets from technical books can be infringing on copyright (or rather IS infringing on copy right).
Well I assume they measure similarity invariant of affine transforms
You are forgetting the fact that the rest of the world is quick to be "compatible" with the U.S. and E.U. patents systems (which are by the way in the process of merging, pracically the E.U. patent system will be like the U.S. one). WTO et. al. will ensure that all booming tech country prospects will be compatible with an aggressive patent system.
Actually the merits of DVORAK is of some debate still in QWERTYnomics, an economic theory stating that every damn thing follows another, meaning that since QWERTY is/was de facto standard DVORAK never succedded replacing QWERTY. The opponents refer to the experiments showing superior performance using the DVORAK layout were seriously flawed and suffered great conflict of interest. So the advantage of DVORAK may not be all that great.
I just love the intro. calc. book by Courant: Introduction to Calculus and Analysis vol. 1. It is clear and precise. The downside is that almost all problems are proofs and there are no solutions. So for self-study you need to complement the material with a solutions book.
I agree. I can't help but thinking that what I am doing for work is so fucking useless, what the hell happend to my life after I graduated???
You won't be hiring someone from Harvard U because of an anonymous shittalker on slashdot?? ;-)
Entropy in statistical mechanics and entropy in information theory are not the same thing