heh... yeah, I meant "the length of the radius of a circle" but "the radius of" has mysteriously disappeared. Maybe it went out to lunch with the Guide's editors.
Why does 2+3 = 5? Because we said it does...not because it is universally true.
So, if I said that you were a carrot, it would be correct because I said so? Even if it weren't universally true, you would still be a carrot. I could grate you and put you in a salad, like any other carrot.
No, if you said he was a carrot, you would be placing a label, "carrot", upon him. That label is external to the actual himness of him.
2 is a label for a quantity. 3 is a label for a quantity. 5 is a label for a quantity. Addition is an operation that we have invented to help us label/determine a quantity from two other quantities.
In some cases, 2 + 3 is not equal to 5. For example, if my number base is 5, 2+3=10. In this case, the label 10 refers to the same quantity that the label 5 refers to in base 10 number systems. Why? Because that's how we defined the number systems.
So, yes, 2+3=5 because we said it does.
However... the quantities that we labeled 2, 3, and 5 *are* universally true.
properties that we "prove" are simply physical facts, that exist independant of our ability to make theorems. That the area of a triangle inscribed in a circle is equal to the product of its three sides divided by four times the circles radius is a physical fact, not resulting from our mathematical manipulations, but one which our mathematics can only "prove" because they correctly describe and quantify all of the geometrical entites involved. And they do this beacause we built them to do that.
To expand on this... we haven't actually "proven" that the area of a triangle inscribed in a circle is equal to the product of its three sides devided by four times the circle's radius [A = (abc)/(4r)] is a physical fact. We have only worked such an equation out from basic mathematical principles (principal principles, you might say) that we believe to be true. Those principles have been tested many times and appear correct -- at least as precisely as we are able to measure and test them. That equation has been tested many times and appears to be correct -- at least as precisely as we are able to measure the area of a triangle, and the lengths of its sides and the length of a circle.
There's a key point here: those principles might break down for certain hitherto unimagined phsyical cirumstances, and when they do we'll re-think the model. Take Einsteinian physics, for example. Newtonian physics remained true for the general case (as far as we could tell) for centuries. Einstein re-evaluated Newtonian physics for bodies moving close to the speed of light, and he has appeared to be correct (at least as far as we can tell). When we observe something different, we'll re-think the model. That's the nature of science and math.
Those a little confused about the separation of concerns between designers and developers should read the following blog entry from one of the MS Expression developers. Designers. Whatever. Just read it:
I've been in the Yahoo Mail beta for some time now, and it is a solid web-based email, with a lot of nifty features. The pros are not strong enough for me to switch permanently from GMail, however. But that's personal preference.
Yahoo Mail has an overall look/feel very similar to a desktop email client. *cough*Outlook*cough* The integration with RSS, maps and calendars is very nice, search is fast and relevant, being able to drag-drop everything is fun, and the tabbed email interface is a great way to quickly switch between different emails that you have open.
That said, there are some cons, and they're doozies. The first is the ads. Tons of 'em, each pretty flashy, and they're all over the place... and strategically placed near locations you're likely to click. The other is just an annoyance factor, and may in fact be limited to IE, since I haven't used Yahoo Mail in anything other than IE. Yes, I use IE. Anyway, whenever I do *anything* in Yahoo Mail, such as load an email for reading, or even click over to my inbox, I'm presented with at least a dozen "link-click" sounds. This is just annoying if you use the default XP theme, and if you use a Star Wars theme -- as I sometime do -- a single click action becomse a minute-long lightsaber battle.
Other than those two complaints, though, Yahoo Mail is a very solid mail client.
In comparison to GMail, however, I have to stick to GMail. I'd love to see some of the features available in the Yahoo Beta put into GMail, but I can live without 'em. I can't live without GMail's "Conversation" email grouping feature, and I'd rather have Tags than folders any day of the week. And GMail's Archive feature... I had to go searching for something I had archived as unnecessary a few months ago on my GMail account, part of an old somewhat silly conversation now dead. Had I had the conversation through my Yahoo account, I'd have deleted the emails outright.
Yet here on Slashdot everyone whose jobs basically consists of writing CRUD software, spitting out webpages, or babysitting servers complains incessantly about how their college education was superfluous. Well if you choose to do something that's not related to what you studied then big surprise that it doesn't entail considerable mathematical expertise.
"Choose to do"? You're kidding, right? CS students fresh out of college do not have a choice on what they do unless they're already wealthy enough to do what they choose.
For the rest of us, those "CRUD" software jobs are all that's available. If we want to do real computer-sciency type stuff, we need to take a "CRUD" job and hope we can get the other folks there to do computer sciency type stuff as part of their process. That's like herding cats.
There are *very* few *real* computer-sciency type jobs out there. Unless you have a PhD and at least 10 years of experience doing computer-sciency type stuff, of course. Oh, and you can't get 10 years of experience doing computer-sciency type stuff without 10 years of experience doing computer-sciency type stuff.
I'd love to work on real computer sciency type stuff. I'd love to architect compilers or natural language processors. I'd love to build the next gen OS from the ground up. But I live in the real world and have bills and dependents.
Rails, Cake, and Turbogears can't provide the sort of rich interaction that flash/activex/java can, no matter how great their frameworks may be. Why?
The problem is not the stateless nature of the web as much as it is the medium with which the web is presented. HTML was designed as a document language, for the static display of information. It was never designed for any sort of interactivity other than hyperlinking. Everything else that has come along is a hack on top of a simple static display medium. Even arguably solid frameworks like Rails are nothing more than a hack to provide dynamic interactivity to a system that was designed against another way of doing things.
If we really want remotely obtained rich interactivity, we need to rethink the medium. We need to drop HTML/Javascript and plugins like activex and flash. We need a new platform designed from the ground up to provide dynamic rich interactivity. That includes both the display medium *and* the means by which it is obtained. XUL was a baby step. The concepts behind XAML seem to go much further -- especially in the display department -- but still relies on stateless HTTP.
All levels of the stack need fixing, not just server-side. We need more than just hacks.
I think you are exactly right. Note how the original article points to an article where Mockapetris claims that DNS servers are going to slow down broadband because they're operating near capacity. Oh, and happily, Nominum (the company he chairs) will provide new, bigger, faster, more scalable DNS solutions for a nominal fee. I wonder if Nominum has had better than nominal business lately. Maybe we can nominate somebody to check into it?
This is a snap to do programmatically for Windows programs, pretty much regardless of how you write them. If you write a Windows pogram using System.Windows.Forms (i.e. the.NET framework), just set the RightToLeft property to true, and whenever a scrollbar that would automatically appear appears, it appears on the left side. Ditto MFC programs -- just set the "Layout RTL" property to true.
I never learned enough about the Win32 API to know whether a window class has a similar property, but I suspect it does.
Personally, I think it's better to have competing formats, and the way MS is handling this (supporting both formats) is best. This sort of competition is good both for Microsoft *and* the OS community. MS frequently adopts and/or modifies standards to suit its needs, almost always for backward compatibility or due to user request. Note that many MS "improvements" that were previously decried by the OS community as "breaking a standard" have since been rabidly accepted to the point that many even forget that MS was the one that created it in the first place. Yes, I'm talking about DHTML and XMLHttpRequest (the bases of Ajax). Hell, Microsoft was a key player in the creation of XML itself, although that was a true collaborative effort. The competition is just as good as collaboration, and it works both ways. The OS community adopts standards from MS that work, expand upon them, then MS adopts parts of the expansions that work, and expands upon them, and so forth.
Office 2007 will support both formats. OpenOffice will support both formats. Someday a new format will arise that takes from both. Or neither. As as long as competition continues -- long as *innovation* continues -- nobody will ever really lose.
That's a very interesting point. How do you label this? It's not a virus, or it would infect healthy cells of the host. It doesn't appear to be bacterial. It's not really a cancer, since cancer is a part of the host's own cells. What is it?
It *behaves* most like a bacterial infection, but it causes tumors. Or rather, it pauses in a host and somehow replicates itself in large quantities, which is mistaken for a cancerous tumor. How does it feed?
I'm not 100% sure about Java, but in.NET, garbage collection only occurs when the heap is full. I'm, pretty sure it's the case with Java too.
If an app is causing lots of stop-the-world thread blocks, the problem lies with the app and an over-reliance on short-term objects, *not* garbage collection. Blame the developers of the application and their poor engineering.
Matt Damon can look young, yes, but he's 35 -- as old as Shatner was when he started playing Kirk originally! If Damon is supposed to be younger Kirk in his Academy days... I dunno, it just doesn't work for me.
The temperature of the black bars must be different from the temperature of the white bars -- simple light/color theory. Therefore, using carbon nanotubules (because you aren't high-techy if you don't), we could set up a system of microscopic thermocouples across those black and white bars. Channel that energy to a central location, and voila! Barcode powered cell-phones.
Slashdot Mirror
heh... yeah, I meant "the length of the radius of a circle" but "the radius of" has mysteriously disappeared. Maybe it went out to lunch with the Guide's editors.
SPACEBALLS??!?
Oh, shit! There goes the planet.
2 is a label for a quantity. 3 is a label for a quantity. 5 is a label for a quantity. Addition is an operation that we have invented to help us label/determine a quantity from two other quantities.
In some cases, 2 + 3 is not equal to 5. For example, if my number base is 5, 2+3=10. In this case, the label 10 refers to the same quantity that the label 5 refers to in base 10 number systems. Why? Because that's how we defined the number systems.
So, yes, 2+3=5 because we said it does.
However... the quantities that we labeled 2, 3, and 5 *are* universally true.
There's a key point here: those principles might break down for certain hitherto unimagined phsyical cirumstances, and when they do we'll re-think the model. Take Einsteinian physics, for example. Newtonian physics remained true for the general case (as far as we could tell) for centuries. Einstein re-evaluated Newtonian physics for bodies moving close to the speed of light, and he has appeared to be correct (at least as far as we can tell). When we observe something different, we'll re-think the model. That's the nature of science and math.
Those a little confused about the separation of concerns between designers and developers should read the following blog entry from one of the MS Expression developers. Designers. Whatever. Just read it:
t s-evolution.html
http://lostgarden.com/2006/02/software-developmen
I've been in the Yahoo Mail beta for some time now, and it is a solid web-based email, with a lot of nifty features. The pros are not strong enough for me to switch permanently from GMail, however. But that's personal preference.
Yahoo Mail has an overall look/feel very similar to a desktop email client. *cough*Outlook*cough* The integration with RSS, maps and calendars is very nice, search is fast and relevant, being able to drag-drop everything is fun, and the tabbed email interface is a great way to quickly switch between different emails that you have open.
That said, there are some cons, and they're doozies. The first is the ads. Tons of 'em, each pretty flashy, and they're all over the place... and strategically placed near locations you're likely to click. The other is just an annoyance factor, and may in fact be limited to IE, since I haven't used Yahoo Mail in anything other than IE. Yes, I use IE. Anyway, whenever I do *anything* in Yahoo Mail, such as load an email for reading, or even click over to my inbox, I'm presented with at least a dozen "link-click" sounds. This is just annoying if you use the default XP theme, and if you use a Star Wars theme -- as I sometime do -- a single click action becomse a minute-long lightsaber battle.
Other than those two complaints, though, Yahoo Mail is a very solid mail client.
In comparison to GMail, however, I have to stick to GMail. I'd love to see some of the features available in the Yahoo Beta put into GMail, but I can live without 'em. I can't live without GMail's "Conversation" email grouping feature, and I'd rather have Tags than folders any day of the week. And GMail's Archive feature... I had to go searching for something I had archived as unnecessary a few months ago on my GMail account, part of an old somewhat silly conversation now dead. Had I had the conversation through my Yahoo account, I'd have deleted the emails outright.
For the rest of us, those "CRUD" software jobs are all that's available. If we want to do real computer-sciency type stuff, we need to take a "CRUD" job and hope we can get the other folks there to do computer sciency type stuff as part of their process. That's like herding cats.
There are *very* few *real* computer-sciency type jobs out there. Unless you have a PhD and at least 10 years of experience doing computer-sciency type stuff, of course. Oh, and you can't get 10 years of experience doing computer-sciency type stuff without 10 years of experience doing computer-sciency type stuff.
I'd love to work on real computer sciency type stuff. I'd love to architect compilers or natural language processors. I'd love to build the next gen OS from the ground up. But I live in the real world and have bills and dependents.
Yes and no.
Rails, Cake, and Turbogears can't provide the sort of rich interaction that flash/activex/java can, no matter how great their frameworks may be. Why?
The problem is not the stateless nature of the web as much as it is the medium with which the web is presented. HTML was designed as a document language, for the static display of information. It was never designed for any sort of interactivity other than hyperlinking. Everything else that has come along is a hack on top of a simple static display medium. Even arguably solid frameworks like Rails are nothing more than a hack to provide dynamic interactivity to a system that was designed against another way of doing things.
If we really want remotely obtained rich interactivity, we need to rethink the medium. We need to drop HTML/Javascript and plugins like activex and flash. We need a new platform designed from the ground up to provide dynamic rich interactivity. That includes both the display medium *and* the means by which it is obtained. XUL was a baby step. The concepts behind XAML seem to go much further -- especially in the display department -- but still relies on stateless HTTP.
All levels of the stack need fixing, not just server-side. We need more than just hacks.
Bah, Cockknocker would whoop all.
Well, till he loses a hand...
All "Vader Lite" has to do is his Franken-NOOOOooooo move and Supes dies laughing.
I think you are exactly right. Note how the original article points to an article where Mockapetris claims that DNS servers are going to slow down broadband because they're operating near capacity. Oh, and happily, Nominum (the company he chairs) will provide new, bigger, faster, more scalable DNS solutions for a nominal fee. I wonder if Nominum has had better than nominal business lately. Maybe we can nominate somebody to check into it?
This is a snap to do programmatically for Windows programs, pretty much regardless of how you write them. If you write a Windows pogram using System.Windows.Forms (i.e. the .NET framework), just set the RightToLeft property to true, and whenever a scrollbar that would automatically appear appears, it appears on the left side. Ditto MFC programs -- just set the "Layout RTL" property to true.
I never learned enough about the Win32 API to know whether a window class has a similar property, but I suspect it does.
Personally, I think it's better to have competing formats, and the way MS is handling this (supporting both formats) is best. This sort of competition is good both for Microsoft *and* the OS community. MS frequently adopts and/or modifies standards to suit its needs, almost always for backward compatibility or due to user request. Note that many MS "improvements" that were previously decried by the OS community as "breaking a standard" have since been rabidly accepted to the point that many even forget that MS was the one that created it in the first place. Yes, I'm talking about DHTML and XMLHttpRequest (the bases of Ajax). Hell, Microsoft was a key player in the creation of XML itself, although that was a true collaborative effort. The competition is just as good as collaboration, and it works both ways. The OS community adopts standards from MS that work, expand upon them, then MS adopts parts of the expansions that work, and expands upon them, and so forth.
Office 2007 will support both formats. OpenOffice will support both formats. Someday a new format will arise that takes from both. Or neither. As as long as competition continues -- long as *innovation* continues -- nobody will ever really lose.
THIS IS CETI ALPHA FIVE!!!
</Obligatory-Quote>
Don't be afraid to google for it:
a gement
http://www.google.com/search?q=MS+engineering+man
returns about 158 million hits, and tons of accredited schools.
That list can be boiled down to a single, simple equation:
Nepotism = jobs.
But, then again, you'll be next -- along with every other fleshy.
That's a very interesting point. How do you label this? It's not a virus, or it would infect healthy cells of the host. It doesn't appear to be bacterial. It's not really a cancer, since cancer is a part of the host's own cells. What is it?
It *behaves* most like a bacterial infection, but it causes tumors. Or rather, it pauses in a host and somehow replicates itself in large quantities, which is mistaken for a cancerous tumor. How does it feed?
This is a very interesting biological concept.
I'm not 100% sure about Java, but in .NET, garbage collection only occurs when the heap is full. I'm, pretty sure it's the case with Java too.
If an app is causing lots of stop-the-world thread blocks, the problem lies with the app and an over-reliance on short-term objects, *not* garbage collection. Blame the developers of the application and their poor engineering.
Matt Damon can look young, yes, but he's 35 -- as old as Shatner was when he started playing Kirk originally! If Damon is supposed to be younger Kirk in his Academy days... I dunno, it just doesn't work for me.
The temperature of the black bars must be different from the temperature of the white bars -- simple light/color theory. Therefore, using carbon nanotubules (because you aren't high-techy if you don't), we could set up a system of microscopic thermocouples across those black and white bars. Channel that energy to a central location, and voila! Barcode powered cell-phones.
Er.... the ends of Monty Python are displayed on TV too often for my tastes. :D