No problem. I'm no pedant, and I like it when I learn something from reading slashdot comments---a rarity, but nice nonetheless.:) I'm just trying to share for the benefit of others. Now you too can help prevent the erosion of the English language in a small way.
Bah, I don't know why I'm explaining myself; it should have been clear that there was no malice in my previous comment. Have a good night.
To be discreet means to have/hold one's own beliefs/possessions in a friendly way without making another person feel compromised or challenged. It also means not declaring personal information that one has learned in a private conversation to other people.
While discrete is defined as:
separate, from the latin word discretus.
In perception a discrete entity is something that can be percepted individually and not as connected to, or part of something else.
In mathematics a discrete set is a countable or countably infinite, with a cardinality less than or equal to aleph 0. (Including integers.) Mathematical study of discrete sets is the area of inquiry for discrete mathematics, but also important for combinatorics, probability theory and statistical theory.
In mathematics, a discrete space is a topological space in which all sets are open.
In electrical engineering, discrete means having separate electronic components, such as individual resistors and inductors -- the opposite of integrated circuitry.
In audio engineering, discrete means having separate and independent channels of audio, as opposed to multiplexed stereo or quadrophonic, or other multi-channel sound.
If anyone is to blame, it is the editor that approved TFA, where `discrete' is misspelled `discreet'. Spell check != correctness.
Personally, I think it's great. I'm an undergraduate in CS right now, and it's amazing how many people I encounter that know and care only a little about the field. I witness rampant academic dishonesty daily, and a general ``who cares'' attitude among my peers, save for a select few.
I've met several people who rely on others excessively (through forums, or in person) to function as a computer scientist. It's troubling when you are asked to help someone with their software, only to discover horrible gaps in their basic CS skills. I've encountered the most awful design flaws in software, written by grad students! Imagine a large Java program, that could have been rather elegant (for Java) using proper OO design... except the program is written completely static! Or, for example, a large if-then-elseif block that looked like it came out of the BASIC days!
Even worse, before I was asked to help, this individual wasted lots of other people's time requesting very basic code that anyone could figure out after spending a bit looking through the Java API. Developer forums can be an excellent resource, but they can also be abused, to the detriment of many helpful individuals.
I honestly believe that the CS discipline is clogged with people who see only dollar signs, not hexadecimal.
On the flipside, less CS enrollment may mean researchers have less options when selecting grad students. Given the large amount of current CS grads, I think it will be some time before there is any shortage of skilled research talent.
Additional article, similar content
on
Comic Book Physics
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The U of M's IT magazine Inventing Tomorrow interviewed Kakalios for its Spring 2002 issue. My favorite quote from the lengthy article:
One of Kakalios' favorite stories acknowledges this leap of faith. "There's a panel in which The Atom and another character have shrunk to submolecular size, and they're sitting on an electron," he recalls with a grin. "The Atom's companion says, 'We're smaller than an oxygen molecule. How are we breathing?' The Atom replies, 'I've never really figured that out.'"
Spider-Man and the death of Gwen Stacy
on
Comic Book Physics
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Here's an article (pdf) that Kakalios wrote for the Star Tribune. It discusses the simple physics behind a 1973 Spider-Man issue.
Note the mirror.
libcaca - Colour AsCii Art library
it's da shit!
Hello/. folks! Please be easy on the server!
Images and tarball are mirrored at http://www.via.ecp.fr/~sam/local/libcaca/.
The libcaca library is a graphics library that outputs text instead of pixels, so that it can work on older video cards or text terminals. It is not unlike the famous AAlib library. libcaca needs a terminal to work, thus it should work on all Unix systems (including Mac OS X) using either the slang library or the ncurses library, on DOS using the library, and on Windows systems using either slang or ncurses (through Cygwin emulation) or .
Libcaca is free software, and can be used, modified and ditributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Publice License. The logo on this page is copyrighted by Akira Toriyama so if anyone fancies drawing a new logo it would be much appreciated.
Features
The differences with AAlib are the following:
* 16 available colours for character output
* dithering of colour images
* basic sprite primitives
But libcaca also has the following limitations:
* no support for brightness, contrast, gamma
* unefficient character-choosing algorithms
* no alternate fonts
* no raw keyboard support
* mouse support only works for slang
* no custom drivers a la AA-on-X
I am perfectly aware that libcaca is the waste of time it looks to be. No need to tell me about that.
Screenshots
Here are my first libcaca attempts. On the left, my test application, an image viewer. On the right, my first port of an application so that it uses libcaca: the VLC media player.
As with all image processing applications, I needed the obligatory Lenna samples. From left to right: no dithering, ordered dithering, random dithering.
no dithering ordered dithering random dithering
Here are a few examples of my libcaca patch for libSDL. Once there is a libcaca backend for libSDL, any program using SDL can automatically benefit from libcaca's rendering routines. These examples show Frozen Bubble, the SABRE flight simulator, and the famous Doom. Frozen Bubble is fully playable, but SABRE and Doom aren't much due to the Ctrl and Shift keys not being recognized (see the TODO list about that).
Frozen Bubble SABRE
Doom splash screen first Doom level
Download libcaca
Latest libcaca release is libcaca-0.1.tar.gz. See the NEWS and ChangeLog files.
Until libcaca enters Debian, woody and sid users may use one of the following apt sources: (sorry, sarge is not supported yet)
deb http://sam.zoy.org/projects/debian woody main
deb-src http://sam.zoy.org/projects/debian woody main
deb http://sam.zoy.org/projects/debian sid main
deb-src http://sam.zoy.org/projects/debian sid main
Patch for libSDL
This simple patch was quickly hacked from the AAlib video driver. Apply it to the libSDL sources and configuree libSDL with --enable-video-caca. Then use the SDL_VIDEODRIVER environment variable to run your SDL programs with libcaca output, for instance Frozen Bubble:
SDL_VIDEODRIVER=caca frozen-bubble
Download patch-libsdl1.2-libcaca0.1.diff.
Patch for VLC
The libcaca patch for the VLC media player was already applied upstream. Check the CVS version.
Development
The mailing-list for libcaca users and developers is libcaca@lists.zoy.org. To subscribe, send an email to ecartis@lists.zoy.org containing the words "subscribe libcaca". To unsubscribe, just use "unsubscribe libcaca".
Please report bugs and make suggestions to libcaca@lists.zoy.org.
There is no public access to the SVN repository yet, but you can browse it using the web interface, for instance to have a look at the BUGS and TODO lists.
That's the whole point - you wouldn't be 'giving it away for free'. Stop and think for a moment. Does the method of distribution have any effect whatsoever on piracy? I would venture that the price of the good drives illegal copying.
As CDs are ridiculously overpriced, it is easy to see why they are pirated - as are certain overpriced operating systems with shoddy security. These items face large-scale piracy issues. The reason? The disparity between the price and the perceived value is so great that a normal person decides to break the law.
Once prices and the actual worth of the product come into closer agreement, the vast majority will opt to follow a legal path - probably out of a natural Machiavellian fear of authority. Refusing to come to grips with the actual value of a product, the industry is reinforcing a community belief that crime is appropriate here, when you're stealing from criminals. It's time to make a better fucking product, and earn money sans rabid lawyer hoard. (Are you listening, Darl?)
Marketing and reason seem diametrically opposed to my mind.. can you imagine slander campaigns similar to election ads?
"Do you want your enterprise code written at 4am by a community of hackers?!"
I doubt any such marketing campaign could convince people who already appreciate the benefits of OSS.
I think the main danger is providing management with misinformation, making a tech's job harder justifying OSS. Most people wouldn't blink as long as the name "Windows" was mentioned.
Once OSS becomes more of a household name (and it is) M$ will have a much harder time suppressing it.
Slashdot Mirror
After poking around on the site, I found a link to a press release containing a PowerPoint (yuck!) presentation. There were some images in there, which I've posted to my company's technology blog.
No problem. I'm no pedant, and I like it when I learn something from reading slashdot comments---a rarity, but nice nonetheless. :) I'm just trying to share for the benefit of others. Now you too can help prevent the erosion of the English language in a small way.
Bah, I don't know why I'm explaining myself; it should have been clear that there was no malice in my previous comment. Have a good night.
It is not `discreet' it is `discrete':
From the Wiktionary:
While discrete is defined as:
If anyone is to blame, it is the editor that approved TFA, where `discrete' is misspelled `discreet'. Spell check != correctness.
If you leave the radiator attached to the car, you could drive your PC to LAN parties!
Personally, I think it's great. I'm an undergraduate in CS right now, and it's amazing how many people I encounter that know and care only a little about the field. I witness rampant academic dishonesty daily, and a general ``who cares'' attitude among my peers, save for a select few.
I've met several people who rely on others excessively (through forums, or in person) to function as a computer scientist. It's troubling when you are asked to help someone with their software, only to discover horrible gaps in their basic CS skills. I've encountered the most awful design flaws in software, written by grad students! Imagine a large Java program, that could have been rather elegant (for Java) using proper OO design... except the program is written completely static! Or, for example, a large if-then-elseif block that looked like it came out of the BASIC days!
Even worse, before I was asked to help, this individual wasted lots of other people's time requesting very basic code that anyone could figure out after spending a bit looking through the Java API. Developer forums can be an excellent resource, but they can also be abused, to the detriment of many helpful individuals.
I honestly believe that the CS discipline is clogged with people who see only dollar signs, not hexadecimal.
On the flipside, less CS enrollment may mean researchers have less options when selecting grad students. Given the large amount of current CS grads, I think it will be some time before there is any shortage of skilled research talent.
The U of M's IT magazine Inventing Tomorrow interviewed Kakalios for its Spring 2002 issue. My favorite quote from the lengthy article:
Here's an article (pdf) that Kakalios wrote for the Star Tribune. It discusses the simple physics behind a 1973 Spider-Man issue.
Note the mirror. /. folks! Please be easy on the server!
libcaca - Colour AsCii Art library
it's da shit!
Hello
Images and tarball are mirrored at http://www.via.ecp.fr/~sam/local/libcaca/.
The libcaca library is a graphics library that outputs text instead of pixels, so that it can work on older video cards or text terminals. It is not unlike the famous AAlib library. libcaca needs a terminal to work, thus it should work on all Unix systems (including Mac OS X) using either the slang library or the ncurses library, on DOS using the library, and on Windows systems using either slang or ncurses (through Cygwin emulation) or .
Libcaca is free software, and can be used, modified and ditributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Publice License. The logo on this page is copyrighted by Akira Toriyama so if anyone fancies drawing a new logo it would be much appreciated. Features
The differences with AAlib are the following:
* 16 available colours for character output
* dithering of colour images
* basic sprite primitives
But libcaca also has the following limitations:
* no support for brightness, contrast, gamma
* unefficient character-choosing algorithms
* no alternate fonts
* no raw keyboard support
* mouse support only works for slang
* no custom drivers a la AA-on-X
I am perfectly aware that libcaca is the waste of time it looks to be. No need to tell me about that.
Screenshots
Here are my first libcaca attempts. On the left, my test application, an image viewer. On the right, my first port of an application so that it uses libcaca: the VLC media player.
As with all image processing applications, I needed the obligatory Lenna samples. From left to right: no dithering, ordered dithering, random dithering.
no dithering ordered dithering random dithering
Here are a few examples of my libcaca patch for libSDL. Once there is a libcaca backend for libSDL, any program using SDL can automatically benefit from libcaca's rendering routines. These examples show Frozen Bubble, the SABRE flight simulator, and the famous Doom. Frozen Bubble is fully playable, but SABRE and Doom aren't much due to the Ctrl and Shift keys not being recognized (see the TODO list about that).
Frozen Bubble SABRE Doom splash screen first Doom level Download libcaca
Latest libcaca release is libcaca-0.1.tar.gz. See the NEWS and ChangeLog files.
Until libcaca enters Debian, woody and sid users may use one of the following apt sources: (sorry, sarge is not supported yet)
deb http://sam.zoy.org/projects/debian woody main
deb-src http://sam.zoy.org/projects/debian woody main
deb http://sam.zoy.org/projects/debian sid main
deb-src http://sam.zoy.org/projects/debian sid main
Patch for libSDL
This simple patch was quickly hacked from the AAlib video driver. Apply it to the libSDL sources and configuree libSDL with --enable-video-caca. Then use the SDL_VIDEODRIVER environment variable to run your SDL programs with libcaca output, for instance Frozen Bubble:
SDL_VIDEODRIVER=caca frozen-bubble
Download patch-libsdl1.2-libcaca0.1.diff. Patch for VLC The libcaca patch for the VLC media player was already applied upstream. Check the CVS version. Development The mailing-list for libcaca users and developers is libcaca@lists.zoy.org. To subscribe, send an email to ecartis@lists.zoy.org containing the words "subscribe libcaca". To unsubscribe, just use "unsubscribe libcaca". Please report bugs and make suggestions to libcaca@lists.zoy.org. There is no public access to the SVN repository yet, but you can browse it using the web interface, for instance to have a look at the BUGS and TODO lists.
That's the whole point - you wouldn't be 'giving it away for free'. Stop and think for a moment. Does the method of distribution have any effect whatsoever on piracy? I would venture that the price of the good drives illegal copying.
As CDs are ridiculously overpriced, it is easy to see why they are pirated - as are certain overpriced operating systems with shoddy security. These items face large-scale piracy issues. The reason? The disparity between the price and the perceived value is so great that a normal person decides to break the law.
Once prices and the actual worth of the product come into closer agreement, the vast majority will opt to follow a legal path - probably out of a natural Machiavellian fear of authority. Refusing to come to grips with the actual value of a product, the industry is reinforcing a community belief that crime is appropriate here, when you're stealing from criminals. It's time to make a better fucking product, and earn money sans rabid lawyer hoard. (Are you listening, Darl?)
Marketing and reason seem diametrically opposed to my mind.. can you imagine slander campaigns similar to election ads?
"Do you want your enterprise code written at 4am by a community of hackers?!"
I doubt any such marketing campaign could convince people who already appreciate the benefits of OSS.
I think the main danger is providing management with misinformation, making a tech's job harder justifying OSS. Most people wouldn't blink as long as the name "Windows" was mentioned.
Once OSS becomes more of a household name (and it is) M$ will have a much harder time suppressing it.
http://www.dot.state.mn.us/tmc/trafficinfo/map/ref reshmap.html
Though it seems that only central Minneapolis/St. Paul is working right now.. could it be the mounds of snow?