X-Men also includes a new character, not seen in the comments. The new Mutant, "JubJub", a young Jamiacan immigrant, was added for comic relief. Apparently, his mutation causes him to stumble around at odd times, accidentally knocking over plants and the odd bad guy.
They've had monitors that can be tipped on their side for years. Mostly used for word-processing work. To the OS, they look like something with a higher height than width.
Especially considering that 18-35 year olds are the most likely to have young children, something known to be a little stressful...
Hell, us 18-35 year olds have it easy these days. There was a time (like, most of history) that being 18-35 meant you might possibly be sent to some foreign country to kill, or be killed by, some foreign 18-35 year old. A slightly stressful thing.
So yeah, I'm trying to think of a time where 18-35 year olds weren't the most stressed. I can't think of one.
But anyway, at 34, it seems to me that one of the things you learn during your first decade or two of adulthood is how to deal with real life. The more you learn, the easier it gets, and the less stressful it becomes.
Most religions allow sorts of unnatural things, like antibiotics, contraceptives, etc.
But anyway, I'd just like to point out that in the rich countries where anti-aging treatments are most likely to occur, the birth rate is at, or below, replacement value and falling.
(Even if we could stop aging and all disease, your life expectency would still be in the ~250 range, because of accidents, etc.)
This should be the choice of the artist. If you want to try to convince artists that this is the way to go, be my guest. I'll be first in line behind you. But just because you think that artists ought to do this does not mean you have the right to act like they are.
It is really easy to say that something someone else created should be free.
But it's theft.
There's a profound difference between someone willingly giving something away (as in open source software) and someone thinking that they can take whatever they want, regardless of the author's wishes.
Too many people here are confused about this. To them, Open Source means "I get to take whatever I want". You can see it the way they bitch at people who put something out there that took a lot of work, free of charge and free for the usage. Pure selfishness. They should be thanking the authors for their work, not castigating them for trivial failings.
The music belongs to the musician. Not you. And while we may all applaud the musician that gives away his or her music for free, we have no right to demand they do so. That's selfish. It is the attitude of a spoiled little child.
And spoiled little children soon find that no one wants to give them anything. People will work for free if they get gratitude in return. If all they get in return is ingratitude, they'll just say "fuck it" and quit.
It is the difference between sharing and theft. Sharing is good. Sharing is people willingly giving what they have to others. We should encourage it. But encourage theft, and we devalue the producers. Do that, and they'll simply stop producing.
How much gas refills do these shoes require per... hmmm say... kilometer
If you read the BBC article, they give you enough to figure that out...roughly. The shoes allow a speed of 25 miles per hour. They say that the fuel last for "about 25 minutes".
That gives a range of about 10.5 miles. Not all that good, actually. (Or a little over 17 Kilometers.)
I suspect it would take a lot of practice... But I also suspect that once you got the hang of it, you could do pretty well.
The root of the problem is that few people with the technical knowledge to really use and maintain computers correctly aren't going to accept a teacher's salary.
One very nice thing about that old Apple ][+ was that it was such a small machine. It wasn't hard for my forteen year old mind to learn much of what there was to know about the software. And it was easy to move to Pascal and assembler. Unfortunately, with today's Windows boxes, deliberately designed to be opaque to the user, you don't get that, and end up with a poorer learning experience.
Yes, not everyone is destined to be a programmer. There is no point in trying to teach a whole class of six-year-olds how to program. Perhaps teach those with an aptitude I guess, but even there, I've seen little evidence that a "head start" before the age of about forteen does all that much good.
The elementary ages are the time when kids need to learn the basics. Reading, writing, basic math, basic science. Programming is not a basic skill, however us techies might think so. At best, it is an advanced skill, though I really think it is something that not everyone in this society needs to know. (Though programming != computer literacy).
Another thing to add to that list is that computers are comparatively expensive to buy and maintain. Yeah, some of the stuff sounds great in theory, but when my wife's school (in a good area, BTW) runs short on funds for buying pencils, for god sakes, you have to wonder why they are spending multiple thousands per classroom for something that most teachers don't know how to use.
1) which would you teach programming to a middle school student with: a) an apple II with logo and BASIC. b) a pentium III running Microsoft Visual Studio.
I can answer that! I learned to program using an Apple ][+ and Applesoft BASIC. From what I've seen, kids who learned to code with today's wonderful modern tools have little advantage over those of us that learned in the dark ages.
(My wife's a teacher, so I speak with some experience.)
Too often, computers in the classroom are used more to keep kids attention and keep them out of the teacher's hair than actual learning. If you've ever looked at primary educational software, it is mostly utter crap. You get basically videogames with a thin helping of vaguely educational soundbytes or glorified flash-cards. Not all that great for learning, and certainly not worth the price considering what could be bought with the same money. (I.e. books, pencils, etc.)
Perhaps computers can, in theory, be helpful for younger kids, but in order to be so, education software needs drastic improvement and teachers need much better training.
If I had a kid, I wouldn't even consider most "educational" software. I'd rather set them up with SimCity first. I'd much prefer to see them reading a book.
I'm no luddite. I've been using computers daily since the age of forteen, over twenty yers ago.
I'm talking about the primary grades here. When you get to older kids, computers start becoming useful as a research tool.
When advocates of computers in the classroom talking about it, they invariably talk about theory and ignore the realities of the current state of technology and what software exists. Yes, in theory, it could be a huge boon. But until someone actually does something decent, it is just pac-man with the ghosts replaced with ants and the name changed to "rain-forest adventure".
Oh, tell me about it! Different divisions in IBM can compete like different companies, up to and including dirty tricks.
I worked for a company looking for a larger-scale system. The different options were IBM AS/400s and IBM RS/6000 boxes running AIX. Some of the stuff that went on between the two groups would have produced an instant lawsuit if they were two different companies.
MXT is a hardware implementation that automatically stores frequently accessed data and instructions close to a computer's microprocessors so they can be accessed immediately -- significantly improving performance. Less frequently accessed data and instructions are compressed and stored in memory instead of on a disk -- increasing memory capacity by a factor of two or more.
Note two things: They are not compressing everything. They are not replacing the actual memory.
Most of the criticisms here are based on misunderstandings of those two things.
(Note that I'm guiltless. I posted a number of times before getting around to read it.)
Why not just tie it into the paging system? Then you have no trouble dealing with going below the actual amount of memory. You just page fault.
That'd really be the way to do it. A "256 MB" compressed chip acts like it as 256 MB even though it only has 128 MB actual. Once it fills, it page faults.
In practice, I doubt you'll ever actually hit that sort of case you're talking about. You'd have to assume that everything in memory was already compressed/random. That's never going to be the case given the large numbers of different programs running around, most written without concern about memory. Lots of arrays of zeros.
Unless you are running some kind of single process OS like DOS, I don't see how you could ever get your memory into a state where you couldn't even get 1:1 compression. There are just too many other processes running around in modern OSes.
Slashdot Mirror
IBM made no effort to keep the software proprietary, and didn't even ship their own OS until OS/2 (Their original OS was merely relabelled MSDOS.)
X-Men also includes a new character, not seen in the comments. The new Mutant, "JubJub", a young Jamiacan immigrant, was added for comic relief. Apparently, his mutation causes him to stumble around at odd times, accidentally knocking over plants and the odd bad guy.
They've had monitors that can be tipped on their side for years. Mostly used for word-processing work. To the OS, they look like something with a higher height than width.
Especially considering that 18-35 year olds are the most likely to have young children, something known to be a little stressful...
Hell, us 18-35 year olds have it easy these days. There was a time (like, most of history) that being 18-35 meant you might possibly be sent to some foreign country to kill, or be killed by, some foreign 18-35 year old. A slightly stressful thing.
So yeah, I'm trying to think of a time where 18-35 year olds weren't the most stressed. I can't think of one.
But anyway, at 34, it seems to me that one of the things you learn during your first decade or two of adulthood is how to deal with real life. The more you learn, the easier it gets, and the less stressful it becomes.
Most religions allow sorts of unnatural things, like antibiotics, contraceptives, etc.
But anyway, I'd just like to point out that in the rich countries where anti-aging treatments are most likely to occur, the birth rate is at, or below, replacement value and falling.
(Even if we could stop aging and all disease, your life expectency would still be in the ~250 range, because of accidents, etc.)
This should be the choice of the artist. If you want to try to convince artists that this is the way to go, be my guest. I'll be first in line behind you. But just because you think that artists ought to do this does not mean you have the right to act like they are.
Whatever you call it, it is still both immoral and selfish.
It is really easy to say that something someone else created should be free.
But it's theft.
There's a profound difference between someone willingly giving something away (as in open source software) and someone thinking that they can take whatever they want, regardless of the author's wishes.
Too many people here are confused about this. To them, Open Source means "I get to take whatever I want". You can see it the way they bitch at people who put something out there that took a lot of work, free of charge and free for the usage. Pure selfishness. They should be thanking the authors for their work, not castigating them for trivial failings.
The music belongs to the musician. Not you. And while we may all applaud the musician that gives away his or her music for free, we have no right to demand they do so. That's selfish. It is the attitude of a spoiled little child.
And spoiled little children soon find that no one wants to give them anything. People will work for free if they get gratitude in return. If all they get in return is ingratitude, they'll just say "fuck it" and quit.
It is the difference between sharing and theft. Sharing is good. Sharing is people willingly giving what they have to others. We should encourage it. But encourage theft, and we devalue the producers. Do that, and they'll simply stop producing.
How much gas refills do these shoes require per... hmmm say... kilometer
If you read the BBC article, they give you enough to figure that out...roughly. The shoes allow a speed of 25 miles per hour. They say that the fuel last for "about 25 minutes".
That gives a range of about 10.5 miles. Not all that good, actually. (Or a little over 17 Kilometers.)
I suspect it would take a lot of practice... But I also suspect that once you got the hang of it, you could do pretty well.
Who are you going to replace them with?
The root of the problem is that few people with the technical knowledge to really use and maintain computers correctly aren't going to accept a teacher's salary.
I think that part of the point is that with an old Apple, you could take it out of the box, plug it in, turn it on and type
10 REM This is my cool program
And be well on your way to learning to code.
These days, you've got to do all sorts of things to get it set up right, and you've got something full of distractions, like Quake and WWW.
Not to mention that these older boxes were smaller, and far less opaque than a modern Windows or Linux box. Simple is good for learning.
An Apple's better than an XT, IMHO. Gotta love that built-in disassembler!
One very nice thing about that old Apple ][+ was that it was such a small machine. It wasn't hard for my forteen year old mind to learn much of what there was to know about the software. And it was easy to move to Pascal and assembler. Unfortunately, with today's Windows boxes, deliberately designed to be opaque to the user, you don't get that, and end up with a poorer learning experience.
Yes, not everyone is destined to be a programmer. There is no point in trying to teach a whole class of six-year-olds how to program. Perhaps teach those with an aptitude I guess, but even there, I've seen little evidence that a "head start" before the age of about forteen does all that much good.
The elementary ages are the time when kids need to learn the basics. Reading, writing, basic math, basic science. Programming is not a basic skill, however us techies might think so. At best, it is an advanced skill, though I really think it is something that not everyone in this society needs to know. (Though programming != computer literacy).
Another thing to add to that list is that computers are comparatively expensive to buy and maintain. Yeah, some of the stuff sounds great in theory, but when my wife's school (in a good area, BTW) runs short on funds for buying pencils, for god sakes, you have to wonder why they are spending multiple thousands per classroom for something that most teachers don't know how to use.
1) which would you teach programming to a middle school student with:
a) an apple II with logo and BASIC.
b) a pentium III running Microsoft Visual Studio.
I can answer that! I learned to program using an Apple ][+ and Applesoft BASIC. From what I've seen, kids who learned to code with today's wonderful modern tools have little advantage over those of us that learned in the dark ages.
(My wife's a teacher, so I speak with some experience.)
Too often, computers in the classroom are used more to keep kids attention and keep them out of the teacher's hair than actual learning. If you've ever looked at primary educational software, it is mostly utter crap. You get basically videogames with a thin helping of vaguely educational soundbytes or glorified flash-cards. Not all that great for learning, and certainly not worth the price considering what could be bought with the same money. (I.e. books, pencils, etc.)
Perhaps computers can, in theory, be helpful for younger kids, but in order to be so, education software needs drastic improvement and teachers need much better training.
If I had a kid, I wouldn't even consider most "educational" software. I'd rather set them up with SimCity first. I'd much prefer to see them reading a book.
I'm no luddite. I've been using computers daily since the age of forteen, over twenty yers ago.
I'm talking about the primary grades here. When you get to older kids, computers start becoming useful as a research tool.
When advocates of computers in the classroom talking about it, they invariably talk about theory and ignore the realities of the current state of technology and what software exists. Yes, in theory, it could be a huge boon. But until someone actually does something decent, it is just pac-man with the ghosts replaced with ants and the name changed to "rain-forest adventure".
Oh, tell me about it! Different divisions in IBM can compete like different companies, up to and including dirty tricks.
I worked for a company looking for a larger-scale system. The different options were IBM AS/400s and IBM RS/6000 boxes running AIX. Some of the stuff that went on between the two groups would have produced an instant lawsuit if they were two different companies.
Sure. And I'd prefer a Ferrari to the old Honda I drive.
But somewhere in the equation money comes into play.
A faster system is a better system. All the rest is implementation details.
Fixate on one part of the system (like RAM speed) and you end up with a system that spends all its time waiting.
Oops. That should be. "Not that I'm guiltless" not "Note that I'm guiltless"!!
The vast majority of systems out there today use paging files.
This would cause a dramatic reduction in page faults on that vast majority of systems.
Get it?
Is a caching system. From the article:
MXT is a hardware implementation that automatically stores frequently accessed data and instructions close to a computer's microprocessors so they can be accessed immediately -- significantly improving performance. Less frequently accessed data and instructions are compressed and stored in memory instead of on a disk -- increasing memory capacity by a factor of two or more.
Note two things: They are not compressing everything. They are not replacing the actual memory.
Most of the criticisms here are based on misunderstandings of those two things.
(Note that I'm guiltless. I posted a number of times before getting around to read it.)
Faster to write straight to RAM, assuming that you haven't run out of RAM and are actually writing to swap partition...
So unless you've turned off virtual memory, you might want to rethink your position.
Why not just tie it into the paging system? Then you have no trouble dealing with going below the actual amount of memory. You just page fault.
That'd really be the way to do it. A "256 MB" compressed chip acts like it as 256 MB even though it only has 128 MB actual. Once it fills, it page faults.
In practice, I doubt you'll ever actually hit that sort of case you're talking about. You'd have to assume that everything in memory was already compressed/random. That's never going to be the case given the large numbers of different programs running around, most written without concern about memory. Lots of arrays of zeros.
Unless you are running some kind of single process OS like DOS, I don't see how you could ever get your memory into a state where you couldn't even get 1:1 compression. There are just too many other processes running around in modern OSes.