Does Eurpoe really have that much guilt over its wretched past? It's OK guys, all our fore-fathers have made mistakes. Banning speech, which is only that, speech, is a ridiculas, unthought-out, pointless idea. Let the racists and biggots publicaly make a fool of themselves so we know who not to associate with. If this does go through though, does this mean that Europeons can no longer write about their hatered for Americans or Stupid White Males?
Yeah, I actually found asm to be easier in many respects because there is so little abstraction and I can see everything piece of loogic in front of me. Obviously it is not easier to write a modest sized program in asm but reading code in assembly should be something any Computer Science graduate should be able to do rather easily. It's not too much to know what it means to load and store a word from a memory location to a particular register and store it again using *gasp* hex.
Not to mention a fair understanding of algorithms, data structires and computation theroy not because you will remember the exact things you learned a year out of school but so you know they exist, why they exist and to prevent you from coming up with crazy ideas that are not computationaly feasable. I would love to see how many programs use a bubble sort to sort a large set of data, ya know.
As for high level languages lowering the bar, it's marketing telling people these things that are simply not true. Marketers will tell clients "this language, anyone can write in it..". It's not that anyone can write in it, sure anyone can get a book and program some codes, but will they understad the consequence of what they are doing? It's hard for people that haven't at least had a math background or engineering (which includes much math) to really understand what they are doing unless they have done a bunch of research themselves, been trained by someone else over a period of time or gone to school for CS.
On another rant, I really hate how the study of Computer Science has been basterdized by vocational programs and get rich quick schemes (tech skills "universities" or "schools".."start your new carrer in IT in 3 months!") such that most people think they teach you how to fix computers, install software, how to program a bit and how to become an "IT Professional" who makes sure all the computers are networked in the office. When I try and explain my fascination of algorithms, languages and computational theroy (Turing-Church Thesis),among other topics, and how computer science is really a subset of math that can be directly applied to modern silicon computers as well as computers being a great frontier for creating systems that can be observed to be algorithmically Turing computable, I am met with a blank face and then asked if I know why their computer crashes all the time. In short, observing the world for computation and applying that to machines that can compute quickly. Such a misunderstood study.
What effect would a quantom computer have on NP Complete problems and exponential length problems? For instance, could you color a graph every possible way with as few colors as possible (the famous k-colored problem) in one instant?
Yeah, I agree. As a language, it suits it's purpose as a quick prototyping language that is viable for graphical scripts or simple data I/O. Too bad it is not always used this way. And you're right about the breed of programmer. I've met enough people who picked up a book on VB, learned a thing or two and think they should be earning 60K+/year because they now understand Computer Science. Firstly, it's insulting and secondly, it's iggnorant. VB is the type of language you shouldn't try and make things work in; it's the type of language you use because what you would want to use is just too powerful for what you are doing.
Yeah, that works too. Once I got rid of a desktop in my room, I found it impossible to sleep because of the silence so I brought in a fan and everything was OK. With a computer, the quiet sounds of the harddrive defragging itself in the background is relaxing as well I have found so I would agree a computer may be better than a fan for the whole white noise thing.
Have a fan going in your room or outside/in a closet. I have known many people that use this technique and everyone agrees this helps them fall asleep quickly. This will cost you about $20.00. Calm, white noise is the key to good rest.
With print statements, your program can alert you in real time, using all the functions available in code but not in a debugger, and doesn't need to be carefully compiled as debug with the appropriate modules running in a debugger with the right break-points set. Just add a message box, and your program will tell you what it's doing.
I agree mainly, in that I often use printf or cout or whatever std output functions the particular programming language makes available but one thing you have to be careful about is, in as you were mentioning, multi threaded programs. Using printf type functions will not always work correctly because as the current thread waits for the IO device, it is put into waiting mode generally and another thread will take it's place as the executing thrad. So, if you are using printf, your program may be taking a break before an important piece of code that is causing the probems only when thread 'a' executed it before thread 'b' but since 'a' is preempted or waiting because of an early I/O command, 'b' runs when it should not and all hell breaks loose. Then again, multithreaded programming has many pitfalls, but just be careful when using an I/O command that will preempt a thread to check for many types of errors. They don't always allow multithreaded programs to execute in a realistic fashion. But then again, a multithreaded program should be able to change threads at anytime and run correctly, prohibiting specific instructions to wait, etc.
Although beta testing is an somewhat important phase in the software and testing life cycle, it is not one you should depend on too heavily. A test plan should be developed after the requirements have been put together and all testing should be executed in each of the phases of the project, being flexible enough to change as possibly new requirements enter the project. Testing of software is usually done poorly and many projects have little focus on the testing process. It's not necessarily the most fun process, but one that is important and should be done by a highly skilled team that is both creative and smart. If your project is relying on beta testing to find a substantial set of errors and defects in your software, your software is probably doomed.
Software engineering really is that, engineering, but it is often not looked at this way. Writing code is the easiest part of it all but many steps and procedures should be used to ensure the highest quality and robustness of software possible. We have way too many under-educated, non-read and undisciplined developers/managers that really need to observe other fields of engineering, such as civil enginering/construction to see what we need to do to make software development of higher quality.
Yeah, only talked to a few, which is more than many engineering students can say, but they all had the same reply. They all come from different parts of India and from different types of families. They were shocked when I told them my sister goes to school for Photography. They thought it was cool that you could do that actually and that they wished there were options like that back home. But simply there is not. Of course I haven't gotten 989759327432 different Indian's opinion but seeing that the few I did talk to all have the same reply makes me assume it's at least a *little* correct. They all told me about the tests and work they had to do and it all pointed in the same direction. The people who get "other" degrees are simply the ones who are not good at math. There is not much else for them at this point unless they are wealthy. Those that are not wealthy and get jobs doing technical things don't become wealthy either. So, we have thousands of people going to school for engineering or medical that know they won't make anything; how are Americans supposed to compete with that? All we can do is hope that our more complete education will allow us to think in more vast ways and this could make us worth it. The sad news for many engineering students is they don't pay attention to those topics and essentially end up 1-dimensional like an Indian graduate except the Indian can do the same thing for much less.
I've talked to some Indian friends of mine in school about what school is like in India. It's a whole different game there. You basically have 3 options; engineering, business and "other". You don't want to end up in the other part. You must be an engineer (computer programmer et all) or business person and it all rides on your grades. I asked about people interested in art and other similar topics and going to college for something like that just is not an option. In fact they don't have those degress really.
They would talk about how it is not fun at all but is the way it is. Hell, being a teacher or professor is actually looked down upon, it's amazing.
My problems with this approach is it seems like people get very 1-dimensional educations and are not put into fields they are good at. Creativity is pushed aside and it's only about numbers. But then again, the "best" wil get through. I think as far as outsourcing goes, this has to be looked at. They really do have a lot of people, and I mean a lot, going for the type of software engineering and IT jobs many of us are looking for.
Listen man, if you want todosomething really serious, a place like Slashdot is the last place to look for advice you can count on. This place is like reading the WEekly World News. HOwever, it is entertaining.
I used to die on purpose just so I could hear the great music in that game. Sometimes I would wait for when I got a powerup, but usually I just liked driving real fast listining to the cool "spy" music that played for like 30 seconds. Needless to say I wasn't leader of the cool club back then either.
I would like to see, in the realm of PC gaming, a game that makes use, or at least allows a user, to use more than 1 monitor at once. Of course, the avergae Joe probably doesn't have 2 or more monitors but for those that do, it would come in real handy. I can imigine infinie uses for using 2 monitors and I think what Nintendo is going to do with two screen Gameboy will make this more clear to people the power of 2 visual output devices.
Imagine an MMO where on one screen is your view, another screen keeps stats, has other players views or multipple angles of battle. In essence, 1 screen keeps focus of the gameplay and another keeps track of stats, interesting things the user should have at hand among other things. The possibilites are left to the user. This can be expanded into the realm of just about any software and already has been for many years.
Not to mention for LAN's, having multiple monitors with your peers screen being sent to it greatly aid in many co-op games.
I understand not everyone has 2 monitors or n-monitors for that matter, but for those that do it could inspire new ideas never implemented and convince people to pick up another, possibly cheap, monitor.
Sure, it is obvious to anyone with some, or possibly no, computer science background but the post was mainly for those who don't understand this concept. I also find it rather interesting that anything you do on a computer is simply the construction of a finite bit pattern. It's simply beautiful. How human thought uses al these abstratcions to find these paths is amazing, etc.
The point of this work isn't to create random sounds, but to create music that sounds tolerable to humans
I've heard many groups on the radio that could probably use this program then.:)
This is cool, but I'm guessing the results won't be very...well, great. Theoretically you could construct every bit pattern for say, 1 MB - 5 MB, capturing the typical encoding of an MP3. Then, you select each byte pattern that sounds good. You would in fact "create" every song that has ever been encoded into MP3 format between 1 and 5 MB. The only problem with this is you are creating more byte patterns than there are protons in the universe, so this is of course practically impossible. It doesn't stop with music either. Anything that can be encoded digitally can be "created" this way. Obviously this cannot happen, not with what we know of anyways, so it's pointless. But it is interesting none the less to think that everything you see, hear, use etc in the realm of digitazion can be created with a simple NFA or graph set to take each "path" and then decode what's viable, etc. Perhaps I should create this algorithm and claim all information withen a certain byte range, sueing for copyright infringment anytime something is created on a computer, as my algorithm has created it already. It's interesting to think about how we get to "create" a finite path in a DFA or byte graph that really already exists, but we need to "find" it.
Who would have guessed that China would lead the way in green transportation?"
Trading in pedal bikes for motor bikes, regardless of power source is not as green as a regular pedal bike. Also, since this is "green" I guess, I would imagine countries like China would adopt them first as there isn't any room for American style SUV's, right?
Slashdot Mirror
"Of course, the non-cheapskates among us should go buy the CD-set to support the project."
Actually, that's why it's called "Free Software".
OK, that's a troll. Go ahead and send them a few dollars if you enjoy using their distribution. You only help yourself when you do this.
Does Eurpoe really have that much guilt over its wretched past? It's OK guys, all our fore-fathers have made mistakes. Banning speech, which is only that, speech, is a ridiculas, unthought-out, pointless idea. Let the racists and biggots publicaly make a fool of themselves so we know who not to associate with. If this does go through though, does this mean that Europeons can no longer write about their hatered for Americans or Stupid White Males?
Yeah, I actually found asm to be easier in many respects because there is so little abstraction and I can see everything piece of loogic in front of me. Obviously it is not easier to write a modest sized program in asm but reading code in assembly should be something any Computer Science graduate should be able to do rather easily. It's not too much to know what it means to load and store a word from a memory location to a particular register and store it again using *gasp* hex.
,among other topics, and how computer science is really a subset of math that can be directly applied to modern silicon computers as well as computers being a great frontier for creating systems that can be observed to be algorithmically Turing computable, I am met with a blank face and then asked if I know why their computer crashes all the time. In short, observing the world for computation and applying that to machines that can compute quickly. Such a misunderstood study.
Not to mention a fair understanding of algorithms, data structires and computation theroy not because you will remember the exact things you learned a year out of school but so you know they exist, why they exist and to prevent you from coming up with crazy ideas that are not computationaly feasable. I would love to see how many programs use a bubble sort to sort a large set of data, ya know.
As for high level languages lowering the bar, it's marketing telling people these things that are simply not true. Marketers will tell clients "this language, anyone can write in it..". It's not that anyone can write in it, sure anyone can get a book and program some codes, but will they understad the consequence of what they are doing? It's hard for people that haven't at least had a math background or engineering (which includes much math) to really understand what they are doing unless they have done a bunch of research themselves, been trained by someone else over a period of time or gone to school for CS.
On another rant, I really hate how the study of Computer Science has been basterdized by vocational programs and get rich quick schemes (tech skills "universities" or "schools".."start your new carrer in IT in 3 months!") such that most people think they teach you how to fix computers, install software, how to program a bit and how to become an "IT Professional" who makes sure all the computers are networked in the office. When I try and explain my fascination of algorithms, languages and computational theroy (Turing-Church Thesis)
Watching LA lose, and in the fashion they lost in, makes me believe that maybe the world ,somehow, is a just, good place.
What effect would a quantom computer have on NP Complete problems and exponential length problems? For instance, could you color a graph every possible way with as few colors as possible (the famous k-colored problem) in one instant?
Yeah, I agree. As a language, it suits it's purpose as a quick prototyping language that is viable for graphical scripts or simple data I/O. Too bad it is not always used this way. And you're right about the breed of programmer. I've met enough people who picked up a book on VB, learned a thing or two and think they should be earning 60K+/year because they now understand Computer Science. Firstly, it's insulting and secondly, it's iggnorant. VB is the type of language you shouldn't try and make things work in; it's the type of language you use because what you would want to use is just too powerful for what you are doing.
Yeah, that works too. Once I got rid of a desktop in my room, I found it impossible to sleep because of the silence so I brought in a fan and everything was OK. With a computer, the quiet sounds of the harddrive defragging itself in the background is relaxing as well I have found so I would agree a computer may be better than a fan for the whole white noise thing.
Have a fan going in your room or outside/in a closet. I have known many people that use this technique and everyone agrees this helps them fall asleep quickly. This will cost you about $20.00. Calm, white noise is the key to good rest.
I agree mainly, in that I often use printf or cout or whatever std output functions the particular programming language makes available but one thing you have to be careful about is, in as you were mentioning, multi threaded programs. Using printf type functions will not always work correctly because as the current thread waits for the IO device, it is put into waiting mode generally and another thread will take it's place as the executing thrad. So, if you are using printf, your program may be taking a break before an important piece of code that is causing the probems only when thread 'a' executed it before thread 'b' but since 'a' is preempted or waiting because of an early I/O command, 'b' runs when it should not and all hell breaks loose. Then again, multithreaded programming has many pitfalls, but just be careful when using an I/O command that will preempt a thread to check for many types of errors. They don't always allow multithreaded programs to execute in a realistic fashion. But then again, a multithreaded program should be able to change threads at anytime and run correctly, prohibiting specific instructions to wait, etc.
Although beta testing is an somewhat important phase in the software and testing life cycle, it is not one you should depend on too heavily. A test plan should be developed after the requirements have been put together and all testing should be executed in each of the phases of the project, being flexible enough to change as possibly new requirements enter the project. Testing of software is usually done poorly and many projects have little focus on the testing process. It's not necessarily the most fun process, but one that is important and should be done by a highly skilled team that is both creative and smart. If your project is relying on beta testing to find a substantial set of errors and defects in your software, your software is probably doomed.
Software engineering really is that, engineering, but it is often not looked at this way. Writing code is the easiest part of it all but many steps and procedures should be used to ensure the highest quality and robustness of software possible. We have way too many under-educated, non-read and undisciplined developers/managers that really need to observe other fields of engineering, such as civil enginering/construction to see what we need to do to make software development of higher quality.
I will now step down from my soap-box.
"Where is the NHK TV camera? Hello, Tokyo!"
Yeah, only talked to a few, which is more than many engineering students can say, but they all had the same reply. They all come from different parts of India and from different types of families. They were shocked when I told them my sister goes to school for Photography. They thought it was cool that you could do that actually and that they wished there were options like that back home. But simply there is not. Of course I haven't gotten 989759327432 different Indian's opinion but seeing that the few I did talk to all have the same reply makes me assume it's at least a *little* correct.
They all told me about the tests and work they had to do and it all pointed in the same direction. The people who get "other" degrees are simply the ones who are not good at math. There is not much else for them at this point unless they are wealthy. Those that are not wealthy and get jobs doing technical things don't become wealthy either. So, we have thousands of people going to school for engineering or medical that know they won't make anything; how are Americans supposed to compete with that? All we can do is hope that our more complete education will allow us to think in more vast ways and this could make us worth it. The sad news for many engineering students is they don't pay attention to those topics and essentially end up 1-dimensional like an Indian graduate except the Indian can do the same thing for much less.
Yeah, forgot about doctor. But what you have listed is exactally what they told me, and in that order.
I've talked to some Indian friends of mine in school about what school is like in India. It's a whole different game there. You basically have 3 options; engineering, business and "other". You don't want to end up in the other part. You must be an engineer (computer programmer et all) or business person and it all rides on your grades. I asked about people interested in art and other similar topics and going to college for something like that just is not an option. In fact they don't have those degress really.
They would talk about how it is not fun at all but is the way it is. Hell, being a teacher or professor is actually looked down upon, it's amazing.
My problems with this approach is it seems like people get very 1-dimensional educations and are not put into fields they are good at. Creativity is pushed aside and it's only about numbers. But then again, the "best" wil get through. I think as far as outsourcing goes, this has to be looked at. They really do have a lot of people, and I mean a lot, going for the type of software engineering and IT jobs many of us are looking for.
Listen man, if you want todosomething really serious, a place like Slashdot is the last place to look for advice you can count on. This place is like reading the WEekly World News. HOwever, it is entertaining.
Booooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!
-for emphasis
I'm amazed and a bit relived that I wasn't the only who thought the music was cool in that game. Like, really cool though.
I used to die on purpose just so I could hear the great music in that game. Sometimes I would wait for when I got a powerup, but usually I just liked driving real fast listining to the cool "spy" music that played for like 30 seconds. Needless to say I wasn't leader of the cool club back then either.
As a marketer you have the right to send out ad's. As a consumer, I have the right to block your shit. Fuck off, excuse the language.
For the record, I'm not in the monitor business. :P
I would like to see, in the realm of PC gaming, a game that makes use, or at least allows a user, to use more than 1 monitor at once. Of course, the avergae Joe probably doesn't have 2 or more monitors but for those that do, it would come in real handy. I can imigine infinie uses for using 2 monitors and I think what Nintendo is going to do with two screen Gameboy will make this more clear to people the power of 2 visual output devices.
Imagine an MMO where on one screen is your view, another screen keeps stats, has other players views or multipple angles of battle. In essence, 1 screen keeps focus of the gameplay and another keeps track of stats, interesting things the user should have at hand among other things. The possibilites are left to the user. This can be expanded into the realm of just about any software and already has been for many years.
Not to mention for LAN's, having multiple monitors with your peers screen being sent to it greatly aid in many co-op games.
I understand not everyone has 2 monitors or n-monitors for that matter, but for those that do it could inspire new ideas never implemented and convince people to pick up another, possibly cheap, monitor.
Sure, it is obvious to anyone with some, or possibly no, computer science background but the post was mainly for those who don't understand this concept. I also find it rather interesting that anything you do on a computer is simply the construction of a finite bit pattern. It's simply beautiful. How human thought uses al these abstratcions to find these paths is amazing, etc.
The point of this work isn't to create random sounds, but to create music that sounds tolerable to humans
I've heard many groups on the radio that could probably use this program then.
This is cool, but I'm guessing the results won't be very...well, great. Theoretically you could construct every bit pattern for say, 1 MB - 5 MB, capturing the typical encoding of an MP3. Then, you select each byte pattern that sounds good. You would in fact "create" every song that has ever been encoded into MP3 format between 1 and 5 MB. The only problem with this is you are creating more byte patterns than there are protons in the universe, so this is of course practically impossible. It doesn't stop with music either. Anything that can be encoded digitally can be "created" this way. Obviously this cannot happen, not with what we know of anyways, so it's pointless. But it is interesting none the less to think that everything you see, hear, use etc in the realm of digitazion can be created with a simple NFA or graph set to take each "path" and then decode what's viable, etc. Perhaps I should create this algorithm and claim all information withen a certain byte range, sueing for copyright infringment anytime something is created on a computer, as my algorithm has created it already. It's interesting to think about how we get to "create" a finite path in a DFA or byte graph that really already exists, but we need to "find" it.
Who would have guessed that China would lead the way in green transportation?"
Trading in pedal bikes for motor bikes, regardless of power source is not as green as a regular pedal bike. Also, since this is "green" I guess, I would imagine countries like China would adopt them first as there isn't any room for American style SUV's, right?
Yeah, China never really "got" that whole Liberal Arts thing. But man can they crack equations!