I hadn't realized the bit about the smart writers who post and the dumb kids who spread, but it makes sense. In fact, it could be useful. Observe:
How about a virus generator that embeds identifying information of the person doing the generating in the virus it generates?
Dig up NIC MACs, IP addresses, email settings, what have you. Something the virus investigators can easily use to trace back to the generator. Then stick them in cleartext (or rot13) in the code generated. Maybe even have the virus generate a report email about it to CERT. (Maybe that would need some self-limiting so as not to flood them, but still.) That way, anyone dumb or malicious enough to generate virii would be setting themselves up (the bomb). Kind of a honeypot in reverse. Let 'em autodarwinate.
Irrational numbers only seem strange because of the way we choose to look at things... the fact that it doesn't reduce to some fraction in our counting system doesn't *mean* anything holy or significant....
Well...not holy, but yes they are significant. They can't be expressed as a fraction in any counting system. (Unless, of course, you cheat and decide to "count in units of" the exact irrational you're trying to express, in which case it's going to be "1" -- you've just replaced one symbol (pi, e, phi, etc.) for another.)
Assembly language of some sort should be part of any programmer's experience. Granted, you're not going to accomplish anything wonderful -- you'll be doing well just to implement a sort or even multiplication (assuming your CPU doesn't have such instructions -- mine didn't (6502)).
But once you get the grasp of how things "really" operate in the machine, and see the limitations of dealing directly with the CPU, you'll appreciate more (and, with luck, grok) how things work in general, even in very high-level languages: even if you don't know exactly what machine code gets generated by a given statement when compiled, you'll be able to guess a bit better where something may be going wrong (or slow), what takes a computer longer or shorter to do, what conceptual misunderstandings may arise on your part, etc.
I think he's talking about the fact that focus is consistent on a sphere, not a plane. Since the chips are flat, the image you project on them is only perfectly focused on a circle (the intersection of the perfect-focus sphere with the plane of the wafer). You can see this happen with regular slide-, TV-, or film-projection as well.
It sounds like they focus the center exactly and let it get blurry the further out you go (this is the case where the plane is tangent to the sphere -- a zero-radius circle of focus, which is of course a point). I would think they would set the cicle to be larger in order to get more area of better focus, but maybe having some blurring in the center screws up their designs more.
Dunno, IANAMCFA. (Dare anyone to figure out what that one meant.)
The answer to that question was: ourselves! We started up a project to
create a free version of DOS, with source code available to all. The
result was the FreeDOS Project.
What if someone did this to Windows? An open source project that emulates Windows -- except better (i.e., without the bugs, instabilities, vulnerabilities, etc...and, for that matter, IE without the bugs, etc.)?
Right after they get done suing Iraq for its obvious ploy to subvert the Macintosh naming-convention "look and feel" with its transparent recapitalization.
I have here a table which is a definitive compilation of all the integers from -1048576 to 1048576. Everyone who wants to use any one of them has to pay me.
I'M RICH I TELLS YA! RICH! AHA HAHHA HA HA HAHAHA HH AHHA!!
Truth be told, it was one of my first thoughts, but her machine is old now and was el cheapo when she bought it: 64MB of RAM. (Linux would be beyond the pale for her.)
Unchallenged by classes, Frankel took control of his own education, largely directing his own home schooling. Around then, he also started messing with his brother's Atari 8-bit computer. By the time he started high school, he was a self-taught whiz.
It's because he cut his geek teeth on Atari 8-bits. I'm not just saying that because I used them too; see, the way the things worked were never officially documented. Everyone had to figure everything out for himself. This encourages tinkering, poking (and peeking), and prodding, and thus, technical ability. Either that or share info with others, which encourages geek socialization. Either way, you end up better (or at least with more geek-nature) for the the experience.
I'd like to know if the lattice could be stretched in all three directions, rather than just one. And if so, would that provide any benefit? Or does the benefit come from that directionality?
Slashdot Mirror
I hadn't realized the bit about the smart writers who post and the dumb kids who spread, but it makes sense. In fact, it could be useful. Observe:
How about a virus generator that embeds identifying information of the person doing the generating in the virus it generates?
Dig up NIC MACs, IP addresses, email settings, what have you. Something the virus investigators can easily use to trace back to the generator. Then stick them in cleartext (or rot13) in the code generated. Maybe even have the virus generate a report email about it to CERT. (Maybe that would need some self-limiting so as not to flood them, but still.) That way, anyone dumb or malicious enough to generate virii would be setting themselves up (the bomb). Kind of a honeypot in reverse. Let 'em autodarwinate.
Assembly language of some sort should be part of any programmer's experience. Granted, you're not going to accomplish anything wonderful -- you'll be doing well just to implement a sort or even multiplication (assuming your CPU doesn't have such instructions -- mine didn't (6502)).
But once you get the grasp of how things "really" operate in the machine, and see the limitations of dealing directly with the CPU, you'll appreciate more (and, with luck, grok) how things work in general, even in very high-level languages: even if you don't know exactly what machine code gets generated by a given statement when compiled, you'll be able to guess a bit better where something may be going wrong (or slow), what takes a computer longer or shorter to do, what conceptual misunderstandings may arise on your part, etc.
Go, assembly language!
I actually meant "IANA Micro Chip Fab Architect", but that's true too.
Watch me pull a fractal outta my hat!
[Servers exploding in Australia]
Oops! Looks like I don't know m'own strenth!
I think he's talking about the fact that focus is consistent on a sphere, not a plane. Since the chips are flat, the image you project on them is only perfectly focused on a circle (the intersection of the perfect-focus sphere with the plane of the wafer). You can see this happen with regular slide-, TV-, or film-projection as well.
It sounds like they focus the center exactly and let it get blurry the further out you go (this is the case where the plane is tangent to the sphere -- a zero-radius circle of focus, which is of course a point). I would think they would set the cicle to be larger in order to get more area of better focus, but maybe having some blurring in the center screws up their designs more.
Dunno, IANAMCFA. (Dare anyone to figure out what that one meant.)
Hmmmm...
Right after they get done suing Iraq for its obvious ploy to subvert the Macintosh naming-convention "look and feel" with its transparent recapitalization.
Them and iRan, iLlinois, iNdia, iStanbul...
I have here a table which is a definitive compilation of all the integers from -1048576 to 1048576. Everyone who wants to use any one of them has to pay me.
I'M RICH I TELLS YA! RICH! AHA HAHHA HA HA HAHAHA HH AHHA!!
Truth be told, it was one of my first thoughts, but her machine is old now and was el cheapo when she bought it: 64MB of RAM. (Linux would be beyond the pale for her.)
"Sour grapes."
Rock on, Atarians...
A: My mom runs Windows ME and I have to give her free tech support over the phone.
I...WANT...TO...MEET...HER!
Grrr...Better get Boy George in here to write a song for her.
(+15 points to anyone who gets the reference, and why it's not offtopic)
Wha?
What if we ported Windows to the PC??
Everything I've read says +R is more compatible. Did I read the wrong things?
Can anyone give a definitive technical reason why either should be?
I'd like to know if the lattice could be stretched in all three directions, rather than just one. And if so, would that provide any benefit? Or does the benefit come from that directionality?
So there will be one ring to bind them? Hmmmm...
Hmm. Interesting.
(Holy crap but we're geeks.)
Boss??
Uh...I was just, uh...researching some...uh...
Aw, crap.
All that work with no saving? And relying on the ability to hot-plug a cassette drive in?
"Hard core, man. Fucking hard core."