Can we just allow companies to patent everything they want and let them be effective for like only 5 years so we can all get on with life? Innovators should not be rewarded for how "clever" they are, but rather compensated for how much it costs to do R&D. Patent duration should depend on the costs associated with innovation in each industry.
A language may lend itself more naturally to a certain way of thinking, but isn't bending the language for the job the role of the programmer?
I personally agree with the author - I think it's always a good mental workout to work in languages that do not give you the wealth of constructs and libraries of the many language popular today, but more than that, starting out in Basic exposed me to the many dialects of Basic very early in my career such that I'm now used to programming in unfamiliar languages.
Granted that Art is not a field foreign to computing, translation is an art that is difficult to satisfactorily automate.
It's not about getting the semantics right, or the meaning right, but to translate a piece of work into another cultural context for another person,
is a bit like trying to read somebody's mind.
The turing test for translation would probably be something like automatically translating a new contemporary musical into another language?
IMHO that's more difficult than getting a computer to write its own musical.
I believe there is a niche for automated translation, but even for the niche it's trying to fill, it's not good enough. Not especially in my part of the world where there is not only
a diversity of languages, but also a great diversity in the language families from which these language take their characteristics.
if performance is the issue and your current machine is at least 4 years old, then the odds are you have to be pretty lucky to buy something that is less powerful than your current machine?
I'm not insomaniac, but for various reasons I used to sleep at about 2am. And then it became 3am. And then it became 4am. after a while the sliding window slid so much that I started sleeping at 8pm. There was a time I got used to be awake at about 4am, but this time not before bed, but after. It was terrible when I was trying to keep my working day life with my 4am nights, until i realized that if I let it run its course, I could decide where it should stop.
i wouldn't entrust my passwords to a third party website, but if i had to do it, i guess i would have to change my password temporary, let the third party site access my account with the temporary password, and then change it back.
but i've always felt very awkward that facebook is one website. Is it possible to make a distributed/cloud version of it using some form of client-side decryption, so that nobody "owns" any of the information in its entirety?
I use dvorak for english typing and qwerty for japanese. my fingers remember the keys that way - i can still, but find it less natural to type querty for english, and in the same way, i find it odd to type dvorak for japanese. it's all mascular memory at the end of the day. the reason i use dvorak though, is neither medical nor speed, it just feels better.
I have seen code from various Japanese projects, and while comments are written in Japanese, variable names are inevitably alphabetical.
Depending on the company's practices, variable names may range from Jinglish to romanized Japanese, in which case is as meaningful as i, j, and k to non-Japanese speakers. No, programmer's don't generally run their variable names through dictionaries to make sure words are spelt correctly or that they really mean what they think they mean.
Just as vehicles are divided into classes, computers are divided into different classes that require slightly different skills. A car license doesn't allow you to drive a bus. If it is fair for the government to control the manufacture and use of military, medical, scientific and civil machinery and devices, I don't see why the same laws cannot apply to computers.
I think what we need instead is a Computer Driver Test, which should include a basic theory test about general concepts behind computers.
The computer is a tool for the brain. Stupid people should not be allowed to use a computer, not any more than blind people should be allowed to drive.
I live in Japan and adoption seems really conservative.
Let's first take version numbers away to get a better view.
Japan
Firefox has been having a 21-23% share for the 2 years, with IE still leading though dropping from 70 to 65%
Growth in conservative. UK seems to have a similar trend.
Singapore
About 30% share and growth is conservative.
Malaysia
Growth from 30% up to 40%, with an equal drop in IE share.
This looks like a market where Firefox can overtake IE?
France
very interesting trend. W38 2008 and W26 2009 had a short period where IE use was displaced by Firefox, but IE use was resumed in a few weeks.
Does that mean users in France are open to the idea, but still don't deem Firefox a good replacement yet?
Interestingly Vietnam seems to have a similar trend.
China
IE has 95% share all the way, with a drop recently, giving way not to Firefox, but to Maxthon.
Poland / Finland
Firefox is the most popular browser!
North Korea
Nobody really wins. Only IE, once in a while.
Antartica
Go figure. But firefox seems to be winning?
It would be nice if we could have a world map of the most popular browsers in each country
so we can adjust our expectations when talking to overseas partners...
The Refrigeration Industrial Artists' Association has decided that you will need to pay an "iFrigement use fee" if you put any food item with an energy content of more than 1000 kCal in your fridge. Your fridge comes with a Healthy Home Edition license - I'm afraid you need to upgrade your kCal licenses for your level of consumption.
Why not make it compulsory to get networkable devices certified to be malware-free every year just as cars need to go through statutory vehicle inspections?
If bandwidth is such an important resource, shouldn't we consider networkable devices to be potentially dangerous and perhaps consider the idea of requiring a license for ownership?
I'm in the IT line. I've never attended a typing course in my life but i self-taught myself touch-typing on some freeware, once in QWERTY, once in DVORAK and in either case it took a little less than three weeks. The real speed came from chatting in IRC. My sister is not in the IT line, she went through the same IRC "course" and she types just a little slower than I. As useful as touch typing is - I think it's trivial to pick it up when compared to something as deep as reading and arithmetic.
All that being said, I realized that my own way of typing back then was not very much different than the "correct" fingering. When speed matters, we will all develop our own optimal way of typing - which should, IMHO, on average, converge on the prescribed "correct" method.
Slashdot Mirror
Can we just allow companies to patent everything they want and let them be effective for like only 5 years so we can all get on with life? Innovators should not be rewarded for how "clever" they are, but rather compensated for how much it costs to do R&D. Patent duration should depend on the costs associated with innovation in each industry.
This is really nostalgic I almost forgot what MAN meant!
A language may lend itself more naturally to a certain way of thinking, but isn't bending the language for the job the role of the programmer? I personally agree with the author - I think it's always a good mental workout to work in languages that do not give you the wealth of constructs and libraries of the many language popular today, but more than that, starting out in Basic exposed me to the many dialects of Basic very early in my career such that I'm now used to programming in unfamiliar languages.
Granted that Art is not a field foreign to computing, translation is an art that is difficult to satisfactorily automate. It's not about getting the semantics right, or the meaning right, but to translate a piece of work into another cultural context for another person, is a bit like trying to read somebody's mind. The turing test for translation would probably be something like automatically translating a new contemporary musical into another language? IMHO that's more difficult than getting a computer to write its own musical. I believe there is a niche for automated translation, but even for the niche it's trying to fill, it's not good enough. Not especially in my part of the world where there is not only a diversity of languages, but also a great diversity in the language families from which these language take their characteristics.
if performance is the issue and your current machine is at least 4 years old, then the odds are you have to be pretty lucky to buy something that is less powerful than your current machine?
I'm not insomaniac, but for various reasons I used to sleep at about 2am. And then it became 3am. And then it became 4am. after a while the sliding window slid so much that I started sleeping at 8pm. There was a time I got used to be awake at about 4am, but this time not before bed, but after. It was terrible when I was trying to keep my working day life with my 4am nights, until i realized that if I let it run its course, I could decide where it should stop.
i wouldn't entrust my passwords to a third party website, but if i had to do it, i guess i would have to change my password temporary, let the third party site access my account with the temporary password, and then change it back. but i've always felt very awkward that facebook is one website. Is it possible to make a distributed/cloud version of it using some form of client-side decryption, so that nobody "owns" any of the information in its entirety?
I use dvorak for english typing and qwerty for japanese. my fingers remember the keys that way - i can still, but find it less natural to type querty for english, and in the same way, i find it odd to type dvorak for japanese. it's all mascular memory at the end of the day. the reason i use dvorak though, is neither medical nor speed, it just feels better.
I have seen code from various Japanese projects, and while comments are written in Japanese, variable names are inevitably alphabetical. Depending on the company's practices, variable names may range from Jinglish to romanized Japanese, in which case is as meaningful as i, j, and k to non-Japanese speakers. No, programmer's don't generally run their variable names through dictionaries to make sure words are spelt correctly or that they really mean what they think they mean.
And i thought MD5 had collision problems!
Just as vehicles are divided into classes, computers are divided into different classes that require slightly different skills. A car license doesn't allow you to drive a bus. If it is fair for the government to control the manufacture and use of military, medical, scientific and civil machinery and devices, I don't see why the same laws cannot apply to computers.
I think what we need instead is a Computer Driver Test, which should include a basic theory test about general concepts behind computers. The computer is a tool for the brain. Stupid people should not be allowed to use a computer, not any more than blind people should be allowed to drive.
I live in Japan and adoption seems really conservative. Let's first take version numbers away to get a better view.
Japan
Firefox has been having a 21-23% share for the 2 years, with IE still leading though dropping from 70 to 65%
Growth in conservative. UK seems to have a similar trend.
Singapore
About 30% share and growth is conservative.
Malaysia
Growth from 30% up to 40%, with an equal drop in IE share.
This looks like a market where Firefox can overtake IE?
France
very interesting trend. W38 2008 and W26 2009 had a short period where IE use was displaced by Firefox, but IE use was resumed in a few weeks.
Does that mean users in France are open to the idea, but still don't deem Firefox a good replacement yet?
Interestingly Vietnam seems to have a similar trend.
China
IE has 95% share all the way, with a drop recently, giving way not to Firefox, but to Maxthon.
Poland / Finland
Firefox is the most popular browser!
North Korea
Nobody really wins. Only IE, once in a while.
Antartica
Go figure. But firefox seems to be winning?
It would be nice if we could have a world map of the most popular browsers in each country
so we can adjust our expectations when talking to overseas partners...
Who needs facebook when there's slashdot?
I thought the waibelfish goes INSIDE the ears?
The Refrigeration Industrial Artists' Association has decided that you will need to pay an "iFrigement use fee" if you put any food item with an energy content of more than 1000 kCal in your fridge. Your fridge comes with a Healthy Home Edition license - I'm afraid you need to upgrade your kCal licenses for your level of consumption.
What could be worse than a bad breakup?
Everyone knows that no new technology can succeed without the endorsement of the pr0n industry.
Make sure you get everything backed up. 'Cos now tech support will just replaced it with a new one.
I'm not sure if I would consider this country democratic.
Why not make it compulsory to get networkable devices certified to be malware-free every year just as cars need to go through statutory vehicle inspections? If bandwidth is such an important resource, shouldn't we consider networkable devices to be potentially dangerous and perhaps consider the idea of requiring a license for ownership?
are adopting the (blame the) customer-first policy.
to feed our musicians again?
I'm in the IT line. I've never attended a typing course in my life but i self-taught myself touch-typing on some freeware, once in QWERTY, once in DVORAK and in either case it took a little less than three weeks. The real speed came from chatting in IRC. My sister is not in the IT line, she went through the same IRC "course" and she types just a little slower than I. As useful as touch typing is - I think it's trivial to pick it up when compared to something as deep as reading and arithmetic. All that being said, I realized that my own way of typing back then was not very much different than the "correct" fingering. When speed matters, we will all develop our own optimal way of typing - which should, IMHO, on average, converge on the prescribed "correct" method.
Do newly discovered ecosystems also represent new ecosystems of viruses, bacteria and diseases?