I don't think I can have any respect for assembly that has more than 200 opcodes.
200??? That's way more than you need. In fact, you only need 1. (OISC. However, it's definitely a bit easier with a few more. 16 is a nice amount, as it is efficiently coded into 4 bits. It's surprising how powerful a 16-instruction set processor can be. (I designed one for my final year thesis).
No it didn't, He crashed. That's pretty much the first thing you are expected not to do when you learn to drive. In fact, I'd say that "not crashing" is the essence of driving. Silly boy. Moron parents.
Steve Jobs is only 53. If we take his statement about his health at face value then we 'll see ten more years from him at least. Probably longer, I don't see him as the retiring type. That's plenty of time to groom a successor. Stop worrying!
Even better, for phones, you coukld have a wheel with the numbers arranged around it. Then to dial *any number*, you just rotate the wheel to the number you want! It would be great, much easier than those stupid pushbuttons.
g. Now if they'd just let me get the songs off my ipod using iTunes and not having to resort to third party software I'll be happy.
While I agree with you that this is a nuisance, what's wrong with 3rd party software? As a OS X developer I don't feel my work is inherently inferior to Apple's. There are many examples where 3rd party software is way superior to Apple's own equivalent, e.g. The Finder.
Just. Hmmm, well, I'd like to see something implemented in a computer that could do it with equivalent precision, speed and in parallel with all the flight-motor control. And in that size and weight.
I guess what I meant was there isn't any maths going on that we would recognise as having anything to do with finding the intercept between two curves. There sure is a lot of visual processing going on that is breathtaking in its capability, but however that works it's unrelated to the usual method of solving intercepts!
One observation I made many years ago led me to realise that we mostly underestimate what even small brains routinely do. I was watching a hovering seagull while waiting at some traffic lights. It was scanning the road surface below for a few seconds, then swooped down and picked up the tiniest speck of food from the tarmac. This was on a busy city street with lots of litter and other debris on the road, such as small stones and gravel, cigarette butts, etc. The tarmac itself presented a "noisy" image background and yet the gull picked out that speck as being worth expending its energy on from a height of 30 or so feet while maintaining balance in flight in a gusty high wind with a lot of moving traffic around. The image processing required to do that boggles my mind! So much for bird-brains.
It's not such a leap to suppose that intelligence, whatever it is, is far more common than we assume. What counts as intelligent for a dog, cat or even a bright bird like a Magpie is probably not something we'd really recognise. Every creature's intelligence is uniquely its own.
For example, even a spider can do quite tricky maths in order to work out how to spin a web between arbitrary fixed points
I don't think the spider is doing any maths. It's a bit like us when we can simply immediately point to an intercept between two curves on a graph. Finding the intercept mathematically is moderately hard, but just looking and seeing where it is is no effort at all. The spider's brain is just looking and seeing where to place the silk - it's no effort at all and he certainly won't be breaking out the spidery slide rule.
Psystar is also accusing Apple of bricking Macs that don't run on genuine Apple hardware
Since the definition of "Macintosh" is a computer built/branded/sold by Apple, and no-one else, this statement is nonsensical. It could say "Psystar is accusing Apple of bricking generic PCs that are attempting to illegally run OS X", but, like it or not, I would have thought they are entitled to do so.
The result are 1,5 MJ per kg. Though better than normal still a long way (by a factor of 30) from fuel gas.
True, but you can't turn kinetic energy into fuel-gas (i.e. regenerative braking), and your I/C engine is wasting >65% of the energy anyway, so as part of an overall system, energy density isn't the whole story.
But my point was that passion often stirs people to drive themselves to learn more
Absolutely, no argument there. But as a Cocoa developer myself I would say that unless the kid was ultra-bright and ultra-motivated, the learning curve would be just too steep for a beginner to programming, of that age. The resulting frustration would be counter-productive, and might even put them off programming altogether. Starting with something that provides instant rewards such as BASIC or Logo would be great, even if it's well short of being able to create a cool iPod game. For those whose enthusiasm is inspired by that and want to move to something "real-world", then I could just about see Cocoa as being introduced.
When I started I learned BASIC, first on the Commodore PET, then the C64. I didn't initially understand the limitations of this, and I wanted to create a cool arcade game - based on the "Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy" in fact. I seem to recall I had some sort of bulldozer-meets-house scenario... Anyway, I started to write it in BASIC but of course even the most simple three-step animation took up all the processor speed, and so the realisation dawned. But I'd seen enough to know I had to learn assembler to get anything realistic done, and by then I'd learned enough fundamentals with BASIC to keep me wanting to learn more. I think if I'd started with assembler and nothing else I'd probably not have been able to do enough to keep me motivated.
Infrastructure should be paid for by the government using taxpayers money for the good of all. These schemes are stupid and illogical, driven by the ideology that says that any form of socialism, no matter how mild, must be avoided at all costs. Well look where that thinking has got you - billions of dollars of taxpayers money being used to feather the nests of incompetent bankers worldwide. Fuck me, if it wasn't such a crying shame it would be hilarious.
If I'm worried enough about someone accessing my data to use this service, then sending the text isn't going to set my mind at rest, since there's no way to know if it worked or not. So I'd still be worrying "did it work?". Once the laptop is shut down it can't send an acknowledgement that it did so, can it?
It's the late 60s and a groupie is invited backstage after a particularly mega concert featuring all the great bands of the day. After a while, a bit of pot has been smoked, some tabs dropped, and plenty of booze swigged, and so things start to swing. The groupie first goes down on Ray Manzarek, then Jim Morrison, and finally Rob Krieger and John Densmore get theirs. Groupie's not done though, and is just getting started on Jimi Hendrix when Michael Caine bursts in, and shouts...
"Oi! You're only supposed to blow the bloody Doors off!"
But very few of us that use the internet are geeks and they use common tools like Google and Shareaza and if they don't work then they just give up. They don't have the proficiency to make it work. And so the luddites win, because the literacy is so low.
You'd think that the luddites who are pushing for this would use their limited abilities to try and verify what they are talking about. Try googling for 'child porn' for example, in which case they find.... nothing. At least no actual child porn. But does the lightbulb ever go on? Apparently not.
How quickly our hopes in the Rudd government are fading - the euphoria last November seems embarrassing in hindsight. I only hope the other recent election doesn't end in disillusionment quite so quickly. Whoever you vote for, wankers always seem to end up in charge. Is it a job requirement or something?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think I can have any respect for assembly that has more than 200 opcodes.
200??? That's way more than you need. In fact, you only need 1. (OISC. However, it's definitely a bit easier with a few more. 16 is a nice amount, as it is efficiently coded into 4 bits. It's surprising how powerful a 16-instruction set processor can be. (I designed one for my final year thesis).
No it didn't, He crashed. That's pretty much the first thing you are expected not to do when you learn to drive. In fact, I'd say that "not crashing" is the essence of driving. Silly boy. Moron parents.
Steve Jobs is only 53. If we take his statement about his health at face value then we 'll see ten more years from him at least. Probably longer, I don't see him as the retiring type. That's plenty of time to groom a successor. Stop worrying!
Even better, for phones, you coukld have a wheel with the numbers arranged around it. Then to dial *any number*, you just rotate the wheel to the number you want! It would be great, much easier than those stupid pushbuttons.
g. Now if they'd just let me get the songs off my ipod using iTunes and not having to resort to third party software I'll be happy.
While I agree with you that this is a nuisance, what's wrong with 3rd party software? As a OS X developer I don't feel my work is inherently inferior to Apple's. There are many examples where 3rd party software is way superior to Apple's own equivalent, e.g. The Finder.
Everything with a bit of popularity and all the new released I'll bet will be $1.29.
Great! I hate popular songs and new releases. Now I have one more reason to steer clear of them.
Any idiot with a Mac and a copy of Garage Band can cut an album now
Ah, that would explain the sheer unadulterated crap that passes for popular music these days. And so much of it!
It's just pattern matching.
Just. Hmmm, well, I'd like to see something implemented in a computer that could do it with equivalent precision, speed and in parallel with all the flight-motor control. And in that size and weight.
I guess what I meant was there isn't any maths going on that we would recognise as having anything to do with finding the intercept between two curves. There sure is a lot of visual processing going on that is breathtaking in its capability, but however that works it's unrelated to the usual method of solving intercepts!
One observation I made many years ago led me to realise that we mostly underestimate what even small brains routinely do. I was watching a hovering seagull while waiting at some traffic lights. It was scanning the road surface below for a few seconds, then swooped down and picked up the tiniest speck of food from the tarmac. This was on a busy city street with lots of litter and other debris on the road, such as small stones and gravel, cigarette butts, etc. The tarmac itself presented a "noisy" image background and yet the gull picked out that speck as being worth expending its energy on from a height of 30 or so feet while maintaining balance in flight in a gusty high wind with a lot of moving traffic around. The image processing required to do that boggles my mind! So much for bird-brains.
It's not such a leap to suppose that intelligence, whatever it is, is far more common than we assume. What counts as intelligent for a dog, cat or even a bright bird like a Magpie is probably not something we'd really recognise. Every creature's intelligence is uniquely its own.
For example, even a spider can do quite tricky maths in order to work out how to spin a web between arbitrary fixed points
I don't think the spider is doing any maths. It's a bit like us when we can simply immediately point to an intercept between two curves on a graph. Finding the intercept mathematically is moderately hard, but just looking and seeing where it is is no effort at all. The spider's brain is just looking and seeing where to place the silk - it's no effort at all and he certainly won't be breaking out the spidery slide rule.
Two words: prior art.
And plenty of it. We had live preview icons in an app in 1989.
Psystar is also accusing Apple of bricking Macs that don't run on genuine Apple hardware
Since the definition of "Macintosh" is a computer built/branded/sold by Apple, and no-one else, this statement is nonsensical. It could say "Psystar is accusing Apple of bricking generic PCs that are attempting to illegally run OS X", but, like it or not, I would have thought they are entitled to do so.
The result are 1,5 MJ per kg. Though better than normal still a long way (by a factor of 30) from fuel gas.
True, but you can't turn kinetic energy into fuel-gas (i.e. regenerative braking), and your I/C engine is wasting >65% of the energy anyway, so as part of an overall system, energy density isn't the whole story.
Nah... It's actually Royal Blue Screen Of Death
Navy blue surely?
Good God, can't you people get off your Anti-Religion Flaming Horse for one thread a day?
Well, since you asked, no. Religion needs to be scorned and ridiculed at every possible opportunity. It's the only way.
But my point was that passion often stirs people to drive themselves to learn more
Absolutely, no argument there. But as a Cocoa developer myself I would say that unless the kid was ultra-bright and ultra-motivated, the learning curve would be just too steep for a beginner to programming, of that age. The resulting frustration would be counter-productive, and might even put them off programming altogether. Starting with something that provides instant rewards such as BASIC or Logo would be great, even if it's well short of being able to create a cool iPod game. For those whose enthusiasm is inspired by that and want to move to something "real-world", then I could just about see Cocoa as being introduced.
When I started I learned BASIC, first on the Commodore PET, then the C64. I didn't initially understand the limitations of this, and I wanted to create a cool arcade game - based on the "Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy" in fact. I seem to recall I had some sort of bulldozer-meets-house scenario... Anyway, I started to write it in BASIC but of course even the most simple three-step animation took up all the processor speed, and so the realisation dawned. But I'd seen enough to know I had to learn assembler to get anything realistic done, and by then I'd learned enough fundamentals with BASIC to keep me wanting to learn more. I think if I'd started with assembler and nothing else I'd probably not have been able to do enough to keep me motivated.
If they have iPods, this also gives the them ability to develop apps for them
Only the iPod Touch. Most iPods do not run OS X, and there is no publicly available SDK. Anyway, even if, not really all that suitable for beginners.
...not with a wang, but with a bimper*
*new slang for female genitalia - about time we had a new one.
One of the two earlier shifted staff members is running Parallels on her Mac to deal with QuickBooks
Weird, considering that QuickBooks is available for Mac: Quickbooks for Mac
The Grauniad has an item which gives some insight into how the ad came to be banned: Here
Seems to me Apple didn't really defend this one very appropriately, but then again, who cares?
Infrastructure should be paid for by the government using taxpayers money for the good of all. These schemes are stupid and illogical, driven by the ideology that says that any form of socialism, no matter how mild, must be avoided at all costs. Well look where that thinking has got you - billions of dollars of taxpayers money being used to feather the nests of incompetent bankers worldwide. Fuck me, if it wasn't such a crying shame it would be hilarious.
If I'm worried enough about someone accessing my data to use this service, then sending the text isn't going to set my mind at rest, since there's no way to know if it worked or not. So I'd still be worrying "did it work?". Once the laptop is shut down it can't send an acknowledgement that it did so, can it?
And for those (probably non-British folk) who didn't get the reference: You tube clip
It's the late 60s and a groupie is invited backstage after a particularly mega concert featuring all the great bands of the day. After a while, a bit of pot has been smoked, some tabs dropped, and plenty of booze swigged, and so things start to swing. The groupie first goes down on Ray Manzarek, then Jim Morrison, and finally Rob Krieger and John Densmore get theirs. Groupie's not done though, and is just getting started on Jimi Hendrix when Michael Caine bursts in, and shouts...
"Oi! You're only supposed to blow the bloody Doors off!"
But very few of us that use the internet are geeks and they use common tools like Google and Shareaza and if they don't work then they just give up. They don't have the proficiency to make it work. And so the luddites win, because the literacy is so low.
You'd think that the luddites who are pushing for this would use their limited abilities to try and verify what they are talking about. Try googling for 'child porn' for example, in which case they find.... nothing. At least no actual child porn. But does the lightbulb ever go on? Apparently not.
How quickly our hopes in the Rudd government are fading - the euphoria last November seems embarrassing in hindsight. I only hope the other recent election doesn't end in disillusionment quite so quickly. Whoever you vote for, wankers always seem to end up in charge. Is it a job requirement or something?