First off the font system is purely a legacy thing, since Tex predates pretty much all other currently popular font tech. So could LaTeX be retrofitted to use TrueType for everything? Probably. In a 100% backwards compatible way?
Yes. This is called XeTeX (and XeLaTeX, the LaTeX equivalent, comes with it). It is developed on Mac OS X, so it uses ATSUI to access system TrueType or PostScript fonts. It is also ported to Linux, accessing font using fontconfig and Freetype.
Just so you know, Christians are no less human than anyone else in the world. I think most Christians are better at recognizing our own flaws than others, but it's clear we can't do anything about it. That's the whole premise why God sent Jesus. That's His way of saying to us, "Nice try, but I'll strike a deal with you to make it easier." For those who did walk with Jesus, you can see the change in him. For those of us who don't, well, we're just like everyone else, probably worse off because we flushed his grace down the toilet.
You forgot that it was God's plan to send Jesus to us as a sacrifice for our sins. He did not send Jesus to teach us about advanced technology or how to perform miracles. He sent Jesus so we can relate to him.
At one point it was easier to convince people that Jesus is someone special by performing miracles, so he did it, but it was clear he did not want the miracles to distract people from his teachings and his ultimate role as a human sacrifice. I think it's quite clear that the technology or the power to perform miracles means nothing to God if we as his children don't turn back to Him.
If we follow this trend---IBM, Microsoft, Google---with Google being the next technology megapower, what are we going to have next? While integrating a train controller with GPS and Google Maps isn't that far-off, what about an elevator that runs off of Firefox which has a Google Gadget for polling button pushes over an AJAX API?!
Not to mention the minor detail that XML and compilers are orthogonal: you can use XML (or many other data interchange formats) with non-compiled languages, and most compilers know nothing about XML (or many other data interchange formats).
If you have taken a compiler class, you'd learn about "compiler compilers" which are parser generators. He's just talking about the concept of parsing in general, and that XML is for people who don't understand how to write parsers.
I don't agree with everything he says, but I think you need to know some context to understand that it's not off-the-chart nonsense.
The idea is not new, but the fact that Protocol Buffer takes a more C-like syntax as opposed to ASN.1 (more Pascal- or Fortran-like) appeals to software developers in this generation who starts learning programming with C or Java. Besides, Protocol Buffer has great integration with C++, Java, and Python. When it comes to data serialization format, it's really the implementation that counts rather than the idea, and they have a nice implementation.
Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!
Long gone are the days when you could host some new whizz-bang idea on your workstation or a borrowed machine in a coloc. If you want to integrate with existing services, you have to speak borg, borgmon, etc.
I'm sick and tired of having my work stolen, labeled "decoys", and trampled with unequal treatment under the law copyright infringing abuse. How are copyright trolls supposed to make a living if they aren't paid?
You seem to complain that RIAA isn't profitable enough to feed you. Dude, get another job!
Do you want to settle a case online? The part writing a network scanner, print out form letters, and build a website that accepts extortion money doesn't cost that much. What matters is to fine tune their selection algorithm to pick only the profitable victims. Notice that no lawyer is involved so far, possibly only to get a stamp of approval for the legality of bringing such system online.
I think the best part of this is that since they outsource the development of the computer system to MediaSentry, they might have an agreement about MediaSentry having to defend RIAA for legal liability in case MediaSentry screws up. At least for the cases I've read about, so far the cases that RIAA dropped and are being counter-sued have belonged to this category, screw up on the part of MediaSentry.
What don't you understand about this whole thing being a business model?
This makes perfect sense considering that RIAA is turning this into a business model. They basically do a network scan to pick plausible victims and print form letters. The first $3000 settlement money hardly cost them anything. It is the follow-up that costs them lawyer fees. Maybe if they could figure out a way to automatically file counter-motions to motion-to-quash, they would be able to lower the step-up rate as well and make a better deal to the students. Oh wait... remind me again what service is the payer getting out of this?
If it's a legit call and they can't be bothered to leave a message, then I can't be bothered to call them back.
You're lucky that you've never encountered a voice spam that waits for the initial greeting, and then plays back a pre-recorded message. Sometimes if you answer the phone without saying anything, it will just be silent, but most people answer the phone with "hello."
You've never met people who tells you that Windows has no bugs? While this does not mean anything about the quality of Windows software, but the user is a significant factor in perceived software quality. I haven't used Windows for many years, but I think it's fair to say that if that thing between the chair and the keyboard knows what he's doing, he can be using Windows, Linux, BSD, or Mac OS X and not have problems.
However, I'm not blaming the user for software problems at all. Perhaps, instead of measuring software quality by the number of bugs in it, you measure it with user satisfaction? If most users can master the software, then it would be of high quality. Then we can see that Linux has definitely been improving consistently throughout these years, regardless whether the number of bugs have been rising.
1+1=2 is arithmetic over counting numbers, and counting is something that you observe. However, the reasoning about the structure as to why 1+1 has to be 2 is invented. 1+1 can be 10 in binary, or 11 in unary. The concept is probably discovered, but the form of writing and the algebraic structure is most definitely invented and can be arbitrary.
For example, one way to define natural number in math is by induction. I say the base case is that 0 is in the set of natural numbers. The inductive case is defined by a successor operation where if N is a natural number, this implies that successor of N is also a natural number. This gives you a unary representation, and the algebraic structure is analogous to a singly linked list.
(No, writing "{0, 1, 2,...} is the set of natural numbers" is not a rigorous definition.)
It is interesting to note that many abstract algebraic properties such as primality is impervious to the form of writing. These are probably discovered. However, the framework used to reason about it, Group and Ring and the many kinds of derivatives (Abelian Group, Principal Ideal Domain, Field) are certainly invented by very clever people.
I think most people who post here don't know what literate programming is. It's more like writing a textbook explaining how your code works, but you can strip away the text and actually have runnable code. This code can be in any language of your choice. It makes sense from Knuth's point of view, but for many of us, we don't write textbooks for a living.
Knuth also doesn't need unit testing because he probably runs (or type checks) the program in his head. Again, for most of us, seeing the program run provides additional assurance that it works. Unit tests also provide a specification of your program. It doesn't have to be just b = f(a). For example, if your code implements a balanced binary search tree, a unit test could check the depth of all subtrees to make sure the tree is balanced. Another unit test would check if the tree is ordered. You can prove by the structure of your program that these properties hold, but a lay-man doesn't want to write proofs for the code he writes, so the second best alternative is to use unit test.
About parallel programming, Knuth is actually right. Many high-performance parallel programs are actually very involved with the underlying architecture. But we can write a high-level essentially-sequential program that uses libraries to compute things like FFT and matrix multiplication in parallel. This tends to be the trend anyways.
I think both are correct answers. When it is discovered, it is physics. When it is invented, it is computer science. However, there is plenty of space in between. Oftentimes people discover something but invents a framework to allow a deeper reasoning of the concepts.
On one side we've got a bunch of scientists - who's philosophy espouses striving for neutrality, lack of bias, objectivity, etc. On the other side, we've got.... an ex-Nixon speechwiter/game show host.
There are two kinds of people. One kind asserts that they're neutral, unbiased, and objective. The other kind always loses argument ad-hominem. Really, when you start putting labels on the people supporting each side of the issue, the outcome is obvious.
Science should be scrutinized, not believed, even if it is generally neutral, unbiased, and objective. I look forward to Darwinism being taught in classroom as long as students are allowed to criticize it, not learning it as the absolute truth. After all, it's just a model of how someone understands nature to be.
I've pointed out flaws in this model before, e.g. the common ancestry assumption. Most species get their genes from two parents as opposed to just one. Viruses, on the other hand, duplicates asexually. That explains why Darwinism is more readily observable on virus than sexed species. And some science fanboys (they might not be scientists at all, mind you) love to say that whatever works for viruses applies to humans and other animals too.
At least whoever wrote Genesis (it is believed to be Moses) has some sense that human can't origin from one Adam alone. And that Noah didn't just pick one animal of each specie (he picked several pairs) when the flood came because one animal can't breed by itself.
If I put you in the outer space, you are not light emitting either. The fact I can see you is because you reflect light either from the sun or the computer screen in front of you.
That said, isn't it surprising when scientists find out that most objects out there aren't light emitting? Like, dark matter?
How can you see a 'black hole'? They dont emit visable light.
No, but its gravitational field distorts light like a lens. It can bend light more than 180 degrees (imagine photon traverses black hole like a comet approaching the sun), so some part of the image might actually be reflection, like a mirror.
It is interesting how you associate the lack of jiggies with photo-realism. Most digital cameras apply some sort of low-pass filter (i.e. blur) because the color filter array causes severe moire effect and aliasing. However, the Foveon X3 sensor doesn't have that problem, so cameras based on X3 (such as Sigma SD14) don't blur the image. The resulting picture actually looks like it has been raytraced. I'm sure you can Google for some pictures yourself.
I'm guessing that blur is all you need for photo-realism.
The terms about "Distributable Code" refers to the bullet points in (2) (a) (i) in the license. One of the item listed there is MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes), a C++ library for GUI programming, similar to QT. Since MFC source code is provided and they let you modify and redistribute it with your proram, I think it's understandable that they don't want to accidentally turn MFC into open source.
Let it be pikine's law that an argument is over as soon as Britney Spears is mentioned in the discussion. Really, your perception about B.S.'s popularity is wrong. Her music was popular in the past when it was still bearable. People are now more interested in her tabloid headline than her music. Your misperception about people's music taste also shows your elitist attitude because you're patronizing over personal preferences. In plain language, you believe "what I like is better than thine," and I'm telling you that's the wrong attitude.
Do you think that usability specialists design software?
Do you think programmers have an aesthetic sense? Many don't even bother to maintain a consistent coding style. Programmers suck at consistency, and that's why you see so many bugs. All bugs are some form of inconsistency. And I argue that consistency is a major factor in aesthetics. That's why people design and appreciate symmetrical things.
It works fine on my computers, it suits my needs
I think we both have this in common. It suits my needs. Unlike you, and I'm agreeing to disagree, I think GIMP sucks.
Anyway, if you have nothing to do with GIMP development, I don't want to waste my time with you. Feel free to go away. Shoo.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. This is called XeTeX (and XeLaTeX, the LaTeX equivalent, comes with it). It is developed on Mac OS X, so it uses ATSUI to access system TrueType or PostScript fonts. It is also ported to Linux, accessing font using fontconfig and Freetype.
Just so you know, Christians are no less human than anyone else in the world. I think most Christians are better at recognizing our own flaws than others, but it's clear we can't do anything about it. That's the whole premise why God sent Jesus. That's His way of saying to us, "Nice try, but I'll strike a deal with you to make it easier." For those who did walk with Jesus, you can see the change in him. For those of us who don't, well, we're just like everyone else, probably worse off because we flushed his grace down the toilet.
You forgot that it was God's plan to send Jesus to us as a sacrifice for our sins. He did not send Jesus to teach us about advanced technology or how to perform miracles. He sent Jesus so we can relate to him.
At one point it was easier to convince people that Jesus is someone special by performing miracles, so he did it, but it was clear he did not want the miracles to distract people from his teachings and his ultimate role as a human sacrifice. I think it's quite clear that the technology or the power to perform miracles means nothing to God if we as his children don't turn back to Him.
If we follow this trend---IBM, Microsoft, Google---with Google being the next technology megapower, what are we going to have next? While integrating a train controller with GPS and Google Maps isn't that far-off, what about an elevator that runs off of Firefox which has a Google Gadget for polling button pushes over an AJAX API?!
If you have taken a compiler class, you'd learn about "compiler compilers" which are parser generators. He's just talking about the concept of parsing in general, and that XML is for people who don't understand how to write parsers.
I don't agree with everything he says, but I think you need to know some context to understand that it's not off-the-chart nonsense.
The idea is not new, but the fact that Protocol Buffer takes a more C-like syntax as opposed to ASN.1 (more Pascal- or Fortran-like) appeals to software developers in this generation who starts learning programming with C or Java. Besides, Protocol Buffer has great integration with C++, Java, and Python. When it comes to data serialization format, it's really the implementation that counts rather than the idea, and they have a nice implementation.
Either that, or you need to speak Zweedish.
You seem to complain that RIAA isn't profitable enough to feed you. Dude, get another job!
Do you want to settle a case online? The part writing a network scanner, print out form letters, and build a website that accepts extortion money doesn't cost that much. What matters is to fine tune their selection algorithm to pick only the profitable victims. Notice that no lawyer is involved so far, possibly only to get a stamp of approval for the legality of bringing such system online.
I think the best part of this is that since they outsource the development of the computer system to MediaSentry, they might have an agreement about MediaSentry having to defend RIAA for legal liability in case MediaSentry screws up. At least for the cases I've read about, so far the cases that RIAA dropped and are being counter-sued have belonged to this category, screw up on the part of MediaSentry.
What don't you understand about this whole thing being a business model?
This makes perfect sense considering that RIAA is turning this into a business model. They basically do a network scan to pick plausible victims and print form letters. The first $3000 settlement money hardly cost them anything. It is the follow-up that costs them lawyer fees. Maybe if they could figure out a way to automatically file counter-motions to motion-to-quash, they would be able to lower the step-up rate as well and make a better deal to the students. Oh wait... remind me again what service is the payer getting out of this?
You're lucky that you've never encountered a voice spam that waits for the initial greeting, and then plays back a pre-recorded message. Sometimes if you answer the phone without saying anything, it will just be silent, but most people answer the phone with "hello."
You've never met people who tells you that Windows has no bugs? While this does not mean anything about the quality of Windows software, but the user is a significant factor in perceived software quality. I haven't used Windows for many years, but I think it's fair to say that if that thing between the chair and the keyboard knows what he's doing, he can be using Windows, Linux, BSD, or Mac OS X and not have problems.
However, I'm not blaming the user for software problems at all. Perhaps, instead of measuring software quality by the number of bugs in it, you measure it with user satisfaction? If most users can master the software, then it would be of high quality. Then we can see that Linux has definitely been improving consistently throughout these years, regardless whether the number of bugs have been rising.
Gentlemen and Gentleladies, please refute it here (2003), here (Mar 2007), or here (Dec 2007), or or not waste your time at all.
1+1=2 is arithmetic over counting numbers, and counting is something that you observe. However, the reasoning about the structure as to why 1+1 has to be 2 is invented. 1+1 can be 10 in binary, or 11 in unary. The concept is probably discovered, but the form of writing and the algebraic structure is most definitely invented and can be arbitrary.
For example, one way to define natural number in math is by induction. I say the base case is that 0 is in the set of natural numbers. The inductive case is defined by a successor operation where if N is a natural number, this implies that successor of N is also a natural number. This gives you a unary representation, and the algebraic structure is analogous to a singly linked list.
(No, writing "{0, 1, 2, ...} is the set of natural numbers" is not a rigorous definition.)
It is interesting to note that many abstract algebraic properties such as primality is impervious to the form of writing. These are probably discovered. However, the framework used to reason about it, Group and Ring and the many kinds of derivatives (Abelian Group, Principal Ideal Domain, Field) are certainly invented by very clever people.
I think most people who post here don't know what literate programming is. It's more like writing a textbook explaining how your code works, but you can strip away the text and actually have runnable code. This code can be in any language of your choice. It makes sense from Knuth's point of view, but for many of us, we don't write textbooks for a living.
Knuth also doesn't need unit testing because he probably runs (or type checks) the program in his head. Again, for most of us, seeing the program run provides additional assurance that it works. Unit tests also provide a specification of your program. It doesn't have to be just b = f(a). For example, if your code implements a balanced binary search tree, a unit test could check the depth of all subtrees to make sure the tree is balanced. Another unit test would check if the tree is ordered. You can prove by the structure of your program that these properties hold, but a lay-man doesn't want to write proofs for the code he writes, so the second best alternative is to use unit test.
About parallel programming, Knuth is actually right. Many high-performance parallel programs are actually very involved with the underlying architecture. But we can write a high-level essentially-sequential program that uses libraries to compute things like FFT and matrix multiplication in parallel. This tends to be the trend anyways.
I think both are correct answers. When it is discovered, it is physics. When it is invented, it is computer science. However, there is plenty of space in between. Oftentimes people discover something but invents a framework to allow a deeper reasoning of the concepts.
There are two kinds of people. One kind asserts that they're neutral, unbiased, and objective. The other kind always loses argument ad-hominem. Really, when you start putting labels on the people supporting each side of the issue, the outcome is obvious.
Science should be scrutinized, not believed, even if it is generally neutral, unbiased, and objective. I look forward to Darwinism being taught in classroom as long as students are allowed to criticize it, not learning it as the absolute truth. After all, it's just a model of how someone understands nature to be.
I've pointed out flaws in this model before, e.g. the common ancestry assumption. Most species get their genes from two parents as opposed to just one. Viruses, on the other hand, duplicates asexually. That explains why Darwinism is more readily observable on virus than sexed species. And some science fanboys (they might not be scientists at all, mind you) love to say that whatever works for viruses applies to humans and other animals too.
At least whoever wrote Genesis (it is believed to be Moses) has some sense that human can't origin from one Adam alone. And that Noah didn't just pick one animal of each specie (he picked several pairs) when the flood came because one animal can't breed by itself.
Do they really need to subpoena it? It's right here.
If I put you in the outer space, you are not light emitting either. The fact I can see you is because you reflect light either from the sun or the computer screen in front of you.
That said, isn't it surprising when scientists find out that most objects out there aren't light emitting? Like, dark matter?
And apparently SharePoint is supported by Google Search Appliance. I think that says enough about the significance of it.
No, but its gravitational field distorts light like a lens. It can bend light more than 180 degrees (imagine photon traverses black hole like a comet approaching the sun), so some part of the image might actually be reflection, like a mirror.
It is interesting how you associate the lack of jiggies with photo-realism. Most digital cameras apply some sort of low-pass filter (i.e. blur) because the color filter array causes severe moire effect and aliasing. However, the Foveon X3 sensor doesn't have that problem, so cameras based on X3 (such as Sigma SD14) don't blur the image. The resulting picture actually looks like it has been raytraced. I'm sure you can Google for some pictures yourself.
I'm guessing that blur is all you need for photo-realism.
The terms about "Distributable Code" refers to the bullet points in (2) (a) (i) in the license. One of the item listed there is MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes), a C++ library for GUI programming, similar to QT. Since MFC source code is provided and they let you modify and redistribute it with your proram, I think it's understandable that they don't want to accidentally turn MFC into open source.
Let it be pikine's law that an argument is over as soon as Britney Spears is mentioned in the discussion. Really, your perception about B.S.'s popularity is wrong. Her music was popular in the past when it was still bearable. People are now more interested in her tabloid headline than her music. Your misperception about people's music taste also shows your elitist attitude because you're patronizing over personal preferences. In plain language, you believe "what I like is better than thine," and I'm telling you that's the wrong attitude.
Do you think programmers have an aesthetic sense? Many don't even bother to maintain a consistent coding style. Programmers suck at consistency, and that's why you see so many bugs. All bugs are some form of inconsistency. And I argue that consistency is a major factor in aesthetics. That's why people design and appreciate symmetrical things.
I think we both have this in common. It suits my needs. Unlike you, and I'm agreeing to disagree, I think GIMP sucks.
Anyway, if you have nothing to do with GIMP development, I don't want to waste my time with you. Feel free to go away. Shoo.