http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_spaceW iki page on CIE XYZ chromaticity. This chart explains the range of colors the average human being sees. Currently, most monitors display sRGB which is smaller than the triangle than you see in the second chart. Some high end displays show larger triangles that cover roughly 70% of that CIE XYZ chart.
Some rough numbers. The human eye can see roughly 2 million distinct shades. Your video card can do 16.7 million colors, though only about 800,000 distinct shades for a given brightness on a typical display. The real contrast is roughly 500:1 on a typical display (accounting for all viewable colors) Your eye has incredible range of contrast, which hopefully the next generation of displays can approximate.
I am talking about the communication from the OS to the videocard to the display. Before Windows Vista, the OS was limited to 8 bits per channel (RGB) OUTPUT for the video card. The video card will only get 8 bit of data per channel from the OS, so even if you have a nice ATI card that can do 10 bit per channel (RGB) output from the port, it's still being fed 8bpc data.
Cards from Matrox that can output 10 bit grayscale for 10 bit monochrome displays use DirectX and special drivers to overcome this limitation. Matrox video cards also support 10bpc in Photoshop using a special plugin/driver. However, you have to run the plugin and switch away from the Photoshop interface to see the extra bit of colors.
I know that OpenGL can do high bit rendering, like in the case of the nVidia Quadro cards, or just using floating point representation. The Quardo uses 128 bit precision for all the fancy 3d effects. However what you're seeing on screen is limited by 8bpc output of your video card (though a quadro supports 12 bit output)
Windows Vista supports 128 bit at the OS level. That means you can have a video card that can output 10bpc (for 30 bits total) and it will contain real information that let's say a nice HDTV can read (using HDMI). Or you can just open a regular RGBA image (32 bits) and using a some sort of 3d program to do fancy compositing using different textures and store the information in 128 bit (or the lesser formats; look at MSDN for the various encoding schemes) for speed.
The point is, Vista has the headroom to really display images that contain more than 8bpc (RGB). I'm hoping that Linux would follow suit (it will once HDR displays become commercialy viable) and I believe Mac OS X Leopard will also have this high bit output support (though I have not found any evidence of that yet.)
Microsof'ts HD Photo format is a forward looking codec. Vista can support future displays that will have wider gamuts and high dynamic range. Right now most video cards only support 8 bits per channel for color (24 bit, the other 8 bits are for alpha channels, meaning that it can quickly apply color effects efficiently).
It is possible that in 2009, people will be buying wide gamut, high dynamic range displays in numbers, so it will become evident that the old graphic file formats aren't going to look as good anymore. HD Photo can fill that need by having the high bit rate for more expressive colors, as well as offering compression comparable to JPEG so that it can be used online. It also offers the flexiblity to trade files uncompressed for maximum detail.
I suppose everyone can use a format like OpenEXR for high bit info, but I don't think it compresses as well as HD Photo.
Nevertheless, I am going to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt that they're not going to sue people for decoding HD Photo. However, I don't know how flexible they will be with people encoding it. I think now the general industry has wisened up to close formats and now will consider open formats from now on.
and while I saw a lot of people in the store checking out the wares, one thing that I noticed was that on the line for the cash register was that most people had iPod related products and accessories. And as I was walking around the store looking at the prices, it made me realize that Apple has way too much of a premium for their products, except for their high end stuff which can actually be a good deal.
What Apple needs is a desktop system that is in between the Mac Mini and Mac Pro. The so called xMac would be something I can see a lot of corporations adopting if they needed something that offers more flexibility than the Mac Mini, and as well as regular end users who wish to use beefier graphic cards to play their favorite games. The same goes for their laptop lines, they need Mac Books with larger screens without the speed range of the Mac Book Pro. And if they price it right, even with a small premium, many people will buy these middle of the road systems.
This year I am going to switch to a Mac Pro system cause, frankly I am tired of Windows and its potential security problems like IE exploits and Vista's attempt to lock you into Microsoft further, and Linux feels too kludgy on the desktop for me to bother with. Plus I always have the option of running Windows when I feel like it with Parallels/BootCamp.
There is one advantage to Apple products that PCs don't have. Because you pay a premium for their products, they depreciate a lot slower. You will find on eBay and other marketplaces that old Powerbooks and G5s still sell for about 60-80% of the original price. Some stores like PowerMax let you trade in old systems as well.
At work, I use a Intel Mac Mini for my programming, and one thing I noticed is how IMPRECISE the pointer is when I try to grab corners or click on the "traffic light" buttons. Now it can be the fault of my crappy Microsoft mouse, but it happens frequently enough that it makes me think that there is some lag between my mouse and the OS.
As for Vista, one my slow Windows box, it felt snappier than XP in terms of menus and selections, and the precision felt the same, except for grabbing corners of windows.
I live in Manhattan, New York City and every summer used to be a chore because bees would love to hang out in my apartment and I am afraid of bees. Then there was the West Nile Virus scare in the late 90's and the Mayor Rudy Guiliani decided to spray deadly melathione poison to kill mosquitoes. Subsequently every summer after that one, I rarely had bees come in through the window into my apartment.
In fact, I barely see any bees hanging out by the garbage bins since the late 90s, and probably seen more bees of the giant variety in park areas.
There's something wrong with the environment, and I can't say for sure what it is, but it may have to do with new pesticides, or even GM food. Who knows...
Blizzard doesn't like that Glider circumvents their program that monitors processes that hook into WoW. The other charges are so that they can establish precedent against other auxiliary programs that they do not like but are not considered cheating.
In the 80's, Electronic Arts published or made good games like Populous, One on One, Wasteland (one of my favorites still) and other titles. Then they began to buy up companies like Origin Systems and other companies (Westwood, etc) and those companeis that got bought, began to decline. OSI for example, floundered with Ultima 8, and Ultima 9 turned out to be a big stinker. Westwood Studios turned out crap like Command and Conquer 2 under EA, and Generals was devoid of content. Their sports franchise while quite decent on consoles, was shitty on PCs, and their yearly refreshes didn't bring that many changes.
Electronic Arts today is now comparable to Microsoft. They release potentially good games with a lot of bugs, and they have a stifling effect on competitors they buy.
I suggest reading this book for color management: Color Management for Photographers: Hands on Techniques for Photoshop Users by Andrew Rodney.
The short gist is that you want to get a color calibrator like a Eye One Display II or a Colorvision Spyder2Pro to calibrate your monitor to a standard.
Second, you will want to get these two books for color correcting your images. Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace by Dan Margulis and Professional Photoshop: The Classic Guide to Color Correction (5th Edition) by Dan Margulis.
These 3 books should be enough for a budding photographer to learn all the advanced techniques to get great results from your shots.
Another program you may want to look at is Bibble Labs RAW image editor. They have a Windows and Linux version.
There's a segment of the population that loves to show off its photos edited in ICC aware programs. On the Mac, Internet Explorer 5 supports ColorSync. When will Internet Explorer for Windows support embedded ICC profiles (and Microsoft's WCS features in Vista)? Also would it fully support embedded profiles? - In Windows Vista RC2, the Photo Gallery software is ICC aware, but it seems to ignore profiles that are not in the profiles directory of Windows Vista. That's a weird implementation if you ask me. The same behavior occurs in Windows XP. The Windows Image and Fax Viewer doesn't read profiles not in its database, but Windows Explorer correctly uses the profile.
When the Nintendo Gamecube debuted, all my local video game stores were sold out, as well as some of the AAA titles.
All it took for me was to go to my local Mega Toys R Us and pick up the console and a few AAA titles, as well as an an extra controller. As for other AAA titles released, I had no trouble buying a copy at Toys R Us.
I am fortunate to live in a big city, but thanks to this Toys R US store, I don't ever have to worry about preordering.
This is a bit off topic, but in the old pen and paper RPG called "MegaTraveller" there was a weapon for spaceships called a meson gun. It described the damage as being a form of radiation that can pass through the hull of a spaceship, irradiating the equipment, and thus causing internal explosions.
For the physicists, is this theoretically possible?
but I mouse with the right hand. I once developed a pinched nerve where I couldn't use my right arm, so I bought a new mouse (Microsoft Intellimouse Optical USB) which was a "Universal" mouse and set the buttons for left handed use. I can use a right handed mouse with my left hand, but it gets very uncomfortable after a few minutes. So then I started to use my PC with my left hand and mouse and it took 3 days to train my brain to accustom my left hand to left handed mice button pressing. I found no difference in using the OS for I was already accustomed to using the scroll wheel for scrolling and using the keyboard shortcuts with my hand. Only difference was using my right hand to do a lot of the key pressing, but I already do that when I use a right handed mouse. On the occasion I did use the scroll bar, I did wish it was on the left side at times, but I found that if I give myself proper space and use a faster mouse pointer, it became less of an issue. Interesting thing too, while I was accustomed to the left mouse, my right hand was also left oriented.
However, when I went home to use my PC, I did find some annoyances. My deskspace was set up for right handed use, so rearranging my desk space was a bit of a hassle. Gaming left handed in FPS games was a bit of a challenge since my left hand was used to the WASD keyboard config. I had to train my right hand to use the left side of the keyboard. It would have been better to remap the keys on the keyboard for my right hand, but my condition was temporary. It didn't take too long to adapt. My house mates also complained of my left mouse too.
Once my pinched nerve was cured (via wearing a neck brace) I went back to the old way of using the right handed mouse. It took 3 days to reprogram my brain, that is get used to the right mouse button setup, and after that I was good again. My left hand, also reverted to right handed usage, forgetting how to use the left mouse button setup.
I've been using Opera for the last few months and I have to say I really like it a lot. One major issue about IE and Firefox that turns me off is that both Firefox and IE have seemingly an infinite memory cache (as in RAM (physical and virtual) as opposed to Disk cache, which works well in all browsers) which I cannot control or limit. Opera on the other hand lets me limit the memory cache to under 60MB. And it works pretty well; with about 40 tabs opened, for the last 3 weeks, I am only using about 200MB physical and 220 Virtual in Windows XP and it drops when I close tabs. IE and Firefox never seem to release the memory used, and I've seen Firefox use up to 800MB of virtual memory, with the same number of tabs.
Opera 9 is just a better browser for me. It's highly customizable, the zoom feature is sweet, the tab preview is nice, it renders most pages well, it supports major plugins like Flash and Quicktime, and it's fast too! Firefox has a slight stall when opening pages, and takes a long time to open when I restore a tabbed out session. IE 6 is well... IE6. Only useful for when I need to use ActiveX websites.
Opera 9 makes it easy to change things like user agent for websites that complain about non IE (or the occasional non-IE or non-Firefox websites) by pressing f12.
that we have to have use technology to prevent this from happening? Why would surgeons (or assistants) think it's okay to leave a foreign object lying on top of an organ or tissue in the first place?! Also why is the surgeon in such a rush that s/he would be so sloppy?
Maybe this would be more appropiate for battlefield sitautions where things can get hairy, but then again, it's pretty rare to do open surgery in the battlefield!
The Halting problem is one of those ideas that philosophy can help analyze. Also discussions of how intelligent a machine is where philosophy can help answer pertinent questions.
Philosophy combined with psychology might also help in the field of software engineering, that is, how should the programs we write be meaningful to developers and users of the software.
If philosophy doesn't help answer those questions, then the ability to think about problems is always a useful skill to have.
I have found that if you place a strong light behind the monitor (regardless if its CRT or LCD) this will help prevent eye strain.
Also take a break every hour and rest your eyes for 15 minutes. For those who work for hours at the desk, take a bathroom break or chat up the receptionist. Legally you're given two 15 minutes breaks, so make use of them.
As for contact lenses, go for lenses that have more water content, not oxygen permeability. My experience is that oxygen permeable glasses make your eyes dry fast and feel tired. High water content contact lenses feel good for most of the day.
At least according to this website I found via the Artima.com website. It lets you compare any two languages that have compilers in Linux and it gives you a graph of speed vs memory usage in various kinds of programming patterns such as matrix math, branchy programs, etc. Eiffel (compiled with SmartEiffel) vs C++ (GCC 3.3.4) is actually slightly faster than C++ in almost all of the tests that the author came up with. And the memory usage is just as efficient as C++.
I've looked at Eiffel, but the syntax isn't very pretty. However, for important projects I think Eiffel will be the right language for the job.
Those who know about teaching young babies (6 mos and up) sign language already know that babies have a capacity to understand some grammar. At least it's nice to have study that shows this.
The real study now is to develop an effective system for teaching babies communication.
I believe the high incidence of cancer is either due to the peppers being grown pesticides, or the kind of people who really love hot peppers do not really eat a healthy diet.
One good example of analysts being wrong is when you look at Costco vs Walmart.
Walmart has a high turnover rate, low customer satisfaction, and questionable business practices. Wall St. analysts constantly praise Walmart despite the fact their stock has been on the decline.
Costco pays its employees very well, allows their workers to unionize, and tries to be socially conscionable. Analysts lament Costco's business practices and yet their stock has been steadily rising.
Seems like some analysts are more into pushing political theory rather than what is profitable (and sane).
It is understood that democracy used in this context means the process of voting and not direct democracy. Everyone knows the US is a representative democratic republic.
Slashdot Mirror
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_spaceW iki page on CIE XYZ chromaticity.
This chart explains the range of colors the average human being sees. Currently, most monitors display sRGB which is smaller than the triangle than you see in the second chart. Some high end displays show larger triangles that cover roughly 70% of that CIE XYZ chart.
Some rough numbers. The human eye can see roughly 2 million distinct shades. Your video card can do 16.7 million colors, though only about 800,000 distinct shades for a given brightness on a typical display. The real contrast is roughly 500:1 on a typical display (accounting for all viewable colors)
Your eye has incredible range of contrast, which hopefully the next generation of displays can approximate.
I am talking about the communication from the OS to the videocard to the display.
Before Windows Vista, the OS was limited to 8 bits per channel (RGB) OUTPUT for the video card. The video card will only get 8 bit of data per channel from the OS, so even if you have a nice ATI card that can do 10 bit per channel (RGB) output from the port, it's still being fed 8bpc data.
Cards from Matrox that can output 10 bit grayscale for 10 bit monochrome displays use DirectX and special drivers to overcome this limitation. Matrox video cards also support 10bpc in Photoshop using a special plugin/driver. However, you have to run the plugin and switch away from the Photoshop interface to see the extra bit of colors.
I know that OpenGL can do high bit rendering, like in the case of the nVidia Quadro cards, or just using floating point representation. The Quardo uses 128 bit precision for all the fancy 3d effects. However what you're seeing on screen is limited by 8bpc output of your video card (though a quadro supports 12 bit output)
Windows Vista supports 128 bit at the OS level. That means you can have a video card that can output 10bpc (for 30 bits total) and it will contain real information that let's say a nice HDTV can read (using HDMI). Or you can just open a regular RGBA image (32 bits) and using a some sort of 3d program to do fancy compositing using different textures and store the information in 128 bit (or the lesser formats; look at MSDN for the various encoding schemes) for speed.
The point is, Vista has the headroom to really display images that contain more than 8bpc (RGB). I'm hoping that Linux would follow suit (it will once HDR displays become commercialy viable) and I believe Mac OS X Leopard will also have this high bit output support (though I have not found any evidence of that yet.)
Microsof'ts HD Photo format is a forward looking codec. Vista can support future displays that will have wider gamuts and high dynamic range. Right now most video cards only support 8 bits per channel for color (24 bit, the other 8 bits are for alpha channels, meaning that it can quickly apply color effects efficiently).
It is possible that in 2009, people will be buying wide gamut, high dynamic range displays in numbers, so it will become evident that the old graphic file formats aren't going to look as good anymore. HD Photo can fill that need by having the high bit rate for more expressive colors, as well as offering compression comparable to JPEG so that it can be used online. It also offers the flexiblity to trade files uncompressed for maximum detail.
I suppose everyone can use a format like OpenEXR for high bit info, but I don't think it compresses as well as HD Photo.
Nevertheless, I am going to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt that they're not going to sue people for decoding HD Photo. However, I don't know how flexible they will be with people encoding it. I think now the general industry has wisened up to close formats and now will consider open formats from now on.
and while I saw a lot of people in the store checking out the wares, one thing that I noticed was that on the line for the cash register was that most people had iPod related products and accessories. And as I was walking around the store looking at the prices, it made me realize that Apple has way too much of a premium for their products, except for their high end stuff which can actually be a good deal.
What Apple needs is a desktop system that is in between the Mac Mini and Mac Pro. The so called xMac would be something I can see a lot of corporations adopting if they needed something that offers more flexibility than the Mac Mini, and as well as regular end users who wish to use beefier graphic cards to play their favorite games. The same goes for their laptop lines, they need Mac Books with larger screens without the speed range of the Mac Book Pro. And if they price it right, even with a small premium, many people will buy these middle of the road systems.
This year I am going to switch to a Mac Pro system cause, frankly I am tired of Windows and its potential security problems like IE exploits and Vista's attempt to lock you into Microsoft further, and Linux feels too kludgy on the desktop for me to bother with. Plus I always have the option of running Windows when I feel like it with Parallels/BootCamp.
There is one advantage to Apple products that PCs don't have. Because you pay a premium for their products, they depreciate a lot slower. You will find on eBay and other marketplaces that old Powerbooks and G5s still sell for about 60-80% of the original price. Some stores like PowerMax let you trade in old systems as well.
At work, I use a Intel Mac Mini for my programming, and one thing I noticed is how IMPRECISE the pointer is when I try to grab corners or click on the "traffic light" buttons. Now it can be the fault of my crappy Microsoft mouse, but it happens frequently enough that it makes me think that there is some lag between my mouse and the OS.
As for Vista, one my slow Windows box, it felt snappier than XP in terms of menus and selections, and the precision felt the same, except for grabbing corners of windows.
I live in Manhattan, New York City and every summer used to be a chore because bees would love to hang out in my apartment and I am afraid of bees. Then there was the West Nile Virus scare in the late 90's and the Mayor Rudy Guiliani decided to spray deadly melathione poison to kill mosquitoes. Subsequently every summer after that one, I rarely had bees come in through the window into my apartment.
In fact, I barely see any bees hanging out by the garbage bins since the late 90s, and probably seen more bees of the giant variety in park areas.
There's something wrong with the environment, and I can't say for sure what it is, but it may have to do with new pesticides, or even GM food. Who knows...
Blizzard doesn't like that Glider circumvents their program that monitors processes that hook into WoW. The other charges are so that they can establish precedent against other auxiliary programs that they do not like but are not considered cheating.
It would be scary if Blizzard won.
Hi ABG,
I need some insight regarding numerical computing. Please email me at throwawaydude (a) yahoo and you know the rest.
Thanks.
Slashdot should implement an email through profile option, if it's feasible.
before they became EA.
In the 80's, Electronic Arts published or made good games like Populous, One on One, Wasteland (one of my favorites still) and other titles. Then they began to buy up companies like Origin Systems and other companies (Westwood, etc) and those companeis that got bought, began to decline. OSI for example, floundered with Ultima 8, and Ultima 9 turned out to be a big stinker. Westwood Studios turned out crap like Command and Conquer 2 under EA, and Generals was devoid of content.
Their sports franchise while quite decent on consoles, was shitty on PCs, and their yearly refreshes didn't bring that many changes.
Electronic Arts today is now comparable to Microsoft. They release potentially good games with a lot of bugs, and they have a stifling effect on competitors they buy.
I suggest reading this book for color management:
Color Management for Photographers: Hands on Techniques for Photoshop Users by Andrew Rodney.
The short gist is that you want to get a color calibrator like a Eye One Display II or a Colorvision Spyder2Pro to calibrate your monitor to a standard.
Second, you will want to get these two books for color correcting your images.
Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace by Dan Margulis
and
Professional Photoshop: The Classic Guide to Color Correction (5th Edition) by Dan Margulis.
These 3 books should be enough for a budding photographer to learn all the advanced techniques to get great results from your shots.
Another program you may want to look at is Bibble Labs RAW image editor. They have a Windows and Linux version.
There's a segment of the population that loves to show off its photos edited in ICC aware programs. On the Mac, Internet Explorer 5 supports ColorSync. When will Internet Explorer for Windows support embedded ICC profiles (and Microsoft's WCS features in Vista)?
Also would it fully support embedded profiles? - In Windows Vista RC2, the Photo Gallery software is ICC aware, but it seems to ignore profiles that are not in the profiles directory of Windows Vista. That's a weird implementation if you ask me. The same behavior occurs in Windows XP. The Windows Image and Fax Viewer doesn't read profiles not in its database, but Windows Explorer correctly uses the profile.
When the Nintendo Gamecube debuted, all my local video game stores were sold out, as well as some of the AAA titles.
All it took for me was to go to my local Mega Toys R Us and pick up the console and a few AAA titles, as well as an an extra controller. As for other AAA titles released, I had no trouble buying a copy at Toys R Us.
I am fortunate to live in a big city, but thanks to this Toys R US store, I don't ever have to worry about preordering.
This is a bit off topic, but in the old pen and paper RPG called "MegaTraveller" there was a weapon for spaceships called a meson gun. It described the damage as being a form of radiation that can pass through the hull of a spaceship, irradiating the equipment, and thus causing internal explosions.
For the physicists, is this theoretically possible?
but I mouse with the right hand. I once developed a pinched nerve where I couldn't use my right arm, so I bought a new mouse (Microsoft Intellimouse Optical USB) which was a "Universal" mouse and set the buttons for left handed use. I can use a right handed mouse with my left hand, but it gets very uncomfortable after a few minutes. So then I started to use my PC with my left hand and mouse and it took 3 days to train my brain to accustom my left hand to left handed mice button pressing. I found no difference in using the OS for I was already accustomed to using the scroll wheel for scrolling and using the keyboard shortcuts with my hand. Only difference was using my right hand to do a lot of the key pressing, but I already do that when I use a right handed mouse. On the occasion I did use the scroll bar, I did wish it was on the left side at times, but I found that if I give myself proper space and use a faster mouse pointer, it became less of an issue. Interesting thing too, while I was accustomed to the left mouse, my right hand was also left oriented.
However, when I went home to use my PC, I did find some annoyances. My deskspace was set up for right handed use, so rearranging my desk space was a bit of a hassle. Gaming left handed in FPS games was a bit of a challenge since my left hand was used to the WASD keyboard config. I had to train my right hand to use the left side of the keyboard. It would have been better to remap the keys on the keyboard for my right hand, but my condition was temporary. It didn't take too long to adapt. My house mates also complained of my left mouse too.
Once my pinched nerve was cured (via wearing a neck brace) I went back to the old way of using the right handed mouse. It took 3 days to reprogram my brain, that is get used to the right mouse button setup, and after that I was good again. My left hand, also reverted to right handed usage, forgetting how to use the left mouse button setup.
I've been using Opera for the last few months and I have to say I really like it a lot.
One major issue about IE and Firefox that turns me off is that both Firefox and IE have seemingly an infinite memory cache (as in RAM (physical and virtual) as opposed to Disk cache, which works well in all browsers) which I cannot control or limit. Opera on the other hand lets me limit the memory cache to under 60MB. And it works pretty well; with about 40 tabs opened, for the last 3 weeks, I am only using about 200MB physical and 220 Virtual in Windows XP and it drops when I close tabs.
IE and Firefox never seem to release the memory used, and I've seen Firefox use up to 800MB of virtual memory, with the same number of tabs.
Opera 9 is just a better browser for me. It's highly customizable, the zoom feature is sweet, the tab preview is nice, it renders most pages well, it supports major plugins like Flash and Quicktime, and it's fast too! Firefox has a slight stall when opening pages, and takes a long time to open when I restore a tabbed out session. IE 6 is well... IE6. Only useful for when I need to use ActiveX websites.
Opera 9 makes it easy to change things like user agent for websites that complain about non IE (or the occasional non-IE or non-Firefox websites) by pressing f12.
that we have to have use technology to prevent this from happening?
Why would surgeons (or assistants) think it's okay to leave a foreign object lying on top of an organ or tissue in the first place?! Also why is the surgeon in such a rush that s/he would be so sloppy?
Maybe this would be more appropiate for battlefield sitautions where things can get hairy, but then again, it's pretty rare to do open surgery in the battlefield!
The Halting problem is one of those ideas that philosophy can help analyze.
Also discussions of how intelligent a machine is where philosophy can help answer pertinent questions.
Philosophy combined with psychology might also help in the field of software engineering, that is, how should the programs we write be meaningful to developers and users of the software.
If philosophy doesn't help answer those questions, then the ability to think about problems is always a useful skill to have.
The PC World article should have mentioned that Microsoft Bob was spearheaded by Melinda French (now Melinda Gates, wife of Bill Gates)...
:p
I guess Microsoft loves to reward failures
I have found that if you place a strong light behind the monitor (regardless if its CRT or LCD) this will help prevent eye strain.
Also take a break every hour and rest your eyes for 15 minutes. For those who work for hours at the desk, take a bathroom break or chat up the receptionist. Legally you're given two 15 minutes breaks, so make use of them.
As for contact lenses, go for lenses that have more water content, not oxygen permeability. My experience is that oxygen permeable glasses make your eyes dry fast and feel tired. High water content contact lenses feel good for most of the day.
At least according to this website I found via the Artima.com website.
It lets you compare any two languages that have compilers in Linux and it gives you a graph of speed vs memory usage in various kinds of programming patterns such as matrix math, branchy programs, etc.
Eiffel (compiled with SmartEiffel) vs C++ (GCC 3.3.4) is actually slightly faster than C++ in almost all of the tests that the author came up with. And the memory usage is just as efficient as C++.
I've looked at Eiffel, but the syntax isn't very pretty. However, for important projects I think Eiffel will be the right language for the job.
Those who know about teaching young babies (6 mos and up) sign language already know that babies have a capacity to understand some grammar.
At least it's nice to have study that shows this.
The real study now is to develop an effective system for teaching babies communication.
This is one battle that won't be won. Even Noam Chomsky doesn't fight to make the distinction known...
It's like cracker vs. hacker.
But for those interested, anomie is lawlessness and chaos, compared to anarchy which is the lack of hierachical structure.
I believe the high incidence of cancer is either due to the peppers being grown pesticides, or the kind of people who really love hot peppers do not really eat a healthy diet.
One good example of analysts being wrong is when you look at Costco vs Walmart.
Walmart has a high turnover rate, low customer satisfaction, and questionable business practices. Wall St. analysts constantly praise Walmart despite the fact their stock has been on the decline.
Costco pays its employees very well, allows their workers to unionize, and tries to be socially conscionable. Analysts lament Costco's business practices and yet their stock has been steadily rising.
Seems like some analysts are more into pushing political theory rather than what is profitable (and sane).
It is understood that democracy used in this context means the process of voting and not direct democracy. Everyone knows the US is a representative democratic republic.