I don't see a good reason for going whole-hog right away. Start with voting kiosks and local networks, isolated from other networks. Then we only have to worry about electromagnetic attacks.
Once we can do this well, then consider moving to larger networks. We'll then need a standard protocol, but not a standard implementation. This will help maintain diversity.
I didn't argue that following directions is too difficult for the average person. I argued that being able to follow directions isn't a sign of intelligence. I made this argument because various people have been saying things like "if someone is too stupid to understand the ballot, then they shouldn't be allowed to vote."
I also realize now that I was putting words into Signal 11's mouth, er, keyboard. He simply expressed skepticism that people were having a hard time understanding the ballot in question. In fact, I had no problem understanding the ballot when I saw it, but then again that ballot reminds me of ballots I saw as a kid in my home town.
Which brings up the point that the instructions for the ballots do change, from place to place and year to year. I don't know where my wife read this, but the person who designed the Palm Beech ballot made special changes just for the elderly (which ironically just confused more voters).
I agree that creativity is no excuse for not following directions. However, some voting booths have lousy directions that are difficult to find.
I would also like to make a distinction between traffic signs and voting directions. We should be able to mostly get along w/out traffic signs, if we could count on people to be courteous--traffic flow doesn't really change that much from place to place, just try to avoid endangering yourself and others. The same can't be said of voting booths. The whole idea of voting is rather abstract, now that I think about it.
1) When trashing media, consider that NPR was far more responsible in assigning states to candidates. Just trash the commercial media.
2) Why prosecute people that had difficulty with the ballot? I had to transcribe about 50 answers on my SAT when I discovered I had accidently skipped a bubble. There's no eraser in a 'punch'-type voting booth. Look for numbers of how many Palm Beech or Florida ballots were punched twice, and hence discarded. I think the number is around 19,000. Of course, they should have just asked for new ballots, but humans are humans.
2.5) Especially, why prosecute elderly people who had problems with the ballots? These people have seen more wars, recessions, and changes in their lifetimes than anyone 'smart' enough to write "First Post" on slashdot. The ability to mindlessly follow arbitrary directions (for instance, working with computers...) is a learned skill, not a sign of intelligence. Saving enough money over your lifetime to retire to a warm climate, OTOH, is probably a better sign of intelligence.
3) Majority Rules? Our entire system of government is built around thwarting "Majority Rules". Go read the Federalist Papers and Constitution for more insight into the subtle problems of democracy and majority tyranny.
Most of the Slashdot posters can't bother to RTFM when it comes to their own government.
Why is being a socialist foolish? It's a lot different than communism. Do you want to say that every socialist country on the planet is maintained by fools? Well, you'll have to fight NATO, since a large number of NATO countries are socialist. So are a lot of non-NATO countries. Actually, the USA is kind-of at the bottom of the barrel for social policies in the 'developed' world. Incidently, the USA also has more violent crime than most developed countries.
Oh, and I'm not some ranting lunatic socialist alien. I'm an American citizen who just happens to think it is ridiculous that I still worry about whether I can afford to go to the doctor when I feel like I have strep throat, while simulataneously busting-my-butt for one of the strongest economies in the world.
The 'fascination' with the 'extreme left' comes from intelligence--after all, the 'extreme left' is held by 'intellectual elistists', or so I've been told by 'Republicans'.
Speaking to an Englishman about politics the other day, I was told "Yes, we also have two large parties, conservative and liberal. However, our conservatives are more liberal than your Democrats". I think that 'extreme left' means something different in the United States than it means anywhere else. Just an interesting observation.
(warning, the following rant is targetted at more than just the guy who wrote the above comment--he unfortunately pulled a trigger he didn't know existed)
Look--you're an American citizen. You live in a society. Deal. If you want to go back to selfish living, go find yourself a small island with a coconut tree and rot there.
"It's as if we're ATMs to pay for everyone ELSE's programs." Try saying that to a veteran whose fought in a war. Or to a school teacher who tried to help your sorry ass learn to read and write. You think school teachers get the pay and respect they deserve? Maybe the bad ones deserve the current levels, but the good ones are heros.
How about volunteers at soup kitchens? Or Big Brothers and Sisters? How much do they get paid? If you're benifitting from living in this society--think roads, water, safety, and everything else mentioned in the famous "Life of Brian" scene about "What have the Romans ever done for us?"--you owe something to this society. And don't try arguing about how much you owe, as none of us can answer that.
It's not "everyone ELSE's" programs, it's "OUR" programs--your not in this alone, buddy. Tell you what, I'll help you find that island with the coconut tree, just to get your selfish attitude out of the country and society I participate in.
I think the point is that 'consumer' has an obvious commercial overtone. Why didn't Bush say 'citizen', instead? Probably we should read too much into this, but I expect it is because THIS WHOLE DAMN COUNTRY IS OBSESSED WITH ECONOMIC WELL-BEING. Yeah, economy is important, BUT BASIC RIGHTS DON'T DEPEND ON ECONOMY. Sorry, just had to get this off my chest--it's not about Bush alone, it's about most of this country's infrastructure and lack of social focus. Can't we be citizens, members of society, WITHOUT BUYING SOMETHING?
I should probably go to bed--I'm tired and I'm hitting the 'Reply to This' button too often. Not to mention I think this is the first time I've YELLED on Slashdot.
"I'd like to know how that's economically possible."
Er, it isn't, at least according to the statisticians/mathematicians/economists that call themselves actuaries. But more interesting than this, is something else you prompted me to think about.
While taking low-income families completely off the tax rolls increases their net-income, this (not obviously) flies in the face of welfare reforms. A big problem in the past (and now, I'm sure) has been that exceeding a ceratain income caused your expenses to jump--i.e. a large discontinuity. By earning more, you brought home less. In particular, this applied to losing Federal health benefits among other things.
So what happens to people at the threshold of the 'no tax' zone--will they be forced to turn down gross gains in income to preserve their net? It sort of looks like Bush's plan is just one new (probably innocently, or ignorantly proposed) way to stigmatize certain income stratas, to separate them from their neighbors. Of course this happens now, but recent welfare reforms have reduced this effect.
CATO disgraced themselves with the Microsoft trial. CATO still doesn't believe MS is a monopoly. I believe that MS's economist-witness was from the head of CATO--and he made an ass out of himself. And CATO backed him up. They even refused to define the relevant market--maybe that's because the economist was an expert in breakfast cereals, not operating systems. Or maybe it was because "Microsoft tracked Windows sales figures on little scraps of paper" as he testified, then later said he didn't believe.
I'm certainly not going to pay serious attention to anything CATO propounds after their performance in the first round of the MS trial. Incidently, who funds CATO? Think-tanks are free, and CATO certainly isn't a self-sufficient hippy commune.
I'd like to see the gamecube succeed just because of Ninetendo's games. Of all the computer games I've played, I've liked Nintendo's games best. As does my wife. It's nice to have games we both like (my wife has started to see the humor in gibs, though;-).
Adding Sega's games to the mix would be nice. Again, Sega's games are 'more fun' for my wife and me than those that appear on PCs and the Sony boxes.
Since we've only read the article, and not the actual work, it is difficult to say if we understand correctly. But I believe that your proposition
"Farmers from two midwestern states would be in the same district, then, but a farmer and a city worker would be in different districts. Annual income might be another good factor."
does not "follow the logic of the article", rather it only follows a small bit of the article. Consider the gerrymandering examples near the end. A voter has more power if the district is diverse--in that case, it is more likely that deadlock will occur. If you organize districts along political lines, you lose the chance of deadlock.
The West Coast of the US, for instance, has more environmental power as three (four, including Alaska) states than as one state. Since a majority (I'm just guessing) of voters in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and California care about environmental issues, they can swing four 'games' instead of just one game. Therefore they have more power.
To maximize a voter's power on some issue, you want to spread your constituency across as many districts as possible, so long as you will win in each district.
also, audio DATs don't use the same format as computer back-up DATs, unfortunately. supposedly sgi once released a computer DAT drive that could read audio dats, but this device appears to be rare.
A lot of what you (nathanh) say is true. But it's clear you don't have the best ears on the planet--do more music listening, even on mediocre equipment, and you'll hear the things you claim can't be heard.
Quit getting so excited about what you know. Just because you've read about signals somewhere doesn't mean you understand human auditory function. And remember that we don't really understand any of this stuff--we're just constructing models. If I can hear what you say I can't, then your _model_ is wrong, not my ears. After all, the models are trying to conform to reality, not vice-versa as you seem to argue.
I am a mathematics grad student, familiar with some signal processing, and critically inclined. I also am passionate about music. I find your comment "Most audiophiles are full of shit" offensive--I know several audiophiles and none of them are full of shit. Some are musicians, some are electrical engineers. All of them have highly trained ears.
I don't care that "most people's speakers have trouble doing better than -3dB at anything over 18kHz anyway"--mine are spec'd -2db at 22kHz, and they only cost $450 for the pair (Sound Dynamics 300ti). I take exception to your comment "So it's hardly any loss at all to throw away the sine waves over 20kHz"--hardly any loss to whom? I would benefit from better-sounding recordings. I do care about the high-range.
Finally, not everything can be represented by sinusoids, as you claim. Fourier claimed, IIRC since I'm not going to check, that all L2(0,1) functions could be represented by an infinite sum of sinusoids. I don't understand why all changes in air pressure must necessarily be in L2(0,1)--and unless a patient physicist tried explaining it to me, I probably wouldn't believe it anyway.
"Now, Intel might still have some tricks up their sleeves, but IMO they've just plain dropped the ball. The Athlon came out of nowhere, kicked them in the pants..."
To pick nits, the Athlon didn't 'come out of nowhere', especially insofar as Intel is concerend. Intel knew full well what AMD was doing--you just can't miss that NexGen and Alpha architects are being hired by AMD. Intel completely blew it. They had been patching up the x86 processor for years, while other companies failed to execute properly. When the Athlon arrive, Intel was mired in its own internal disasters and AMD finally got their act together. Only after the Athlon 1GHz was announced did we start to really witness Intel coming apart at the seams.
It might be worth noting that the only thing x86 had going for it after about 1992 was backward compatibility. Intel knows a lot about manufacturing chips, but has never really been successful in the cpu-research department--which was fine so long as they were making the best x86 implementation available. When Intel did become more adventurous, they failed. Even with HP's help (which they didn't really like to acknowledge) on the Merced/Itanium, Intel still couldn't hack it. This platform may never make it to the market, though we might see its successor. But even once Intel's VLIW stuff does reach the market, they won't have backward compatibility, the only valuable part of their existing processor market.
Compare this to AMD's 64-bit strategy, or to Alpha's 64-bit legacy. If you want 64-bit x86-like code, go with AMD Sledgehammer. If you want super-duper 64-bit code and don't need backward compatibility, go with a damn fast, proven architecture like Alpha. And there are other 64bit architectures out there that are competitive with the Alpha, for instance the IBM RS-64 III.
VLIW as a technology may stand a chance in the future, but I'll venture that Intel doesn't have what it takes to make it work in any reasonable amount of time. In fact, my opinion is that Intel's x86 architecture is retarding the commercial development of new cpu architectures -- even within Intel.
I predict AMD will eventually forget about retail microprocessors once x86 is no longer desired in the market. Intel will stop torturing us with their designs and become the world's largest and best fabrication company. Microsoft will stop writing software and become the world's largest legal firm (do they already hold this distinction?). This is how we'll finally see the end of the x86 and Win32 architectural disasters that are anchoring computing technology in the 1980s.
I'm not sure about the Athlon in particular, but I know that the Alpha '264 can keep truckin' with several outstanding cache line fills. This may be relevant because of the architectural connections (people and design) between the Athlon and the Alpha.
>> At home I just got a WD 30gig drive and I can't play mp3's while ripping anymore. I used to
>> have a maxtor 6 gig ide drive that didn't cause problems.
You might want to try moving the disk from the middle of the IDE cable to the end, or vice-versa. This fixed similar problems in my machine. Yes, IDE does suck that much.
I believe that most of the world is using roughly the same notation in mathematics. Perhaps I should say instead that there is no more notational variation between countries than there is within a country, for any particular math subject.
1) you can hit tab from anywhere on the line, so you don't have to hop back to the beginning to get proper indentation.
2) incremental search (ctrl-s). Why isn't this feature in every viewing and editing program in existance? I hate regular search, where you open a new interface, guess at how much of a substring you need, and then hit some wacky key-combo to differentiate between find and 'find next'.
Just hit ctrl-s to start the search, and start typing. If you make a typo, hit delete and the search will back up to the previous match. Once you've typed in as much as you care to type, if you aren't already at your desired location, hit ctrl-s until you arrive. If you need to search on the same thing again after you've done some editing, hit ctrl-s once to enter the incremental search, and then ctrl-s again to search for the last match.
3) esc-%, although a pretty bizarre combo, is search-and-replace. It has history for the search and replace terms, which is why I wanted to mention it.
Why isn't this 'score 5, funny'? Although I don't use MSVC or any other MS development products, I've never heard such praises as you give. In fact, for every point you mention, I've only heard swearing:
1) stable, never crashed? This is new to me--my wife has complained of 3 crashes in one workday, on more than one occasion (this is running on NT, if that makes any difference)
2) hooked on Intellisense? Again, I've been told it is a huge distraction, and very bothersome.
3) and recompilation while debugging--it's a good idea, and so I asked a couple developers about it. Their response was that despite the nice idea, it didn't actually work reliably.
Consider how much time you save because of the slick user interface. Then think about the money spent on it--not a very good argument on its own, though. Now consider how much time it will take you to implement regular expressions, since it doesn't include regex libraries--or else how much it will cost to purchase commercial libs with distribution rights. How about any of the other standard POSIX services that don't come with MSVC?
"I got this great new shiny bicycle, too bad it doesn't have a chain, oh, and the wheels are square."
I just don't understand what you really get for your money with the Microsoft development tools. I'd rather have useful libraries instead of Intellisense. Not to mention, slightly unrelated, why doesn't FAT/VFAT/NTFS have symlinks yet? Where's the service from Microsoft?
And just how much would US trade restrictions hurt Microsoft? I don't think MS would be protected by NAFTA or the WTA, since they were found to have broken laws in the US. So maybe the trade restrictions would include a _huge_ increase in prices, or a restriction on mergers (they can't buy or merge with American companies, only Canadian companies--watch out Corel!), or maybe restrictions on the quantity of imports?
I think the US government would really show its teeth if this happened, since it would feel like a violation of our extradition treaty with Canada.
On the other hand, would MS get away with the same crap in BC that they got away with here? Not hardly. And remember that contract workers bruhaha a while back? I would expect that a more social country like Canada would respond much stronger and faster than the US would. Of course I'm speculating.
And MS says a reorg would be hard and disrupt business. What would happen if they moved most of their developers, or even just reincorporated elsewhere? I expect it would take a long time to prepare, and a long time to execute. There would probably be a lot of changes in employment laws, trade laws, marketing laws, tax laws, etc.
Maybe anti-pollution laws would stop the move, anyway. It would be like dumping US toxic waste in Canada.
Slashdot Mirror
Did anyone else laugh when the saw the two headlines next to each other on Slashdot?
"At Last, Mir to be Ditched"
"Iridium Saved?"
-Paul Komarek
I don't see a good reason for going whole-hog right away. Start with voting kiosks and local networks, isolated from other networks. Then we only have to worry about electromagnetic attacks.
Once we can do this well, then consider moving to larger networks. We'll then need a standard protocol, but not a standard implementation. This will help maintain diversity.
-Paul Komarek
I didn't argue that following directions is too difficult for the average person. I argued that being able to follow directions isn't a sign of intelligence. I made this argument because various people have been saying things like "if someone is too stupid to understand the ballot, then they shouldn't be allowed to vote."
I also realize now that I was putting words into Signal 11's mouth, er, keyboard. He simply expressed skepticism that people were having a hard time understanding the ballot in question. In fact, I had no problem understanding the ballot when I saw it, but then again that ballot reminds me of ballots I saw as a kid in my home town.
Which brings up the point that the instructions for the ballots do change, from place to place and year to year. I don't know where my wife read this, but the person who designed the Palm Beech ballot made special changes just for the elderly (which ironically just confused more voters).
I agree that creativity is no excuse for not following directions. However, some voting booths have lousy directions that are difficult to find.
I would also like to make a distinction between traffic signs and voting directions. We should be able to mostly get along w/out traffic signs, if we could count on people to be courteous--traffic flow doesn't really change that much from place to place, just try to avoid endangering yourself and others. The same can't be said of voting booths. The whole idea of voting is rather abstract, now that I think about it.
-Paul Komarek
1) When trashing media, consider that NPR was far more responsible in assigning states to candidates. Just trash the commercial media.
2) Why prosecute people that had difficulty with the ballot? I had to transcribe about 50 answers on my SAT when I discovered I had accidently skipped a bubble. There's no eraser in a 'punch'-type voting booth. Look for numbers of how many Palm Beech or Florida ballots were punched twice, and hence discarded. I think the number is around 19,000. Of course, they should have just asked for new ballots, but humans are humans.
2.5) Especially, why prosecute elderly people who had problems with the ballots? These people have seen more wars, recessions, and changes in their lifetimes than anyone 'smart' enough to write "First Post" on slashdot. The ability to mindlessly follow arbitrary directions (for instance, working with computers...) is a learned skill, not a sign of intelligence. Saving enough money over your lifetime to retire to a warm climate, OTOH, is probably a better sign of intelligence.
3) Majority Rules? Our entire system of government is built around thwarting "Majority Rules". Go read the Federalist Papers and Constitution for more insight into the subtle problems of democracy and majority tyranny.
Most of the Slashdot posters can't bother to RTFM when it comes to their own government.
-Paul Komarek
"(Einstein was a socialist, for example)"
Why is being a socialist foolish? It's a lot different than communism. Do you want to say that every socialist country on the planet is maintained by fools? Well, you'll have to fight NATO, since a large number of NATO countries are socialist. So are a lot of non-NATO countries. Actually, the USA is kind-of at the bottom of the barrel for social policies in the 'developed' world. Incidently, the USA also has more violent crime than most developed countries.
Oh, and I'm not some ranting lunatic socialist alien. I'm an American citizen who just happens to think it is ridiculous that I still worry about whether I can afford to go to the doctor when I feel like I have strep throat, while simulataneously busting-my-butt for one of the strongest economies in the world.
-Paul Komarek
The 'fascination' with the 'extreme left' comes from intelligence--after all, the 'extreme left' is held by 'intellectual elistists', or so I've been told by 'Republicans'.
Speaking to an Englishman about politics the other day, I was told "Yes, we also have two large parties, conservative and liberal. However, our conservatives are more liberal than your Democrats". I think that 'extreme left' means something different in the United States than it means anywhere else. Just an interesting observation.
-Paul Komarek
(warning, the following rant is targetted at more than just the guy who wrote the above comment--he unfortunately pulled a trigger he didn't know existed)
Look--you're an American citizen. You live in a society. Deal. If you want to go back to selfish living, go find yourself a small island with a coconut tree and rot there.
"It's as if we're ATMs to pay for everyone ELSE's programs." Try saying that to a veteran whose fought in a war. Or to a school teacher who tried to help your sorry ass learn to read and write. You think school teachers get the pay and respect they deserve? Maybe the bad ones deserve the current levels, but the good ones are heros.
How about volunteers at soup kitchens? Or Big Brothers and Sisters? How much do they get paid? If you're benifitting from living in this society--think roads, water, safety, and everything else mentioned in the famous "Life of Brian" scene about "What have the Romans ever done for us?"--you owe something to this society. And don't try arguing about how much you owe, as none of us can answer that.
It's not "everyone ELSE's" programs, it's "OUR" programs--your not in this alone, buddy. Tell you what, I'll help you find that island with the coconut tree, just to get your selfish attitude out of the country and society I participate in.
-Paul Komarek
He left out every religion mentioned in the question.
-Paul Komarek
I think the point is that 'consumer' has an obvious commercial overtone. Why didn't Bush say 'citizen', instead? Probably we should read too much into this, but I expect it is because THIS WHOLE DAMN COUNTRY IS OBSESSED WITH ECONOMIC WELL-BEING. Yeah, economy is important, BUT BASIC RIGHTS DON'T DEPEND ON ECONOMY. Sorry, just had to get this off my chest--it's not about Bush alone, it's about most of this country's infrastructure and lack of social focus. Can't we be citizens, members of society, WITHOUT BUYING SOMETHING?
I should probably go to bed--I'm tired and I'm hitting the 'Reply to This' button too often. Not to mention I think this is the first time I've YELLED on Slashdot.
-Paul Komarek
Thank God! More mathematicians on Slashdot! Finally some people with a solid ability to reason. =-)
;-)
Of course, we might not have all the political axioms worked out yet, but I'm sure there's a logically complete system waiting to be discovered...
-Paul Komarek
"I'd like to know how that's economically possible."
Er, it isn't, at least according to the statisticians/mathematicians/economists that call themselves actuaries. But more interesting than this, is something else you prompted me to think about.
While taking low-income families completely off the tax rolls increases their net-income, this (not obviously) flies in the face of welfare reforms. A big problem in the past (and now, I'm sure) has been that exceeding a ceratain income caused your expenses to jump--i.e. a large discontinuity. By earning more, you brought home less. In particular, this applied to losing Federal health benefits among other things.
So what happens to people at the threshold of the 'no tax' zone--will they be forced to turn down gross gains in income to preserve their net? It sort of looks like Bush's plan is just one new (probably innocently, or ignorantly proposed) way to stigmatize certain income stratas, to separate them from their neighbors. Of course this happens now, but recent welfare reforms have reduced this effect.
-Paul Komarek
CATO disgraced themselves with the Microsoft trial. CATO still doesn't believe MS is a monopoly. I believe that MS's economist-witness was from the head of CATO--and he made an ass out of himself. And CATO backed him up. They even refused to define the relevant market--maybe that's because the economist was an expert in breakfast cereals, not operating systems. Or maybe it was because "Microsoft tracked Windows sales figures on little scraps of paper" as he testified, then later said he didn't believe.
I'm certainly not going to pay serious attention to anything CATO propounds after their performance in the first round of the MS trial. Incidently, who funds CATO? Think-tanks are free, and CATO certainly isn't a self-sufficient hippy commune.
-Paul Komarek
I'd like to see the gamecube succeed just because of Ninetendo's games. Of all the computer games I've played, I've liked Nintendo's games best. As does my wife. It's nice to have games we both like (my wife has started to see the humor in gibs, though ;-).
Adding Sega's games to the mix would be nice. Again, Sega's games are 'more fun' for my wife and me than those that appear on PCs and the Sony boxes.
-Paul Komarek
Er, the Sony Playstation 2 uses Linux for the OS.
-Paul Komarek
Since we've only read the article, and not the actual work, it is difficult to say if we understand correctly. But I believe that your proposition
"Farmers from two midwestern states would be in the same district, then, but a farmer and a city worker would be in different districts. Annual income might be another good factor."
does not "follow the logic of the article", rather it only follows a small bit of the article. Consider the gerrymandering examples near the end. A voter has more power if the district is diverse--in that case, it is more likely that deadlock will occur. If you organize districts along political lines, you lose the chance of deadlock.
The West Coast of the US, for instance, has more environmental power as three (four, including Alaska) states than as one state. Since a majority (I'm just guessing) of voters in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and California care about environmental issues, they can swing four 'games' instead of just one game. Therefore they have more power.
To maximize a voter's power on some issue, you want to spread your constituency across as many districts as possible, so long as you will win in each district.
-Paul Komarek
newer DATs are doing 96kHz at 24bits.
also, audio DATs don't use the same format as computer back-up DATs, unfortunately. supposedly sgi once released a computer DAT drive that could read audio dats, but this device appears to be rare.
-Paul Komarek
A lot of what you (nathanh) say is true. But it's clear you don't have the best ears on the planet--do more music listening, even on mediocre equipment, and you'll hear the things you claim can't be heard.
Quit getting so excited about what you know. Just because you've read about signals somewhere doesn't mean you understand human auditory function. And remember that we don't really understand any of this stuff--we're just constructing models. If I can hear what you say I can't, then your _model_ is wrong, not my ears. After all, the models are trying to conform to reality, not vice-versa as you seem to argue.
I am a mathematics grad student, familiar with some signal processing, and critically inclined. I also am passionate about music. I find your comment "Most audiophiles are full of shit" offensive--I know several audiophiles and none of them are full of shit. Some are musicians, some are electrical engineers. All of them have highly trained ears.
I don't care that "most people's speakers have trouble doing better than -3dB at anything over 18kHz anyway"--mine are spec'd -2db at 22kHz, and they only cost $450 for the pair (Sound Dynamics 300ti). I take exception to your comment "So it's hardly any loss at all to throw away the sine waves over 20kHz"--hardly any loss to whom? I would benefit from better-sounding recordings. I do care about the high-range.
Finally, not everything can be represented by sinusoids, as you claim. Fourier claimed, IIRC since I'm not going to check, that all L2(0,1) functions could be represented by an infinite sum of sinusoids. I don't understand why all changes in air pressure must necessarily be in L2(0,1)--and unless a patient physicist tried explaining it to me, I probably wouldn't believe it anyway.
-Paul Komarek
"Now, Intel might still have some tricks up their sleeves, but IMO they've just plain dropped the ball. The Athlon came out of nowhere, kicked them in the pants..."
To pick nits, the Athlon didn't 'come out of nowhere', especially insofar as Intel is concerend. Intel knew full well what AMD was doing--you just can't miss that NexGen and Alpha architects are being hired by AMD. Intel completely blew it. They had been patching up the x86 processor for years, while other companies failed to execute properly. When the Athlon arrive, Intel was mired in its own internal disasters and AMD finally got their act together. Only after the Athlon 1GHz was announced did we start to really witness Intel coming apart at the seams.
It might be worth noting that the only thing x86 had going for it after about 1992 was backward compatibility. Intel knows a lot about manufacturing chips, but has never really been successful in the cpu-research department--which was fine so long as they were making the best x86 implementation available. When Intel did become more adventurous, they failed. Even with HP's help (which they didn't really like to acknowledge) on the Merced/Itanium, Intel still couldn't hack it. This platform may never make it to the market, though we might see its successor. But even once Intel's VLIW stuff does reach the market, they won't have backward compatibility, the only valuable part of their existing processor market.
Compare this to AMD's 64-bit strategy, or to Alpha's 64-bit legacy. If you want 64-bit x86-like code, go with AMD Sledgehammer. If you want super-duper 64-bit code and don't need backward compatibility, go with a damn fast, proven architecture like Alpha. And there are other 64bit architectures out there that are competitive with the Alpha, for instance the IBM RS-64 III.
VLIW as a technology may stand a chance in the future, but I'll venture that Intel doesn't have what it takes to make it work in any reasonable amount of time. In fact, my opinion is that Intel's x86 architecture is retarding the commercial development of new cpu architectures -- even within Intel.
I predict AMD will eventually forget about retail microprocessors once x86 is no longer desired in the market. Intel will stop torturing us with their designs and become the world's largest and best fabrication company. Microsoft will stop writing software and become the world's largest legal firm (do they already hold this distinction?). This is how we'll finally see the end of the x86 and Win32 architectural disasters that are anchoring computing technology in the 1980s.
-Paul Komarek
I'm not sure about the Athlon in particular, but I know that the Alpha '264 can keep truckin' with several outstanding cache line fills. This may be relevant because of the architectural connections (people and design) between the Athlon and the Alpha.
-Paul Komarek
>> At home I just got a WD 30gig drive and I can't play mp3's while ripping anymore. I used to
>> have a maxtor 6 gig ide drive that didn't cause problems.
You might want to try moving the disk from the middle of the IDE cable to the end, or vice-versa. This fixed similar problems in my machine. Yes, IDE does suck that much.
-Paul Komarek
I believe that most of the world is using roughly the same notation in mathematics. Perhaps I should say instead that there is no more notational variation between countries than there is within a country, for any particular math subject.
-Paul Komarek
I'd like to add:
1) you can hit tab from anywhere on the line, so you don't have to hop back to the beginning to get proper indentation.
2) incremental search (ctrl-s). Why isn't this feature in every viewing and editing program in existance? I hate regular search, where you open a new interface, guess at how much of a substring you need, and then hit some wacky key-combo to differentiate between find and 'find next'.
Just hit ctrl-s to start the search, and start typing. If you make a typo, hit delete and the search will back up to the previous match. Once you've typed in as much as you care to type, if you aren't already at your desired location, hit ctrl-s until you arrive. If you need to search on the same thing again after you've done some editing, hit ctrl-s once to enter the incremental search, and then ctrl-s again to search for the last match.
3) esc-%, although a pretty bizarre combo, is search-and-replace. It has history for the search and replace terms, which is why I wanted to mention it.
-Paul Komarek
Why isn't this 'score 5, funny'? Although I don't use MSVC or any other MS development products, I've never heard such praises as you give. In fact, for every point you mention, I've only heard swearing:
1) stable, never crashed? This is new to me--my wife has complained of 3 crashes in one workday, on more than one occasion (this is running on NT, if that makes any difference)
2) hooked on Intellisense? Again, I've been told it is a huge distraction, and very bothersome.
3) and recompilation while debugging--it's a good idea, and so I asked a couple developers about it. Their response was that despite the nice idea, it didn't actually work reliably.
Consider how much time you save because of the slick user interface. Then think about the money spent on it--not a very good argument on its own, though. Now consider how much time it will take you to implement regular expressions, since it doesn't include regex libraries--or else how much it will cost to purchase commercial libs with distribution rights. How about any of the other standard POSIX services that don't come with MSVC?
"I got this great new shiny bicycle, too bad it doesn't have a chain, oh, and the wheels are square."
I just don't understand what you really get for your money with the Microsoft development tools. I'd rather have useful libraries instead of Intellisense. Not to mention, slightly unrelated, why doesn't FAT/VFAT/NTFS have symlinks yet? Where's the service from Microsoft?
Try writing your own regular expression parser sometime, just for an example of why someone would want to _reuse_ already written and debugged code.
-Paul Komarek
And just how much would US trade restrictions hurt Microsoft? I don't think MS would be protected by NAFTA or the WTA, since they were found to have broken laws in the US. So maybe the trade restrictions would include a _huge_ increase in prices, or a restriction on mergers (they can't buy or merge with American companies, only Canadian companies--watch out Corel!), or maybe restrictions on the quantity of imports?
I think the US government would really show its teeth if this happened, since it would feel like a violation of our extradition treaty with Canada.
On the other hand, would MS get away with the same crap in BC that they got away with here? Not hardly. And remember that contract workers bruhaha a while back? I would expect that a more social country like Canada would respond much stronger and faster than the US would. Of course I'm speculating.
And MS says a reorg would be hard and disrupt business. What would happen if they moved most of their developers, or even just reincorporated elsewhere? I expect it would take a long time to prepare, and a long time to execute. There would probably be a lot of changes in employment laws, trade laws, marketing laws, tax laws, etc.
Maybe anti-pollution laws would stop the move, anyway. It would be like dumping US toxic waste in Canada.
-Paul Komarek