All this is dealt with in a consistent way, the section on references in "Programming Perl" took me a few reads but it eventually made sense.
I like the part where Larry is describing the thing a reference refers to, which is termed a "thingy, in honour of the thingy that hangs down the back of your throat". Then there's a footnote that says "You could also call it a 'referent', if you prefer a joyless existence."
Python zealots always strike me as the type of people who'd call it a 'referent'.
If Max Planck had followed the way proposed by Lao Tzu he would have never introduced the idea of quantised energy in the first place.
Max Planck had spent his whole career 'learning' that light and matter were continuous quantities and that there were no such things as atoms or photons. His understanding of his own results was confused and almost contradictory. He even gave a convoluted argument as to why photons could not exist, despite what his work was telling him.
Had he 'unlearned' his prejudices about light and matter he would have been able to make the next conceptual step. Instead that fell to Einstein who also 'unlearned' what everyone had learned about space and time.
The quote from Lao Tzu essentially means that our accumulated prejudices are what prevent us from understanding the world. Major breakthroughs in physics are almost always associated with an unlearning of some prejudice. Many physicists nowadays suspect that part of the problem with quantum gravity is that we are prejudiced towards the meaning of the word "is", and are unable to unlearn what we think it means.
There is a Zen saying "in the expert's mind there are few possibilities, in the beginner's mind there are many." This is why most scientific breakthroughs are usually accomplished by younger scientists.
I really don't know why people still go on about fonts in linux. I haven't had a problem with them since XFree86 3.3.something.
If I've been working exclusively on linux for a few weeks I gag when I boot up windows and look at the fonts for the first time in ages. And vice-versa when I have been exclusively on windows for a while. It just depends what I'm used to.
Compare Microsoft's extensions with GCC's. Quiz: which of Microsoft and GNU do you think are introducing more portability problems by embracing and extending the C and C++ languages?
Who uses compiler specific language extensions when they're trying to write portable code? Nobody. So long as it compiles standards compliant code, it doesn't really matter how many extensions are available. Nobody's forcing you to use them. Most of the extensions for both compilers you mention are useful and valid when you are trying to optimize code for a particular platform.
And if this was the approach Microsoft took to "embracing and extending" that would be fine. But it's not. Traditionally they have pretended to adopt a standard, added extensions without telling anyone in the standards committee, actively promoted their use without indicating that they are non-standard (like calling it "managed C++") and that in most cases things could actually be accomplished in a standards compliant manner. Since they have a dominant position in the market place, use of these proprietary extensions becomes commonplace and displaces alternative products who can't obtain enough information about microsoft's new "features" to support them.
Completely and utterly different from C/C++ language extensions.
Further, IBM has spent enormous sums of money to ensure that Linux is reliable.
They haven't even spent a fraction of the amount of money that they would have in developing their own operating system from scratch.
IBM will soon discover that this aspect of Linux is the Achille's heel of open source.
I'm sure they were already aware that contributing to a GPL project means other people can use your code.
By using Linux, HP essentially gets a free ride from IBM and need not spend the money to ensure that Linux is reliable. IBM has already done the work.
I doubt IBM spent any time worrying about how to support the sort of redundancy that goes into the NonStop servers. HP would have had to contribute a lot of that themselves, and guess what? IBM gets access to all that code.
There is no purpose in learning a new system because Windows is now polished and stable, and maintains its original attractiveness through its continued ease-of-use
My mother has purchased a new laptop about two weeks ago. Over the course of those two weeks it has progrssively taken longer and longer to go from logon screen to usable desktop, and it now takes about 15 minutes. Neither myself not the retailer has any idea what the problem was, and although some sort of malware is quite likely none of the anti-virus software she has tried has found anything.
If it were a linux system, I am confident I could find the problem inside 5 minutes. Every problem I have ever had on linux has been resolvable, but I know of lots of scenarios where windows has just had to be reinstalled.
This is why I use linux. It's not a car with the bonnet welded shut.
Well, I'm pretty sure you just answered your own question about Starbucks. Starbucks ensures that all of its drinks are made on well-maintained machines by well-trained baristas.
No way. I have been forced into a Starbucks by caffeine withdrawal headaches several times. Even when they're making the first coffee I've had in 3 days it tastes like rubbish. They'd do better if they were trained to crunch the beans up in their mouth and spat into the cup. Or maybe they'd screw that up too. There's no passion in their craft, it's just a part time job to them.
Plus there are different blends and roasting time for different coffees
This is exclusively where variety in coffee should come from. A caramel mocha frappuchino is not coffee, and it should not be called as such.
he fact is that since we're the land of the free and capitalism and all that, if your "well trained barrista" and whatnot could manage to sell coffee, they'd smack Starbucks around.
Bah. Much as I am loathe to quote Michael Moore, we all know capitalism selects the "ruthless but mediocre few."
Pulling it apart is probably the best thing you could do with it.
You see, the thing that many people in the US completely miss is that the breweing of coffee was perfected in 1855 and it is senseless to mess with it. A shot of espresso made with freshly roasted / ground beans and on a well maintained machine by a well trained barrista is the apex of coffee perfection and cannot be improved upon. There is no substitute, and it cannot be put in an can.
Why the hell such abominations as the Wolfgang Puck Gourmet Latte and just about everything they serve at Starbacks are permitted to exist is beyond me.
The interesting question is not: "can a digital computer simulate anything"
I disagree and think that this is a very interesting question. The Church-Turing thesis says yes, and all the computers we have conceived of to date can be simulated on a digital computer but this doesn't actually prove anything. It might be that the Church-Turing thesis is correct, or it might be that we have a very limited capacity for devising computers.
In other words the closer to analog the system's encoding is, the greater its processing power and the greater its difficulty in being simulated by a coarser level of representation such as digital.
That doesn't really matter except in practice, and in practice the closer to analog the system's encoding is the more susceptible it is to noise. And since error correction is not possible for analog computers, nobody bothers with them.
The article seems to assume that the only type of computer is a _binary_ computer.
Binary computers are able to simulate every other model of computation known. They may be a bit slower in some cases, and a bit faster in others but anything you can do on one can be done on another. It's an open question as to whether what's possible with a human brain can be done on a computer.
The Earth has been through many, many periods in its history where it was warmer than it is today. This was before cars or factories. It managed to cool itself down.
Most people aren't really worried about the Earth. They're worried about the inhabitants. Mass extinctions usually accompany planetary wide climate change.
I blame the ridiculous emphasis we seem to put on earning large amounts of money. We're all taught that the more money you have, the happier you are. And since people with degrees can earn more money, going to college is essential if you are to be happy.
A big topic in Australia at the moment is the 'skills shortage' which was produced partially because everyone seems to be going to university to become doctors, lawyers and acoountants and we don't have enough people who can actually do something anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm still paying for that crap, ten years later. It's totally not worth it.
Wow. Your amphetameine dealer let you pay it off over 10 years?
All this is dealt with in a consistent way, the section on references in "Programming Perl" took me a few reads but it eventually made sense.
I like the part where Larry is describing the thing a reference refers to, which is termed a "thingy, in honour of the thingy that hangs down the back of your throat". Then there's a footnote that says "You could also call it a 'referent', if you prefer a joyless existence."
Python zealots always strike me as the type of people who'd call it a 'referent'.
If Max Planck had followed the way proposed by Lao Tzu he would have never introduced the idea of quantised energy in the first place.
Max Planck had spent his whole career 'learning' that light and matter were continuous quantities and that there were no such things as atoms or photons. His understanding of his own results was confused and almost contradictory. He even gave a convoluted argument as to why photons could not exist, despite what his work was telling him.
Had he 'unlearned' his prejudices about light and matter he would have been able to make the next conceptual step. Instead that fell to Einstein who also 'unlearned' what everyone had learned about space and time.
The quote from Lao Tzu essentially means that our accumulated prejudices are what prevent us from understanding the world. Major breakthroughs in physics are almost always associated with an unlearning of some prejudice. Many physicists nowadays suspect that part of the problem with quantum gravity is that we are prejudiced towards the meaning of the word "is", and are unable to unlearn what we think it means.
There is a Zen saying "in the expert's mind there are few possibilities, in the beginner's mind there are many." This is why most scientific breakthroughs are usually accomplished by younger scientists.
Had we waited a couple weeks or not used the bombs it is believed the Japanese could have launched their own atomic strikes on America.
That is probably one of the dumbest things I have ever read. Even on slashdot.
I just start the gnome-settings-daemon in xinitrc.
I really don't know why people still go on about fonts in linux. I haven't had a problem with them since XFree86 3.3.something.
If I've been working exclusively on linux for a few weeks I gag when I boot up windows and look at the fonts for the first time in ages. And vice-versa when I have been exclusively on windows for a while. It just depends what I'm used to.
The upper-right corner of the IE 7 window contains a form that allows the user to launch a search
...
Revolutionary! And there's more
Google searches actually work!
Doesn't sound like he expects to omuch from Microsoft.
Compare Microsoft's extensions with GCC's. Quiz: which of Microsoft and GNU do you think are introducing more portability problems by embracing and extending the C and C++ languages?
Who uses compiler specific language extensions when they're trying to write portable code? Nobody. So long as it compiles standards compliant code, it doesn't really matter how many extensions are available. Nobody's forcing you to use them. Most of the extensions for both compilers you mention are useful and valid when you are trying to optimize code for a particular platform.
And if this was the approach Microsoft took to "embracing and extending" that would be fine. But it's not. Traditionally they have pretended to adopt a standard, added extensions without telling anyone in the standards committee, actively promoted their use without indicating that they are non-standard (like calling it "managed C++") and that in most cases things could actually be accomplished in a standards compliant manner. Since they have a dominant position in the market place, use of these proprietary extensions becomes commonplace and displaces alternative products who can't obtain enough information about microsoft's new "features" to support them.
Completely and utterly different from C/C++ language extensions.
Why don't you walk them through compiling and configuring the latest e17 release?
That's FUN.
Further, IBM has spent enormous sums of money to ensure that Linux is reliable.
They haven't even spent a fraction of the amount of money that they would have in developing their own operating system from scratch.
IBM will soon discover that this aspect of Linux is the Achille's heel of open source.
I'm sure they were already aware that contributing to a GPL project means other people can use your code.
By using Linux, HP essentially gets a free ride from IBM and need not spend the money to ensure that Linux is reliable. IBM has already done the work.
I doubt IBM spent any time worrying about how to support the sort of redundancy that goes into the NonStop servers. HP would have had to contribute a lot of that themselves, and guess what? IBM gets access to all that code.
They ALWAYS lock up the browser and force a ctrl-alt-del to shut it down. Firefox and IE alike.
Never had a problem, ever. You could always try an OS that properly implements the whole shared library thing.
No. That was some sort of ultrasonic device. And IIRC Biggles turned it on itself using a helicopter equipped with a P/A.
And now I've got that god awful theme song "do you want to be a hero" in my head.
Cool. Thanks for that.
There is no purpose in learning a new system because Windows is now polished and stable, and maintains its original attractiveness through its continued ease-of-use
My mother has purchased a new laptop about two weeks ago. Over the course of those two weeks it has progrssively taken longer and longer to go from logon screen to usable desktop, and it now takes about 15 minutes. Neither myself not the retailer has any idea what the problem was, and although some sort of malware is quite likely none of the anti-virus software she has tried has found anything.
If it were a linux system, I am confident I could find the problem inside 5 minutes. Every problem I have ever had on linux has been resolvable, but I know of lots of scenarios where windows has just had to be reinstalled.
This is why I use linux. It's not a car with the bonnet welded shut.
Nice work.
I bough a La Pavoni a little while and thoroughly recommend them too.
Well, I'm pretty sure you just answered your own question about Starbucks. Starbucks ensures that all of its drinks are made on well-maintained machines by well-trained baristas.
No way. I have been forced into a Starbucks by caffeine withdrawal headaches several times. Even when they're making the first coffee I've had in 3 days it tastes like rubbish. They'd do better if they were trained to crunch the beans up in their mouth and spat into the cup. Or maybe they'd screw that up too. There's no passion in their craft, it's just a part time job to them.
Plus there are different blends and roasting time for different coffees
This is exclusively where variety in coffee should come from. A caramel mocha frappuchino is not coffee, and it should not be called as such.
he fact is that since we're the land of the free and capitalism and all that, if your "well trained barrista" and whatnot could manage to sell coffee, they'd smack Starbucks around.
Bah. Much as I am loathe to quote Michael Moore, we all know capitalism selects the "ruthless but mediocre few."
Pulling it apart is probably the best thing you could do with it.
You see, the thing that many people in the US completely miss is that the breweing of coffee was perfected in 1855 and it is senseless to mess with it. A shot of espresso made with freshly roasted / ground beans and on a well maintained machine by a well trained barrista is the apex of coffee perfection and cannot be improved upon. There is no substitute, and it cannot be put in an can.
Why the hell such abominations as the Wolfgang Puck Gourmet Latte and just about everything they serve at Starbacks are permitted to exist is beyond me.
The interesting question is not: "can a digital computer simulate anything"
I disagree and think that this is a very interesting question. The Church-Turing thesis says yes, and all the computers we have conceived of to date can be simulated on a digital computer but this doesn't actually prove anything. It might be that the Church-Turing thesis is correct, or it might be that we have a very limited capacity for devising computers.
In other words the closer to analog the system's encoding is, the greater its processing power and the greater its difficulty in being simulated by a coarser level of representation such as digital.
That doesn't really matter except in practice, and in practice the closer to analog the system's encoding is the more susceptible it is to noise. And since error correction is not possible for analog computers, nobody bothers with them.
The article seems to assume that the only type of computer is a _binary_ computer.
Binary computers are able to simulate every other model of computation known. They may be a bit slower in some cases, and a bit faster in others but anything you can do on one can be done on another. It's an open question as to whether what's possible with a human brain can be done on a computer.
The Earth has been through many, many periods in its history where it was warmer than it is today. This was before cars or factories. It managed to cool itself down.
Most people aren't really worried about the Earth. They're worried about the inhabitants. Mass extinctions usually accompany planetary wide climate change.
Why are you arguing with a popular media article? Why don't you read the original research and argue with that instead?
I'm not sure they are thinking. Like the people who remove whitespace to 'save bytes'.
So, it runs Linux, and does absolutely nothing useful. Big freaking deal
Sheesh. Kids nowadays. What's the world coming to?
I blame the ridiculous emphasis we seem to put on earning large amounts of money. We're all taught that the more money you have, the happier you are. And since people with degrees can earn more money, going to college is essential if you are to be happy.
A big topic in Australia at the moment is the 'skills shortage' which was produced partially because everyone seems to be going to university to become doctors, lawyers and acoountants and we don't have enough people who can actually do something anymore.