Anyone remember the 1541? One of the things you could do was store data (code) in its memory that could survive a reboot of the computer itself. Retro malware, anyone?
Right - just like the Massholes at the Massachusetts DOT that collectively took a long pull from their spliffs, coughed and beat their chests, and exclaimed:
"I GOT IT! *cough* How about we take the slowest possible lane we have, the breakdown lane (which is the lane where cars experiencing problems are supposed to go into and STOP to await help or effect repairs), and open it up for travel during rush hour! And as a bonus, given the fact that much of the debris that ends up on the road eventually finds it way to the shoulders and breakdown lane, we can introduce more tire hazards for those vehicles using it! Yeah, brilliant!
Yeah - what a great idea... I see how great it works on each drive from NH to Boston on I93... It is funny to watch people actually get pissed off because someone had to bring his car with a flat into that lane to stop and await AAA.
Imagine - the nerve of some people to use the breakdown lane for the REASON IT EXISTS!
Do not laugh - the poster is correct. This is actually why the "just keep a safe distance" strategy does not work all the time: you may be keeping a safe distance of (for example) 4 car-lengths, but if some idiot decides that he must grace this perfect 4 car-length space with his presence and merges into it, you now have to reduce speed in order to regain that 4 car-length distance from this new vehicle.
This means that you have to slow down and then speed up again, and the car behind you has to slow down and speed up again, and the car behind it has to...
Because that might make things worse - people may get even more careless or distracted while driving: why do *I* have to watch the road when this little radar-thingy will brake for me?
I bet that some drivers would become more aggressive accelerators if they had an automatic braking system, and would result in even more rapid starts & stops because they would basically just stand on their gas pedal the whole time. This would increase the wave/ripple/accordion effects being discussed here.
Not all of 'em do... You may see portable speed displays (basically small trailers with a generator) for example that flash you speed as you approach them. These work by radar try passing one with a radar detector or a jammer sometime to see what I mean. All of the radar cameras that I am familar with (albiet not many) also use radar.
Impressive... Now, what about visual languages? Let it loose on some videos of native ASL signers and have it learn the subtleties and nuances of the language, have it observe another sign system and translate between the two and THEN I will be impressed!:)
-Or even languages that have Classifiers, like Navajo.
Hell, I would love to even see it go between ASL and English...! It would be a great thing for the both the deaf and The Deaf.
...because in general they are given higher responsibilities they realize that given the level of their responsibilities, the stakes and thus the cost of their mistakes are much higher.
There is a real difference in risk and cost when you have a fresh-outta-college programmer working on a text editor in his mother's basement, vs. a highly experienced developer designing the architecture for a multi-million dollar project.
Higher stakes, more stress, more likely to have to say: "Whoa, I need to take a day or two to settle my thoughts and clear my head."
Consider the following two scenarios, both involving people of the exact same mental abilities working at NASA:
One has to design and implement a safety system for the next launch that will prevent another Challenger-like accident from ever happening again.
The other has to design a timekeeping system for the maintainance crew (clock-in, clock-out).
Which one of the above do you think is going to have more stress and be more likely to crack?
Man, all I was waiting for was a nice Picasso; a good old-fashioned fatal transporter accident, just like what happened to the two crewman (a Vulcan male and some chick) beaming aboard in the first Star Trek movie (ST:TMP).
Ahhh... Nothing like a physically-deforming, screaming, PAINFUL death to pick things up, eh?:)
That is what I was waiting for, since "quantum mode" of the transporter is still new to the Enterprise crew.
(Oh, and that little one where the "father of the transporter" materialized his son and killed him does not count! With a degraded pattern, he should have materialized deformed -- he looked pretty normal to me lying dead on the deck...)
Oh, well. Guess I will have wait for another series or movie. Or invent the transporter myself! Anyone want to go it first? I will make sure no fly gets in with 'ya!!!
I would think that the jumpy video and audio dropouts have to do with your area and/or usage area not Comcast itself. I have had OnDemand for some time now, and have never experienced any problems with it at all. Smooth video, perfect audio. No problems.
I believe that your problems are due to how many people are on the same "connection" as you.
Just my $0.02...
Peace!
-=- James.
I think this would be an real interesting approach to Augmented Reality (or Mixed Reality -- see http://www.augmented-reality.org and Google for information and resources).
Normally, cameras and monitors (goggles, etc) are used to blend additional information into what you would normally see. But using additional senses for it would be interesting, too. At least, I think it would.
Wonder if your brain would be able to take other additional non-visual inputs and kinda-sorta internally superimpose them onto your vision, or if things would get confused because you would have two different sets of sensory input trying to accomplish the same goal (both visual and tactile inputs for visual information, for example).
Either way, this whole thing sounds cool to me, and I would be really interested in seeing how far its use can go.
Similar to changing gears in a car. You don't sit there and think okay, the car is now in third gear,
Completely true. You can be driving around and find yourself in 4th gear and not realize exactly how you got there, indicating a possible subconscious force.
Although that kind of connection also has its issues too... Every have a "mis-shift", where you grind the gears a little? If yes, think about it, were you doing a conscious shift at that time, or did it just happen?
One other factor is caching... Overwriting the same small location 5 times might result in only the 5th time's data getting put to the physical media.
One way around this (that a product of mine does) is to determine the amount of disk cache (both in the drive and in the logical filesystem) available, and write out enough data to exceed twice the cache available (sometimes this requires that a temp file be created).
Writing twice the cache amount should cause the cache to get flushed to the physical media, and then you can start additional write passes. If in doubt, grow the file to some large size, like 128MB, and then act on it.
This also assumes that your filesystem does not reallocate the entire file when you grow it...
FYI, Prodigy as a few patents regarding its Reception System (the "RS", what you used to run on your system to connect to Prodigy) and the bytecode that is sent to it that might be considered Prior Art for Java.
Programs/Applets were written in TBOL (Trintex Basic Operating Language, used earlier) and PAL (Prodigy Application Language, kinda like a typeless-C), which were compiled into one or more objects (which contained bytecode or data).
These objects were then optionally compressed and sent, down-the-wire, to be interpreted by the RS on the user's (remote) machine. Whole pages and all processing were done by these little code objects.
The RS (the interpreter) executed the bytecode and implemented platform-specific input, output, storage, sound, etc., routines for the bytecode and also was basically an early form of distributed processing -- data was sent to the RS for processing by the applets on the user's machine instead of the server.
Does the RS sound a little like the JVM to anyone...?
Indeed, what makes this easier, is that by creating such oss code, you are effectively advertising yourself as a super-talented developer to hundreds/thousands of employee-hunters [...]
Not all open-source developers are "super-talented". I have seen some bad habits demonstrated in open-source code just as I have seen bad habits demonstrated in "closed" source code.
I think that PHPBB is pretty good open-source software. Same thing for MySQL, and Linux (in general). However, none of them have gone without some kind of patch at some point to fix some kind of problem. (Yes, even some security-related problems.)
Now, after reading that, some people are quick to change their argument to something like "open-source code has less bugs than closed source because of the fact that all these other people can review it." However, not everyone that is reviewing the software is a truly exceptional developer either. Bugs still get through; check your favorite open-source project for any security-related patches for some examples. Incompetient people write software all the time, in all kinds of languages, in both open-source and "closed" environments.
I am not bashing open-source here, but you have to maintian a firm grip on reality when defending it, otherwise you look/sound like some crazy street-corner preacher.
I have read plenty of posts regarding how math is important to, and some even say a required part of, Conputer Science. But exactly how much math is required? Algebra? Calculus? Stats? DiffEQ?
Yes, there are special situations like Games/Graphics, but the average programmer is not likely working on the next FPS game engine. (And even if they were, would DiffEQ be required?)
Personally, I consider myself quite shi*ty at math -- things like advanced calclus or DiffEq (although I start to get nervous when I think about FOIL:). That is one of the reasons I left college in my third year (after relational algebra, I saw no reason to continue further). The most useful math class I ever took was in my first year: Finite Math.
Neither lacking a degree or the math expertise has EVER been a limiting factor in my professional or personal life.
I still produce high quality, high performance software and algorithms, command a six figure salary, and have never had to beg for a job. There is no math problem that I have ever encountered in my career that my trusty TI graphing calculator could not handle.
IMHO, do not give math too much weight. That is just as bad as too little. Some math is important, maybe even required. But, not all of it.
Ask yourself this: how many times last year were you required to use Calculus, DiffEQ, etc. in order to complete a programming related task? And was it something that a calculator could not have done faster (time == $$$) and more accurately?
Personally, I LIVE for space-fights. It is why I love Wrath of Khan and First Contact the most; lotsa action (IMHO).
Lasers, Phasers, Disrupters, Phase Cannons, pulse weapons, beam weapons, conventional & photon torps. etc.; it does not matter so long as I hear a weapon bring fired, followed by a satifying explosion.:)
To that end, I would love to see more action, and less "let's drag this plot out as long as we can" $hit... find a Xindi outpost someplace and pump 20 torpedos into it! Blast a ship into several floating chunks... and then go after those chunks!
Besides, with some Americans having a "let's nuke 'em all" attitude toward recent... Um... International Events involving the US, it might help us all to see some $hit get blown up!:)
I say have the crew go crazy, find a cache of WoMD somewhere and start blowing up everything in sight (or within the range of 100 or so light years). I would stay up to watch something like that...!
The points you have about software development are mostly valid. However, since there are more people that *use* software rather than *build* it, you have to consider this: it is not really a "my language builds faster than your language" problem, it is a developer problem.
Most developers these days are quite oblivious when it comes to knowing the difference between "works" and "works well", and those that do seem to be satisified with the former.
It is also easy to fall into the "Java trap" of believing that throwing more metal at something is an acceptable way of speeding it up (as opposed to implementing it correctly). Same goes for the naive belief that "we do not have to worry about that: computers are so fast and have so much memory these days that it will not matter". The result? We end up needing to load megabytes of runtime for a simple "Hello World!" program. And what is the average system used to deploy Java-built solutions on these days?
Truth is: you can build slow software in *any* language. As such, it is mostly pointless to ignite pissing matches about whose language is better; the time is better spent teaching developers how to write code that performs well, and does not take things for granted.
Building an application in C++ (or Lisp or Python) is not flawed. Building SLOW sofware in C++ (or Lisp or Python) is.
Peace!
Re:Explain ... (second try, hit the wrong button)
on
Latest SCO News
·
· Score: 1
> SCO code and Linux code include identical annotations made by developers
> when they wrote the programs, says DiDio, who compares such notes to the
> signature or fingerprint of a developer's work.
I cannot buy that. Now, I can understand using someone's coding style to identify them (for example, you can do it with my code), but even this only works when you have a large amount of code to deal with. For example, you cannot say that I (or anyone else) comitted theft based on the following lines of code:
FILE *pFile = fopen( "test.bin", "r" );/* Try To Open The Data File */
if( !pFile )/* If Failed */
{
ÂÂÂreturn( NULL );/* Stop Here */
}
return( pFile );/* Return The Data File (Successful) */
Just because those 6 lines of code could be seen elsewhere does not mean that anyone stole anything, even if those same lines were found multiple times. To say otherwise is NaÃve at best, and Negligent at worst.
> SCO code and Linux code include identical annotations made by developers
> when they wrote the programs, says DiDio, who compares such notes to the
> signature or fingerprint of a developer's work.
I cannot buy that. Now, I can understand using someone's coding style to identify them (for example, you can do it with my code), but even this only works when you have a large amount of code to deal with. For example, you cannot say that I comitted theft based on the following lines of code:
FILE *pFile = fopen( "test.bin", "r" );/* Try To Open The Data File */
if( !pFile )/* If Failed */
{
return( NULL );/* Stop Here */
}
return( pFile );/* Return The Data File (Successful) */
Just because those 6 lines of code could be seen elsewhere does not mean that anyone stole anything, even if those same lines were found multiple times. To say otherwise is NaÃve at best, and Negligent at worst.
Just my $0.02...
Peace!
-=- James.
...from a previous co-worker, friend and damn good developer/architect who we call Darth, you point out what you beleive to be the problem and/or failure of the proposed work and offer a corrected solution ONCE ONLY.
If they take your advice, all the better for them. If not, then do it as they request.
More than likely they will be needing help more in the future to fix it and to it "the right way". This means more $$$ for the consultant in the long run, and maybe the companies start to remember the reason the consultant was hired in the first place.
Post-lingually Deaf? I only ask because I have experience with The Deaf, and I must say that you write English like a native Hearie!:)
>I'd know when you were honking the horn, we can feel it
Now, driving a manual transmission by feeling the car's vibrations (no tach.) is one thing; being able to feel even those little tweeter-sounding horns on some smaller vehicles is another...:)
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone remember the 1541? One of the things you could do was store data (code) in its memory that could survive a reboot of the computer itself. Retro malware, anyone?
Yeah - what a great idea... I see how great it works on each drive from NH to Boston on I93... It is funny to watch people actually get pissed off because someone had to bring his car with a flat into that lane to stop and await AAA.
Imagine - the nerve of some people to use the breakdown lane for the REASON IT EXISTS!
Do not laugh - the poster is correct. This is actually why the "just keep a safe distance" strategy does not work all the time: you may be keeping a safe distance of (for example) 4 car-lengths, but if some idiot decides that he must grace this perfect 4 car-length space with his presence and merges into it, you now have to reduce speed in order to regain that 4 car-length distance from this new vehicle.
This means that you have to slow down and then speed up again, and the car behind you has to slow down and speed up again, and the car behind it has to...
Because that might make things worse - people may get even more careless or distracted while driving: why do *I* have to watch the road when this little radar-thingy will brake for me? I bet that some drivers would become more aggressive accelerators if they had an automatic braking system, and would result in even more rapid starts & stops because they would basically just stand on their gas pedal the whole time. This would increase the wave/ripple/accordion effects being discussed here.
Not all of 'em do... You may see portable speed displays (basically small trailers with a generator) for example that flash you speed as you approach them. These work by radar try passing one with a radar detector or a jammer sometime to see what I mean. All of the radar cameras that I am familar with (albiet not many) also use radar.
Impressive... Now, what about visual languages? Let it loose on some videos of native ASL signers and have it learn the subtleties and nuances of the language, have it observe another sign system and translate between the two and THEN I will be impressed! :)
-Or even languages that have Classifiers, like Navajo.
Hell, I would love to even see it go between ASL and English...! It would be a great thing for the both the deaf and The Deaf.
Peace!
There is a real difference in risk and cost when you have a fresh-outta-college programmer working on a text editor in his mother's basement, vs. a highly experienced developer designing the architecture for a multi-million dollar project.
Higher stakes, more stress, more likely to have to say: "Whoa, I need to take a day or two to settle my thoughts and clear my head."
Consider the following two scenarios, both involving people of the exact same mental abilities working at NASA:
Which one of the above do you think is going to have more stress and be more likely to crack?
Peace!
Man, all I was waiting for was a nice Picasso; a good old-fashioned fatal transporter accident, just like what happened to the two crewman (a Vulcan male and some chick) beaming aboard in the first Star Trek movie (ST:TMP).
:)
Ahhh... Nothing like a physically-deforming, screaming, PAINFUL death to pick things up, eh?
That is what I was waiting for, since "quantum mode" of the transporter is still new to the Enterprise crew.
(Oh, and that little one where the "father of the transporter" materialized his son and killed him does not count! With a degraded pattern, he should have materialized deformed -- he looked pretty normal to me lying dead on the deck...)
Oh, well. Guess I will have wait for another series or movie. Or invent the transporter myself! Anyone want to go it first? I will make sure no fly gets in with 'ya!!!
I would think that the jumpy video and audio dropouts have to do with your area and/or usage area not Comcast itself. I have had OnDemand for some time now, and have never experienced any problems with it at all. Smooth video, perfect audio. No problems. I believe that your problems are due to how many people are on the same "connection" as you. Just my $0.02... Peace! -=- James.
Yet another reason why VBers should never be in a design or architecture position... :)
C++ developers have been ragging on VBers for years... Ever wonder why? Read above.
Peace!
I think this would be an real interesting approach to Augmented Reality (or Mixed Reality -- see http://www.augmented-reality.org and Google for information and resources).
Normally, cameras and monitors (goggles, etc) are used to blend additional information into what you would normally see. But using additional senses for it would be interesting, too. At least, I think it would.
Wonder if your brain would be able to take other additional non-visual inputs and kinda-sorta internally superimpose them onto your vision, or if things would get confused because you would have two different sets of sensory input trying to accomplish the same goal (both visual and tactile inputs for visual information, for example).
Either way, this whole thing sounds cool to me, and I would be really interested in seeing how far its use can go.
Peace!
Similar to changing gears in a car. You don't sit there and think okay, the car is now in third gear,
Completely true. You can be driving around and find yourself in 4th gear and not realize exactly how you got there, indicating a possible subconscious force.
Although that kind of connection also has its issues too... Every have a "mis-shift", where you grind the gears a little? If yes, think about it, were you doing a conscious shift at that time, or did it just happen?
One other factor is caching... Overwriting the same small location 5 times might result in only the 5th time's data getting put to the physical media.
One way around this (that a product of mine does) is to determine the amount of disk cache (both in the drive and in the logical filesystem) available, and write out enough data to exceed twice the cache available (sometimes this requires that a temp file be created).
Writing twice the cache amount should cause the cache to get flushed to the physical media, and then you can start additional write passes. If in doubt, grow the file to some large size, like 128MB, and then act on it.
This also assumes that your filesystem does not reallocate the entire file when you grow it...
Peace!
FYI, Prodigy as a few patents regarding its Reception System (the "RS", what you used to run on your system to connect to Prodigy) and the bytecode that is sent to it that might be considered Prior Art for Java.
Programs/Applets were written in TBOL (Trintex Basic Operating Language, used earlier) and PAL (Prodigy Application Language, kinda like a typeless-C ), which were compiled into one or more objects (which contained bytecode or data).
These objects were then optionally compressed and sent, down-the-wire, to be interpreted by the RS on the user's (remote) machine. Whole pages and all processing were done by these little code objects.
The RS (the interpreter) executed the bytecode and implemented platform-specific input, output, storage, sound, etc., routines for the bytecode and also was basically an early form of distributed processing -- data was sent to the RS for processing by the applets on the user's machine instead of the server.
Does the RS sound a little like the JVM to anyone...?
Yeah, and...
"That said, the patch has been removed due to patent #5,288,158 held by halfkeyboard.com"
Not all open-source developers are "super-talented". I have seen some bad habits demonstrated in open-source code just as I have seen bad habits demonstrated in "closed" source code.
I think that PHPBB is pretty good open-source software. Same thing for MySQL, and Linux (in general). However, none of them have gone without some kind of patch at some point to fix some kind of problem. (Yes, even some security-related problems.)
Now, after reading that, some people are quick to change their argument to something like "open-source code has less bugs than closed source because of the fact that all these other people can review it." However, not everyone that is reviewing the software is a truly exceptional developer either. Bugs still get through; check your favorite open-source project for any security-related patches for some examples. Incompetient people write software all the time, in all kinds of languages, in both open-source and "closed" environments.
I am not bashing open-source here, but you have to maintian a firm grip on reality when defending it, otherwise you look/sound like some crazy street-corner preacher.
UnrealScript Language Reference
:)
Sorry, but I just had to post that...
Peace!
Yes, there are special situations like Games/Graphics, but the average programmer is not likely working on the next FPS game engine. (And even if they were, would DiffEQ be required?)
Personally, I consider myself quite shi*ty at math -- things like advanced calclus or DiffEq (although I start to get nervous when I think about FOIL :). That is one of the reasons I left college in my third year (after relational algebra, I saw no reason to continue further). The most useful math class I ever took was in my first year: Finite Math.
Neither lacking a degree or the math expertise has EVER been a limiting factor in my professional or personal life.
I still produce high quality, high performance software and algorithms, command a six figure salary, and have never had to beg for a job. There is no math problem that I have ever encountered in my career that my trusty TI graphing calculator could not handle.
IMHO, do not give math too much weight. That is just as bad as too little. Some math is important, maybe even required. But, not all of it.
Ask yourself this: how many times last year were you required to use Calculus, DiffEQ, etc. in order to complete a programming related task? And was it something that a calculator could not have done faster (time == $$$) and more accurately?
Just my $.02 (from experience) on it...
Personally, I LIVE for space-fights. It is why I love Wrath of Khan and First Contact the most; lotsa action (IMHO).
:)
:)
Lasers, Phasers, Disrupters, Phase Cannons, pulse weapons, beam weapons, conventional & photon torps. etc.; it does not matter so long as I hear a weapon bring fired, followed by a satifying explosion.
To that end, I would love to see more action, and less "let's drag this plot out as long as we can" $hit... find a Xindi outpost someplace and pump 20 torpedos into it! Blast a ship into several floating chunks... and then go after those chunks!
Besides, with some Americans having a "let's nuke 'em all" attitude toward recent... Um... International Events involving the US, it might help us all to see some $hit get blown up!
I say have the crew go crazy, find a cache of WoMD somewhere and start blowing up everything in sight (or within the range of 100 or so light years). I would stay up to watch something like that...!
Peace!
The points you have about software development are mostly valid. However, since there are more people that *use* software rather than *build* it, you have to consider this: it is not really a "my language builds faster than your language" problem, it is a developer problem.
Most developers these days are quite oblivious when it comes to knowing the difference between "works" and "works well", and those that do seem to be satisified with the former.
It is also easy to fall into the "Java trap" of believing that throwing more metal at something is an acceptable way of speeding it up (as opposed to implementing it correctly). Same goes for the naive belief that "we do not have to worry about that: computers are so fast and have so much memory these days that it will not matter". The result? We end up needing to load megabytes of runtime for a simple "Hello World!" program. And what is the average system used to deploy Java-built solutions on these days?
Truth is: you can build slow software in *any* language. As such, it is mostly pointless to ignite pissing matches about whose language is better; the time is better spent teaching developers how to write code that performs well, and does not take things for granted.
Building an application in C++ (or Lisp or Python) is not flawed. Building SLOW sofware in C++ (or Lisp or Python) is.
Peace!
> SCO code and Linux code include identical annotations made by developers
/* Try To Open The Data File */ /* If Failed */ /* Stop Here */ /* Return The Data File (Successful) */
> when they wrote the programs, says DiDio, who compares such notes to the
> signature or fingerprint of a developer's work.
I cannot buy that. Now, I can understand using someone's coding style to identify them (for example, you can do it with my code), but even this only works when you have a large amount of code to deal with. For example, you cannot say that I (or anyone else) comitted theft based on the following lines of code:
FILE *pFile = fopen( "test.bin", "r" );
if( !pFile )
{
ÂÂÂreturn( NULL );
}
return( pFile );
Just because those 6 lines of code could be seen elsewhere does not mean that anyone stole anything, even if those same lines were found multiple times. To say otherwise is NaÃve at best, and Negligent at worst.
Just my $0.02...
Peace!
> when they wrote the programs, says DiDio, who compares such notes to the
> signature or fingerprint of a developer's work.
I cannot buy that. Now, I can understand using someone's coding style to identify them (for example, you can do it with my code), but even this only works when you have a large amount of code to deal with. For example, you cannot say that I comitted theft based on the following lines of code:
FILE *pFile = fopen( "test.bin", "r" );
...from a previous co-worker, friend and damn good developer/architect who we call Darth , you point out what you beleive to be the problem and/or failure of the proposed work and offer a corrected solution ONCE ONLY.
If they take your advice, all the better for them. If not, then do it as they request.
More than likely they will be needing help more in the future to fix it and to it "the right way". This means more $$$ for the consultant in the long run, and maybe the companies start to remember the reason the consultant was hired in the first place.
Post-lingually Deaf? I only ask because I have experience with The Deaf, and I must say that you write English like a native Hearie! :)
:)
>I'd know when you were honking the horn, we can feel it
Now, driving a manual transmission by feeling the car's vibrations (no tach.) is one thing; being able to feel even those little tweeter-sounding horns on some smaller vehicles is another...