I don't think Americans cherish the elderly in general, but perhaps many Americans treat their own parents better than they might, at least in old age. Which is funny, because as children, teenagers and young adults we treat our parents atrociously; worse than the Japanese, I'd guess.
I wonder if anyone who actually grew up in Japan could make a comment on how well or badly the elderly are treated.
Ok, I understand that some people want to pet a stuffed toy and pretend that it's a baby seal. I mean actually do this more than once.
Let's say that this applies to say, 1% of the population.
Ok, now you stick some robotics into your stuffed toy (they would have said "clockwork" a hundred years ago), does that really raise the percentage of people interested in petting the stuffed toy and pretending that it's a real seal?
I mean I like stuffed toys myself, but I can't imagine that putting machinery inside of one makes it better. Since you don't have to pretend that it's moving or anything, I think you're MORE likely to be thinking of it as just an object, in case you'll think of it as a machine rather than as a pillow.
I mean lets face it, the smartest computerized toy is no nearer to being a real seal than an ordinary doll is.
And isn't the whole premise awfully condescending and insulting? If you want to help old people get over loneliness, why are you foisting toys on them rather than say, time with a real human being, or a real pet?
I worked on sound compression for a few years, and I've done my own listening tests (on top of the line Senheiser headphones).
My conclusions were that(back when my ears were better than they are now) I could all lossless compression at certain moments in pieces that overloaded the available bandwidth. However, Vorbis at the lowest compression rate was perfect most of the time.
However, that was for a somewhat earlier version of Vorbis. Some years later I checked back and some idiot had rebalanced Vorbis to dump so much bandwidth into the high treble that there wasn't enough left for the more important (and audible) parts of the spectrum. It's an unfortunate bit of mathematics that the highest audible octave has exactly takes just as much information to represent perfectly as the rest of the signal put together. You can easily dump all available bandwidth into the high treble, but it's a really bad trade off.... At higher compression rates, only the later versions of WMA have reasonable stereo imaging. However that imaging is exaggurated. Obviously they're explicitly modeling the stereo image... However lots of people aren't sensitive to stereo imaging at all, and so for them all of that effort (and the bandwidth devoted to it) is wasted.
The strongtalk vm is based a very sophisticated new technique called type-feedback, where statistics are taken on the program while it runs, and inlining, specialization and other optimization take placed based on what types are seen to be the common cases in running code.
Probably the most exotic thing the VM does deoptimize running code (for debugging and when the definitions of classes change in a way that invalidates the optimizations), because it actually transforms the activation records on the stack (rewrites the stack!) in order to match the transformation of the object code.
Currently Strongtalk only runs on Windows, and it's not entirely debugged, but it is working and fast. It would need some extensions for Ruby, but even YARV lacks support for continuations...
Another much-better-than-most compiler that I may adapt to Ruby is Steel Bank Common Lisp. It runs on all Unix platforms and is the fastest lisp. It's a more conventional compiler than the Strongtalk VM. I think it's optimizations are all static, and so it can't do much with optimizing polymorphic calls, unlike strongtalk, but it's static optimizations are very good.
Re:Ruby!
on
The Ruby Way
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I think of Ruby as being more like common-lisp, without the horrible, unreadable S-expression syntax (good as that is for automated code analysis, it's hell on humans).
It does have regular expressions though, which I suppose seems familiar to Perl programmers.
It's disappoinging if they're taking those things off.
I'm just starting to learn Japanese and shows for young children would be the only Japanese media I'd be capable of following. I wish I had known that stuff was available before they took it off.
Excuse, me but encryption doesn't have any effect. If they want to collect the IP addresses of people downloading their music, they just have to join the torrent - being encrypted buys you nothing, unless you think your ISP is spying for the MPAA.
If, say, you had pre-painted ping pong balls, then you could go to a voting booth and be told, "sorry we're out of democrat votes, but you can still vote for the republican if you want."
I heard about this YEARS ago from a scientist. The problem is that the device is brittle and if you crack it, it discharges all of its energy internally, exploding like TNT.
Even if it wasn't ceramic, the danger of an explosion would still be too great.
This is similar to the reason we don't have plutonium powered devices. I remember tests on the security container for a plutonium power source that could run a artificial heart for years without recharging... It passed all tests (train wreck, building collapse etc.) except being shot with a high powered rifle at close range. But even back in the 80s, the risk of what a terrorist could do with a dirty bomb was considered too great.
When you have an important info - burn it on a gold master cdr. Depending on the brand the life is supposed to be 100 to 400 years. They cost $1.50 in bulk.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe by the time you're old, computers will be smarter than the nurses. Then it would be cool.
I see.
So it may work better than it sounds.
Still, I can't help thinking of the pet robot dog in "Sleeper". Can anyone remember its lines?
I don't think Americans cherish the elderly in general, but perhaps many Americans treat their own parents better than they might, at least in old age. Which is funny, because as children, teenagers and young adults we treat our parents atrociously; worse than the Japanese, I'd guess.
I wonder if anyone who actually grew up in Japan could make a comment on how well or badly the elderly are treated.
Ok, I understand that some people want to pet a stuffed toy and pretend that it's a baby seal. I mean actually do this more than once.
Let's say that this applies to say, 1% of the population.
Ok, now you stick some robotics into your stuffed toy (they would have said "clockwork" a hundred years ago), does that really raise the percentage of people interested in petting the stuffed toy and pretending that it's a real seal?
I mean I like stuffed toys myself, but I can't imagine that putting machinery inside of one makes it better. Since you don't have to pretend that it's moving or anything, I think you're MORE likely to be thinking of it as just an object, in case you'll think of it as a machine rather than as a pillow.
I mean lets face it, the smartest computerized toy is no nearer to being a real seal than an ordinary doll is.
And isn't the whole premise awfully condescending and insulting? If you want to help old people get over loneliness, why are you foisting toys on them rather than say, time with a real human being, or a real pet?
Older versions of Notepad were vulnerable.
I've lost count of the times I've gotten security updates to notepad.
I'm so glad that I just switched to open office.
I worked on sound compression for a few years, and I've done my own listening tests (on top of the line Senheiser headphones).
...
My conclusions were that(back when my ears were better than they are now) I could all lossless compression at certain moments in pieces that overloaded the available bandwidth. However, Vorbis at the lowest compression rate was perfect most of the time.
However, that was for a somewhat earlier version of Vorbis. Some years later I checked back and some idiot had rebalanced Vorbis to dump so much bandwidth into the high treble that there wasn't enough left for the more important (and audible) parts of the spectrum. It's an unfortunate bit of mathematics that the highest audible octave has exactly takes just as much information to represent perfectly as the rest of the signal put together. You can easily dump all available bandwidth into the high treble, but it's a really bad trade off.
At higher compression rates, only the later versions of WMA have reasonable stereo imaging. However that imaging is exaggurated. Obviously they're explicitly modeling the stereo image... However lots of people aren't sensitive to stereo imaging at all, and so for them all of that effort (and the bandwidth devoted to it) is wasted.
Uh right, I forgot about that.
But afaik there is no DVD version available for download.
DOH!
PS
RE: Slow Down Cowboy!
Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
What idiot decided that no one would be allowed to post corrections!!!
Look, either allow people to edit their posts or allows correction posts!!!
Start
I noticed that those textures on the front page are annoyingly vivid stuff that I would never want on a desktop.
But searching through the maze of submissions I found a few that I thought were cooler that what's was in there.
But really, there was a lot of annoying artwork, all better packaged as optional than as default.
As far as I can tell Ubuntu installation disks are currently limited to CD size, not DVD size, so there probably isn't a lot of extra space for alternate art. Given that fact, I think artwork really belongs in a separate package.
I'd rather see features than artwork given the choice. If it were up to me, it would come with a firewall control gui, Wine, Eclipse and Sun Java etc. Though it's not as bad as Linspire in requiring an internet connection to get any features.
I wonder why there isn't a DVD install version for people who won't have access to the internet after install. That would be awfully useful in packaging for countries where fast internet access isn't a given.
I suppose that the licensing is the reason there's no Sun Java, but since Java was just GPL released this week, I hope future versions will have it.
Wrong, those are shots of what was released. I should know, I'm typing this on an Ubuntu Edgy installation right now.
There are alternatives.
I'm starting a project adapting the strongtalk vm to Ruby.
The strongtalk vm is based a very sophisticated new technique called type-feedback, where statistics are taken on the program while it runs, and inlining, specialization and other optimization take placed based on what types are seen to be the common cases in running code.
Probably the most exotic thing the VM does deoptimize running code (for debugging and when the definitions of classes change in a way that invalidates the optimizations), because it actually transforms the activation records on the stack (rewrites the stack!) in order to match the transformation of the object code.
Currently Strongtalk only runs on Windows, and it's not entirely debugged, but it is working and fast. It would need some extensions for Ruby, but even YARV lacks support for continuations...
Another much-better-than-most compiler that I may adapt to Ruby is Steel Bank Common Lisp. It runs on all Unix platforms and is the fastest lisp. It's a more conventional compiler than the Strongtalk VM. I think it's optimizations are all static, and so it can't do much with optimizing polymorphic calls, unlike strongtalk, but it's static optimizations are very good.
I think of Ruby as being more like common-lisp, without the horrible, unreadable S-expression syntax (good as that is for automated code analysis, it's hell on humans). It does have regular expressions though, which I suppose seems familiar to Perl programmers.
You saw the title.
There is nothing in the article about hacking quantum computers or networks, it just talks about errors in transmission.
It's disappoinging if they're taking those things off. I'm just starting to learn Japanese and shows for young children would be the only Japanese media I'd be capable of following. I wish I had known that stuff was available before they took it off.
I need to see this.
What's the spelling in Japanese so I can google/Yahoo for it?
Excuse, me but encryption doesn't have any effect. If they want to collect the IP addresses of people downloading their music, they just have to join the torrent - being encrypted buys you nothing, unless you think your ISP is spying for the MPAA.
wait.
If, say, you had pre-painted ping pong balls, then you could go to a voting booth and be told, "sorry we're out of democrat votes, but you can still vote for the republican if you want."
Now we just need a technews-comedy that's as informative as slashdot.
By the way, the plutonium thing was just a permanently warm stick to drive a heat powered device. It didn't get anywhere near criticality.
I heard about this YEARS ago from a scientist. The problem is that the device is brittle and if you crack it, it discharges all of its energy internally, exploding like TNT.
Even if it wasn't ceramic, the danger of an explosion would still be too great.
This is similar to the reason we don't have plutonium powered devices. I remember tests on the security container for a plutonium power source that could run a artificial heart for years without recharging... It passed all tests (train wreck, building collapse etc.) except being shot with a high powered rifle at close range. But even back in the 80s, the risk of what a terrorist could do with a dirty bomb was considered too great.
I suppose I should Google, but I have software somewhere that conjugates Japanese verbs...
Do you suppose that they're going to claim that they can have a separate patent for each language?
When you have an important info - burn it on a gold master cdr. Depending on the brand the life is supposed to be 100 to 400 years. They cost $1.50 in bulk.
0 8.shtml
o ld.html
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/service/faqs/faq10
http://store.mam-a-store.com/standard---archive-g