I thought that was his point. Isn't the Wendy's triple burger a famous example of marketing? i.e. it exists primarily to sell more double burgers. They stopped making the triple for a while because hardly anyone bought them (so the tale goes), only to find people then stopped buying the double and went for singles instead. So they put the triples back on the menu.
Then again, I probably read that on slashdot, so it will be debunked as urban legend in 5...4...3...
I'm not entirely sure how seriously I should take the advice of a linguist who leaves a glaring spelling mistake uncorrected on their website for 18 months.:-)
This is where I get confused. I agree 911 should be used for emergencies only... but exactly what qualifies as an emergency?
I live in the UK and the police advice is quite simple: "Always call 999 if a crime is being committed, or a suspect is present or nearby."
It then goes on to say that you should call the normal local police number to report a crime that has been committed (past tense), or you want a police officer to attend for some other reason.
Having said that, the UK still has a problem with people not knowing when to use 999. Some of the instances of 999 abuse really do makeyouwonder.
Yes, that always seemed obvious to me. Seeing as how they had been banging on about the dark side of the force for FIVE FILMS, and was a MAJOR THEME of the story, you'd think some people would say "Hey, maybe Anakin's not in control of himself, and the dark side is amplifying his emotions and causing him to act outside his character."
The new ones do. I bought my iPod in 2003 (i.e. 2 years after the GP bought their Nomad), and although it has some firmware upgrades, it doesn't do the on-the-fly playlists thing.
Which is not to say I don't like the iPod. I've never used a Nomad, but the odds are that I won't like the UI, etc. Mainly because I haven't liked the UI on any other mp3 player I've ever tried. Plus, it's a Creative product, and they wouldn't know good UI design if you shoved their hideously bloated 70Mb sound driver downloads up their ass.
Why do you think Microsoft went towards using year numbers rather than versions? Years are four digits. That's huge.
Microsoft went to years (firstly with Windows 95, I believe - see, only 2 digits) not because the version numbers are huge but because it hammers home to people that they're using an 'old' version of Windows or Office, so they should upgrade.
The thinking is, someone with, e.g. Office v6 may be quite happy. It's version 6 - that's good, right?
Someone with Office 2000 will think "2000? It's 2006! I should upgrade, that's like 6 years old now."
Seems like they've dropped this for Windows client now (XP, Vista), and I'm not sure what Office 12 will be called. But originally it was to drive upgrade sales.
I feel comfortable saying that because I've been programming a long time, and I've never met anyone who had 'great' knowledge of all those languages. And I've met some excellent programmers.
Perhaps it all depends on your definition of 'great'.
When I was interviewing for C++ programmers once, one of my standard questions was "Explain the difference betweeen a virtual function and a non-virtual function." That floored about 90% of the applicants right there. They hadn't a clue. Most of them didn't know about object slicing issues either. And various other important issues. And a lot of these applicants had been programming C++ for a few years, and had great knowledge of it. At least, that's what their CVs said:-)
(Aside: I don't judge purely on specific experience when interviewing, as I find that less important than a good general grounding in programming, and knowing 'what's going on' under the hood. A good programmer can learn C++, or DirectX, or whatever you ask them to - a bad programmer sucks even with the languages/libraries they already know).
It's perhaps an appropriate time to mention what I feel is one of the most important characteristics of a good programmer: when you ask them something they don't know the answer to, they say "I don't know."
If you think that sounds silly, and no-one would ever behave otherwise, then good luck in your programming career:-)
Well, quite. Until university I seemed to know more about computers than my teachers. CS was a pretty new subject then, though, and CS teachers tended to be Maths teachers with a CS textbook.
I vividly remember one week we had a test, which had this question: "If you turn on the computer, and type 'PRINT A' what will it say?"
The question asked for the answer for the two different computers we used in class - Commodore PETs and BBC Micros.
Now, this seemed like a pretty dumb question to me; not an especially useful thing to know, and it seemed you should really be teaching that you shouldn't use undefined variables anyway, but still. So I answered the question - the BBC Micro would say "No such variable", whereas the PET would say "0", because it assumed a variable was 0 unless you'd otherwise initialised it.
As we went through the answers, the teacher said that both computers would complain about the variable not being known. I put my hand up and said I thought this wasn't right - I wasn't going to lose a mark because the teacher was wrong:).
The teacher pulled a nice authority trick, as after we argued back and forth a couple of times, he said "Well, why don't you turn the PET on in front of the whole class and try it?" with a smug self-satisifed smile, obviously hoping to embarrass me.
So, I did as he suggested, and I was proved right, as I expected. Cue teacher looking embarrassed.
What I really didn't get was that the question asked for the answer for two different computers, thus giving a clue that the two answers might be different, you might think. I can only assume he didn't write the test. But then whoever did obviously hadn't bothered to check the answers by, oh, I don't know, trying them on a computer.
Accordingly, I didn't bother to take CS at the next level of school - waited until university, where the teachers quite obviously did know more than me. Now, some of them weren't that great at teaching, but it was still better.
Well, the original point was that this was during an import operation, so I assumed only one final image, etc.
I guess if you already have 3 other photos loaded with adjustments made to them, you're going to be in trouble.
Gah, we're running out of address space again - wonder how hard Apple is looking at the prospect of 64-bit Intel chips.
Re:Nintendo's Wii akin to Chevrolet's Nova?
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Well, Lahore's not a high-profile global product name chosen by a presumably expensive marketing/branding process, designed to resemble a word in a particular language that in some regions (that use that language) means urine, for a start.
Sorry, I upped the res from 32bpp to 64bpp but didn't change my calculation. So it's 160Mb for the uncompressed image. Still a way off 1Gb. (Call it 750Mb to allow 250Mb for the OS, I guess.)
Well, yes, I can see that happening pretty easily. With only 1G of RAM and doing RAW conversion to an in-memory form (which is completely uncompressed), I could easily see it taking more than 1G
Let's say you have a RAW picture with the equivalent of 20 million pixels. That seems like an over-generous estimate. Each pixel is, say 64-bit resolution, i.e. 8 bytes. That means the image is 20 * 4 = 80 Mb when stored in RAM.
Maybe you have a few copies when doing the conversion, to allow for buffers for conversion process. We're not even near 1Gb yet.
All new cell phones in the U.S. produced 2005 and beyond are reading real GPS satellite signals, noting your location, and transmitting it to the cell phone company. A 2001 federal law mandates the GPS. You cannot opt out.
Linky..?
This seems to contradict your statement, is all (assuming it's the same law/regulation under discussion).
No, I must have miscommunicated - I just meant that the generally poor state of most technology means that most people expect it won't work or will have problems.
Unless they're 2, and they don't know any better.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
...and he likes to be known as the Angry Young Man.
No, it's just so tedious that it seems like it.
Then again, I probably read that on slashdot, so it will be debunked as urban legend in 5...4...3...
Ha, just kidding. Just wanted to see if I could make you post that link again. You've posted it 11 times - going for a record of some kind?
Lawsuit from Thompson heading your way in 5...4...3...
Gamut.
I'm not entirely sure how seriously I should take the advice of a linguist who leaves a glaring spelling mistake uncorrected on their website for 18 months. :-)
Defining Web 2.0?
Well, that is a fun game, to be sure, but I prefer Mornington Crescent. The rules are less nebulous.
I live in the UK and the police advice is quite simple: "Always call 999 if a crime is being committed, or a suspect is present or nearby."
It then goes on to say that you should call the normal local police number to report a crime that has been committed (past tense), or you want a police officer to attend for some other reason.
Having said that, the UK still has a problem with people not knowing when to use 999. Some of the instances of 999 abuse really do make you wonder.
That's probably where this comes in.
"Americans don't understand irony."
"Tell me about it!"
But no, guess it was just you and me.
Or one of my favourites: "I can arrange that!"
Maybe it's to do with that dumb 'binary digit' character that actually has 3 states instead of 2?
Such a rookie mistake.
The new ones do. I bought my iPod in 2003 (i.e. 2 years after the GP bought their Nomad), and although it has some firmware upgrades, it doesn't do the on-the-fly playlists thing.
Which is not to say I don't like the iPod. I've never used a Nomad, but the odds are that I won't like the UI, etc. Mainly because I haven't liked the UI on any other mp3 player I've ever tried. Plus, it's a Creative product, and they wouldn't know good UI design if you shoved their hideously bloated 70Mb sound driver downloads up their ass.
Microsoft went to years (firstly with Windows 95, I believe - see, only 2 digits) not because the version numbers are huge but because it hammers home to people that they're using an 'old' version of Windows or Office, so they should upgrade.
The thinking is, someone with, e.g. Office v6 may be quite happy. It's version 6 - that's good, right?
Someone with Office 2000 will think "2000? It's 2006! I should upgrade, that's like 6 years old now."
Seems like they've dropped this for Windows client now (XP, Vista), and I'm not sure what Office 12 will be called. But originally it was to drive upgrade sales.
Not to come across as smug, but: No, you don't.
I feel comfortable saying that because I've been programming a long time, and I've never met anyone who had 'great' knowledge of all those languages. And I've met some excellent programmers.
Perhaps it all depends on your definition of 'great'.
When I was interviewing for C++ programmers once, one of my standard questions was "Explain the difference betweeen a virtual function and a non-virtual function." That floored about 90% of the applicants right there. They hadn't a clue. Most of them didn't know about object slicing issues either. And various other important issues. And a lot of these applicants had been programming C++ for a few years, and had great knowledge of it. At least, that's what their CVs said :-)
(Aside: I don't judge purely on specific experience when interviewing, as I find that less important than a good general grounding in programming, and knowing 'what's going on' under the hood. A good programmer can learn C++, or DirectX, or whatever you ask them to - a bad programmer sucks even with the languages/libraries they already know).
It's perhaps an appropriate time to mention what I feel is one of the most important characteristics of a good programmer: when you ask them something they don't know the answer to, they say "I don't know."
If you think that sounds silly, and no-one would ever behave otherwise, then good luck in your programming career :-)
Ah, the power of Engineer's Induction, eh? :)
Well, quite. Until university I seemed to know more about computers than my teachers. CS was a pretty new subject then, though, and CS teachers tended to be Maths teachers with a CS textbook.
I vividly remember one week we had a test, which had this question: "If you turn on the computer, and type 'PRINT A' what will it say?"
The question asked for the answer for the two different computers we used in class - Commodore PETs and BBC Micros.
Now, this seemed like a pretty dumb question to me; not an especially useful thing to know, and it seemed you should really be teaching that you shouldn't use undefined variables anyway, but still. So I answered the question - the BBC Micro would say "No such variable", whereas the PET would say "0", because it assumed a variable was 0 unless you'd otherwise initialised it.
As we went through the answers, the teacher said that both computers would complain about the variable not being known. I put my hand up and said I thought this wasn't right - I wasn't going to lose a mark because the teacher was wrong :).
The teacher pulled a nice authority trick, as after we argued back and forth a couple of times, he said "Well, why don't you turn the PET on in front of the whole class and try it?" with a smug self-satisifed smile, obviously hoping to embarrass me.
So, I did as he suggested, and I was proved right, as I expected. Cue teacher looking embarrassed.
What I really didn't get was that the question asked for the answer for two different computers, thus giving a clue that the two answers might be different, you might think. I can only assume he didn't write the test. But then whoever did obviously hadn't bothered to check the answers by, oh, I don't know, trying them on a computer.
Accordingly, I didn't bother to take CS at the next level of school - waited until university, where the teachers quite obviously did know more than me. Now, some of them weren't that great at teaching, but it was still better.
There, I feel better now :)
I guess if you already have 3 other photos loaded with adjustments made to them, you're going to be in trouble.
Gah, we're running out of address space again - wonder how hard Apple is looking at the prospect of 64-bit Intel chips.
Well, Lahore's not a high-profile global product name chosen by a presumably expensive marketing/branding process, designed to resemble a word in a particular language that in some regions (that use that language) means urine, for a start.
Sorry, I upped the res from 32bpp to 64bpp but didn't change my calculation. So it's 160Mb for the uncompressed image. Still a way off 1Gb. (Call it 750Mb to allow 250Mb for the OS, I guess.)
Let's say you have a RAW picture with the equivalent of 20 million pixels. That seems like an over-generous estimate. Each pixel is, say 64-bit resolution, i.e. 8 bytes. That means the image is 20 * 4 = 80 Mb when stored in RAM.
Maybe you have a few copies when doing the conversion, to allow for buffers for conversion process. We're not even near 1Gb yet.
Or have I misunderstood?
Linky..?
This seems to contradict your statement, is all (assuming it's the same law/regulation under discussion).
Unless they're 2, and they don't know any better. :-)