1) I'm not a hippie. I wear khakis and earn too much money.:-)
2) I'm not protesting. But I'm not opposed to protesting. Hell, I used to be protestant a while ago.
3) Social Security Trust Fund is some kind of multi-word oxymoron.
I would debate you more seriously, but you have the crazy notion that the social security is some kind of trust fund.
Repeat after me: The money you pay in doesn't pay for your retirement. It pays for others who are retired *right now*. Someone else will foot the bill when you yourself are retired.
I agree. When I saw that 40% of my check was going to the government I realized that they must be taking 40% of *everyone's* paycheck. That must mean that it's a complete wash!
At that instant I realized that I wanted them to take 60% of my paycheck, and give a little bit more to NASA.
Believe it or not, astronomy advances really *are* advancing as rapidly as computer technology. Some other commentors in this thread have suggested that building a telescope that is larger than today's scopes is difficult. I think that it is not. We have the technology and the ability to design and build telescopes that are 23, 30, or even 100 meters across. The largest scopes today have mirrors about 10 meters across.
The single most important limiting factor on telescopes today has to do with the adaptive optics used on modern scopes. Hundreds of times a second, a computer analyzes the light entering the scope and adjusts elements within the scope to change the shape of the optics, compensating for distortions in the atmosphere. When you've got a huge telescope, you've got a huge wavefront to analyze. It's currently not possible to perform the analysis, but with faster computers it will be.
I can just about guarentee that within 10 years or so an instrument at least 50 meters wide will be built. There's quite a few projects underway right now.
OK, suppose that I'm writing a Modula-2 compiler, and since Java is nice and portable, I decide to make my M-2 compiler emit Java code, which will be run on a virtual machine.
Then suppose next year, I decide that I'm going to write Suckix, and new operating system for the Play Station 2, and I'm going to write it in Modula-2.
Bzzzt! I'm screwed, because my absolutely STUPID choice of an intermediate language prevents me from accessing the hardware.
Modula-2 is a systems programming language. It makes sense to use C as the intermediate, as it is also a systems programming language.
The language is good based on its merits, and has nothing to do with C.
My point is that C is available for just about every machine out there, and it can be considered to be a universal machine language. In fact, there's many compilers out there that compile their language right down to C. Even Java could be turned into C with a compiler.
It's a nice way to quickly implement a highly optimized, portable, and standard compiler.
I wrote a letter to Sen. Kaye Bailey Hutchison (Tx). I expressed my support for the continued and if possible increasing funding for NASA, because of the wide variety of missions that they perform.
Her response back was focused exclusively on the space station. It's like she had little blinders on, thinking that's all NASA did.
I wrote her back and told her that I was NOT talking about the space station, but about other projects such as the Pluto/Kuiper Express.
When you write your congressperson, make it clear that you support projects *besides* the space station. Write them every year. Repeat yourself. That's how we get funding passed for the cool science.
Congress approved funding for the continued war on drugs a few months ago. It was a 12 billion dollar package. 12 billion dollars is roughly the ballpark figure of NASA's annual budget. Imagine what could happen if the war on drugs was limited a bit - NASA could get more cash. There's plenty of money, but the allocation is what sucks. Write the congress and help them to decide how to allocate the money.
I agree. Suppose that the future space probe is a 1 gram mass consisting of a power source, computer, sensors, radio, and attitude control.
We sent a multi-ton spacecraft out of the solar system. Two of them in fact. We sent a further two somewhat lighter spacecraft out of solar system as well.
Think of the speed you could get if you put a nuclear type rocket behind a 1 gram fully functional payload.
Perhaps you could reach a substantial fraction of the speed of light, allowing a mission to be completed within 100 years.
That would make it just possible for someone being born today to still be alive when our first stellar probe is radioing the results back to earth.
When you consider that there are people alive who existed before cars, it's simply astounding.
Seniors have taken trig already, right? Maybe they've learned about dot and cross products too, right?
Have them write a simple ray tracer! Some of those kids will be thinking "why do I need to learn trig?" You can show them that they can do fun things with it, and that's a good a reason as any.
I was being sarchastic, not serious, but at least you have a strong opinion. I don't care for those who like to sit on the fence. If you considered anything atop a fence a target for plinking, I guess I wouldn't mind too much.
True story. Back in 1997 I changed my address. I went to the USPS web site and printed out a change of address form, then I had to take it to the post office and hand it in. Strange that they wouldn't accept online submissions.
Anyway, I get up to the counter, and hand the guy the form. He immediately says "what's this?" I tell him it's a change of address form. He looks at me like I'm from Mars. I tell him that it's a legitimate form for address changes. He tells me that it doesn't look like any form he's ever seen. I tell him that I got it off the internet.
Then he practically yells at me "I DON'T KNOW NOTHIN' ABOUT THE INTERNET!!!!!!"
I didn't know there were so many Gone with the Wind fans working at the USPS! Geez.
I convinced him that it would be a fun experiment to pretend the form looked like a normal form and submit it just like the other forms are normally submitted. He didn't seem happy about it, but my address got changed.
So, who wants to take the Mozilla code as it exists today and fork it?
We'll freeze the feature list right where it's at now. We'll wipe out all the bugs that cause crashes. Then, we'll use a garbage collector to get rid of memory leaks.
Then we release a nice stable browser a year before the other Mozilla is ready.
Disclaimer: I work for IBM in Austin as a contractor.
I have a couple Linux boxes that I do all my work on. Once I needed to export a directory through NFS to an AIX box. It didn't work because the NFS version that Linux supports is a version out of date.
I was pleasantly surprised when I called AIX support that they did no finger pointing at all. I was expecting it. Instead, they diagnosed the problem accurately and told me how to get AIX to recognize the older NFS version that Linux uses. No sweat.
On the other hand, AIX has some truly brain dead 'features' such as a grep that chokes on lines over 2048 characters. Duh!
Definitely stay away from Web Sphere, and maybe consider Linux over AIX. But if you do go with the IBM stuff I think the tech support will be better than what you'd get from other places.
There's a separate data bus, and a separate instruction bus. I don't think it is strictly required to have a separate data memory area and a separate instruction memory area, but I think it's usually implemented that way. There are a number of microcontrollers that use this architecture, storing the program in a ROM and accessing a RAM chip for scratchpad area.
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Calvin Coolidge! I thought you were dead...
Hate to say it, but some people enjoy using Hungarian notation in C++ programs to. There's no accounting for taste I guess.
>at least until I write a conversion program that turns braces into the whitespace that python likes (in Perl :-).
You've given me an idea...
I think I could write that program in Tcl!
DOS versions of GCC require huge chunks of memory and a 386 chip. It will not run on an 8088.
Now, your suggestion for coding on the Palm V is intriguing. What C++ compiler works on the Palm V?
I'm not sure what you're talking about.
:-)
1) I'm not a hippie. I wear khakis and earn too much money.
2) I'm not protesting. But I'm not opposed to protesting. Hell, I used to be protestant a while ago.
3) Social Security Trust Fund is some kind of multi-word oxymoron.
I would debate you more seriously, but you have the crazy notion that the social security is some kind of trust fund.
Repeat after me: The money you pay in doesn't pay for your retirement. It pays for others who are retired *right now*. Someone else will foot the bill when you yourself are retired.
I agree. When I saw that 40% of my check was going to the government I realized that they must be taking 40% of *everyone's* paycheck. That must mean that it's a complete wash!
At that instant I realized that I wanted them to take 60% of my paycheck, and give a little bit more to NASA.
Believe it or not, astronomy advances really *are* advancing as rapidly as computer technology. Some other commentors in this thread have suggested that building a telescope that is larger than today's scopes is difficult. I think that it is not. We have the technology and the ability to design and build telescopes that are 23, 30, or even 100 meters across. The largest scopes today have mirrors about 10 meters across.
The single most important limiting factor on telescopes today has to do with the adaptive optics used on modern scopes. Hundreds of times a second, a computer analyzes the light entering the scope and adjusts elements within the scope to change the shape of the optics, compensating for distortions in the atmosphere. When you've got a huge telescope, you've got a huge wavefront to analyze. It's currently not possible to perform the analysis, but with faster computers it will be.
I can just about guarentee that within 10 years or so an instrument at least 50 meters wide will be built. There's quite a few projects underway right now.
I think they should Blame Canada!
OK, suppose that I'm writing a Modula-2 compiler, and since Java is nice and portable, I decide to make my M-2 compiler emit Java code, which will be run on a virtual machine.
Then suppose next year, I decide that I'm going to write Suckix, and new operating system for the Play Station 2, and I'm going to write it in Modula-2.
Bzzzt! I'm screwed, because my absolutely STUPID choice of an intermediate language prevents me from accessing the hardware.
Modula-2 is a systems programming language. It makes sense to use C as the intermediate, as it is also a systems programming language.
Maybe he changed the kernel source so that it looked for /etc/resolf.conf instead of /etc/resolv.conf?
You completely misunderstood me!
The language is good based on its merits, and has nothing to do with C.
My point is that C is available for just about every machine out there, and it can be considered to be a universal machine language. In fact, there's many compilers out there that compile their language right down to C. Even Java could be turned into C with a compiler.
It's a nice way to quickly implement a highly optimized, portable, and standard compiler.
That's all.
Is C# a good language or not?
If it is, then a compiler that emits C code compilable by gcc should be built. End of story. I think Microsoft would hate that.
I wrote a letter to Sen. Kaye Bailey Hutchison (Tx). I expressed my support for the continued and if possible increasing funding for NASA, because of the wide variety of missions that they perform.
Her response back was focused exclusively on the space station. It's like she had little blinders on, thinking that's all NASA did.
I wrote her back and told her that I was NOT talking about the space station, but about other projects such as the Pluto/Kuiper Express.
When you write your congressperson, make it clear that you support projects *besides* the space station. Write them every year. Repeat yourself. That's how we get funding passed for the cool science.
Congress approved funding for the continued war on drugs a few months ago. It was a 12 billion dollar package. 12 billion dollars is roughly the ballpark figure of NASA's annual budget. Imagine what could happen if the war on drugs was limited a bit - NASA could get more cash. There's plenty of money, but the allocation is what sucks. Write the congress and help them to decide how to allocate the money.
Remember too that the higher the frequency, the smaller the antenna required. Terahertz frequencies would need only a microscopic antenna.
Of course, you'd have to figure out how to transmit without vaporizing your antenna...
I agree. Suppose that the future space probe is a 1 gram mass consisting of a power source, computer, sensors, radio, and attitude control.
We sent a multi-ton spacecraft out of the solar system. Two of them in fact. We sent a further two somewhat lighter spacecraft out of solar system as well.
Think of the speed you could get if you put a nuclear type rocket behind a 1 gram fully functional payload.
Perhaps you could reach a substantial fraction of the speed of light, allowing a mission to be completed within 100 years.
That would make it just possible for someone being born today to still be alive when our first stellar probe is radioing the results back to earth.
When you consider that there are people alive who existed before cars, it's simply astounding.
Seniors have taken trig already, right? Maybe they've learned about dot and cross products too, right?
Have them write a simple ray tracer! Some of those kids will be thinking "why do I need to learn trig?" You can show them that they can do fun things with it, and that's a good a reason as any.
I was being sarchastic, not serious, but at least you have a strong opinion. I don't care for those who like to sit on the fence. If you considered anything atop a fence a target for plinking, I guess I wouldn't mind too much.
You know, people like yourself are what made this country (the US) what it is today.
More and more, I am agreeing with the NRA. The solution to all our problems is definitely MORE GUNS.
Think of it as giving Darwin a helping hand.
Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity.
True story. Back in 1997 I changed my address. I went to the USPS web site and printed out a change of address form, then I had to take it to the post office and hand it in. Strange that they wouldn't accept online submissions.
Anyway, I get up to the counter, and hand the guy the form. He immediately says "what's this?" I tell him it's a change of address form. He looks at me like I'm from Mars. I tell him that it's a legitimate form for address changes. He tells me that it doesn't look like any form he's ever seen. I tell him that I got it off the internet.
Then he practically yells at me "I DON'T KNOW NOTHIN' ABOUT THE INTERNET!!!!!!"
I didn't know there were so many Gone with the Wind fans working at the USPS! Geez.
I convinced him that it would be a fun experiment to pretend the form looked like a normal form and submit it just like the other forms are normally submitted. He didn't seem happy about it, but my address got changed.
And when one of their server dies you can be sure it was a stray bullet passing through the power supply.
So, who wants to take the Mozilla code as it exists today and fork it?
We'll freeze the feature list right where it's at now. We'll wipe out all the bugs that cause crashes. Then, we'll use a garbage collector to get rid of memory leaks.
Then we release a nice stable browser a year before the other Mozilla is ready.
Disclaimer: I work for IBM in Austin as a contractor.
I have a couple Linux boxes that I do all my work on. Once I needed to export a directory through NFS to an AIX box. It didn't work because the NFS version that Linux supports is a version out of date.
I was pleasantly surprised when I called AIX support that they did no finger pointing at all. I was expecting it. Instead, they diagnosed the problem accurately and told me how to get AIX to recognize the older NFS version that Linux uses. No sweat.
On the other hand, AIX has some truly brain dead 'features' such as a grep that chokes on lines over 2048 characters. Duh!
Definitely stay away from Web Sphere, and maybe consider Linux over AIX. But if you do go with the IBM stuff I think the tech support will be better than what you'd get from other places.
the Harvard architecture.
There's a separate data bus, and a separate instruction bus. I don't think it is strictly required to have a separate data memory area and a separate instruction memory area, but I think it's usually implemented that way. There are a number of microcontrollers that use this architecture, storing the program in a ROM and accessing a RAM chip for scratchpad area.
Actually, the Liberty was assigned to SIGSTOP, not SIGINT.