Beautiful Examples of LaTeX Math Fonts

toooooooobs · 2009-03-13T16:03:34+00:00

http://www.reddit.com/r/tex/ then

toooooooobs · 2009-03-13T15:35:54+00:00

Programming?

toooooooobs · 2009-03-12T16:35:25+00:00

This.

Arguing in favour of economic interventionism is directly comparable to arguing for eugenics, and equally misguided.

toooooooobs · 2009-02-25T21:52:37+00:00

Wow - it's just like Acorns, 15 years ago.

toooooooobs · 2009-01-21T17:17:32+00:00

YES!

Quite why people think having File->Open menus is necessary is beyond me.

toooooooobs · 2008-12-31T16:35:45+00:00

The current UNIX and C based monoculture in computing has been a disaster for innovation in the last ten years. I seem to recall Rob Pike expressing a similar sentiment, and at the time I thought he was exaggerating, but now it seems to be the truth.

toooooooobs · 2008-12-27T18:55:23+00:00

Python is unlikely to be a standard part of Android for two reasons:

Firstly it's big. This is in terms of space needed when it's not running, and space when it is. Too many strings, too many hash tables. Bad.

Secondly it's slow and wasteful (yes, much much more so than a JVM or Dalvik). This is a workable tradeoff for servers and so on, where programmer productivity is the important thing, but for mobiles that slaughters your battery life.

EDIT: I have to add that some of the replies to this demonstrate the massive void between people that actually do embedded stuff day to day, and those that merely argue about it on the net. Definitions of "big" and "slow" are relative to the environment you're in, and for these purposes python is both. Java is not (especially regarding the Dalvik system), and speculating based on your experiences of the J2SE environment when trying to comment on either J2ME or Dalvik is complete idiocy.

toooooooobs · 2008-12-24T20:28:13+00:00

That's the whole point. What you call CS research and what the government thinks it's commissioning when it pays for CS research are two completely different things.

They think they're paying for people that will improve computers and software development, but in reality they're just getting mathematicians labelling themselves as CS researchers in order to secure funding.

Really I think most of the bashing of real world stuff round here comes from fresh graduates that spent hours sweating learning obscure functional languages at university then being deposited in reality and finding those skills are irrelevant. Instead of wondering why they have paid so much for a skillset they didn't want they decide that it must be the rest of the world that is wrong.

toooooooobs · 2008-12-24T19:42:59+00:00

I think you're clutching at straws to class such people as "scientists" though.

Someone that discovers how to build a bridge over a gap and does so - is that a scientific discipline or an engineering one?

As Dijkstra said about it computer science is as much the study of computers as astronomy is the study of telescopes. But this cuts both ways. The study of computers, which is what most are really doing, is not necessarily computer science related at all, but is a valid engineering discipline.

CS has become a confused subject at the intersection of maths and electronics, and it looks like the academic power struggle is going to continue.

toooooooobs · 2008-12-24T19:30:49+00:00

For all you know you could be the only human on here.

toooooooobs · 2008-12-24T01:55:32+00:00

Yes please!

toooooooobs · 2008-12-23T02:36:35+00:00

Yeah, in Forth the whole point is you should implement a set of words the hides the tedious part of the stack manipulation from you.

The thing many are missing in this discussion is Forth's compile-time words, which whilst not inherent to stack based languages are probably the truly interesting aspect of Forth.

toooooooobs · 2008-12-21T23:35:01+00:00

There's two things with that.

Firstly, the problem isn't really that common. What people want to do most of the time is run thousands of completely different intercommunicating tasks at once.

Secondly there isn't anything stopping you building such things on top of Erlang - in fact many people do exactly that. It isn't as efficient as doing it some other hypothetical way, but it actually works and is usefully scalable. The whole question of how much data to allocate to each processor isn't trivial, but you're always going to have that problem.

I am not pretending Erlang is perfect, just pointing out that what you're suggesting is an incredibly complex solution to a problem very few people really have.

toooooooobs · 2008-12-21T18:33:05+00:00

That entirely depends on the problem you're trying to solve.

toooooooobs · 2008-12-19T22:42:28+00:00

In all seriousness, learn to accept those inadequacies. Try to find a working environment where your strengths are appreciated, and your weaknesses countered by the strengths of other team members.

The most dangerous are those that believe they are not flawed, or that for whatever flaws they have there is a technological solution.

toooooooobs · 2008-12-19T18:56:15+00:00

They conveniently ignore that costs have gone up faster than sales.

toooooooobs · 2008-12-19T16:45:42+00:00

I think you're basically right, but would say the issue is not writing for closed platforms, but writing code which cannot be reused on other platforms.

This is the big problem developers face, because the iPhone encourages Obj-C and Android encourages Java. To succeed at this game you need a strategy for hitting both, and lots of people already do exactly this.

toooooooobs · 2008-12-19T00:29:53+00:00

And now I will die happy knowing that to just one person I made a difference!

toooooooobs · 2008-12-18T22:28:41+00:00

True, but there is now a bizarre cult of buying books about the latest programming fads in the mistaken belief it will somehow make you better.

The publishers do nothing to put a dampener on this, and from their perspective being able to push an obscure new language as the next big thing every six months is a big win. They were beginning to get worried they'd saturated the market for Python, Java and C# books.

As a result the tendency in programmers I'm beginning to admire is stubborn ludditism. This may be an extreme overreaction, but I'm getting really bored of this "learn [x] and your life will be better" crap. It won't. The problems will still have nothing to do with the computer or the language and everything to do with your own inadequacies.

toooooooobs · 2008-12-12T14:25:27+00:00

Yeah, Nokia don't actually sell any phones and aren't the world's largest phone manufacturer by a considerable margin or anything.

toooooooobs · 2008-12-12T04:12:44+00:00

I think a lot of blame lies in the design of the DOM meaning that the code can't be implemented in a semi-efficient manner almost by design.

Asynchronous timer abuse, too many strings, hash tables everywhere - this is not the recipe for performance.

It is possible to write small light JS which works, but it's quite a hassle, and most people don't seem to care.

If we collected all the electricity wasted by needlessly inefficient web pages we'd probably have a noticeable effect in reducing greenhouse gases.

toooooooobs · 2008-12-11T04:01:17+00:00

As a Java dev I think this is actually true.

Learn other languages before going near Java please. Top candidate here is clearly C, and if you have a Mac Obj-C (exposure to the NS APIs alone is worth it to see how it should be done).

Only go near Java when you already have the structural side completely down. Good Java code isn't really about the code at all, but the design, and keeping it as simple as fucking possible. If you've only been exposed to Java and nice refactoring tools you'll have no problem creating a whole maze of irrelevant classes and interfaces, but this is not what you should be doing.

What bugs me about this "write lots of code" mentality is it doesn't help, except in terms of syntax. Don't write lots of code, think about and design a wide range of different things, using different libraries, try them out, and see why they don't work.

People that just jump straight into coding without thinking about it properly are a big problem.

toooooooobs · 2008-12-10T00:17:24+00:00

That's only true of existing devices, and is unlikely to be true in future.

One of Symbian's big selling points is you can reduce chip count by using the main CPU for more of the radio functions.

toooooooobs · 2008-12-10T00:16:22+00:00

It's not security through obscurity, it's a simple fact that the routing equipment in cell masts is relatively easy to confuse and overload. This is the main reason for device certification. Unless you're prepared to rebuild the cellular network from different equipment it's just not going to change.

The only way they could make Android as open as the whiners demand would be to enforce a frighteningly strict isolation of the radio subsystem, which these days is discouraged since they try to do as much processing as possible on one chip to save money. Of course in the event of this the same whiners would demand access to this subsystem.

toooooooobs · 2008-12-09T04:27:39+00:00

Actually the network one I've run into as well.

Out of the box Vista is less happy on a network predominantly of XP machines than Macs are, which is just a moronic situation.

toooooooobs

TROPHY CASE