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New user? Saturday, May 8, 2004
UserLand announces services group
UserLand Product News: UserLand Adds Professional Services Group
Interesting. Who have they hired?
Oldest Canadian World War I combat vet dies
CP: Oldest Canadian World War I combat vet dies
There are now only 8 Canadians left from the 650,000 that served in the war.
teleport, a smart software KVM
abyssoft: teleport -- "teleport is a simple utility to let you use one single mouse and keyboard to control several of your Macs. Simply reach the edge of your screen, and your mouse teleports to your other Mac! The pasteboard can even be synchronized between the computers."
I have been talking to friends about doing exactly this software since 2001 (maybe even earlier), but obviously didn't get motivated enough to do it. I wanted it to work across platforms, mind you, not just Macs, but Windows machines as well, and why not *nix too? This is something that should be straightforward, but probably is quite tricky. It could probably re-use a lot of VNC code... but really, it's much simpler than VNC.
A math problem is driving me nuts!
I took a picture of an example from the math text I am reading. This is in the introductory section that is demonstrating how to solve inequalities.
I think there might be an error in his work, but when I plug the original inequality and the suspect one into the Graphing Calculator (the one that comes with Mac OS 9), I get the same result. So I'm not sure if this is a coincidence or if he really did do it right.
What I don't understand is how he made x(x+5)/x+1 > 3 into (x2+2x-3)/x+1 > 0. If you expand x(x+5), you get x2+5x, so I don't see how he ended up with only 2x in the numerator on the left hand side of the inequality instead of 5x.
It looks to me like it should be ((x2+5x)/(x+1))-3 > 0 instead. Can somebody please confirm this or explain how you might get from what I got to, to what he got to?
Thanks!
RE: A math problem is driving me nuts!
Seth showed me how to solve the math problem I was having, as did Dori, privately. Thanks!
While trying to work it out, I was thinking that there has to be a way to get that lone "3" into the numerator, since it was completely gone from the author's answer, but I was struggling to find the way. When I saw what I had missed, lots of old synapses fired and soot balls were jettisoned from my ears. :-)
At first I was a little disappointed that I had forgotten something rather simple, but after a few minutes that blue mood went away. I can't get discouraged so easily, especially when I've JUST started studying again. Obviously things aren't going to come as easily as I hope they would.
I've got 3 months to get my brain into shape. I think that's enough time.
Here are some of the bookmarks I kept while browsing for Math resources back in March...
- MathWorld from the makers of Mathematica
- MIT OpenCourseWare | Mathematics
- Five Free Calculus Textbooks, a thread on Slashdot.
- Mathematical Background
- Mathematics bookshelf from Wiki Books
As you can see there is no shortage of material to study from. I still think I am going to need some more elementary material though. I need a thorough review of factoring, for one thing. Frankly, I need a thorough review of all junior-high and high-school level algebra and trigonometry.
Friday, May 7, 2004
Longhorn is morbidly obese
Microsoft Watch: Longhorn to Steal Limelight at WinHEC (emphasis added)
I saw these specs on MacRumors.com, and I thought they were being sarcastic, so I clicked through to this story, and, well there they are again!
2 gigs of RAM and a terabyte of storage? If you take all of the computers in my office you'll get a little more than 2 GB of RAM, but you don't get anywhere near a terabyte of storage. All of this CPU and RAM and storage is there to solve what problem? Only hard core gamers are going to have systems that beefy by 2006... and Microsoft still hasn't managed to get as many people upgraded to XP as they'd hoped.
This reminds me of OS/2 Warp, pundits said nobody could use it because you needed at least 8 MB of RAM, more realistically 16 MB or 32 MB to run it, and just about nobody has a machine with those specs. 4 MB was the norm then, and really good machines had 8 MB. Having 16 MB or 32 MB in a home computer was very rare at the time.
Update: Greg found a story on Ars Technica discussing these requirements. The good news is that those requirements are definitely not the "minimum" requirements. Then again, when you look at the minimum requirements for PC games, you certainly wouldn't want to be the one playing that game on that minimum machine... so it could be that those requirements represent what you'd really want to have to get a decent experience.
Thursday, May 6, 2004
James Hague on contemporary optimization issues
James Hague: Programming as if Performance Mattered
This link on /. reminded me that I need to start reading Lambda the Ultimate again!
Math And The Computer Science Major
/.: Math And The Computer Science Major links to...
Lineman.Net: Math and the Computer Science Major
I have to read this. From a skim it looks like the article is in defense of all the Math that's part of most CS degrees. At least I hope it does. I think Math is the difference between Programming and Computer Science. The /. comments basically say the same thing. You don't need Math to program, but you do need Math to do Computer Science.
There's lots of timely stuff being written about Math and CS right now that I'll be sure to link to going forward...
Simon's switch-a-like for Python
Simon Willison: Switch statements in Python
I remember doing something like this in another language that didn't have a switch/case statement... it might have been UserTalk (Frontier's native programming language) I don't know why I didn't think of this for Python. Nice one Simon!
Virtual skin looking even better
BBC NEWS: Virtual skin looking even better
Yeah I know, I'm a little obsessed with this Math topic right now, but I've been seeing things in a new perspective lately. Rather than just thinking "hey, cool", I thought, "this is a perfect example of why Math is important in Computer Science".
Dr. Henrik Jensen made an astute observation (that some light was scattered inside marble rather than just reflecting directly off of it) while doing an unrelated project, and saw a way to apply his findings. As he said, "The development of the mathematical model was the most difficult aspect of the project", and "It required a number of new algorithms and techniques not previously seen in computer graphics."
Without the ability to create that mathematical model, his observation might not have had as much potential for innovation.
Anyway, not trying to be preachy, but I'm finally seeing the light. No pun intended.
Critical period for next ORM Mac OS X conf
MacDevCenter.com: Next Two Weeks Critical for the Mac OS X Conference
Getting back to my previous post after some time to reflect... I really don't like the name O'Reilly Media. It doesn't flow like O'Reilly and Associates did, and it doesn't have the same inclusive connotation. Now it reminds me of News Corp, CNN or Time Warner, blah like PC World, not fresh like Wired. Way less cool. :-(
