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New user? 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. :-(
Wednesday, May 5, 2004
Find the Head Nails you're looking for
CNN.com: Man survives six nails driven into head -- "A construction worker had six nails driven into his head in an accident with a high-powered nail gun, but doctors said Wednesday they expect him to make a full recovery."
Gotta love the Overture ads below the picture of the guy's xray showing the nails embedded in the poor guy's skull....
