DarrenR114 - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Wrong (Score 1) 1268

by DarrenR114 on Friday August 13, 2010 @11:41AM (#33240918) Attached to: US Students Struggle With Understanding of the 'Equal' Sign

That's not what = means. = is ASSIGNMENT. They're looking for ==.

Much as I know you're joking, I'd really love to get rid of this bane that C has brought upon us. Many previous languages used := to mean assignment, hence avoiding the clash with the mathematically well defined = symbol.

You'd prefer something like '<=>' to indicate 'logical equality' then?
That's more similar to the actual symbol used. But then that's not so easy to type as '=='.
http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/145316

In programming languages older than Algol (from which Pascal was derived) such as FORTRAN, the single '=' was good enough to designate both variable assignment AND logical equality.

It was your precious Pascal (along with Algol) that muddied the waters.

Comment Re:Wrong (Score 1) 1268

by DarrenR114 on Friday August 13, 2010 @11:39AM (#33240866) Attached to: US Students Struggle With Understanding of the 'Equal' Sign

That's not what = means. = is ASSIGNMENT. They're looking for ==.

Much as I know you're joking, I'd really love to get rid of this bane that C has brought upon us. Many previous languages used := to mean assignment, hence avoiding the clash with the mathematically well defined = symbol.

You'd prefer something like '' to indicate 'logical equality' then?
That's more similar to the actual symbol used. But then that's not so easy to type as '=='.
http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/145316

In programming languages older than Algol (from which Pascal was derived) such as FORTRAN, the single '=' was good enough to designate both variable assignment AND logical equality.

It was your precious Pascal (along with Algol) that muddied the waters.

Comment Re:Wrong (Score 1) 1268

by DarrenR114 on Friday August 13, 2010 @11:16AM (#33240412) Attached to: US Students Struggle With Understanding of the 'Equal' Sign

Reading your post, I got to "ematic" and thought it was some language term for a word fragment that I didn't know, until I realized it WAS the word fragment.

Slashdot reading in the early morning is hard.

Shouldn't that be Slashdot *readings* in the early morning is hard? ;)

Rupert Murdoch Claims To Own the 'Sky' In 'Skype' 186

Posted by samzenpus on Friday August 13, 2010 @09:25AM from the mine-now-I-take-it dept.

Crudely_Indecent writes "Not content to own just news stories, Rupert Murdoch is now going after individual words! His BSkyB is fighting a legal battle with Skype, claiming that it owns the 'Sky' in 'Skype.' From the article: 'A spokesman for Sky confirmed that the company has been involved in a "five-year dispute with Skype" over trademark applications filed by the telecomms company. These are, the spokesman added: "including, but not limited to, television-related goods and services."'"

Comment Re:Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system (Score 1) 472

by DarrenR114 on Thursday March 19, 2009 @02:34PM (#27259423) Attached to: The 100 Degree Data Center

I recalled incorrectly - 0 degrees was the freezing point of brine.

I knew I never should have trusted anything my seventh grade science teacher taught us.

Comment Re:Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system (Score 1) 472

by DarrenR114 on Thursday March 19, 2009 @02:30PM (#27259361) Attached to: The 100 Degree Data Center

As I recall, zero degrees Farenheit is the freezing temp of alcohol and 100 degrees Farenheit was originally supposed to be the normal body temp of humans (someone must have had a slight fever when Farenheit was measuring his data.)

Submission + - How do you learn new languages?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16, 2007 @12:24PM

An anonymous reader writes: How do you go about learning a new (programming) language? Do you buy a book? Use online tutorials? Message boards? Take a class?

Submission + - Vista retail sales low compared to XP launch

Submitted by

PetManimal

on Friday February 16, 2007 @12:14PM

PetManimal writes: "A comparison of first-week retail sales of Vista compared to first-week sales of XP back in 2001 found that Vista sales were 60% lower. Steve Ballmer has admitted that earlier sales forecasts were "overly aggressive," but at least there is some good news for Microsoft: early Office 2007 sales were very strong compared to the early sales of Office 2003, despite almost no advertising or marketing until the retail launch at the end of January."

Submission + - Silicon Valley, follow the money

Submitted by

mrspin

on Friday February 16, 2007 @12:09PM

mrspin writes: "This week the The New York Times sparked a lively debate, after it published an article which argued that when it comes to creating innovative technology, geography still matters — and that Silicon Valley is the place to be. And it's certainly true that Silicon Valley, compared with other innovation hot-spots, has the much needed Venture Capital and the connections that enable money to flow from one new company to another. Want proof? ZDNet takes a look at LinkSViewer, a new web-based visual networking tool for exploring capital relationships in Silicon Valley."

Submission + - beta version of CUDA is available

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16, 2007 @12:05PM

An anonymous reader writes: http://developer.nvidia.com/object/cuda.html he CUDA Toolkit is a complete software development solution for programming CUDA-enabled GPUs. The Toolkit includes standard FFT and BLAS libraries, a C-compiler for the NVIDIA GPU and a runtime driver. The CUDA runtime driver is a separate standalone driver that interoperates with OpenGL and Microsoft® DirectX® drivers from NVIDIA. CUDA technology is currently supported on the Linux and Microsoft® Windows® XP operating systems. The CUDA Developer SDK provides examples with source code to help you get started with CUDA. Examples include: Parallel bitonic sort Matrix multiplication Matrix transpose Performance profiling using timers Parallel prefix sum (scan) of large arrays Image convolution 1D DWT using Haar wavelet OpenGL and Direct3D graphics interoperation examples CUDA BLAS and FFT library usage examples CPU-GPU C- and C++-code integration

Submission + - Why Does KDE Use Slaves?

Submitted by

Jabari Zakiya

on Friday February 16, 2007 @12:03PM

Jabari Zakiya writes: "I wrote this blog on Freesoftware Magazine http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/ and the majority of the comments so far have been in support of the use of the terminology of "slaves" to describe KDE widgets. I say the use of the "slave" metaphor is totally inconsistent with the concept of "free software." Apparently, others don't. So, should KDE use "slaves." http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/node/2075"

Submission + - Apple TV to be a centrally controlled P2P network?

Submitted by Rolgar on Friday February 16, 2007 @11:57AM

Rolgar writes: This week, Bob Cringely states that since the Apple TV will be an always on device (unless you unplug it) with a 40GB hard drive, Apple will distribute content to Apple TVs for every ISP, and then use centrally controlled P2P sharing on those Apple TVs to distribute the content to the rest of the owners of the Apple TV, cutting their own bandwidth costs and providing video faster to the consumers. The ISPs will incur higher (essentially free) bandwidth locally, possibly lose some subscribers to cable TV, but have fewer costs through the Tier II Internet backbone providers, which I suspect would possibly undercut the Apple and Google's need to worry about net neutrality for video. Bob also expects that Google will be involved with their fiber network and advertising expertise, and I suspect that they'll bundle in YouTube content as well and maybe Google has worked out a way to distribute YouTube video to PCs through this network. Bob suspects that they won't get around to announcing the full details of this plan until they hit a half million units or more, and that this Apple and Google pairing will become the equivalent of a cable TV provider with almost none of the infrastructure costs, and that eventually the real HD revolution will come from Apple and Google.

Comments From Miyamoto On Wii, Industry 209

Posted by Zonk on Friday February 16, 2007 @11:57AM from the wise-man dept.

This past December, Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto sat down with the Talk Asia program. It was only just recently translated and (via Ars Technica), CNN is carrying the resulting commentary. Miyamoto discusses the creation of Mario, the future of the Nintendo, the problems facing the games industry today, and the 'awesomeness' of the Wii's name. "I think anyone can enjoy video games. But some people shy away from them, just by looking at the shape of the console, or they think it is complicated when they have to plug the machine into their television set. However, I think if it is something that is simple to connect and play, it can be enjoyed by anybody, especially if they can interact with the characters. We also have to think about the themes of the games. There is an abundance of themes that people are interested in, and video games have only touched on few of them."

Submission + - No truth to Samba rumor

Submitted by

lisah

on Friday February 16, 2007 @11:36AM

lisah writes: "Linux.com is reporting this morning that recent rumors of a mass exodus of Samba developers fleeing to Red Hat because they are irate over the Microsoft/Novell agreement are unfounded. Though well known Samba team member Jeremy Allison recently left Novell for Google, Novell spokesperson Kevan Barney says reports that the entire Samba team has imploded are 'incorrect'."

Submission + - Bionic eye could restore vision

Submitted by

MattSparkes

on Friday February 16, 2007 @11:24AM

MattSparkes writes: "A new bionic eye could restore vision to the profoundly blind. A prototype was tested on six patients and "within a few weeks all could detect light, identify objects and even perceive motion again. For one patient, this was the first time he had seen anything in half a century." The user wears a pair of glasses that contain a miniature camera and that wirelessly transmits video to a cellphone-sized computer in the wearer's pocket. This computer processes the image information and wirelessly transmits it to a tiny electronic receiver implanted in the wearer's head."

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