Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Wrong (Score 1) 1268

by DarrenR114 (#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 (#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.
Image

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

Posted by samzenpus 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."'"
Microsoft

Submission + - Vista retail sales low compared to XP launch

Submitted by
PetManimal
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."
Software

Submission + - Silicon Valley, follow the money

Submitted by
mrspin
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."
Technology (Apple)

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

Submitted by Rolgar
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.
Nintendo

Comments From Miyamoto On Wii, Industry 209

Posted by Zonk 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."
Biotech

Submission + - Bionic eye could restore vision

Submitted by
MattSparkes
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."
Mozilla

Over 27% of Firefox Patches Come from Volunteers 107

Posted by Zonk from the those-who-make-our-browswer-awesome-be-saluted dept.
dolphinling writes "Everyone is aware that the Mozilla Corporation makes some money, and employs some people now. Google has full-time employees working on Firefox too, as do a number of other places. Yet despite that, in the six months up to Firefox 2 some 27% of the patches to Firefox were submitted by key volunteers, and those patches represent 24% of changes made to the source code. What's more, those numbers only counted contributers with 50 patches or more, so the actual numbers are probably quite a bit higher. It's good to see that even as Mozilla does so well in the business world, it can still keep its ties to the community so strong." They were running these number to find out who they need to start offering support to. So: contribute to Firefox, and you know you'll get a hand up. Nice work, folks.

Slashdot Top Deals

Overflow on /dev/null, please empty the bit bucket.

Close