AssemblyBoard

Just wanted to know what blogs people read and why.  Been reading quite a few for almost two years now (started with homeschooling stuff and branched out from there).  

Cheers,
G

www.worldmagblog.com - I think very highly of World magazine and the job they do with the news.

www.scrappleface.com - Great satire.

www.blogs4god.com is a directory of Christian blogs.

www.slashdot.com - technology superstars
www.neowin.net - ^ take 2
www.winOScentral.com - windows
www.packetstormsecurity.org - network security
www.forceboy.com - mine

Best of the best ::)
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lucas

Dave, I do read worldmag blog, the whole gay discussion gone on in different sections is very interesting, especially considering you have "possible" un-saved people who regularly pipe in.  BTW, I miss that racist Bad alwaying piping in with thoughts, but I go to his blog to get the latest "southern" views.

Lucus, thanks for yours they connect with my inner geekness.  BTW; have you taken this test, and what was your score?  http://www.innergeek.us/geek.html  (http://www.innergeek.us/geek.html)  

Some of the blogs I look at!

http://icky.blogspot.com/ (http://icky.blogspot.com/)  Izzy keeps the homeschoolers up todate.

http://www.dyingchurch.com/ (http://www.dyingchurch.com/)  The Dying Church - good stuff about how pomo churches have taken over, and how to get back to a chruch that is alive.

http://www.acidink.org/ (http://www.acidink.org/)  Makes you think and ponder, note: has a calvinist slant though.

Cheers,
G

Bah, I got "48.91519% - Super Geek"   :o

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lucas

You should get another Geek point for carrying the decimal out that far! :D

I was 28.9% - Total Geek.

I'm not a big computer geek and that held me back. Thankfully! ;)

S

I had a 36.7 when I took the test.  Dang, should have done more D&D back in the days could have hit the 40%.

Later,
G

27.8%.  Wasn't into enought Sci-fi as a kid.   :)

I got about 25%.  Not enough questions relevant to older people.

Before looking at that web site, I had run Luke's score through the continued fraction algorithm and found that 0.4891519 is about 248/507.  I wondered about the big numbers, but at the end of the test it said that there were 507 questions: a lot more than I had expected.

Hey, Stephen,

I agree. Nearly all of the questions I answered positively had more to do with my youth than anything currently.

Lots of D&D, comics and sci-fi/fantasy.

Do I get a point for thinking your continued fraction algorithm is cool? ;D

S

Sure, but i get to call you a dork :)

ps Steve - I finally get what you were telling me regarding the fractional series of the "amount of mountain dew it would take to kill you" thing awhile back.  I didn't understand what you were trying to tell me  ::)

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lucas

Hey, I don't have to take that from you, Super Geek. There are hundreds of other people willing to call me a dork! ;D

S

The thing I hadn't realized back then was that the number I was analyzing had come from the source code of the web page rather than from use of the web page.  The number must have been from dividing the deadly caffeine dose by the amount in a can.  I haven't been able to find info on either of those numbers yet, but I haven't tried all that hard either.

Wait one second, is number your using from Code Red Mtn Dew, Regular Mtn Dew, or Diet Dew?   :D

Cheers,
G

Most definitely from Regular.  However, Code Red has plenty more lethal elements to choose from  ;)

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lucas

38.46154% - Major Geek

I thought that listening to Conversational Klingon narrated by Michael Dorn might give me some bonus points.  :P

I would think the fact that you even want bonus points should earn you some bonus points!   :o

Well, I though Arthur would give him a run for his money, but so far Lucas is by far and away the biggest geek on the board.  ;D

S

 :P

Does it get me more points to mention that my girlfriend is a triple major in voice, theater, and computer science?  ::)

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lucas

Sorry, that's a different thread: Guys who date out of their league! ;)

S

No question.  :)


No, because voice and theatre don't really count.  They, like all general ed and liberal arts classes, are just a means of boosting your GPA to balance out the difficult upper division major engineering, math and science courses.  :P  Can I get away with that?  Any pretend...er...I mean non-trade majors out there?  

Thing is, there might be, but they probably wouldn't be able to figure it out.  Anyone want to dumb-down...er...translate what I just said?  

Just kidding, Heheh   :D

Arthur

Arthur, I think you may be missing the point in such a way that proves your geekness.

If any of you uber-geeks can convince a talented, brilliant triple major to go out with you, you should get as many points as you want!

Scott "Revenge of the Liberal Arts Majors" McCumber ;D

Does computer science count?  I once had to take a programming class at the university to fulfill the general education requirements.  I was surprised when the instructor started writing misspelled words on the board.  I always thought that university instructors were supposed to know how to spell.

Nah, speling abillaty is won of those inhairent skils. Without it yoo can lern oll the rools and memooriz werds and be a prity gud speler, but a nachural speler wil stil wip yoo in a speling be.

I no a lot of peepel whu ar signifkantlee smartr than I am (programars, teechrs, evn reeportrs) but kan't spel comun evary day werds such as "tomarow" too sayv thare lives, lett aloen sumthing like "onomatopoeia".

Yoo ether hav it or yoo done't.

S

Hey, no knocking CSC majors.  The instructor was probably one of those eccentrics.  Either that or a grad student.  Or maybe a music major posing as a CSC instructor.

But, um, I have to confess that I had to look up how to spell "eccentric" on dictionary.com.  I do that a lot actually.  Why don't these message boards have a built-in spell checker?

OBTW, I've heard about those lower division CSC classes.  They are nothing like the upper division classes.  Let's just say its a little more complicated than learning how to make a C program that displays "Hello world" or converts Fahrenheit to Celsius (www.dictionary.com to my rescue again).   ;D

Arthur

English is not neccesarily their first language......

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lucas

It seems to me that rather than comparing software design to architecture, a better analogy would be city planning, at least for large projects.  Perhaps studying computer science is somewhat analogous to studying law and political science.  Working with modern operating systems and programming languages seems a lot like dealing with government bureaucracy.

Software vendors have figured out ways to discourage competition.  It is often difficult or impossible to find clear and precise documentation, except perhaps in a highly diluted form spread out over thousands of pages in several books with poor indexing, or help files of a similar nature.  Chaotic and confusing software organization is another hindrance to imitation.

In recent experience learning how to use a compiler for programmable gate arrays, I found that it was difficult to figure out which buttons did what, and where to specify the input, and where to look for the output.  Another consultant familiar with the software set up the project and did the DMA and processor interface part of the design.  He also linked in some DRAM controller logic that was written by someone else.

After learning that the best thing to feed the compiler was Verilog, I found a little bit of documentation of the Verilog language on the web.  Only a minimal amount of debugging was needed to get my part of the design to work (a couple of pages of code to control the imaging chip).  Designing hardware with Verilog is much easier than having to work out all of the details by hand, which is the way it had to be done years ago.  Even though Verilog has been around for several years, I hadn't learned it before, since I was stuck in a rut doing C language software development.

Hey, quityerbellyachin...that's how I feel about the keyboard for crying out loud.



Hey, watch your language, this is a Christian website.    ;)

Thomas Maddux

That's the beauty of Java.  Leave it to free-enterprise to create an open-platform language that comes with on-line documentation.    

     I'm with Tom...  To me the beauty of Java ia that a cup or two can jump-start my brain in the morning.  ;D

al

My heart jumped when Sun announced that they are still considering open sourcing Java with IBM.  That would be *awesome* ::)

but i must say, I immensely prefer perl or python to the java api.....it is amazing the things you can do with languages created by lazy hackers  :o

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lucas

You know, I don't think I've ever been quite so passionate about a programming language.   :)


Yeah, like a lot of video games and most shareware.  But they were dilligent in their lazy hacking and made some great stuff.  Those were the days.  Hey, ever play Dungeons of Kroz?  Castle?  Advent?  Commander Keen?  

I remember Commander Keen....wasn't that made by Epic?  I also remember crystal caves, solar winds......man, that was a *long* time ago  ::)

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lucas

You obviously don't have the right mindset.

However, I am probably about as passionate against Java as Lucas is for it.  Java was very much done by lazy hackers.  Too lazy, and too pressured to get something out before it was finished.

Dave

Exactly, hence why it would be amazingly beneficial to all if it became an open source imperative.  Regardless of this, I would prefer Java over C++.....as it is  a robust, architecturally neutral, portable, interpreted, threaded, dynamic and high performance language :)

C++ on the other hand, while powerful, completely obliterates its potential due to the expectation upon the programer to explicitly allocate and otherwise handle, memory.

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lucas

     ...buncha young whippersnappers!!! >:(  I remember PINBALL, played with a real ball shot from a real pin!!!  THAT was a *long* time ago!!! :o

grampa al ;)

I had Pong. Then Space Invaders. Asteroid. Defender. Dig Dug. Pac-Man. Then Dirk the Daring (cutting edge stuff - think they used a laser disc or something).

S

Oh yeah, forgot about the Atari 2600 games.  I still have mine, but I got that after I got my first PC.  Advent is another form of Crystal Caves.  I think I heard of Solar Winds, was it another adventure game?  Oh, and that reminds me of the online text games we played over the modem.  Ever BBS before the internet was around?  I remember a game called Trade Wars that was really fun.  I loved my 2400 baud modem.  Take heart Al, pinball is still around--a bit suped up from you day though.

Arthur

Ok, since we are going back.  First computer was an Atari 1600, then went to Apple C (loved Lode Runner and Mr. Robot).  Anyone have a Commodore 64?  I still think Intellivision was the best 80's gaming system.  Also Joust or Defender was the best game in the 80's honorable mention goes out to Track and Field, and the original Street Fighter!

Later,
G

Heh, I spent 2 hours last night playing my old Odyssey 2 :) Gotta love block graphics and polygonal collision detection ;)

Anyway, I *think* i remember my first personal machine being a Color Computer 2 (COCO) (my dad taught my C on that machine), with an Apple and x86 boxes following.

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lucas

My first computer was an Atari 800.  I had to buy a TV to use for the display.  I also got an Okidata Microline 82A printer for it and made my own custom designed printer cable and device driver software for it.

My brother got a Commodore Pet computer.

A friend at work also got an Atari 800 and wrote the Canyon Climber and Mr. Do game programs for it.  I helped him out with the Canyon Climber music and the Mr. Do shortest path maze following algorithm used by the monsters.

My first was a Commodore 64 that I ran Lode Runner on and played around with some basic BASIC!

I learned BASIC on some kind of Tandy Radio Shack at my high school.

That was pretty much the end of my computer experience for almost 10 years! I then got a hand me down 486 that I used for word processing, etc., and then I bought a Pentium 75 :o Packard Smell.

 I saw a news report about the COCO on the TV show, Computer Chronicles.  The report interviewed a user-group that still uses it.  But I think I saw that show 8 years ago, lol.  Atari 800/1600, Commodore 64, Apple, Amiga, DEC--man those were the days.  Now everyone has a PC or Mac and there isn't much romance in it.  Everything's user friendly with a graphical user interface--kinda takes the geekiness out of it.  Sad to say, I don't program for fun anymore  :'(

My PC history. This is fun.  :)
I remember playing Lemonade and Oregon Trail on the Apple IIe computer in Junior High.  

Then I bought my very own computer in the summer of  1990.  It was a PC-XT running at 4.77 MHz--until my sister showed me there was a turbo switch that could be connected.  Then it ran at 8.54 MHz, woot!   I got it for $300.  It had a 5 1/4" floppy and 1 MB of RAM.   I think that price included the 12" TTL Hercules amber monochrome monitor.  I bought a 20 HD for it for another $100 or so.  My sister was a partner in a computer business and sold it to me.  I later worked for that business in '92 putting computers together in the back.  At that time the 486 was king.  A typical server would be a 486-33 with 16 MB of RAM.  

My next PC was a 386DX-20 MHz.  I dont remember how much RAM it had.  It was either 1, 2 or 4MB.  I was so excited when I bought a color VGA monitor for it (I think the video card was a Trident something or other).  I bought it so that I could play King's Quest V-- a very cool full color adventure game.
Also about this time I got my first sound card.  BIG difference over the PC speaker.  It was a Thunderboard from Sierra On-line, a SoundBlaster compatible that didn't cost as much.  

PC generation #3 was a 486 DX2/66 with 16 MB RAM. I remember buying 16 MB of RAM for around $650.  And I bought a 57MB HD for $250.  Amazing how prices have changed.  Too bad it isn't like that for automobiles.  It was an this PC that I switched from DOS (I think I was running DR DOS 6.0 at the time) to Windows 95 in Aug '95.  I remember loading the beta version-- it took something like 30 1.44 floppy disks.  Around this time I got my first CD-ROM drive.  The video card was a Genoa Phantom Visa Local Bus.

#4 was a Pentium 120 MHz with 32MB RAM.  I bought a Samsung 17GLsi monitor for $800 in '96. Still use it to this day.  Got my first 1GB hard drive around this time.  Then later a 4GB.  Diamond Stealth 3D-2000 video card.  

#5 was a Celeron 466MHz, 128MB RAM, ATI Xpert '98 video card, bought in '99.  

#6 was an Athlon 1.6 GHz, 256MB RAM, 20GB HD, Nvidia GeForce 2, purchased in '01.

#7 is my current PC, an Athlon XP 2400+, 256MB RAM, 40 GB HD, GeForce 4, includes DVD-ROM and CD-RW.  But these stats fluxuate as I periodically swap parts for work.


Arthur

hehe, you said w00t!  :)

That's hilarious  ;)

--
lucas

The latest news:


Greatest maths problem 'solved'

By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor


A mathematician at Purdue University in the US claims to have proved the Riemann Hypothesis - called the greatest unsolved problem in maths.

The hypothesis concerns prime numbers and has stumped the world's mathematicians for more than 150 years.

Now, Professor Louis De Branges de Bourcia has posted papers on the internet detailing his attempt at a proof.

There is a $1m prize for whoever solves the hypothesis.

...


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3794813.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3794813.stm)