Today's Question:  What does your personal desk look like?        GIVE A SHOUT

SEARCH KEYWORD -- floating point

  How Computers Boot Up

The previous post described motherboards and the memory map in Intel computers to set the scene for the initial phases of boot. Booting is an involved, hacky, multi-stage affair – fun stuff. Here’s an outline of the process: An outline of the boot sequence Things start rolling when you press the power button on the computer (no! do tell!). Once the motherboard is powered up it initializes its own firmware – the chipset and other tidbits – and tries to ...

   Computer,Boot-up,Rationale     2012-04-11 13:43:02

  Objective-C Is The Language

My good friend Brent Simmons invokes a historical email from Linus Torvalds, about his disdain for C++C++ is a horrible language. It’s made more horrible by the fact that a lot of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it’s much much easier to generate total and utter crap with it.Brent affirms his support while paying homage to plain-old C:But I will admit to an enduring love of C. I still think of C not as C but as the language.I loved C. Emphasis on the past-tense. A...

   Objective-C,C,Apple,OOP,C++     2011-11-07 08:23:08

  ARE YOU LIKE ME? OR DO YOU HAVE DISCIPLINE?

If you are anything like me, you've started more things than you have finished. We're innately curious about the things around us and inspired when we come across people who have mastered their trade. We see people create cool and beautiful things and think, "Man, that looks easy, if I put in a little time I can do that in no time." What follows is a few days or weeks of focused and dedicated learning. During this time we make some progress, but not much. In fact, the progress that we do ma...

   Work,Learning,Effort,Detail,Complexity     2011-10-25 10:27:28

  Will tablet revolution really come soon?

The famous Silicon Valley entrepreneur and academic Vivek Wadhwa said a few months ago that tablet revolution would come only if the price dropped below $100. According to The Wall Street Journal, the 4th largest PC manufacturer Acer seems to be the first one to eat crab. It plans to promote $88 Android tablet Acer Iconia B1. Does this indicate that the tablet revolution is coming? According to a person who knows the Acer tablet project, Acer Iconia B1 configuration will be similar to those of ...

   Acer,Tablet,Low price,Tablet revolution     2012-12-24 20:51:33

  What the Heck are Algebraic Data Types? ( for Programmers )

This post is meant to be a gentle introduction to Algebraic Data Types. Some of you may be asking why you should learn Algebraic Data Types and how will they change your world?  I am not going to answer that, but suffice it to say that Algebraic Data Types are the underpinning of the type systems to the ML derived languages, Haskell and OCaml included, and their construction and properties allow for the power (and inference) that accompanies these type systems.  They are cropping...

   Algebraic Data Type,Set,Operator,Programmer     2011-12-30 08:31:43

  The roots of Lisp

(I wrote this article to help myself understand exactly what McCarthy discovered. You don't need to know this stuff to program in Lisp, but it should be helpful to anyone who wants to understand the essence of Lisp-- both in the sense of its origins and its semantic core. The fact that it has such a core is one of Lisp's distinguishing features, and the reason why, unlike other languages, Lisp has dialects.)In 1960, John McCarthy published a remarkable paper in which he did for programming somet...

   Lips,Root,McCarthy,AI,Artificial Intelligence     2011-10-25 10:35:13

  Recursive class initialization in Java

When a Java class is referenced and initialized, it has to go through the loading and linking first. Once the loading and linking complete successfully. The class will be initialized. The static variables and constant variables will be initialized during this process. Once the class is initialized, it is ready for use. If when class A is initialized and it is referencing a class B, the class B will also get initialized. But what will happen if class B is referencing class A as well? This is call...

   Java,JVM,class initialization,static final     2015-04-15 21:04:29

  A completely new approach to surveillance - should you be worried?

Paranoia is not necessarily a bad thing - assuming someone is really out there to get you. True or not, the paranoid have had issues they need to control explode as the internet developed, they also got specific tools to make their secrets (or their life, not everybody has a dark secret) more secure and under control. Unfortunately to them, and to the amazement of science and science fiction fans worldwide, a new way of obtaining secrets has appeared and it’s something very few expected. ...

   security     2014-08-11 05:41:58

  Reasons to use blue in design

Blue color is used in many product designs and logo designs such as Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and our site. Why do companies choose blue color in their design? It's not a coincidence for them to choose blue. One saying is the color blue is associated with trust, efficiency, clarity and simplicity. Beside this reason, are there other reasons? From an interface design standpoint, blue is an incredibly useful color. Among the dark colors designers have in their toolbox, red, orange and green al...

   Design,Blue     2013-12-13 07:13:22

  Open Source Needs a New UI

As a freelance web developer, I’ve seen and used my fair share of open source web applications (and desktop software), and I’d like to point out something that I see all too often in open source projects: the user interface almost always lets the project down. Let me explain… The Problem I’ve used a considerable amount of open source software (web-based and desktop), and I feel that a large portion of them are let down by their UI. The functionality is brill...

   Open source,Problem,UI,New paradign     2011-12-09 07:53:19

RECENT