webjprgm

Which version of Xbox360Controller and what Mac OS version? You might want to try an older pre-64bit version of the driver if that will work on your OS.

Or you could try to debug the source if you're up for that. I would try but don't have the expertise to help without seeing it and tinkering with it.

A couple years ago I bought a Logitech gamepad that happened to use Xbox protocol (I didn't read the label well enough, I just saw the name brand). I tried to use this Xbox360Controller driver but it didn't recognize my gamepad. So, I fixed the driver to work.

When Mountain Lion came out I had to update the driver, which had undergone some 32bit -> 64bit change but also added in some other garbage about Xbox chat pads that was breaking when I tried to use it with my Logitech game pad. I don't remember if it kernel panicked or just didn't work. Certainly I caused a kernel panic or two while tinkering with the driver. But I got it working again, mostly by commenting out stuff I didn't want.

Why is the Ouya's bad? It doesn't look as comfortable as an Xbox controller, but I haven't held one.

I like the idea of a touch pad for configurable interface elements. That's what I first thought of when the Valve modularity patent was mentioned. Has anyone played a game on Ouya that made good use of that touchpad?

Or am I mistaking and it's not both a touch screen and touch pad, just more of a trackpad-like input device?

He said the distributor that ships books to local bookstores would also have to ship them to Amazon. So he can't both stay out of Amazon's channel and be in the local bookseller's channel. Presumably he wants his book in local bookstores.

> 1 flight per day across the country

Don't we already have same-day delivery? So the next tier would have to be quicker delivery than that, which would necessitate more than one flight a day. Is it still economically viable in that case?

Does this same economy math apply to passenger transport? Or could one flight per day of mail to the other side of the world be worth it?

No IMs definitely can't be kept private from the companies themselves because those companies make their money by knowing what it's users talk about.

This is part of why I never trusted GMail from the beginning. (But I'm still stuck with it.)

I've gotten to the point where I'm not sucked in and addicted to MC anymore, but since it was the building part that I got stuck on, never modding or multi-player, I still get plenty of enjoyment when I periodically think of something new to build.

(E.g. I built a residence, garden, etc. in a cloud then decided I could expand that to a several-cloud city. Then decided I could build a tower with railroad in an attempt to bring cows and pigs up there. The next project might be an underwater city, or play around with the new horse stuff they added.)

New content is added occasionally. I'm not entirely sure why, since they don't have continuous subscription revenue like WOW does. I actually find it kind of annoying since then I need to explore another huge swath of territory to get new chunks to generate with the new stuff in it. Or worse, if the new stuff breaks the timing on some of my red stone circuitry or the effectiveness of my experience generator.

Actually, I can pinch-to-zoom using my thumb and pointer-finger on the screen with my remaining three fingers holding the phone. It's awkward, but works in a pinch (haha).

I much prefer a gesture that makes intuitive sense. Pinch-to-zoom is very easy to learn and just seemed right the first time I saw it. I haven't tried the double-tap+scroll gesture you mention, but it sounds like something that would be a tad trickier and less obvious.

Yuck yuck yuck. And yuck to ctrl-Insert / shift-Insert too, though that's better. I very much like the fact that on OS X the default copy-paste keys are command-c / command-v which don't conflict with UNIX's use of ctrl. If I can bind Windows-C / Windows-V to copy/paste in a terminal emulator I'd be happier.

Select-to-copy is yuck for two reasons: 1: After you select, it copies and then deselects. This is annoying if you want to see that you selected the right thing, and it doesn't allow you to change your selection if you see you were off by a character. 2: I like to select to mark my place sometimes, but I don't want that to change what's on my system clipboard.

ctrl/shift Insert is yuck because it's a two-hand keystroke and doesn't have an easy way to remember whether shift or ctrl is the copy. (I don't often make mistakes between the two, but it leaves me unsure of myself which is a half second lost to hesitation each time.)

This looks pretty awesome. It's also the first time I've heard of Vala, so I read through the tutorial of that too. It's also interesting.

I don't suppose there's a way to use this with Windows, either as the shell emulator for Cygwin or a shell emulator for an SSH connection? Then I could actually have nice shells when I have to work on a Windows box too.

Could Google Analytics data be used as "something other than links"? They can track traffic, bounce rates, how long people stay, how often the same people return. Would that provide a better indicator of quality pages? It would only apply to sites that opt-in by using Google Analytics, but if it made them rank higher than everyone would do it. (How many don't already?)

I've been watching "PubNub-World-4" for a while (28 generations, animation is still on). It has a nasty hill to climb that stops all cars at about 160 meters. I saw one almost make it over. So now I don't want to refresh and lose the chance that one might eventually evolve to make it.

Most of the cars seem to be quite similar, though. Also, the one that almost made it over doesn't seem to be marked as the leader so there's no net improvement in the cars. I saw one more, in about Gen 30, almost make it over too (it jumps up and sits on the ledge a while before falling back, as opposed to not getting past the ledge or jumping straight up in the air and falling back down).

Very mesmerizing thing.

I think I misread this the first time. You mean a "big data" framework not a big "data framework", right?

The idea of using a programming language as a database language: MUMPS (aka M), JavaScript as query language to some new NoSQL databases, ORM like Ruby ActiveRecrod which makes it look like you work on data in just Ruby.

As for the "big data" interpretation, I don't have much to say.

I tried to find a way to store a function in an object to call later, and after fighting the syntax I hit a bus error. I guess that is only possible with full closures.

I was trying to have a vector of behaviors for my sprites, which would hold arbitrary functions to call when updating the sprite. I don't need to capture any variables, so I don't actually need a closure. But the scope in which the anonymous function was initially created is long gone, so that's probably the issue.

I'll see if co-routines can solve this for me ...

I did a little playing with it last night.

I find that one can do object-oriented things, but constructors are a bit of a catch.

    struct A : [a, defaulted]
    struct B : A [b]
    
    //You can do it this way,
    //but each subclass has to init every field (brittle)
    function MakeA(a): [a, 99] : A
    function MakeB(a,b): [a, 99, b] : B
    
    //Or use the super constructor syntax
    //but this uses a copy and is less efficient
    function MakeA(a): [a, 99] : A
    function MakeB(a,b): [super MakeA(a), b] : B
    
    //Or something in between
    function InitA(me::A, theA): a = theA; defaulted = 99; me
    function MakeA(a): new := [0,0]; new.InitA(a)
    function InitB(me::B, theA, theB): me.InitA(theA); b = theB; me
    function MakeB(a,b): new := [0,0,0]; new.InitB(a,b)

I'll keep playing with it and see what else I discover. I haven't gotten far enough to use coroutines, multi-method, or to make my own control structures yet.

At first glance I love this syntax. I'll have to pull out some of my hypothetical syntax notes to see if any holes I came up with for my language attempts apply here, but I very much like it.

Using high-level function constructs for main language flow control features seems to be in vogue. Rust does it too. I liked it when I learned Scheme and have been wanting it to be more main stream since then. That's probably why I like Ruby, since Ruby's blocks are close for many uses.

I'll play with this more when I get home tonight.

Yeah, 4 years later when a whistle blower said something.

No, but I have my own mental model of how it works, and if I were trying to preserve my own Perl code I'd only need the subset of Perl that I understand and use. I could reconstruct that from scratch with no reference other than my own Perl source code.

I get the same feeling. That's why I always have this idea in the back of my head that I should learn to make a computer from the sand on a beach in case I'm ever marooned on an island on an alien planet.

But I recognize that it's entirely impractical to start from literally nothing.

I also keep around my old computers and/or make sure I have emulators that can run my old stuff. E.g. a TRS-80 emulator for the Basic II programs I first learned to write. Or a Mac OS 9 emulator to open Claris Works 4 files I wrote in high school. I rarely use such things, but I feel better knowing my data is not truly lost.

That just means the semantics are not precisely defined. Have a look at the C specification for things that are left undefined. The same C program, when interpreted by different compilers (esp. on different architectures) will have different behavior.

Which further proves the author's point that adding syntax makes things easier, since even the pure Lisp land is speckled with extra syntax to make it work.

One comment on the article mentioned that programming languages need to have many concepts, and concepts built on concepts, and concepts built on those. So you can't have a new symbol for each concept since you build more and more concepts.

I think Lisp has too few symbols. I completely agree with the author on this.

I think there's a balance where we use enough symbols to make the structure of the code stand out but don't try to make everything into a symbol since the language is essentially extensible by the user in building the tower of concepts.

Next question: is operator overloading good? It lets you write extensions that feel like they are part of the language, but it also makes the code difficult to evaluate mentally since you might not know that an operator means something different now.

I've always found it rather annoying to use collection APIs in Java, or big num libraries, since you have to call long-named functions for simple operations. In C++ you can overload operators to concatenate, iterate, and inspect collections. But this can be misused (in C++, Lisp, and other languages) to make code harder to figure out.

Math notation, though, does have overloading. "+" is not just add two integers, it can be used for set operations sometimes. Also some notation is used differently in different disciplines, like math-like notation in some computer science papers (e.g. describing a type system or Lambda calculus evaluation) look similar to operators used in logic or calculus but mean different things. So operator overloading is common. Is it good?

I agree that I'd like to have the chance to get really good in a language that I use for a long time. (As long as it's enjoyable, e.g. I wouldn't want to be stuck in VB forever.) At one point I worked almost entirely in Java (up until around Java 1.5). Another few years it was mostly PHP. But since then it's been a bit of everything.

Useful lessons from learning: - Javascript -> Callback passing for an asynchronous computing paradigm. Object-array duality and prototype-based inheritance. - Ruby -> Rubyists often like to be clever with chaining several functions on one line to do something succinctly. This is kinda like functional programming (operations like map, inject, fold, etc.) but just one small piece of it. Ruby also has lots of metaprogramming magic to make DSLs, but that can bite you really bad when you have to debug RoR GEMs.

It also partly depends on how often you switch jobs that require you to learn a new programming language. So far in my career I've had to learn new languages quite often, esp. on hacked-together projects with 3+ languages. It's not just learning the syntax but also the common idioms. Still, I'm pretty sure at least more than 50% of the time was using the language and not learning it, so the original statement stands.

Ugh, please no. The real problem is that startups can't decide to open up shop somewhere else, like Pleasanton or Napa. Somewhere that's just as accessible to all the VCs and conferences but not so short on housing.

I don't want mega city. I'm sure a lot of people who have made the Silicon Valley their home for many years agree. It's just the young crowd who has to live in apartments anyway that think more mega Apartment buildings would be great. I completely refuse to live in SF because of the density and turn down any job based in SF automatically.

Impossible. You could only cite cases where it did, not where it didn't.

Or you could give personal witness of seeing a case that did not make it on the news. But no citation.

Ninite isn't an expensive paid Adobe Flash updater. It's a useful sysadmin tool for automating several painful processes. I think it should exist and other companies should not be able to bully them to shut down. As a consumer you can pay if you think Ninite's functionality is useful or not if you think it isn't.

On an ideological level, I would look at whether they are stealing content and reselling it or just automating something the user would do for him/herself. It sounds like automating to me.

I make scripts to automate my workflows all the time, including the flash installer. (Though I don't download it as part of the script, I have pre-downloaded it and put it in a folder to use. So I have to manually get the latest before I run the script on a batch of machines.)

Yup. And trying to shut it down is litigating, legislating, and dealing down to "no-real-competition".

Not to mention a larger, longer download. Then you realize it and have to re-download it all over for the flash-only one. (It's happened to me a few times.)

Graphics drivers aren't open source either. A very large amount of actual Mac OS X performance problems and crashes come from the combination of the graphics drivers and CoreGraphics/Aqua. Both of these systems can use main memory and therefore might be influencing or be influenced by paging issues.

If you can get a reproducible case and capture enough useful diagnostic information you can give that to Apple to try to get a fix in some future version of OS X. Have a look at /usr/bin/sysdiagnose and /usr/sbin/spindump among other tools. I'm sure there are more diagnostic tools internal to Apple, which would require that you have a case that is reproducible from a new OS X install rather than from a system with files copied over. If you can identify the one file from ~/Library or wherever that triggers it, then you can pass that along as the repro case.

In general people (like me) just don't have the time to hunt down every crash, hang, etc. we find when using a computer. So I can understand if one doesn't bother with capturing diagnostics and repro cases or with downloading Darwin or Android source to debug a crash. I can also understand where huge frustrated discussions like this one come from. But deep down there is an answer, and it likely is not from some huge corporate failing on Apple's part.