The Believers: The hidden story behind the code that runs our lives

Deep learning is dominating the news these days, but it's quite possible the field could have died if not for a mysterious call that Geoff Hinton, now at Google, got one night in the 1980s: "You don't know me, but I know you," the mystery man said. "I work for the System Development Corporation. We want to fund long-range speculative research. We're particularly interested in research that either won't work or, if it does work, won't work for a long time. And I've been reading some of your papers." The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a readable profile of the minds behind neural nets, from Rosenblatt to Hassabis, told primarily through Hinton's career.

TinyLetter - Email for people with something to say

TinyLetter is a personal newsletter service brought to you by the people behind MailChimp. People use it to send updates, digests, and dispatches to their fans and friends.

Though they're built on the same infrastructure, TinyLetter is for people who don't need all the business features that come along with MailChimp. Simplicity is at the heart of everything we do at TinyLetter.

TinyLetter is a completely free service.

http://tinyletter.com

Missing "Convert to Adobe PDF" context menu?

Missing "Convert to Adobe PDF" context menu?

Many Acrobat users love the context menus added to Windows Explorer that allow them to right-click a file (of any supported type) and convert it into a PDF file, or right-click a selection of multiple files and either convert them all, or combine them into a single PDF file or PDF Portfolio:

On rare occasions though, this context menu goes astray during updates. If that happens to you, there's a way to bring it back without having to reinstall anything.

These are the instructions for Windows 7 64-bit and Acrobat X:

• From your Windows Start Menu, open the All Programs / Accessories folder
• Right-click "Command Prompt" and choose "Run as Administrator"
• In the UAC dialog that pops up (if UAC is enabled), click Yes.
• The black command prompt window will open. Type the following single line into the box, including the quotes, and press Enter:

regsvr32 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat 10.0\Acrobat Elements\ContextMenu64.dll"

• You'll get a dialog box saying the command has successed (hopefully!) If not, check your spelling.
• Close the command prompt window, and your context menus will be back!

If you want to copy and paste from this blog, you can, but pasting into a command prompt is a bit different - don't press ctrl-V, instead copy the line above and right-click somewhere on the command prompt window, choosing "Paste" from the little menu box.


With Windows 7 32-bit and Acrobat 9, the line you enter changes to:

regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Acrobat Elements\ContextMenu.dll"

Other combinations should make sense - "(x86)" and "64.dll" if you're on a 64-bit machine, and the version of Acrobat in the middle. Note that even if you're updated to Acrobat 9.4, the folder is still called "Acrobat 9.0".

On Windows XP, the instructions are the same but there's no "Run as Administrator" option as there's no user Account Control. You should instead be logged in as an administrator.

It doesn't do any harm to run the command twice, even if the context menus are already working - so it's possible to deploy it across an enterprise where only some machines need fixing.

This article was copied from a removed blog - The Acrobat Ninja -  http://acrobatninja.blogspot.com/2011/03/missing-convert-to-adobe-pdf-context.html

ircmaxell's blog: Being A Responsible Developer

ircmaxell's blog: Being A Responsible Developer: Last night, I was listening to the combined DevHell and PHPTownHall Mashup podcast recording, listening to them discuss a topic I talked ab...

ircmaxell's blog: PHP Install Statistics

ircmaxell's blog: PHP Install Statistics: After yesterday's post , I decided to do some math to see how many PHP installs had at least 1 known security vulnerability. So I went t...

ReplicatorG - lowering the barrier to 3D printing

ReplicatorG - lowering the barrier to 3D printing
This is the software that will drive your MakerBot Replicator, Thing-O-Matic, CupCake CNC, RepRap machine, or generic CNC machine. You can give it a GCode or STL file to process, and it takes it from there. It's cross platform, easily installed, and is based on the familiar Arduino / Processing environments. ReplicatorG is used by thousands of MakerBot Operators, and has printed tens of thousands of 3D objects and counting.
http://replicat.org/

LinuxCNC (the Enhanced Machine Control)

linuxcnc.org - LinuxCNC (the Enhanced Machine Control) is a software system for computer control of machine tools such as milling machines and lathes.
LinuxCNC is free software with open source code. Current versions of LinuxCNC are entirely licensed under the GNU General Public License and Lesser GNU General Public License (GPL and LGPL)

LinuxCNC provides:

• several graphical user interfaces including one for touch screens
• an interpreter for "G-code" (the RS-274 machine tool programming language)
• a realtime motion planning system with look-ahead
• operation of low-level machine electronics such as sensors and motor drives
• an easy to use "breadboard" layer for quickly creating a unique configuration for your machine
• a software PLC programmable with ladder diagrams
• easy installation with .deb packages or a Live-CD

It does not provide drawing (CAD - Computer Aided Design) or G-code generation from the drawing (CAM - Computer Automated Manufacturing) functions.

• It can simultaneously move up to 9 axes and supports a variety of interfaces.
• The control can operate true servos (analog or PWM) with the feedback loop closed by the LinuxCNC software at the computer, or open loop with "step-servos" or stepper motors.
• Motion control features include: cutter radius and length compensation, path deviation limited to a specified tolerance, lathe threading, synchronized axis motion, adaptive feedrate, operator feed override, and constant velocity control.
• Support for non-Cartesian motion systems is provided via custom kinematics modules. Available architectures include hexapods (Stewart platforms and similar concepts) and systems with rotary joints to provide motion such as PUMA or SCARA robots.
• LinuxCNC runs on Linux using real time extensions. Support currently exists for version 2.4 and 2.6 Linux kernels with real time extensions applied by RT-Linux or RTAI patches.