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ITIL, as mentioned previously does a good job of discussing IT from the perspective of the people that make decisions such as the creation of a new department and how they would prefer to interact with such a department. That said, it is rational only at a large scale where such abstractions are necessary to manage people in the absence of more personal relationships. As such, it can provide you with an understanding that will help you communicate with the decision makers about how your suggested organizational change will serve their purposes.

The following will likely be relatively unintelligible to the powers that be but the reason for rationalizing (or not) the separation of IT into a distinct organizational structure is the separation of concerns (suggested reading). More specifically: the concerns of an IT department are very different than the concerns of an engineering department. In order to better define and understand the IT needs of the organization, a separate organization will serve the purpose of better meeting those needs. Of course the risk of this is that either of the engineering or IT organizations will become blind to the concerns of the other through organizational dysfunction in the form of an "us vs. them" mentality (clearly given some of the comments here, this isn't unreasonable to expect [as you've noted]) or reduced communication and collaboration. Therefore, if such a division is to occur, it will be important to those approving of it that strategies are in place to address such possibilities: that the change will bring greater value to the organization as a whole over the alternative. If the concepts and changes are rolled out properly, the engineers will be glad not to have to deal with the day to day tasks of IT operations as it will free them up to remain more focused on their own concerns and IT can be glad to have independence to do their job well and grow in their ability to do so as well as to gain a distinct voice in the discussion of how to support value creation in the organization.

In such considerations, the size of the organization is key. In small organizations, the greater efficiency of having single individuals playing multiple roles requires the fusion of roles. As organizations grow, the separation of responsibilities that allows those responsibilities to be performed with greater skill, sophistication, and complexity begins to outweigh that initial efficiency. You will have to answer for yourself where your organization falls on the spectrum of size and what the trade offs of separation look like or else you will be unprepared to answer the questions and concerns of your management.

Based on your communication, it would seem that you have already identified some key consequences of the lack of separation and those will serve as good pieces of the rationale you can present. It would also seem that you have established a reasonable amount of trust and authority for yourself with the organization. It will be important that you remember that the things which seem obvious to you are clear in your mind because you think about and deal with them on a regular basis. The people you'll be talking with do not think about or deal with those things and they like it that way. You will be asking them to think about these things that they don't want to think about so it will be key that they feel you've thought through the change to maintain the trust you've built as well as supporting further trust that you are trying to better serve the needs of the organization. Part of that should include being up front about your own desires to head the new department but you'll likely not want to emphasize that too much - the fact that you're developing these ideas and considering these concerns presents you as the natural choice for the position so it will be yours to lose if they buy in to the change.

Best of luck in creating your new position and department as well as supporting your organization's success.

1. Having variable length instructions complicates instruction decoding, which cost die space and cycles (once for actual decoding and once for instructions spanning fetch boundaries). Also several processor architectures save 16-bit instructions (ARM, SH, MIPS, TI C6x off the top of my head), still having access to 16 general purpose registers as x86-64 with its up to 16 byte insns.

Yes, those are the standard arguments against variable length instructions. But both Intel and AMD use extra marker bits to mark the instruction boundaries, which removes the extra-cycles penalty. I'd argue that the extra area with the marker bits is *still* smaller than wasting area on non-compressed instructions. With the cycle penalty gone, now you're just left with a die size argument for the initial decode hardware and the cross-fetch-boundary hardware. I'll argue that that area cost is absolutely minimal. I also named an advantage: increased performance due to higher ICache hit rate for the same ICache size. I'll take that advantage over the die size disadvantage every time.

2. Load-op insns and many others are split up internally in smaller micro-ops. They are about as useful as assembler macros. Load-op insns are also hurting performance - for example on Intel processors load-op are split on two mops, one of which is dispatched to port 2, which means that two load-ops cannot by dispatched on the same cycle, whereas up to three simple ops can can be dispatched in one cycle.

Sandy Bridge and all AMD processors since K7 do it with a single micro-op.

3. AVX is good, having the same style for general purpose insns is better.

Good thing AVX is extensible.

4. Dedicated SP engine is a solution to a problem, which does not exist on common RISC architectures anyway. The dependency, which is eliminated by the stack pointer tracker is the dependency of a push/pop insn on that value of SP, which is a result of a previous push/pop. There's no such dependency if simple moves to/from memory (e.g. `movq %rbx, 10(%rsp)') are used as in typical RISC (or in x86 too). Also ARM (and THUMB) can save/restore multiple registers on stack with a single insn, so no dependency there either.

RISC still needs to maintain a stack pointer/frame pointer register for function calls. This maintenance, which requires using general purpose instructions like add/sub/mov, is what causes the false dependence. You haven't addressed how to remove this dependence in RISC.

5. The advantage of 64-bit address space for an architecture, traditionally targeted at embedded and mobile applications is quite dubious.

ARM has been making a lot of noise about getting into servers. Servers as I understand them today really do want true 64-bit addressing.

Make no mistake, x86-64 CPUs are good because the manufacturing process is good and not because, but despite the ISA.

x86 has no merits, but just age old quirks, which are solved by throwing in a ton of additional logic and gigahertz. x86-64 CPUs are good because x86 CPU designers are pretty smart. I would say that x86 ISA has little impact on the quality of the CPU. Likewise, RISC ISA has little to no impact on the quality of the CPU. See this paper for an example.

If you are traveling out I-10 near Fort Davis, TX is the McDonald Observatory.

http://www.as.utexas.edu/mcdonald/
http://mcdonaldobservatory.org/


They have special programs available to the public with evening viewing.

The McDonald Observatory is way out in the middle of nowhere by design, so it might not seem worth hitting, but you shouldn't miss it. Placed at the highest point on the Texas highway system in the clear desert air and in a black-out zone where they keep people from 20 miles around from having lights on at night, you'll reliably see the best stars in the continental US. Come to a star party, and they have half a dozen telescopes set up on major sky sites 3 nights a week. A few times a year, you can view through either the 107 inch, 82 inch, or 36 inch research telescopes. Come during the day to tour the 433 inch telescope, one of the largest in the world. If you can, stay at the inexpensive Astronomer's Lodge and hang out with the astronomers doing research there.

I heard about this through my mother (a former high-school English teacher) and took several days out of vacation (we live in Chicago) to travel there with my wife (an HR exec). Both of them thought it was fantastically worthwhile, so imagine how good it was for science geeks like us.

The McDonald Observatory is way out in the middle of nowhere by design, so it might not seem worth hitting, but you shouldn't miss it. Placed at the highest point on the Texas highway system in the clear desert air and in a black-out zone where they keep people from 20 miles around from having lights on at night, you'll reliably see the best stars in the continental US. Come to a star party, and they have half a dozen telescopes set up on major sky sites 3 nights a week. A few times a year, you can view through either the 107 inch, 82 inch, or 36 inch research telescopes. Come during the day to tour the 433 inch telescope, one of the largest in the world. If you can, stay at the inexpensive Astronomer's Lodge and hang out with the astronomers doing research there.

I heard about this through my mother (a former high-school English teacher) and took several days out of vacation (we live in Chicago) to travel there with my wife (an HR exec). Both of them thought it was fantastically worthwhile, so imagine how good it was for science geeks like us.

From utexas.edu:

Estimated Total Cost of Undergraduate Education (Fall 2010 - Spring 2011) Texas resident on-campus $23,596 - 24,936 Texas resident off-campus $23,734 - 25,074 Non-resident on-campus $35,776 - 45,960 Non-resident off-campus $35,914 - 46,098

This is a tax-supported state school, although probably one of the more expensive ones.

"In 2011-12, public four-year colleges charge, on average, $8,244 in tuition and fees for in-state students. The average surcharge for full-time out-of-state students at these institutions is $12,526. Private nonprofit four-year colleges charge, on average, $28,500 per year in tuition and fees."
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/pay/add-it-up/4494.html

I can't find the link right now but when room and board is considered I believe the average cost of a 4-year college or university is $13 per year.

Estimated Total Cost of Undergraduate Education (Fall 2010 - Spring 2011)

Texas resident on-campus $23,596 - 24,936
Texas resident off-campus $23,734 - 25,074
Non-resident on-campus $35,776 - 45,960
Non-resident off-campus $35,914 - 46,098

This is a tax-supported state school, although probably one of the more expensive ones.

Roman life expectancy had little to do with their medicine. They had a cultural practice of infant exposure. They would kill unhealthy (born) children. Naturally this affected the statistics for life expectancy at birth. Roman life expectancy at age 5 was 48, higher than almost anywhere else at the time. It was deliberate. And it produced the most dominant military force the world has ever seen.

They also had a cultural practice of cutting unborn children from mothers who died in childbirth. This produced people with unnaturally large heads. Again, deliberate. And today known as Caesarian section. Roman surgeons were excellent, as a result of, again, warfare.

In short, Romans were the world's preeminent genetic engineers. They probably affected your life expectancy for the better, and may even be responsible for you being able to type on magic computing boxes to people halfway around the globe right now.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that your entire premise is complete nonsense, and that given adequate resources and moderately high standard of living, the vast majority of people would tend to live long and healthy lives even without modern medicine.

Science must necessarily be cruel.

There was new data this year indicating subsurface water ice from two synthetic radars (SHARAD and MARSIS at different frequencies on two different landers).
They have estimates for the volume and placement of the ice as well.
http://www.jsg.utexas.edu/news/feats/2010/mars_glaciers.html

An original finding from 2002 based on a single Gamma Ray Spectrometer instrument showed excess Hydrogen...
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2002/28may_marsice/

And now even more extensive results from long term surface studies... I find the recent subsurface radar measurements most compelling.

Your not gonna work for fb anytime soon sorry I can't be any nicer about it

http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/faculty/pennebaker/reprints/Deception.pdf

I think part of the challenge is thinking outside the box towards stuff like this link.

I'd start by writing a dictionary table of lying words and query off that and I'd also try and research other things in the realm of psychology that indicate when somebody is lying in their phrasing or not.

If you think the only part to coding is the code itself, then at least you know where you now stand.

Your slipping. And i don't believe for a second you have researched, read or listened to anything from him. It would be impossible to reach your conclusions if you did.

Propagandist : Regan supports apartheid.
Reagan: Bullshit. http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1986/092686h.htm

A favorite trick of the Democrats is to create a bill that says one thing but stuff it full of misguided, misleading shit. When the president refuses to sign on, they love to say "why he doesn't support X". Its a lie. Its propaganda and it takes you all of two seconds to get the real story behind it. Stop being so damn lazy.

Oh little one. I am so disappointed in you. You had a choice. Carefully research and validate your accusations before making them or blindly run with the first thing you think validates your position. You chose to be lazy and reach deep into the propaganda well. All you managed to do was validate my point and make an utter ass out of yourself.

The propagandist preys on your laziness. We all know that Reagans speeches and writings are publicly available and easily searchable. (Look. Its easy http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/search/speeches/speech_srch.html . Try searching for civil rights) But your so well trained, they also know you wont look. You will rely on them to interpret it for you. Your intellectually weak and they know it.

Had you taken a second, you would have come across multiple references that refute your claims. How about his own words on the subject? A reported once asked him this directly:

Q. Mr. President, in the sixties you opposed all civil rights legislation, but more recently you said that you were a part of the Martin Luther King revolution. If that is the case, why is your administration so bent on wiping out the flexible hiring goals for blacks, minorities, and women? And I'd like to follow up.
The President. Helen, we're not wanting to do that. But we have seen in administering these programs, we've seen that the affirmative action program was becoming a quota system. Now, I've lived long enough to have seen quotas when they were employed long before there was a civil rights movement, when they were employed in my youth to definitely discriminate and use the quota as a means of discrimination. And, therefore, we feel that, yes, we want affirmative action to continue. We want what I think Martin Luther King asked for: We want a colorblind society. The ideal will be when we have achieved the moment when no one -- or when nothing is done to or for anyone because of race, differences, or religion, or ethnic origin; and it's done not because of those things but in spite of them.

Or Gee. How about this?

Q. You have strong views about civil rights. What are your views on goals and timetables?
The President. Well, as I said before, I think that we must have a colorblind society. Things must be done for people neither because of nor in spite of any differences between us in race, ethnic origin, or religion. And it's so easy to fall into a bureaucratic practice of saying, ``Well, isn't this the easiest thing? Let's just tell them they have to have x number and that'll settle it.'' Well, let me give you an example. Recently here in the East -- and I won't name the locale -- we had a public housing apartment, and they had on their own set a quota. And the quota was for 30 percent black. Now, they didn't get 70 percent white; they had empty units. And yet because their quota was full, they were turning away every black applicant that came to the public housing because of their quota. This is the type of thing that we want to stop. And it isn't government policy. Again, as I say, you have to recognize that when you go down far enough in the echelons of bureaucracy, things can take place that you find you are almost helpless to stop.

What do you know. Oh so many. Here is another:

Q. Mr. President, are you at all concerned about an apparent continuing perception among a number of black leaders that the White House continues to be, if not hostile, at least not welcome to black viewpoints, and that administration policies are working to widen the income gap between blacks and whites, and also increase black unemployment?
The President. I'm aware of all of that. And it's very disturbing to me, because anyone who knows my life story, knows that long before there was even a thing called the civil rights movement, I was busy on that side. As a sports announcer I didn't have any Willie Mays or Reggie Jacksons to talk about when I w

No, this is an NSF Petascale "Track 2" project like TACC's earlier Ranger system or NICS' Kraken system, whereas Blue Waters was/is the NSF Petascale "Track 1" project. Same basic idea, slightly different pots of money.

(Disclaimer: I work for NICS.)

--t

Remember how awful the economy was when Clinton was president? Eight horrible years of peace and prosperity, thank God that's long gone.
Going back as far as 1950, higher top marginal rates are (weakly) correlated with improved economic growth, not reduced economic growth ( http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/archives/002279.html ).

Remember how awful the economy was when Clinton was president? Eight horrible years of peace and prosperity, thank God that's long gone.
Going back as far as 1950, higher top marginal rates are (weakly) correlated with improved economic growth, not reduced economic growth ( http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/archives/002279.html ).

kills more users per capita than the illegal stuff.

You probably don't like it when people mix and twist sets of statistics, cherry-pick and paraphrase the conclusions so they agree with their viewpoint, eh? Seems like most /.ers dislike that.

What you've just done here is a prime example of statistics abuse.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6001a12.htm
What percent of people properly using prescription drugs were killed by them? Seems to me you are glossing over the fact that the legal vs illegal death rate change was due to overdoses of legal meds. The CDCs definition counts improperly-acquired oxycodone, causing overdose fatalities as a "legal drug" death.

http://www.utexas.edu/research/cswr/gcattc/documents/PrescriptionTrends_Web.pdf

Kids downing hydrocodone and diazepam at raves.... they don't get that from their doctors. But is sure is tempting to include their statistics in with the "legal drugs are more dangerous than crack and meth!!!1!" numbers.

Dear Rush Limbaugh, ShakaUVM, and many other climate change contrarians,

Last year, Dr. Xiaoping (Frank) Wu et al. published a paper which claimed that the present day mass trends (PDMTs) of regions such as Antarctica and Greenland had been overestimated in previous studies because their glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) corrections weren't large enough.

... [Dr. Wu's] “GIA estimated” uses GPS and GRACE to simultaneously solve for GIA and PDMT. For Greenland, "GIA estimated" has a PDMT of -104 +- 23 Gt/yr. [Dr. Wu's] "GIA corrected" uses GRACE alone to solve for PDMT, correcting for GIA using the widespread ICE-5G model. For Greenland, "GIA corrected" has a PDMT of -161 +- 35 Gt/yr. These new estimates are compared to Velicogna's Greenland PDMT of -234 +- 33 Gt/yr over the same timespan.

In that same comment, I explained that Dr. Wu's estimates of Greenland's mass loss rate conflict with several other GRACE estimates, measurements that subtract ice discharge from surface mass balance, laser altimetry, radar interferometry, and other empirical evidence regarding ice history since the Last Glacial Maximum. I even suggested some potential areas of improvement in Dr. Wu's algorithm, including the statement "I suspect this effective sensitivity kernel wouldn’t be smooth, and that the “GIA corrected” PDMT estimate is too small because (for instance) it overweights the mass gain in the interior and/or underweights mass loss on the coasts."

Then, at the GRACE science team meeting earlier this month, Xiaoping Wu revised his numbers. For Greenland, "GIA estimated" now has a PDMT of -144 +- 27 Gt/yr. For Greenland, "GIA corrected" now has a PDMT of -219 +- 33 Gt/yr.

After his presentation, I asked Dr. Wu what changed in his methodology to make his new numbers more closely match those of Velicogna, Chen, Luthcke, and all the other non-GRACE measurement techniques. He said that he expanded his sensitivity kernel to 0.5 degrees off the coast of Greenland because secular trends in the ocean are very small compared to land. Thus his new inversion doesn't underweight the mass loss (as much), because it's occurring primarily on the coasts.

So after Dr. Wu fixed one of the issues I mentioned, his "GIA corrected" PDMT increased from 68% to 93% of Velicogna's Greenland PDMT. His "GIA estimated" PDMT has increased from 44% to 61% of Velicogna's Greenland PDMT.

Rush Limbaugh, do you regret calling GRACE research a "sham" and a "hoax" (four times) based on numbers that are being corrected as we speak? Do you regret calling for climate scientists to be drawn and quartered because you fell for the overhyped and manufactured drama called climategate? Do you regret weaving that conspiracy theory into your attacks against me and my colleagues by saying that we "forgot to hide the decline"?

So you're saying I'm right, then. "-144 +- 27 Gt/yr" is nowhere close to "-219 +- 33 Gt/yr" [ShakaUVM]

1. You probably meant to compare Dr. Wu's -144 +- 27 Gt/yr "GIA estimated" PDMT to Velicogna's -234 +- 33 Gt/yr Greenland PDMT. The comparison you actually wrote makes no sense; you're comparing the revised numbers from one of Dr. Wu's techniques (GIA estimated) to the revised numbers from another of Dr. Wu's techniques (GIA corrected).
2. This is the fourth time you've claimed that I agree with your libelous smears. I've already asked you to stop. Please do so.
3. When you accused

Last year, Dr. Xiaoping (Frank) Wu et al. published a paper which claimed that the present day mass trends (PDMTs) of regions such as Antarctica and Greenland had been overestimated in previous studies:

... [Dr. Wu's] “GIA estimated” uses GPS and GRACE to simultaneously solve for GIA and PDMT. For Greenland, "GIA estimated" has a PDMT of -104 +- 23 Gt/yr. [Dr. Wu's] "GIA corrected" uses GRACE alone to solve for PDMT, correcting for GIA using the widespread ICE-5G model. For Greenland, "GIA corrected" has a PDMT of -161 +- 35 Gt/yr. These new estimates are compared to Velicogna's Greenland PDMT of -234 +- 33 Gt/yr over the same timespan.

At the GRACE science team meeting earlier this month, Xiaoping Wu revised his numbers. For Greenland, "GIA estimated" now has a PDMT of -144 +- 27 Gt/yr. For Greenland, "GIA corrected" now has a PDMT of -219 +- 33 Gt/yr.

After his presentation, I asked Dr. Wu what changed in his methodology to make his new numbers more closely match those of Velicogna, Chen, Luthcke, and all the other non-GRACE measurement techniques. He said that he expanded his sensitivity kernel to 0.5 degrees off the coast of Greenland because secular trends in the ocean are very small compared to land. Thus his new inversion doesn't underweight the mass loss (as much), because it's occurring primarily on the coasts.

I took a picture of the slide in his presentation which contains these revisions, but it's illegible. When the GRACE meeting slides appear on the web (hopefully later this month), I'll share the address of these slides and the exact slide number so my report of his revisions can be verified.

After watching this simulation of a computerized intersection, I would say that the situation at the street level would mean the end of airbags in cars, and the introduction of anti-pants-shitting technology for the passengers.

The group's videos page with their approach and statistics is quite good as well.

How is it abuse when the data is supposedly collected in an anonymizing fashion?

anonymizing social data is extremely hard. If you're confident that the dataset is sufficiently anonymized, then you've probably erased all of the interesting data.

It was Dana Ballard. IIRC, the work that I referred to was done when he was at Rochester. He seems to have a link to the peanut butter and jelly video up on his page, but I am not able to download it.

I couldn't gather much from TFA apart from that they recognized the activities and the learning model behind it. I don't recall how much training data Dr. Ballard used, but the activity recognition in real time was very accurate.

Yes, it certainly is too bad that NASA doesn't do anything anymore.

(Sorry if I left out your favorite misson; there's just so many.)

I posted the following comment on neuroskeptic about this article:
`"Noteworthy was the high frequency of agent-slotting exchanges between the hospital boss, Joe, and the Mafia boss, Vito, and parallel confusions between the “I” self-reference and underling Mafia members, suggesting generalization of boss/underling relationships."

For the model to recognize these types of relationships, the authors would have had to explicitly tag these agents as possessing either these qualities the constituent elements of these qualities. In either case, it's easy to imagine post-hoc biases in the model's "memory encoder" that generate just-so results without actually reflecting the biological or theoretical underpinnings.
How these relationships are assessed by the "memory encoder" and the "story parser" has much to do with the way features are associated with lexemes. From http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/?miikkulainen:phd:
"Processing in DISCERN is based on hierarchically-organized backpropagation modules, communicating through a central lexicon of word representations. The lexicon is a double feature map, which transforms the orthographic word symbol into its semantic representation and vice versa."`
(http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2011/04/schizophrenic-computer.html)

A judgement of this article depends largely on whether the parser assigns meaning with a result (at the very least, or, given that the goal is to model schizophrenia, in a way) that's compatible with the output (or processes) of human linguistic cognition.

Then why does Wikipedia say this:

Xerox did go to trial to protect the Star user interface. In 1989, after Apple sued Microsoft for copyright infringement of its Macintosh user interface in Windows, Xerox filed a similar lawsuit against Apple; however, it was thrown out because a three year statute of limitations had passed. (Apple eventually lost its lawsuit in 1994, losing all claims to the user interface).[15]

???

Please give your citation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star
http://www.me.utexas.edu/~me179/topics/copyright/case2.html
https://www.abanet.org/antitrust/at-journal/pdf/abstracts/v68-I3/v68-I3-abstract-06.pdf

From what I've ever read, Xerox licensed Apple a few limited pieces of the UI for the Lisa and never for the Macintosh.

Xerox was, however, under a consent decree limiting what types of inventions they could patent and profit from (kind of like AT&T with Unix). They lost their suit over the Mac because of a statute of limitations.

Please enlighten me to where the Macintosh UI license from Xerox is.

Of course, over the years we've had varying tax rates, and varying rates of (inflation-adjusted) economic growth. Plot the data from 1950-2009, and you see that highest-marginal tax rates are not a large factor in economic growth (in fact, you see a weak positive correlation between tax rates and economic growth).

It is surely complicated, I will grant you that, which is why I always like to check theory, with data.

By-the-way, what makes you think you know how other people think? I can't speak for other people, but I don't think that's a good way to start a civil discussion.

Why were you going into bars and restaurants where people smoked, if you found it so unpleasant? There are more restaurants that do not allow smoking pretty much everywhere you go in the country.

Right, as if we had a choice?

There are more restaurants that do not allow smoking pretty much everywhere you go in the country. Before they banned restaurant/bar smoking here in Virginia, about 65% of all restaurants were already smoke-free.

Sorry to be so confrontational, but that's, well, a bunch of made up sounding BS. Either that, or we live in completely different worlds. There were ZERO bars and restaurants that banned smoking before city-wide ordinances banning smoking indoors took effect.

If your Virginia numbers are to be believed, it would follow that they were seeing the successes of other city business where smoking bans were in effect, and imposed their own bans on their own. They can't help it if their city isn't progressive enough to understand the benefits of promoting smoke free public conveyances.

Your claims are bogus. I'm a gigging musician and I've lived in cities before and after smoking bans went into effect. Austin, TX, for example, has enjoyed an even more robust nightlife since the smoking ban. The high end of occupancy increased from 230 to 307 people, on average AFTER the smoking ban went into effect (and save your correlation/causation argument).

  http://www.caee.utexas.edu/prof/Siegel/papers/conference/waring_2006_ets_article_HB_conference_submit.pdf

According to the article http://fastrac.ae.utexas.edu/our_satellites/operation.php it orbits at 650KM. That is higher than the Hubble which is at 595Km. Maybe you should check your figures before posting.

The satellites were launched by a Minotaur IV rocket from Alaska.
These rockets are derived from converted old Minuteman/Peacekeeper ICBMs.
Despite that, the launch costs of such a rocket can still be $40-50 million
So, unless you can score a free ride for your doohickey, it ain't so cheap.

Do you mean this speech? or this letter? (Dijkstra's unsubstantiated list of aphorisms.)

Oh, yeah. Neither of them mention GOTO -- that's just in the one letter I linked to above.

Funny that it doesn't mention BASIC at all...

It looks to me like the GP is still wrong.

Do you mean this speech? or this letter? (Dijkstra's unsubstantiated list of aphorisms.)

Oh, yeah. Neither of them mention GOTO -- that's just in the one letter I linked to above.

Funny that it doesn't mention BASIC at all...

It looks to me like the GP is still wrong.

THAT was what Dijkstra was complaining about.

Try actually reading the Dijkstra letter in question.

Now do you see how totally wrong you are?

I actually did think for myself when I rejected GOTO.

Did you reject GOTO as a way to forever avoid writing anything in assembly?

I actually went back and read the "GOTO considered harmful" essay.

Yeah, Dijkstra was *pissed* that Wirth changed the title. -- You know, because it misrepresents the content of the letter. (letter with original title)

Can you provide an example of when goto is appropriate -- in particular, when it's appropriate to use a goto rather than actually structured programming, or even a safer option like break, return, or throw?

Why, Yes, I can. How about an example from the Linux kernel which is very well defended by Linus Torvalds? Good enough for you?

Dijkstra was dead wrong on that (as is evident by the millions of programmers who learned BASIC on their micros in the 80's) -- He was just hating on BASIC without reason. (Really, he never gave a reason for his anti-basic screed in that speech.)

Now, you seem to be under the impression that he was railing against GOTO (he wasn't) -- you're thinking of Niklaus Wirth (who made up the "GOTO considered harmful" title to a Dijkstra letter --which Dijkstra took exception to! Read the original letter it's more about misuse of goto in structured languages than anything else.)

I challenge anyone spreading the "BASIC is the suck" or "BASIC will destroy your brain" meme to offer a legitimate reason for their beliefs. (None of this "it teaches you bad habits" rhetorical nonsense. If that's your reason, you've got to list those "bad habits" and explain how BASIC forces or encourages you to adopt them.)

So far, no one has tried. It seems that no one has ever bothered to justify their irrational belief.

Dijkstra was dead wrong on that (as is evident by the millions of programmers who learned BASIC on their micros in the 80's) -- He was just hating on BASIC without reason. (Really, he never gave a reason for his anti-basic screed in that speech.)

Now, you seem to be under the impression that he was railing against GOTO (he wasn't) -- you're thinking of Niklaus Wirth (who made up the "GOTO considered harmful" title to a Dijkstra letter --which Dijkstra took exception to! Read the original letter it's more about misuse of goto in structured languages than anything else.)

I challenge anyone spreading the "BASIC is the suck" or "BASIC will destroy your brain" meme to offer a legitimate reason for their beliefs. (None of this "it teaches you bad habits" rhetorical nonsense. If that's your reason, you've got to list those "bad habits" and explain how BASIC forces or encourages you to adopt them.)

So far, no one has tried. It seems that no one has ever bothered to justify their irrational belief.

Look at this as an example and cower in fear: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~aim/?p=video ( http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~aim/video/fcfs-insanity.mov )

Look at this as an example and cower in fear: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~aim/?p=video ( http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~aim/video/fcfs-insanity.mov )

I can tell it's truly News for Nerds because I can barely understand what it's saying and it drops causal references to advanced mathematics

I recommend you start visiting arXiv then.

Are you suggesting the OP, a self-described interested lay person, learns or even mere follow mathematic research by reading arXiv? If so, WTF!?

arXiv is a pre-print archive of original research articles, not exactly a welcoming place for a non-mathematician (or non-subject specialist, e.g. physics, and computer science also use it). Even with an undergrad degree in mathematics, I find it a difficult (and/or useless) place to try to follow progress in the field, without the editorial assistants to filter the wheat from the chaff. And I've been reading original (first source) research papers since the mid-1990s in multiple research disciplines.

You might as well ask him to read Euclid's Elements in its original Greek. Heck, after the translation, it would be more accessible, as it is intended to be a textbook for learning.

I would rather suggest, try reading some of the mathematics journals that are intended to be more accessible, such as from MAA and AMS societies. Some are aimed at students of two-year and four-year "colleges" (aka polytechs / technical colleges and universities), while others are just interesting yet often accessible, such as Journal of Recreational Mathematics and Mathematics Magazine and online columns such as Kevin Devlin's Devlin's Angle.

In the more general sense, I would recommend popular math writers such as Ian Stewart, Simon Singh, Paul J. Nahin, the recently deceased Martin Gardner (slashdot), and many more authors that I cannot recall.

Unfortunately I can't think of any pop-math books or articles on linear algebra, in the vein of "e: The Story of a Number" (Maor), "An Imaginary Tale" (Nahin), "Flatland" (Abbott), "Flatterland" (Stwart), "A Mathematician's Apology" (Hardy), "Fermat's Last Theorm" / "Fermat's Engima" (US) (Singh), "Does God Play Dice?" (Stewart), "Chaos" (Gleick), and many others.

To wit, mathematics is I believe the only discipline where fourth year undergrad students take third or fourth year courses with "introduction" or "elementary" in their course titles. But I digress. My point is that one "problem" is that given mathematics long history, and that is has fascinated people across cultures throughout history, the subject has accumulated such a vast body of knowledge, so it is difficult to get a firm understanding on every field within mathematics. So feeling overwhelmed with all the facts and fields to learn is normal.

... the study takes into account a rebounding of the Earth's crust called glacial isostatic adjustment, a continuing rise of the crust after being smashed under the weight of the Ice Age. [Slashdot summary]

Here the summary implies that previously published GRACE ice mass balance estimates didn't take GIA into account. At first I assumed this ridiculous implication must have been a mistake on Slashdot's part. Then I read the article:

... according to the new study, published in the September issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, the ice estimates fail to correct for a phenomenon known as glacial isostatic adjustment. ... Often ignored or considered a minor factor in previous research, post-glacial rebound turns out to be important, says the paper. [AFP, Sep 8]

No, previous research didn't ignore (see section 2.2.4) GIA/PGR. These news stories are reporting on a paper by Xiaoping Wu et al. (free PDF). In table 2, Dr. Wu shows that his estimates are half as big as those in papers published separately by Velicogna, Chen et al. and Luthcke et al.

Luthcke et al. corrects for GIA using the ICE-5G model which combines many proxies and other empirical evidence regarding ice history since the Last Glacial Maximum, mantle viscosity and the Earth's various Love numbers. Chen et al. used the similar IJ05 model. Velicogna used multiple independent models to estimate uncertainty in the GIA signal. After reading Dr. Wu's paper, it's clear he never claimed that previous research had ignored or failed to correct for GIA.

That would have been a real surprise, because he wouldn't make a claim that can be disproven simply by skimming the papers he referenced. Nor is he rude enough (or at all, for that matter) to imply that the rest of the GRACE community ignored this important issue. Coincidentally, Dr. Wu worked for my advisor as a postdoc in the 1990s, in the same office that I'm currently using. I met him several months ago at the WP-AGU conference in Taiwan, and as far as I can tell he's overwhelmed by the bizarre attention his paper has gotten from the general public:

RUSH: There's a global warming story out. Guess what? Greenland and some of the ice floes, they're only going to melt half as much as originally forecast. So the polar bears are still going to have a place to live. I don't think they're going to melt, period. All of this is a sham.

"Estimates of the rate of ice loss from Greenland and West Antarctica, one of the most worrying questions in the global warming [hoax], should be halved, according to Dutch and US scie

No guerilla force will survive for a week under those conditions.

Nazis played by those rules, and yet the resistance were active for years. Slaughtering a village full of innocent people in retaliation for the killing of a soldier does not stop the resistance. Instead, it encourages others to covertly work against you.

Any civilian is only protected as long as he can keep both fighting forces away from himself and his house.

Bullshit. The Geneva Convention Additional Protocols (signed by the U.S. in 1977, endorsed by Ronald Reagan, and accepted as binding on non-signatories by the U.N. Security Council, of which the U.S. is a part), Protocol 1, Articles 50 and 51 make it clear that a commander has a duty to protect civilian life, even if it comes at the cost of exposing his troops to greater danger. The commander/soldier must be able to justify any military action that results in the loss of civilian life as being "reasonable" and "unavoidable" in the context of the military target. Article 50 ("Definition of Civilians and Civilian Population") makes it clear that civilians are to be protected, even if there are "unlawful combatants" within the population ("The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character.)

Article 50: Definition of Civilians and Civilian Population

1. A civilian is any person who does not belong to one of the categories of persons referred to in Article 4 A 111, lIl, (31 and 161 of the Third Convention and in Article 43 of this Protocol. In case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian.
2. The civilian population comprises all persons who are civilians.
3. The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character.

Article 51: Protection of the Civilian Population

1. The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against dangers arising from military operations. To give effect to this protection, the following rules, which are additional to other applicable rules of international law, shall be observed in all circumstances.
2. The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.
3. Civilians shall enjoy the protection afforded by this Section, unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.
4. Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are:
   1. those which are not directed at a specific military objective;
   2. those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or
   3. those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol; and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.
5. Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate:
   1. an attack by bombardment by any methods or means which treats as a single military objective a number of clearly separated and distinct military objectives located in a city, town, village or other area containing a similar concentration of civilians or civilian objects; and
   2. an attack which may be expected to cause incid

I wasn't aware of this scenario, so I read about it here: http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/rhodesprp/01_02/divide/dereg.htm#conseq. It does indeed seem that in this case, the government deregulation led to a worse market outcome.

The only point I can make of the government deregulating "improperly" is that they put up long-term frequency rights for auction, leading to most of them being bought by 3 companies. That is definitely regulation - only these 3 companies are allowed to use these frequencies. On the other hand, it seems the earlier, stricter regulation they had of short-term rights was better. Furthermore, I don't know what would happen if government had no part in enforcing any frequency rights. Would probably be a shitshow at first, then maybe companies would get together to figure it out.

Honestly Edsger Dykstra (RIP) said it best in his hand written paper "On the cruelty of really teaching computing science".
Link to a PDF of his handwritten paper.

A lot of research into addiction is focused on dopamine. http://www.utexas.edu/research/asrec/dopamine.html Drugs like Wellbutrin are classified as DRI's or Dopamine re-uptake inhibitors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine_reuptake_inhibitor SSRI's are meant to affect serotonin level's but can also affect dopamine level's. This is one reason why psychologists have started prescribing multiple medications to treat depression . Usually one SSRI and one DRI to maintain serotonin and dopamine levels So using anti-depressants to treat game addiction was bound to happen. I think that in our lifetime we will see drugs that will eliminate addiction all together (for those that are willing to take them).

Furthermore the article has no details on how the error bounds are calculated.

Good point, if you are interested in the details of the error bounds, please check out our preprints below, and the references cited therein.

http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/~peterson/articles/2010_rboomit_cmame_preprint.pdf
http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/~peterson/articles/2010_hafs.pdf

Furthermore the article has no details on how the error bounds are calculated.

Good point, if you are interested in the details of the error bounds, please check out our preprints below, and the references cited therein.

http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/~peterson/articles/2010_rboomit_cmame_preprint.pdf
http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/~peterson/articles/2010_hafs.pdf

"Oh and why do you capitalize the 'middle east'? Is it a country now, worthy of promotion to a proper noun?"

Doesn't need to be a country. Region names are capitalized when they stand alone and are widely understood to designate a specific geographic (or geopolitical) area. e.g. Southern California, the Bay Area, the Middle East.

http://www.utexas.edu/visualguidelines/capitalization.html

Should have been modded +4 Whoosh

"Oh and why do you capitalize the 'middle east'? Is it a country now, worthy of promotion to a proper noun?"

Doesn't need to be a country. Region names are capitalized when they stand alone and are widely understood to designate a specific geographic (or geopolitical) area. e.g. Southern California, the Bay Area, the Middle East.

http://www.utexas.edu/visualguidelines/capitalization.html

35 years is about 300k core-hours, a standard measure of computing resources. This is a big pile of computer time, but is not unreasonable.

So how much does this cost?

A typical supercomputer, Ranger, cost $59 million to build and operate for four years. It's got about 60k cores, so $59 million delivers 240k core-years; they used 35 core-years to do this computation. Doing the division, you get $9000 of computer time -- not all that bad. Plugging in the cost numbers for another production supercomputer, Kraken, gives a slightly lower cost.

You said it yourself, 40% of children failed to reach adulthood. Most numbers that are thrown around are the average at birth; the high infant mortality rates of the past lead to artificially low numbers (e.g. you have 6 babies, 4 of them die within a year but the remaining two live to be 65, your average expectancy is...well, a lot lower than 65, the math is more involved than I want to get atm). In Rome, the average expectancy was 24, but if you made it to 5 years old your new average was 48, more than enough time to bear and raise children even if you married in your mid-20s.

I suspect the early marriage of yore was so you could start producing children as soon as possible, to insure you could bear enough that at least one or two would make it through childhood and get to the point where they could reasonably expect to see 50.

I once had an artist explain to me that modern art is meta-art. The object itself is not art, the act of persuading someone else to accept that it is art and exchange money for it is art. When I walk around Tate Modern or the MOMA and look at all of the people appearing to enjoy the displays, I can't help thinking of this, and regarding them, rather than the pieces, as the works of art.

That said, I do like a lot of Piet Mondrian's work. As well as providing the inspiration for the only sane way of implementing memory protection yet proposed, and the only programming language where programs can literally be beautiful, he encoded mathematical jokes in a few of his paintings, which 90% of the people I see admiring them completely miss.