Evolution has not been demonstrated in a controlled experiment. Currently, it is a historical science, like solar system geology. Once someone does a falsifyable, controlled experiment that is peer reviewed, we should not consider it as strong a fact, as, say, atmoic theory.
And we haven't managed to create a planet in a controlled experiment either. That doesn't mean that we are completely unqualified to talk about where planets come from and how they form.
Besides, evolution has been demonstrated empirically. I recall reading of a study in which bacteria were induced to divide, given a certain amount of time to finish dividing, and then a chemical was administered to kill all the bacteria that were still in the process of dividing. This was repeated over and over, and the amount of time that they were permitted was decreased every time.
At the end of the experiment, the researchers were left with a new species of bacterium: one which had discarded virtually every part of its genetic code that was not absolutely critical to its ability to grow and divide. In selecting for division speed, the result was a bacterium that could successfully divide far faster than any normal bacterium, but which would have found itself outcompeted in other areas.
Viola. A new species, in a controlled experiment, generated by a process exactly analogous to natural selection. I'm sure you'll have some explanation as to why this experiment is irrelevant and doesn't satisfy your objections, and in that case I invite you to reread the first paragraph of my post.
Umm... in what sense? Animals survive if they are well-adapted to their environment, better able than their cohorts to secure food and mates, and lucky. The luck part has no preference, but the other two mechanisms favor the fit over the unfit, quite self-evidently. There's still no theory here.
If it's self-evident, why did it take humans tens of thousands of years to figure it out? Why are there still so many people that don't believe it?
"Touching hot coals is generally painful" is self-evident. The Theory of Evolution is not.
No one has bothered to even look to see if the rules by which our universe exists today are the same as a few million years ago, or a few billion years ago. How would you be able to tell that, say, the gravitational constant of the universe has been constant all along?
You are mistaken. There have been a number of studies done to try to determine if fundamental "constants" such as the speed of light are in fact constant.
It is, of course, very difficult to devise experiments to test such theories, but a number have been designed and performed. The phrase "no one has bothered to even look" comes up in other fields, such as paranormal research, and it is just as untrue there. Scientists would love to find evidence of (say) the gravitational constant changing, extraterrestrial organisms, or psychic power, and to suggest that they haven't even bothered to look is an insult to the field.
I always thought this was an interesting an odd part of modern science and cosmology. Why should we assume occam's razor, that simpler explanations are better? Why should the universe be simple and elegant?
You have misunderstood Occam's razor. It doesn't say that at all.
Occam's razor, in its original form, translates to "Do not multiply entities unnecessarily". That has been modernized to "The simplest explanation is usually correct", which is close, but not exactly the same.
What Occam's razor really means is: given two (or more) possible explanations of a phenomenon, with no evidence favoring one over the other, assume that the simplest one is correct.
For instance, if I find a pinecone lying on the ground under a pine tree, the simplest explanation is that it fell off of the pine tree. Sure, it might have been planted there by invisible space aliens in conjunction with the Illuminati acting in strict accordance with the Masonic doctrine of the Coming of the Pine Cone King, but since there is no evidence to favor one explanation over the other, I should assume that it fell off of the pine tree.
That doesn't mean that it did fall off the pine tree, and it doesn't mean that I might not change my mind as more evidence is found. It also doesn't mean that I shouldn't look for more evidence and try to determine the origin of the pine cone with greater accuracy. That isn't what it says at all. It just means that until such evidence arises which would cause me to revise my view of things, I should assume the simplest explanation that fits the facts. The explanation should only change when the known facts do, or a better explanation is found.
. Images are an especially important example. Values for images are generally RGB triplets ranging from 0-255. Doubling the memory footprint of all images on your computer would kill it real fast with all visual icons and everything that most people use.
I'm sorry, but I get the feeling that you haven't actually done image work using Java.
A) Most image storage / manipulation is done by the underlying libraries. They can use unsigned numbers internally if they want, and I don't care.
B) At the level where you get access to color information, you're generally dealing with RGB or ARGB ints, instead of either bytes or shorts. This has no effect on memory usage.
Still failing to see the problem.
Re:What does 'different mathmetics' mean?
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The Golden Ratio
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But if we were born with 13 fingers on each hand, then how would we work math?
Is that what he means by different mathmetics? When I think of it that way I come to the conclusion that at the core everything is equal. Seems to me that no matter what number system you use you could always convert it.
Yes, and no.
It is important to understand that we invented math. It wasn't just out there, on its own, waiting to be discovered.
We defined the number 1, and what it means. We defined the number 0, and what that means. We defined addition and multiplication, and the results of performing those operations on various numbers.
Now, you take a computer. Interesting enough, its "math" is not based on addition and subtraction. It's based on AND, OR, NOT, and so forth -- the basic bit-twiddling operations. And it's still able to do "our" math, despite the fact that "its" math is completely and utterly different. That's interesting, but not important, because the two mathematical systems are easily interchangeable.
However, it's easy to envision systems which are *not* easily interchangeable. Take imaginary numbers. Why is sqrt(-1) == i? Because we said "Let there be a number i such that i * i = -1". That's it. i is the square root of negative one because we said it is, and for no other reason. We could just as easily have said "there is no number i such that i * i = -1", and it would be just as valid of a way of looking at things. Sure, it would completely change the way we do higher math, but it would not be wrong. We made these constructs, and defined their behaviors, and they work the way we say they do.
What if an alien race had introduced a number q, such that q = [result of some other impossible operation], and then based half of their mathematics around it? That's exactly what we did with imaginary numbers. If we have i and they have q, and these two concepts have nothing to do with each other and aren't easily convertible, you've got two entirely different, but both perfectly valid, mathematical systems.
It's likely that all intelligent species will have pretty compatible basic arithmetic, but as soon as you get to higher-order math, all bets are off, because we will have defined the axioms differently.
We made math. Not the other way around. Don't ever be fooled into thinking so.
Just skip this and program in much better JVM based languages than Java:
Admittedly, I didn't even bother to look at either of the languages you point to, but it's irrelevant. Here in the real world, popularity matters. You could be using the best damned programming language in the entire world, and if you're the only one using it, good luck finding a job.
I'm not saying that we should hold back progress. If these languages are really better than Java, then by all means support them and encourage people to adopt them. That's not where you're wrong. Where you're wrong is saying that people should "skip" Java for these languages. That is, quite simply, insane, at least if you're trying to program for a living.
Now if they would just implement unsigned types (uint, ushort, uchar) the jvm could be used much more effectively for lots of things. Especially vision, graphics, and all kinds of numerical algorithms.
What difference does it make? The only times I have ever wanted unsigned datatypes were when talking to legacy libraries that use them. The legacy libraries didn't actually need to be using unsigned datatypes, they just were.
So, when the only pain I have ever experienced due to this lack is when talking to legacy code that uses it, and the legacy code would have been just as happy using signed datatypes if it had been written that way, I don't really see the big deal. Might as well just kill unsigned datatypes altogether, simplifying life for everybody down the road -- and that's exactly what Sun did. Good for them, I say.
Just out of pure interest, what do you use for your "low-volume" stuff?
My team uses JDK 1.4 with Tomcat and Apache running on Linux. I admit that we can't handle nearly the load that My Yahoo can, but low-volume for us still translates into ten million hits a day per server.
The high-volume properties like My Yahoo run a custom version of Apache on a custom version of BSD with a custom non-relational database backend. There is no off-the-shelf software that can even come close to handling Yahoo's traffic volume, unfortunately.
The lack of speed of virtual methods has NOTHING to do with processor technology. It is there because you MUST do a lookup at runtime (which there is absolutely no way to avoid). This will ALWAYS add overhead, regardless of processor technology. The only way to avoid this overhead while still having "reusability" is to have "compile-time virtual methods" (i.e. templates).
Oh. So basically, what you're trying to say is "I have no idea what I'm talking about!". I gotcha.
Absolutely no way to avoid? Hotspot keeps track of whether or not a particular method actually has multiple implementations (and thus really needs to be virtual) or not. If not, it can treat the method as if it were not virtual and, for instance, inline it.
The complication in doing so is that Java supports dynamic class loading -- you can load a class from anywhere at any time. Such a class might contain a new definition for a method, which suddenly makes a virtual-but-not-really method truly virtual, with multiple implementations. Hotspot is smart enough to realize this, find every method in which it has made an assumption that a method only had a single implementation, "deoptimize" them (throw away the compiled native code and go back to running Java bytecodes), and potentially reoptimize them.
And the really cool part is that it can do that even while the method is executing.
Now, why is it that people on/. insist on screaming "That's impossible!", even when something was implemented years ago? Seriously, if you're going to claim that something can't be done, please at least pick something that hasn't been done yet. That way there's actually the possibility of being correct.
Are you serious?? You should try to do some netowrk programming, say for example real time analysis of netowrk packets, see if java can handle a gigabit network...I didnt think so.
I work for Yahoo. Many of our web servers are powered by Java, and they're fast enough for us. Are you suggesting that your network performance needs are higher that frickin' Yahoo's?!?
I do freely admit that we don't use Java for the super-high-volume stuff like My Yahoo and Mail. But we're Yahoo. Even our low-volume properties are high volume. Java is fast enough to serve a lot of purposes around here.
It seems to me that as time goes on, the JVM specification adds functionality that can possibly exclude it from being ported to other platforms. With this new release, the whole "Shared memory between JVMs".. I am pretty sure there are some not-so-advanced or alternate-goal OS's that doesn't support these kind of things.
Sure, maybe the blame can be put on the author of the OS, but I know that the "write once, run anywhere" vision is starting to slip.
Please go read the spec before jumping to conclusions. "Shared memory between JVMs" is an implementation change, not a specification change. It is not required, and indeed from a running Java program you can't even tell that it is happening. All that changes is that your memory usage is lower and your startup time is faster.
What trademark issues? It's entirely legal for two companies to use similar marks, so long as there does not exist a significant potential for consumer confusion. Bob McDonald's Auto Repair, for instance, isn't in any danger from the restaurant chain. A relevant precedent is the case of Apple Computer and Apple Records, both of which got to keep using their marks.
Now, clearly the Xbox and NeXT exist in a similar market, unlike Apple Computer and Apple Records. But NeXT computers aren't being manufactured or sold anymore. How the hell can you get confused into thinking that an Xbox Next would have anything to do with NeXT computers? We're not talking about a recognizable, clear brand here (such as "Atari"), we're talking about a simple English word -- it's much more difficult to get confused into thinking that the two marks are related.
All of this is assuming, of course, that someone actually owns the trademark on NeXT and it is still valid. Considering that the computers are not being manufactured anymore, it is entirely possible that this is not the case.
I am utterly failing to be either surprised or alarmed.
OH NO! THEY CAN TELL THAT LOTS OF PEOPLE WATCHED THAT SCENE! DEAR LORD, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
Ummmm... so? Yes, I would be concerned if they said "Matt Hooper, 26, of Colorado Springs replayed the Janet Jackson breast scene a record 126 times. Sales statistics in the area also show an unusual spike in hand lotion and tissue purchases."
They haven't said that, or anything remotely resembling that. They have said "Tivo users watched this particular segment of the Superbowl more than anything else." So?
Yes, Tivo could do something horrible with my personal information. But then again, Hustler could also publish a big long list of everybody that subscribes to it, complete with home addresses, but they don't. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but at some point we just have to have some level of trust in other people. Tivo has said that my information is kept anonymous, and has given me no reason to doubt their word, so I don't see a big problem with trusting them.
And before you start the "oh-my-god-what-an-idiot-for-trusting-a-big-compan y" standard Slashdot response, think about what you have trusted companies with. How many companies have your name and address? Your home phone number? Your bank account information? Your credit card information? Why did you trust them with such information, if no companies can ever be trusted?
If you have used a credit card, you must trust every single store at which you have ever swiped your credit card at least as much as I trust Tivo. If you have ever applied for a loan, you've coughed up your bank account information. And you're worried about someone knowing what television shows you're watching?
The autoswitching thing is ok, but what I'm really interested in hearing more about is how you got your wife to play games!;-)
Heh. My father-in-law raised his daughter right. She grew up playing Mario and Zelda, so while she's admittedly not as much of a gamer as I am, she still plays a lot of games. In addition to the female-friendly set like The Sims, Animal Crossing, Mario Party and whatnot, she absolutely loves Diablo II, and now I've gotten her hooked on Final Fantasy XI. She also owns a Corvette, loves power tools, and is a good shot with a.357. And lest that give you the wrong impression, she's also beautiful and still very feminine (in the right ways) without being a whiny aggravating bitch like most women.
When we visited my friend's house, where he had just installed a 110" home theater (which his wife hated and was barely tolerant of), my wife leaned over to me and whispered "I thought it would be bigger than that. We should get a bigger screen when we do ours." His wife acquiesced to the popcorn machine, but won't let him put in a soda fountain. My wife informed me that our theater had better damned well include a soda fountain, popcorn machine, and classic arcade cabinets.
Oh, and she lets me date other women.
No, I am not making any of this up. Yes, I am well aware that I am the luckiest fucking bastard alive.
Could you give more info on the autosensing switchbox (ie. brand, inputs, etc)? Most of the ones I've seen look pretty cheap so I question their actual usefulness.
It's frickin' amazing. There are manual-pushbutton component video switches that cost $500, and this thing does it automatically for under $200.
Basically, it has four sets of component video / stereo audio / optical audio / coax audio inputs. You order them in terms of priority -- input 1 takes priority over input 2. When you turn a device on, it sees the signal coming from it, and switches to that device. When you turn a device off, it goes to the highest-priority device that is still on. It also has a manual button to override its choice, but in practice I almost never actually need to override it.
I have all of my game systems attached to it, and all I have to do is turn one on to start playing it.
- Why are they getting millions of dollars if they are using chips that are 13 years old...
Because it takes millions of dollars to develop a lander and rover, strap it to the top of an enormous incendiary device, launch it into space, and bring it safely to rest on a target millions of miles away. Relatively little of that cost comes from the actual hardware of the rover, and of the cost of the rover, the computer chips that run it are certainly a small fraction.
Why not spend 13 years developing a low power design for processors and other hardware, that could be benificial for both space exploration and the earthen population...
Since when is NASA responsible for developing microprocessors? You're complaining about them spending too much money, and now you think that they should be researching new processor designs too, instead of just buying an off-the-shelf processor?
Very true again, but it's not like they sent an apple 8600 up there, they modified the base design of a particular processor and added some great technology to it to make it space worthy, why could they not figure out how to do this with better technology...
No, they didn't. You seem to be missing the fundamental point that NASA did not design or manufacture these microprocessors, any more than Dell designed the Pentium 4. Just because you can crack open a Dell and find a Pentium 4 inside of it does not mean that Dell had anything directly to do with its creation.
Correct, but i'm not saying Athlon 64 or P4 Extreme. I'm saying they have crap thats 13 years old, you'd think by 97 they would have said hay technology is moving really fast, lets figure out a way to use our low power technology with incorporating a dual G3 design....
You still haven't answered my question -- why? What difference does it make? What science could they do with a dual G3 that they can't do with a RAD6000?
A 20MHz chip is perfectly sufficient to do everything the rover needs to do. Why do you give a crap what kind of processor it runs?
In case you hadn't noticed, almost everything nowadays has computer chips in them. Cars, microwaves, washing machines, Mars rovers. Very few of these devices have a need for anything approaching the computational power of a modern desktop. I don't care if my washing machine runs a dual G5 any more than I care if the Mars rovers do. I just care that they can do the job they were designed to do, and do it well.
You know what? When you're designing a Martian lander, feel free to put in a dual PowerPC G4. Until then, maybe you should assume that the people who managed to design and build this machine and send it to a different fucking planet safely, might just possibly have some idea of what they're doing. The phrase "rocket science" didn't come to mean "really insanely complicated stuff" by accident. These folks are very, very smart.
Jackson stated that he built up [Arwen's] role to make the movies more appealing to female movie-goers. I truly doubt that this had much impact--especially compared to the impact of having Orlando Bloom running around in tights or having Viggo Mortensen up on the big screen.
This guy apparently does not have a girlfriend. Arwen herself is not what makes the story attractive to women, it's the love story of her and Aragorn. Jackson had to beef up her role in order to sell the love story aspect, and the love story is a big deal to women.
You see, unlike the author of this list, I have actually had sex with women before.
um ok yes my system is not space worthy, but what I said was
"at least used a design similar to a Dual G4 or maybe even a Dual Xeon or P4"
They are not using actual PPC processors from Apple, there using RAD6000, which is...similar...to the PPC's
NASA used a RAD6000 processor, which is essentially a radiation-hardened version of the POWER chip. It's low-power, reliable, and already certified as spaceworthy. Plus, it's readily available.
Now, you've asked why they didn't use something similar to a Dual G4 or Dual Xeon configuration. I listed four perfectly good reasons, all of which you seem to have ignored. Fine, I'll list a fifth.
5) A radiation-hardened, spaceworthy version of the POWER chip already exists in the form of the RAD6000 processor. Radiation-hardened, spaceworthy versions of the Xeon, Pentium 4, and PowerPC G4/G5, to the best of my knowledge, do not exist.
Now, I realize that you've ignored all of my other arguments, but if I need to explain why they used a chip that exists over one that does not, you're on your own.
...are some decent games. It's been years since anything original or even slightly interesting's been released in any electronic format. I've seen lots of "awesome graffix!!!", though.
Damn. What the hell have I been playing for the last two years, then? I suppose Metroid Prime, Viewtiful Joe, Halo, and Devil May Cry (to name a very, very small sample) have all been both unoriginal and completely uninteresting.
Like always with game consoles, it just comes down to the games- I want to play a lot of Gamecube games, but I don't really want to play many XBox games. Gamecube at $99 is a steal because you have things like Viewtiful Joe, Zelda, Metroid, Mario (Kart), etc...Honestly, somebody correct me if I am missing something, but I haven't seen even one must-buy game for the XBox since Panzer Dragoon Orta.
I'm in the same boat. I have an Xbox, a PS2, and a GameCube.
I have four Xbox games. I have five PS2 games. I have twenty-six GameCube games.
I'm pretty platform-agnostic, too. All three of my systems are hooked up via an autosensing switchbox and have wireless controllers, so playing any one of them is no more complicated than turning it on and grabbing the controller. Because of that, it's not like I have a excuse for wanting to play one system more than the other (well, the Xbox is in the closet, so I'd have to drag it out and hook it up...). Nothing like that.
I just find that there are very few games on the other two systems that interest me in the least, whereas the GameCube has a ton. Plus the GameCube has a lot more female-friendly games, which is important to me because it's a lot easier for me to score gaming time if my wife wants to play too.
Are all the millions of dollars spent on full for the rockets?! Why the fuck is my home system more advanced than NASA's? You'd think they'd of at least used a design similar to a Dual G4 or maybe even a Dual Xeon or P4. Can someone explain to me why NASA gets millions of dollars if they are using 1990 equipment?
A) They don't need to play Doom 3 up there. 20MHz is sufficient for almost anything you would want to do on Mars. Why send up more than you need to?
B) Your computer runs far hotter and consumes far more power than the Mars rovers do. Power is at a premium when you're millions of miles away from the nearest electrical outlet.
C) The rovers are radiation-hardened. Your system is not. Your computer would last about twelve minutes in space before it locked up. A big part of radiation hardening is using larger (and therefore slower) transistors.
D) It takes years to certify a particular piece of equipment as spaceworthy. NASA isn't going to just pop in the latest and greatest Athlon and assume it will work "because the last one did". That means that anything flying into space is automatically going to be at least a few years behind the curve.
I never said that it's impossible. My point is merely that successfully starting a company is a hell of a lot harder than just getting a job, and if you're not able to find a job, you shouldn't view starting a company as a quick fix for the situation.
This is really no different than saying "Hey! You're unemployed, right? Why don't you just get a job? That would fix things right up!"
Where do you think the money comes from when you start a company? That's right, investors. Now, if you can't find a job, what the hell makes you think that you're going to be able to find investors?
"Hmmm. You've been looking for a job for the past year. Unsuccessfully. You have no experience running a company. You don't have a clear business plan. You have no leadership skills. Well, what have I got to lose? Here's ten million dollars. Have fun!"
Slashdot Mirror
Evolution has not been demonstrated in a controlled experiment. Currently, it is a historical science, like solar system geology. Once someone does a falsifyable, controlled experiment that is peer reviewed, we should not consider it as strong a fact, as, say, atmoic theory.
And we haven't managed to create a planet in a controlled experiment either. That doesn't mean that we are completely unqualified to talk about where planets come from and how they form.
Besides, evolution has been demonstrated empirically. I recall reading of a study in which bacteria were induced to divide, given a certain amount of time to finish dividing, and then a chemical was administered to kill all the bacteria that were still in the process of dividing. This was repeated over and over, and the amount of time that they were permitted was decreased every time.
At the end of the experiment, the researchers were left with a new species of bacterium: one which had discarded virtually every part of its genetic code that was not absolutely critical to its ability to grow and divide. In selecting for division speed, the result was a bacterium that could successfully divide far faster than any normal bacterium, but which would have found itself outcompeted in other areas.
Viola. A new species, in a controlled experiment, generated by a process exactly analogous to natural selection. I'm sure you'll have some explanation as to why this experiment is irrelevant and doesn't satisfy your objections, and in that case I invite you to reread the first paragraph of my post.
Umm... in what sense? Animals survive if they are well-adapted to their environment, better able than their cohorts to secure food and mates, and lucky. The luck part has no preference, but the other two mechanisms favor the fit over the unfit, quite self-evidently. There's still no theory here.
If it's self-evident, why did it take humans tens of thousands of years to figure it out? Why are there still so many people that don't believe it?
"Touching hot coals is generally painful" is self-evident. The Theory of Evolution is not.
No one has bothered to even look to see if the rules by which our universe exists today are the same as a few million years ago, or a few billion years ago. How would you be able to tell that, say, the gravitational constant of the universe has been constant all along?
You are mistaken. There have been a number of studies done to try to determine if fundamental "constants" such as the speed of light are in fact constant.
It is, of course, very difficult to devise experiments to test such theories, but a number have been designed and performed. The phrase "no one has bothered to even look" comes up in other fields, such as paranormal research, and it is just as untrue there. Scientists would love to find evidence of (say) the gravitational constant changing, extraterrestrial organisms, or psychic power, and to suggest that they haven't even bothered to look is an insult to the field.
I always thought this was an interesting an odd part of modern science and cosmology. Why should we assume occam's razor, that simpler explanations are better? Why should the universe be simple and elegant?
You have misunderstood Occam's razor. It doesn't say that at all.
Occam's razor, in its original form, translates to "Do not multiply entities unnecessarily". That has been modernized to "The simplest explanation is usually correct", which is close, but not exactly the same.
What Occam's razor really means is: given two (or more) possible explanations of a phenomenon, with no evidence favoring one over the other, assume that the simplest one is correct.
For instance, if I find a pinecone lying on the ground under a pine tree, the simplest explanation is that it fell off of the pine tree. Sure, it might have been planted there by invisible space aliens in conjunction with the Illuminati acting in strict accordance with the Masonic doctrine of the Coming of the Pine Cone King, but since there is no evidence to favor one explanation over the other, I should assume that it fell off of the pine tree.
That doesn't mean that it did fall off the pine tree, and it doesn't mean that I might not change my mind as more evidence is found. It also doesn't mean that I shouldn't look for more evidence and try to determine the origin of the pine cone with greater accuracy. That isn't what it says at all. It just means that until such evidence arises which would cause me to revise my view of things, I should assume the simplest explanation that fits the facts. The explanation should only change when the known facts do, or a better explanation is found.
. Images are an especially important example. Values for images are generally RGB triplets ranging from 0-255. Doubling the memory footprint of all images on your computer would kill it real fast with all visual icons and everything that most people use.
I'm sorry, but I get the feeling that you haven't actually done image work using Java.
A) Most image storage / manipulation is done by the underlying libraries. They can use unsigned numbers internally if they want, and I don't care.
B) At the level where you get access to color information, you're generally dealing with RGB or ARGB ints, instead of either bytes or shorts. This has no effect on memory usage.
Still failing to see the problem.
But if we were born with 13 fingers on each hand, then how would we work math?
Is that what he means by different mathmetics? When I think of it that way I come to the conclusion that at the core everything is equal. Seems to me that no matter what number system you use you could always convert it.
Yes, and no.
It is important to understand that we invented math. It wasn't just out there, on its own, waiting to be discovered.
We defined the number 1, and what it means. We defined the number 0, and what that means. We defined addition and multiplication, and the results of performing those operations on various numbers.
Now, you take a computer. Interesting enough, its "math" is not based on addition and subtraction. It's based on AND, OR, NOT, and so forth -- the basic bit-twiddling operations. And it's still able to do "our" math, despite the fact that "its" math is completely and utterly different. That's interesting, but not important, because the two mathematical systems are easily interchangeable.
However, it's easy to envision systems which are *not* easily interchangeable. Take imaginary numbers. Why is sqrt(-1) == i? Because we said "Let there be a number i such that i * i = -1". That's it. i is the square root of negative one because we said it is, and for no other reason. We could just as easily have said "there is no number i such that i * i = -1", and it would be just as valid of a way of looking at things. Sure, it would completely change the way we do higher math, but it would not be wrong. We made these constructs, and defined their behaviors, and they work the way we say they do.
What if an alien race had introduced a number q, such that q = [result of some other impossible operation], and then based half of their mathematics around it? That's exactly what we did with imaginary numbers. If we have i and they have q, and these two concepts have nothing to do with each other and aren't easily convertible, you've got two entirely different, but both perfectly valid, mathematical systems.
It's likely that all intelligent species will have pretty compatible basic arithmetic, but as soon as you get to higher-order math, all bets are off, because we will have defined the axioms differently.
We made math . Not the other way around. Don't ever be fooled into thinking so.
Just skip this and program in much better JVM based languages than Java:
Admittedly, I didn't even bother to look at either of the languages you point to, but it's irrelevant. Here in the real world, popularity matters. You could be using the best damned programming language in the entire world, and if you're the only one using it, good luck finding a job.
I'm not saying that we should hold back progress. If these languages are really better than Java, then by all means support them and encourage people to adopt them. That's not where you're wrong. Where you're wrong is saying that people should "skip" Java for these languages. That is, quite simply, insane, at least if you're trying to program for a living.
Now if they would just implement unsigned types (uint, ushort, uchar) the jvm could be used much more effectively for lots of things. Especially vision, graphics, and all kinds of numerical algorithms.
What difference does it make? The only times I have ever wanted unsigned datatypes were when talking to legacy libraries that use them. The legacy libraries didn't actually need to be using unsigned datatypes, they just were.
So, when the only pain I have ever experienced due to this lack is when talking to legacy code that uses it, and the legacy code would have been just as happy using signed datatypes if it had been written that way, I don't really see the big deal. Might as well just kill unsigned datatypes altogether, simplifying life for everybody down the road -- and that's exactly what Sun did. Good for them, I say.
Just out of pure interest, what do you use for your "low-volume" stuff?
My team uses JDK 1.4 with Tomcat and Apache running on Linux. I admit that we can't handle nearly the load that My Yahoo can, but low-volume for us still translates into ten million hits a day per server.
The high-volume properties like My Yahoo run a custom version of Apache on a custom version of BSD with a custom non-relational database backend. There is no off-the-shelf software that can even come close to handling Yahoo's traffic volume, unfortunately.
The lack of speed of virtual methods has NOTHING to do with processor technology. It is there because you MUST do a lookup at runtime (which there is absolutely no way to avoid). This will ALWAYS add overhead, regardless of processor technology. The only way to avoid this overhead while still having "reusability" is to have "compile-time virtual methods" (i.e. templates).
/. insist on screaming "That's impossible!", even when something was implemented years ago? Seriously, if you're going to claim that something can't be done, please at least pick something that hasn't been done yet. That way there's actually the possibility of being correct.
Oh. So basically, what you're trying to say is "I have no idea what I'm talking about!". I gotcha.
Absolutely no way to avoid? Hotspot keeps track of whether or not a particular method actually has multiple implementations (and thus really needs to be virtual) or not. If not, it can treat the method as if it were not virtual and, for instance, inline it.
The complication in doing so is that Java supports dynamic class loading -- you can load a class from anywhere at any time. Such a class might contain a new definition for a method, which suddenly makes a virtual-but-not-really method truly virtual, with multiple implementations. Hotspot is smart enough to realize this, find every method in which it has made an assumption that a method only had a single implementation, "deoptimize" them (throw away the compiled native code and go back to running Java bytecodes), and potentially reoptimize them.
And the really cool part is that it can do that even while the method is executing.
Now, why is it that people on
Are you serious??
You should try to do some netowrk programming, say for example real time analysis of netowrk packets, see if java can handle a gigabit network...I didnt think so.
I work for Yahoo. Many of our web servers are powered by Java, and they're fast enough for us. Are you suggesting that your network performance needs are higher that frickin' Yahoo's?!?
I do freely admit that we don't use Java for the super-high-volume stuff like My Yahoo and Mail. But we're Yahoo. Even our low-volume properties are high volume. Java is fast enough to serve a lot of purposes around here.
It seems to me that as time goes on, the JVM specification adds functionality that can possibly exclude it from being ported to other platforms. With this new release, the whole "Shared memory between JVMs".. I am pretty sure there are some not-so-advanced or alternate-goal OS's that doesn't support these kind of things.
Sure, maybe the blame can be put on the author of the OS, but I know that the "write once, run anywhere" vision is starting to slip.
Please go read the spec before jumping to conclusions. "Shared memory between JVMs" is an implementation change, not a specification change. It is not required, and indeed from a running Java program you can't even tell that it is happening. All that changes is that your memory usage is lower and your startup time is faster.
I see trademark issues here...
What trademark issues? It's entirely legal for two companies to use similar marks, so long as there does not exist a significant potential for consumer confusion. Bob McDonald's Auto Repair, for instance, isn't in any danger from the restaurant chain. A relevant precedent is the case of Apple Computer and Apple Records, both of which got to keep using their marks.
Now, clearly the Xbox and NeXT exist in a similar market, unlike Apple Computer and Apple Records. But NeXT computers aren't being manufactured or sold anymore. How the hell can you get confused into thinking that an Xbox Next would have anything to do with NeXT computers? We're not talking about a recognizable, clear brand here (such as "Atari"), we're talking about a simple English word -- it's much more difficult to get confused into thinking that the two marks are related.
All of this is assuming, of course, that someone actually owns the trademark on NeXT and it is still valid. Considering that the computers are not being manufactured anymore, it is entirely possible that this is not the case.
You too? I don't know a single damned person that watches any of the "popular" TV programming.
I am utterly failing to be either surprised or alarmed.
... so? Yes, I would be concerned if they said "Matt Hooper, 26, of Colorado Springs replayed the Janet Jackson breast scene a record 126 times. Sales statistics in the area also show an unusual spike in hand lotion and tissue purchases."
n y" standard Slashdot response, think about what you have trusted companies with. How many companies have your name and address? Your home phone number? Your bank account information? Your credit card information? Why did you trust them with such information, if no companies can ever be trusted?
OH NO! THEY CAN TELL THAT LOTS OF PEOPLE WATCHED THAT SCENE! DEAR LORD, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
Ummmm
They haven't said that, or anything remotely resembling that. They have said "Tivo users watched this particular segment of the Superbowl more than anything else." So?
Yes, Tivo could do something horrible with my personal information. But then again, Hustler could also publish a big long list of everybody that subscribes to it, complete with home addresses, but they don't. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but at some point we just have to have some level of trust in other people. Tivo has said that my information is kept anonymous, and has given me no reason to doubt their word, so I don't see a big problem with trusting them.
And before you start the "oh-my-god-what-an-idiot-for-trusting-a-big-compa
If you have used a credit card, you must trust every single store at which you have ever swiped your credit card at least as much as I trust Tivo. If you have ever applied for a loan, you've coughed up your bank account information. And you're worried about someone knowing what television shows you're watching?
The autoswitching thing is ok, but what I'm really interested in hearing more about is how you got your wife to play games! ;-)
.357. And lest that give you the wrong impression, she's also beautiful and still very feminine (in the right ways) without being a whiny aggravating bitch like most women.
Heh. My father-in-law raised his daughter right. She grew up playing Mario and Zelda, so while she's admittedly not as much of a gamer as I am, she still plays a lot of games. In addition to the female-friendly set like The Sims, Animal Crossing, Mario Party and whatnot, she absolutely loves Diablo II, and now I've gotten her hooked on Final Fantasy XI. She also owns a Corvette, loves power tools, and is a good shot with a
When we visited my friend's house, where he had just installed a 110" home theater (which his wife hated and was barely tolerant of), my wife leaned over to me and whispered "I thought it would be bigger than that. We should get a bigger screen when we do ours." His wife acquiesced to the popcorn machine, but won't let him put in a soda fountain. My wife informed me that our theater had better damned well include a soda fountain, popcorn machine, and classic arcade cabinets.
Oh, and she lets me date other women.
No, I am not making any of this up. Yes, I am well aware that I am the luckiest fucking bastard alive.
Could you give more info on the autosensing switchbox (ie. brand, inputs, etc)? Most of the ones I've seen look pretty cheap so I question their actual usefulness.
Thanks!
Audio Authority Component Video Switch
It's frickin' amazing. There are manual-pushbutton component video switches that cost $500, and this thing does it automatically for under $200.
Basically, it has four sets of component video / stereo audio / optical audio / coax audio inputs. You order them in terms of priority -- input 1 takes priority over input 2. When you turn a device on, it sees the signal coming from it, and switches to that device. When you turn a device off, it goes to the highest-priority device that is still on. It also has a manual button to override its choice, but in practice I almost never actually need to override it.
I have all of my game systems attached to it, and all I have to do is turn one on to start playing it.
- Why are they getting millions of dollars if they are using chips that are 13 years old...
Because it takes millions of dollars to develop a lander and rover, strap it to the top of an enormous incendiary device, launch it into space, and bring it safely to rest on a target millions of miles away. Relatively little of that cost comes from the actual hardware of the rover, and of the cost of the rover, the computer chips that run it are certainly a small fraction.
Why not spend 13 years developing a low power design for processors and other hardware, that could be benificial for both space exploration and the earthen population...
Since when is NASA responsible for developing microprocessors? You're complaining about them spending too much money, and now you think that they should be researching new processor designs too, instead of just buying an off-the-shelf processor?
Very true again, but it's not like they sent an apple 8600 up there, they modified the base design of a particular processor and added some great technology to it to make it space worthy, why could they not figure out how to do this with better technology...
No, they didn't. You seem to be missing the fundamental point that NASA did not design or manufacture these microprocessors, any more than Dell designed the Pentium 4. Just because you can crack open a Dell and find a Pentium 4 inside of it does not mean that Dell had anything directly to do with its creation.
Correct, but i'm not saying Athlon 64 or P4 Extreme. I'm saying they have crap thats 13 years old, you'd think by 97 they would have said hay technology is moving really fast, lets figure out a way to use our low power technology with incorporating a dual G3 design....
You still haven't answered my question -- why? What difference does it make? What science could they do with a dual G3 that they can't do with a RAD6000?
A 20MHz chip is perfectly sufficient to do everything the rover needs to do. Why do you give a crap what kind of processor it runs?
In case you hadn't noticed, almost everything nowadays has computer chips in them. Cars, microwaves, washing machines, Mars rovers. Very few of these devices have a need for anything approaching the computational power of a modern desktop. I don't care if my washing machine runs a dual G5 any more than I care if the Mars rovers do. I just care that they can do the job they were designed to do, and do it well.
You know what? When you're designing a Martian lander, feel free to put in a dual PowerPC G4. Until then, maybe you should assume that the people who managed to design and build this machine and send it to a different fucking planet safely, might just possibly have some idea of what they're doing. The phrase "rocket science" didn't come to mean "really insanely complicated stuff" by accident. These folks are very, very smart.
Jackson stated that he built up [Arwen's] role to make the movies more appealing to female movie-goers. I truly doubt that this had much impact--especially compared to the impact of having Orlando Bloom running around in tights or having Viggo Mortensen up on the big screen.
This guy apparently does not have a girlfriend. Arwen herself is not what makes the story attractive to women, it's the love story of her and Aragorn. Jackson had to beef up her role in order to sell the love story aspect, and the love story is a big deal to women.
You see, unlike the author of this list, I have actually had sex with women before.
um ok yes my system is not space worthy, but what I said was
"at least used a design similar to a Dual G4 or maybe even a Dual Xeon or P4"
They are not using actual PPC processors from Apple, there using RAD6000, which is...similar...to the PPC's
NASA used a RAD6000 processor, which is essentially a radiation-hardened version of the POWER chip. It's low-power, reliable, and already certified as spaceworthy. Plus, it's readily available.
Now, you've asked why they didn't use something similar to a Dual G4 or Dual Xeon configuration. I listed four perfectly good reasons, all of which you seem to have ignored. Fine, I'll list a fifth.
5) A radiation-hardened, spaceworthy version of the POWER chip already exists in the form of the RAD6000 processor. Radiation-hardened, spaceworthy versions of the Xeon, Pentium 4, and PowerPC G4/G5, to the best of my knowledge, do not exist.
Now, I realize that you've ignored all of my other arguments, but if I need to explain why they used a chip that exists over one that does not, you're on your own.
Damn. What the hell have I been playing for the last two years, then? I suppose Metroid Prime, Viewtiful Joe, Halo, and Devil May Cry (to name a very, very small sample) have all been both unoriginal and completely uninteresting.
Like always with game consoles, it just comes down to the games- I want to play a lot of Gamecube games, but I don't really want to play many XBox games. Gamecube at $99 is a steal because you have things like Viewtiful Joe, Zelda, Metroid, Mario (Kart), etc...Honestly, somebody correct me if I am missing something, but I haven't seen even one must-buy game for the XBox since Panzer Dragoon Orta.
I'm in the same boat. I have an Xbox, a PS2, and a GameCube.
I have four Xbox games.
I have five PS2 games.
I have twenty-six GameCube games.
I'm pretty platform-agnostic, too. All three of my systems are hooked up via an autosensing switchbox and have wireless controllers, so playing any one of them is no more complicated than turning it on and grabbing the controller. Because of that, it's not like I have a excuse for wanting to play one system more than the other (well, the Xbox is in the closet, so I'd have to drag it out and hook it up...). Nothing like that.
I just find that there are very few games on the other two systems that interest me in the least, whereas the GameCube has a ton. Plus the GameCube has a lot more female-friendly games, which is important to me because it's a lot easier for me to score gaming time if my wife wants to play too.
Are all the millions of dollars spent on full for the rockets?! Why the fuck is my home system more advanced than NASA's? You'd think they'd of at least used a design similar to a Dual G4 or maybe even a Dual Xeon or P4. Can someone explain to me why NASA gets millions of dollars if they are using 1990 equipment?
A) They don't need to play Doom 3 up there. 20MHz is sufficient for almost anything you would want to do on Mars. Why send up more than you need to?
B) Your computer runs far hotter and consumes far more power than the Mars rovers do. Power is at a premium when you're millions of miles away from the nearest electrical outlet.
C) The rovers are radiation-hardened. Your system is not. Your computer would last about twelve minutes in space before it locked up. A big part of radiation hardening is using larger (and therefore slower) transistors.
D) It takes years to certify a particular piece of equipment as spaceworthy. NASA isn't going to just pop in the latest and greatest Athlon and assume it will work "because the last one did". That means that anything flying into space is automatically going to be at least a few years behind the curve.
I never said that it's impossible. My point is merely that successfully starting a company is a hell of a lot harder than just getting a job, and if you're not able to find a job, you shouldn't view starting a company as a quick fix for the situation.
This is really no different than saying "Hey! You're unemployed, right? Why don't you just get a job? That would fix things right up!"
Where do you think the money comes from when you start a company? That's right, investors. Now, if you can't find a job, what the hell makes you think that you're going to be able to find investors?
"Hmmm. You've been looking for a job for the past year. Unsuccessfully. You have no experience running a company. You don't have a clear business plan. You have no leadership skills. Well, what have I got to lose? Here's ten million dollars. Have fun!"