It's very simple. What part of "We set a lower bound on the complexity of options pricing formulae in the lattice metric by proving that no general explicit or closed form (hypergeometric) expression for pricing vanilla European call and put options exists when employing the binomial lattice approach" you didn't understand?
You can run a Python 2 program in a Python 2 interpreter; they aren't going anywhere
Yes, they are. When Python 2 packages aren't available in the repositories I use, I don't want to keep all the dependencies by myself, I have more important things to do.
If you're porting a program to Python 3 and integer-truncation division is important to you, use the "//" operator.
I have *lots* of code. I don't want to check every single division in each formula I have to verify if the correct operator to use is '/' or '//'. I repeat, I have more important things to do.
In conclusion, no Python 3 for me. And, since I don't know how long Python 2 will be available in the systems I use, I'm "deprecating" the Python language altogether.
that doesn't mean that a new version of the standard doesn't bring improvements/changes/fixes to previous editions.
Yes, but the changes are mostly minor and do not affect software that's already working in C.
Compare this to Python, where a basic mathematical operator like '/' was changed from one version to the other. In Python up to version 2 the expression (2/3) has the value 0, while in Python 3 it has the value 1.5. This makes it impossible to use a program developed for version 2 without a serious risk of subtle bugs. An automated migration tool is useless in this case, since the dividend type may depend on an input value.
If you port the emulator to plain vanilla ANSI C, then it should still run in 100 years unchanged.
My thoughts exactly.
What makes C so great is that it was born the way it is and does not change. I have been programming in C for about 25 years now and the first programs I wrote still compile and run unchanged today.
Compare this with other languages: Fortran, PHP, Perl, Python, all have gone through major redesigns from version to version. Moving a program from version n to version (n+1) means redesign, retesting, endless debugging.
I have been programming a lot in Python recently, but if I have to port a program from Python 2 to Python 3 I'd rather port it to C instead. Just think of checking every single division in every formula I ever used to see if I have to change '/' to '//' or not.
I don't want to do all that work again when Python 4 comes.
It doesn't pick a physically preferred frame any more than saying "This is MY car and that's a preferred frame!"
Unless you are rotating. Then you have a centrifugal force. Why is it that if you are standing still against the CMB you feel no centrifugal force but if your frame has any rotation at all against the "distant stars" you have centrifugal and Coriolis forces?
OK, rotation has this particular property that translation doesn't have, but if there's one preferred frame for rotation why shouldn't the same frame be special with respect to translation?
But, in all fairness, I'm not a particle physicist, I'm a cosmologist.
What I want from cosmology is the same thing I want from the government: no inflation. A theory that needs a 78 orders of magnitude adjustment doesn't seem quite right to me.
Why not assume that the answer to the horizon problem is that under some circumstances FTL might exist? The problem with relativity is that it denies, in a somewhat dogmatic way, the existence of one absolute inertial reference, when we know there is at least one local reference that's "more inertial" than others because it's at rest with relation the the cosmic background.
In 1905 Ockham's razor was favorable to relativity because the microwave background wasn't known, but today we do know that it exists. Perhaps we have one reference where simultaneity can be defined in an absolute way, and the lack of simultaneity in other references is just an illusion caused by perspective. After all, there are many experiments demonstrating Bell's inequality that seem to indicate simultaneity in remote events.
It would seem to me that in the conditions shortly after the big bang there could exist conditions where some physical parameters were communicated instantaneously across the universe by quantum effects, this is at least no more unbelievable than cosmic inflation.
Dark matter is real and we now have tools with which we can spot it
Or not. The Bullet cluster is one example that confirms some predictions of dark matter, but there still remain other problems, like the cuspy halo problem.
Reality simply does not diverge from the theories unless we get into some really exotic conditions
And that should get worse as our theories become more precise.
The problem with general relativity is that it gives very precise predictions for orbits in our solar system, but we do not have good measurements for bigger orbits. The Pioneer anomaly and the flyby anomaly could be indications of a deviation from general relativity. Perhaps a future theory of gravitation could explain both the Pioneer anomaly and galaxy rotation without the need for dark matter. However to test if the Pioneer anomaly really exists one would need to perform new, more precise, measurements which would be very expensive and take years.
The problem with ground breaking theories is that they create the need to rewrite large portions of current physics and that takes time and effort, so scientists usually are reluctant to accept them. That's what happened with special relativity, only when several different versions of the Michelson-Morley experiment seemed to prove in an incontrovertible way that aether drift did not exist scientists started looking for alternative theories. The main problem today is that experiments to detect limitations in general relativity are much more difficult to perform than the experiments they did a hundred or more years ago to prove the inexistence of aether drift.
I bet Visual Studio would be somewhat popular for Linux if they'd make it
I bet the 1959 Edsel would be somewhat popular if they still made it. But I'd rather have a Toyota Camry instead. Just as, having used both, I prefer Kdevelop to Visual Studio.
The mission is called MESSENGER, for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging.
They certainly did a lot of "ranging" coming up with that acronym.
Actually, ranging is an important part of any space mission. What they call "ranging" is measuring the distance from an earth station to the spacecraft and it's what allows then to calculate the orbit the spacecraft is following.
Without accurate ranging the spacecraft would either get lost in space or crash on the planet. With accurate enough ranging one can even find out details about the planer's interior. Thanks to ranging, we know that Mars has a liquid core.
In a smooth and well calculated leap, the cat jumped upon the table and, after letting his body mold itself to the lumps in the most uncomfortable place, is looking at you with a bored expression in his half-closed eyes.
So without paying much attention to the article (in the grand tradition of slashdot!) this is a proof of the "ansibles" used in Ender's Game?
That's what I thought when I RTFA. At first sight, "the new technology offers the possibility to distribute entanglement" seems to violate the "no cloning" theorem, which is what impedes FTL quantum communications.
So the core of a neutron star is now more dense than a black hole?
Note that they mentioned "the highest known densities". The part of the black hole that's under the event horizon is unknown and will remain so forever. We have theories and extrapolations about those parts, but no experimental evidence that any of it is true, so we don't "know" anything about the density of a black hole.
The best tweet: "I hope programmers worldwide will join me in calling for M[ou]'?am+[ae]r.*([AEae]l[- ])? [GKQ]h?[aeu]+([dtz][dhz]?)+af[iy] to step down."
It could be worse, I'd rather spend the rest of my life writing regular expressions than wading through unicode hell....
First off, the Islamic council aren't dumb, not in the slightest
I'm sure not. People who believe only one book contains all the knowledge anyone could need are beyond dumb, there's no adjective to describe that level of stupidity.
The protests in mid last year were met mainly with subterfuge and false flag operations
Which year are you living in? FYI the big protests against the fraudulent elections in Iran happened in June 2009 and right now it's 2011.
This pressure will build over time however if a violent revolution were to occur today, it would just cause most Persians to rally around the government for security, isolating the youth
That was the theory that other rulers, like Mubarak, believed in. The fact is that, as revolutions go, no one can predict when they will succeed. There were rebellions in Eastern Europe in 1956 and 1968, without success, but in 1989 the Communist regimes fell. Right now, the situation in the Muslim countries feels more like 1989 than 1956, the first dominoes have fallen.
we screwed that one when we deposed the legitimately elected government and put that idiot Reza on the throne.
Oh, puleez, let Mossadegh rest in pieces... Every time the situation in Iran is mentioned someone brings this 1953 thing up. If the CIA were half as competent in throwing down governments as you believe, the Castros and Chavez would be long gone by now.
The simple fact is that the Mossadegh government was a total failure from the economy point of view and that was what brought him down. Perhaps it would take a little bit longer without the CIA and MI6 intervention, but his fate was sealed from the moment he nationalized the oil industry without checking if there were enough trained Iranian technicians to keep the oil industry running.
Besides, a fact that people fail to mention when they bring up the Mossadegh affair is that his predecessor was assassinated when he tried to bring democratic changes to Iran. It's not as if Iran were a paradise of democracy before.
I never reboot unless the system hangs up completely. In recent years I had to reboot once, when the air conditioning failed and a server had a bad memory alarm.
By keeping reboot as an extreme measure, I know when something truly bad happened. If I reboot without reason, I lose that information.
I don't understand how this Py3k praising always gets such good moderation on/.
Python 3 has left the original focus of the language as something simple and easy to use. All the changes are towards a MORE COMPLEX language, I see no change that makes it simpler to use, no change that requires less code than the former version.
Py3k is moving in the direction of Java, where nothing can be done without typing a hundred lines of code. An example from the Python documentation:
I cannot see how would anyone call this an "improvement"... Oh, sure, it gives me more options, more control, but if I had wanted to finely tune the innards of the program I would have used C++.
It's interesting that you use power tools as an analogy. I once made a presentation to managers in my company on "Why Linux?" where I had the following analogy: Windows XP on personal computers is like Black & Decker drills, cheap and easy to use, found everywhere. Windows server is like Makita drills, sturdier, more professional, and more expensive, but very much like an amateur tool on steroids.
Linux is like an air drill. Most people aren't even aware that such thing exists. But it's the only solution where an industrial strength tool is needed.
the computer is faster at evaluating the alternatives by checking them move by move, while the human is faster at identifying patterns in the position
When we can get a computer to do *THAT*, then we will have *really* made a computer that has solved chess.
In the end, it's all a matter of processor architecture. The human brain is made of a hundred billion CPUs operating at a clock rate of 100 Hz. A desktop computer is made of four CPUs operating at three billion Hz. Do the math and see who has the advantage.
There are computer algorithms to find patterns, but we still don't have enough CPU power to run them efficiently in a chess computer. At our current technology level, brute power search through game positions gives better results.
"Thinking like a human" depends on having hardware like a human.
Slashdot Mirror
It's very simple. What part of "We set a lower bound on the complexity of options pricing formulae in the lattice metric by proving that no general explicit or closed form (hypergeometric) expression for pricing vanilla European call and put options exists when employing the binomial lattice approach" you didn't understand?
50 nanometres is not the same as 10 metres (5 x 10-8)
According the precedence rules, you should do the multiplication before the subtraction, so 5 x 10 - 8 = 42.
You can run a Python 2 program in a Python 2 interpreter; they aren't going anywhere
Yes, they are. When Python 2 packages aren't available in the repositories I use, I don't want to keep all the dependencies by myself, I have more important things to do.
If you're porting a program to Python 3 and integer-truncation division is important to you, use the "//" operator.
I have *lots* of code. I don't want to check every single division in each formula I have to verify if the correct operator to use is '/' or '//'. I repeat, I have more important things to do.
In conclusion, no Python 3 for me. And, since I don't know how long Python 2 will be available in the systems I use, I'm "deprecating" the Python language altogether.
that doesn't mean that a new version of the standard doesn't bring improvements/changes/fixes to previous editions.
Yes, but the changes are mostly minor and do not affect software that's already working in C.
Compare this to Python, where a basic mathematical operator like '/' was changed from one version to the other. In Python up to version 2 the expression (2/3) has the value 0, while in Python 3 it has the value 1.5. This makes it impossible to use a program developed for version 2 without a serious risk of subtle bugs. An automated migration tool is useless in this case, since the dividend type may depend on an input value.
Bill Gates doesn't work at Microsoft anymore
That's not Bill Gates, that's Woody Allen. But you're right, he never worked there.
If you port the emulator to plain vanilla ANSI C, then it should still run in 100 years unchanged.
My thoughts exactly.
What makes C so great is that it was born the way it is and does not change. I have been programming in C for about 25 years now and the first programs I wrote still compile and run unchanged today.
Compare this with other languages: Fortran, PHP, Perl, Python, all have gone through major redesigns from version to version. Moving a program from version n to version (n+1) means redesign, retesting, endless debugging.
I have been programming a lot in Python recently, but if I have to port a program from Python 2 to Python 3 I'd rather port it to C instead. Just think of checking every single division in every formula I ever used to see if I have to change '/' to '//' or not.
I don't want to do all that work again when Python 4 comes.
It doesn't pick a physically preferred frame any more than saying "This is MY car and that's a preferred frame!"
Unless you are rotating. Then you have a centrifugal force. Why is it that if you are standing still against the CMB you feel no centrifugal force but if your frame has any rotation at all against the "distant stars" you have centrifugal and Coriolis forces?
OK, rotation has this particular property that translation doesn't have, but if there's one preferred frame for rotation why shouldn't the same frame be special with respect to translation?
But, in all fairness, I'm not a particle physicist, I'm a cosmologist.
What I want from cosmology is the same thing I want from the government: no inflation. A theory that needs a 78 orders of magnitude adjustment doesn't seem quite right to me.
Why not assume that the answer to the horizon problem is that under some circumstances FTL might exist? The problem with relativity is that it denies, in a somewhat dogmatic way, the existence of one absolute inertial reference, when we know there is at least one local reference that's "more inertial" than others because it's at rest with relation the the cosmic background.
In 1905 Ockham's razor was favorable to relativity because the microwave background wasn't known, but today we do know that it exists. Perhaps we have one reference where simultaneity can be defined in an absolute way, and the lack of simultaneity in other references is just an illusion caused by perspective. After all, there are many experiments demonstrating Bell's inequality that seem to indicate simultaneity in remote events.
It would seem to me that in the conditions shortly after the big bang there could exist conditions where some physical parameters were communicated instantaneously across the universe by quantum effects, this is at least no more unbelievable than cosmic inflation.
The melting point of a surface mount IC is a lot less than that of a spinning platter.
Considering that all you need to melt a hard disk platter is a flower pot, a haird rier, and some charcoal that shouldn't be any problem.
Dark matter is real and we now have tools with which we can spot it
Or not. The Bullet cluster is one example that confirms some predictions of dark matter, but there still remain other problems, like the cuspy halo problem.
Reality simply does not diverge from the theories unless we get into some really exotic conditions
And that should get worse as our theories become more precise.
The problem with general relativity is that it gives very precise predictions for orbits in our solar system, but we do not have good measurements for bigger orbits. The Pioneer anomaly and the flyby anomaly could be indications of a deviation from general relativity. Perhaps a future theory of gravitation could explain both the Pioneer anomaly and galaxy rotation without the need for dark matter. However to test if the Pioneer anomaly really exists one would need to perform new, more precise, measurements which would be very expensive and take years.
The problem with ground breaking theories is that they create the need to rewrite large portions of current physics and that takes time and effort, so scientists usually are reluctant to accept them. That's what happened with special relativity, only when several different versions of the Michelson-Morley experiment seemed to prove in an incontrovertible way that aether drift did not exist scientists started looking for alternative theories. The main problem today is that experiments to detect limitations in general relativity are much more difficult to perform than the experiments they did a hundred or more years ago to prove the inexistence of aether drift.
According to TFA, 'Rabellino's main focus right now "is to enable PHP to shine on our platforms."'
So, he's there to get people to migrate from LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP) systems to WIMP (Windows, IIS, MS-SQL, PHP) systems.
I bet Visual Studio would be somewhat popular for Linux if they'd make it
I bet the 1959 Edsel would be somewhat popular if they still made it. But I'd rather have a Toyota Camry instead. Just as, having used both, I prefer Kdevelop to Visual Studio.
The mission is called MESSENGER, for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging.
They certainly did a lot of "ranging" coming up with that acronym.
Actually, ranging is an important part of any space mission. What they call "ranging" is measuring the distance from an earth station to the spacecraft and it's what allows then to calculate the orbit the spacecraft is following.
Without accurate ranging the spacecraft would either get lost in space or crash on the planet. With accurate enough ranging one can even find out details about the planer's interior. Thanks to ranging, we know that Mars has a liquid core.
In a smooth and well calculated leap, the cat jumped upon the table and, after letting his body mold itself to the lumps in the most uncomfortable place, is looking at you with a bored expression in his half-closed eyes.
So without paying much attention to the article (in the grand tradition of slashdot!) this is a proof of the "ansibles" used in Ender's Game?
That's what I thought when I RTFA. At first sight, "the new technology offers the possibility to distribute entanglement" seems to violate the "no cloning" theorem, which is what impedes FTL quantum communications.
So the core of a neutron star is now more dense than a black hole?
Note that they mentioned "the highest known densities". The part of the black hole that's under the event horizon is unknown and will remain so forever. We have theories and extrapolations about those parts, but no experimental evidence that any of it is true, so we don't "know" anything about the density of a black hole.
It's a truly lazy person who needs a microprocessor to detect rancid tuna.
Do they let you open each can in a supermarket shelf to find out which ones are rancid?
The best tweet: "I hope programmers worldwide will join me in calling for M[ou]'?am+[ae]r .*([AEae]l[- ])? [GKQ]h?[aeu]+([dtz][dhz]?)+af[iy] to step down."
It could be worse, I'd rather spend the rest of my life writing regular expressions than wading through unicode hell....
* Nodes don't need video, and nearly any server/cluster motherboard will have onboard cheap video anyway, so save the video cards.
I guess he meant video cards for GPGPU, not for video itself.
First off, the Islamic council aren't dumb, not in the slightest
I'm sure not. People who believe only one book contains all the knowledge anyone could need are beyond dumb, there's no adjective to describe that level of stupidity.
The protests in mid last year were met mainly with subterfuge and false flag operations
Which year are you living in? FYI the big protests against the fraudulent elections in Iran happened in June 2009 and right now it's 2011.
This pressure will build over time however if a violent revolution were to occur today, it would just cause most Persians to rally around the government for security, isolating the youth
That was the theory that other rulers, like Mubarak, believed in. The fact is that, as revolutions go, no one can predict when they will succeed. There were rebellions in Eastern Europe in 1956 and 1968, without success, but in 1989 the Communist regimes fell. Right now, the situation in the Muslim countries feels more like 1989 than 1956, the first dominoes have fallen.
we screwed that one when we deposed the legitimately elected government and put that idiot Reza on the throne.
Oh, puleez, let Mossadegh rest in pieces... Every time the situation in Iran is mentioned someone brings this 1953 thing up. If the CIA were half as competent in throwing down governments as you believe, the Castros and Chavez would be long gone by now.
The simple fact is that the Mossadegh government was a total failure from the economy point of view and that was what brought him down. Perhaps it would take a little bit longer without the CIA and MI6 intervention, but his fate was sealed from the moment he nationalized the oil industry without checking if there were enough trained Iranian technicians to keep the oil industry running.
Besides, a fact that people fail to mention when they bring up the Mossadegh affair is that his predecessor was assassinated when he tried to bring democratic changes to Iran. It's not as if Iran were a paradise of democracy before.
I never reboot unless the system hangs up completely. In recent years I had to reboot once, when the air conditioning failed and a server had a bad memory alarm.
By keeping reboot as an extreme measure, I know when something truly bad happened. If I reboot without reason, I lose that information.
I don't understand how this Py3k praising always gets such good moderation on /.
Python 3 has left the original focus of the language as something simple and easy to use. All the changes are towards a MORE COMPLEX language, I see no change that makes it simpler to use, no change that requires less code than the former version.
Py3k is moving in the direction of Java, where nothing can be done without typing a hundred lines of code. An example from the Python documentation:
17.1.3.1. Replacing /bin/sh shell backquote
output=`mycmd myarg`
==>
output = Popen(["mycmd", "myarg"], stdout=PIPE).communicate()[0]
I cannot see how would anyone call this an "improvement"... Oh, sure, it gives me more options, more control, but if I had wanted to finely tune the innards of the program I would have used C++.
It's interesting that you use power tools as an analogy. I once made a presentation to managers in my company on "Why Linux?" where I had the following analogy: Windows XP on personal computers is like Black & Decker drills, cheap and easy to use, found everywhere. Windows server is like Makita drills, sturdier, more professional, and more expensive, but very much like an amateur tool on steroids.
Linux is like an air drill. Most people aren't even aware that such thing exists. But it's the only solution where an industrial strength tool is needed.
the computer is faster at evaluating the alternatives by checking them move by move, while the human is faster at identifying patterns in the position
When we can get a computer to do *THAT*, then we will have *really* made a computer that has solved chess.
In the end, it's all a matter of processor architecture. The human brain is made of a hundred billion CPUs operating at a clock rate of 100 Hz. A desktop computer is made of four CPUs operating at three billion Hz. Do the math and see who has the advantage.
There are computer algorithms to find patterns, but we still don't have enough CPU power to run them efficiently in a chess computer. At our current technology level, brute power search through game positions gives better results.
"Thinking like a human" depends on having hardware like a human.
It's easy to get the data off
Much easier than spelling the inventor's name