The number you are quoting is the solar constant, as measured by satellite.
The number the grandparent is quoting is the average atmospheric insolation over all of Earth for a calendar year. I found a nice calculator provided by NASA that generates "a numerical table of monthly latitude insolation at top-of-atmosphere for a given calendar year" that backs up his provided average of ~342 W/m^2 -- see the bottom right.
You see, exomorons have their stupidity on the outside, so we can determine at a glance that they're idiots. For our normal everyday endomorons, we have to talk to them for a while or observe their actions. If we can find some exomorons, we may be able (at a later date) to cross-breed them with endomorons and save everyone else a lot of time. Unfortunately, I have a sneaking suspicion that there may be selective pressures against displaying one's stupidity for all to see, so any species we create that does so may be doomed to extinction. I can only hope we make all the endomorons extinct first...
One study after another cites the previous study, and almost no one knows where that 42 billion dollar figure came from, but it's impressive, so everyone continues to quote it.
Ars did an article on attempting to trace one such oft-quoted figure of losses, and slashdot discussed it. This $42 billion figure is probably from the same source.
tl;dr: big-dollar piracy numbers probably come from some unsubstantiated source from 1993 or earlier.
You're mostly correct, in that it is the longest and most well-known, but slightly wrong about it being the only one open to the public. Though I agree that riding on maglev trains is cool (did it at the Japan '05 Expo), riding on a minibus driven by a stuffed toy was more fun.:)
This brings up an interesting point. The Netflix algorithm is working from flawed/incomplete data generated from poor design decisions, so no matter how good the algorithm gets it still won't be able to accurately predict what movies will actually interest people based on a very subjective unidimensional rating. For example, the same person might rate a movie differently under differing conditions, and the rating itself may hinge entirely on one thing in the movie (s)he did(n't) like, whereas the movie might have been overall pretty good. It's like asking someone, 'on a scale of 1 to 5, what is your favorite color?'; it has next to no relation to its supposed objective.
On top of all this, people are capricious at best when it comes to movie tastes; they might not even like a movie based on its own merits, but something completely orthogonal to the question such as it being the movie they saw on their first date. As such, no set of ratings from any given user can really be accurately matched with those of another to provide suggestions, since they may have liked/hated those movies for entirely separate reasons. Granted, some of these things can't easily be transcribed into data for formulaic processing, but you'd think Netflix could at least add an optional 'detailed rating' section (e.g., rate by pace, plot, action, acting, dialogue, etc.) to better describe why a user did or didn't like a flick.
You'll probably be off by a day. The shipped product will invariably be older than a daily snapshot from the 23rd, so it is very likely that Win7 will have to download the most recent Windows Defender definitions if nothing else.
A brief reading of a wikipedia link about the
neocortical column provided from another poster above seems to suggest that a similar topology is present in the brain. From the section on columnar functional organization:
The columnar functional organization, as originally framed by Vernon Mountcastle, suggests that neurons that are horizontally more than 0.5 mm (500 um) from each other do not have overlapping sensory receptive fields, and other experiments give similar results: 200-800 um (Buxhoeveden 2002, Hubel 1977, Leise 1990, etc.). Various estimates suggest there are 50 to 100 cortical minicolumns in a hypercolumn, each comprising around 80 neurons.
An important distinction is that the columnar organization is functional by definition, and reflects the local connectivity of the cerebral cortex. Connections "up" and "down" within the thickness of the cortex are much denser than connections that spread from side to side.
So if their goal were to only simulate the neocortex, it seems they would really only need dense inter-chip connections between those chips that would make up their version of a cortical column and sparser connections to its neighbors, rather than needing to connect each simulated neuron in each chip to every other. (IANA neurobiologist)
Your first point is valid enough, and your second one does hold some water, but it seems that it has already been addressed by other books on programming in PHP. Further, if I fully understand what your second point is talking about, it would seem that solving it would require getting rid of some of the flexibility (and hence, utility) of the language.
Notably, points 3.2 and 3.3 in your post have already been addressed (not sure about 3.1 or 3.4... never ran into anyone who did 3.1 since it seems incredibly foolish, and haven't heard of any changes yet for 3.4).
3.2: 1 == '1more' is true for two reasons: you're using the weak equivalence operator (hence why a string and an int can be equivalent) and your string starts with valid numeric data which can be converted properly while the rest is ignored. See here for more examples of what would and wouldn't be converted.
3.3: Using the strict equivalency operators ('===' and '!==') in your conditional statements solves this. According to the link, this has been available since PHP 4 so I'm not sure why you're still going on about it...
Your fourth point doesn't necessarily make PHP any less secure than any other programming language that can use external libraries, unless the ones PHP uses are particularly poorly written. While it is true that most of the issues with buffer overflows and memory corruptions in C can be more easily avoided with other languages (e.g., Java), it doesn't mean they can't also be avoided in C with careful coding.
If those aren't already options in the install GUI, they should be. Having a package manager for which you can set preferences to look for only free driver updates, etc. or automatically install whatever drivers it thinks you need (regardless of whether it's proprietary or not) would be nice, and it might help to keep things usable for newbies while still being flexible enough for more advanced users. Granted, advanced users would just do a command line install, but whatever.
As a side note, I see the disparities mentioned in TFS as a good thing, as it indicates more people are switching to Linux.
Disclaimer: I don't usually install Linux boxen, I just SSH into them.
I believe it was picked to help foster in laymen the vague notion that we're just making shit up to mess with them. In order to solve this issue, I propose we now start calling them kibibikibitibobitiboobytes.
Slashdot Mirror
If dolphins really want to get special treatment, they need to figure out how to do something for us.
Does patrolling our harbors for terrorists, spies, and underwater mines count?
The number you are quoting is the solar constant, as measured by satellite.
The number the grandparent is quoting is the average atmospheric insolation over all of Earth for a calendar year. I found a nice calculator provided by NASA that generates "a numerical table of monthly latitude insolation at top-of-atmosphere for a given calendar year" that backs up his provided average of ~342 W/m^2 -- see the bottom right.
figuring out the best way to fill a rectangle with circles
I don't know about best, but I think Mandelbrot has already figured out the prettiest.
The word you are looking for is 'infamous'.
My guess would be that they used an atomic clock and very, very big Vernier calipers.
Well, at least then they could've used Rockapella for echolocation...
You see, exomorons have their stupidity on the outside, so we can determine at a glance that they're idiots. For our normal everyday endomorons, we have to talk to them for a while or observe their actions. If we can find some exomorons, we may be able (at a later date) to cross-breed them with endomorons and save everyone else a lot of time. Unfortunately, I have a sneaking suspicion that there may be selective pressures against displaying one's stupidity for all to see, so any species we create that does so may be doomed to extinction. I can only hope we make all the endomorons extinct first...
One study after another cites the previous study, and almost no one knows where that 42 billion dollar figure came from, but it's impressive, so everyone continues to quote it.
Ars did an article on attempting to trace one such oft-quoted figure of losses, and slashdot discussed it. This $42 billion figure is probably from the same source.
tl;dr: big-dollar piracy numbers probably come from some unsubstantiated source from 1993 or earlier.
You're mostly correct, in that it is the longest and most well-known, but slightly wrong about it being the only one open to the public. Though I agree that riding on maglev trains is cool (did it at the Japan '05 Expo), riding on a minibus driven by a stuffed toy was more fun. :)
In retrospect, "The tiger is cast" would have been cooler for Caesar to say before crossing the Rubicon...
This brings up an interesting point. The Netflix algorithm is working from flawed/incomplete data generated from poor design decisions, so no matter how good the algorithm gets it still won't be able to accurately predict what movies will actually interest people based on a very subjective unidimensional rating. For example, the same person might rate a movie differently under differing conditions, and the rating itself may hinge entirely on one thing in the movie (s)he did(n't) like, whereas the movie might have been overall pretty good. It's like asking someone, 'on a scale of 1 to 5, what is your favorite color?'; it has next to no relation to its supposed objective.
On top of all this, people are capricious at best when it comes to movie tastes; they might not even like a movie based on its own merits, but something completely orthogonal to the question such as it being the movie they saw on their first date. As such, no set of ratings from any given user can really be accurately matched with those of another to provide suggestions, since they may have liked/hated those movies for entirely separate reasons. Granted, some of these things can't easily be transcribed into data for formulaic processing, but you'd think Netflix could at least add an optional 'detailed rating' section (e.g., rate by pace, plot, action, acting, dialogue, etc.) to better describe why a user did or didn't like a flick.
You'll probably be off by a day. The shipped product will invariably be older than a daily snapshot from the 23rd, so it is very likely that Win7 will have to download the most recent Windows Defender definitions if nothing else.
Well, some people just can't tolerate intolerance.
If I thought my feet were going to be stepped on, I would still pick the elephant before a woman in stilettos.
Ooh! Contact those Conficker guys to add that to their payload!
Moblin? What's their slogan, "It's a secret to everybody"?
The columnar functional organization, as originally framed by Vernon Mountcastle, suggests that neurons that are horizontally more than 0.5 mm (500 um) from each other do not have overlapping sensory receptive fields, and other experiments give similar results: 200-800 um (Buxhoeveden 2002, Hubel 1977, Leise 1990, etc.). Various estimates suggest there are 50 to 100 cortical minicolumns in a hypercolumn, each comprising around 80 neurons.
An important distinction is that the columnar organization is functional by definition, and reflects the local connectivity of the cerebral cortex. Connections "up" and "down" within the thickness of the cortex are much denser than connections that spread from side to side.
So if their goal were to only simulate the neocortex, it seems they would really only need dense inter-chip connections between those chips that would make up their version of a cortical column and sparser connections to its neighbors, rather than needing to connect each simulated neuron in each chip to every other. (IANA neurobiologist)
If you change it to 'any cheap way', it makes more sense. Still not completely true, but at least it's closer to reality...
Your first point is valid enough, and your second one does hold some water, but it seems that it has already been addressed by other books on programming in PHP. Further, if I fully understand what your second point is talking about, it would seem that solving it would require getting rid of some of the flexibility (and hence, utility) of the language.
Notably, points 3.2 and 3.3 in your post have already been addressed (not sure about 3.1 or 3.4... never ran into anyone who did 3.1 since it seems incredibly foolish, and haven't heard of any changes yet for 3.4).
3.2: 1 == '1more' is true for two reasons: you're using the weak equivalence operator (hence why a string and an int can be equivalent) and your string starts with valid numeric data which can be converted properly while the rest is ignored. See here for more examples of what would and wouldn't be converted.
3.3: Using the strict equivalency operators ('===' and '!==') in your conditional statements solves this. According to the link, this has been available since PHP 4 so I'm not sure why you're still going on about it...
Your fourth point doesn't necessarily make PHP any less secure than any other programming language that can use external libraries, unless the ones PHP uses are particularly poorly written. While it is true that most of the issues with buffer overflows and memory corruptions in C can be more easily avoided with other languages (e.g., Java), it doesn't mean they can't also be avoided in C with careful coding.
"must be free" and "just do it for me".
If those aren't already options in the install GUI, they should be. Having a package manager for which you can set preferences to look for only free driver updates, etc. or automatically install whatever drivers it thinks you need (regardless of whether it's proprietary or not) would be nice, and it might help to keep things usable for newbies while still being flexible enough for more advanced users. Granted, advanced users would just do a command line install, but whatever.
As a side note, I see the disparities mentioned in TFS as a good thing, as it indicates more people are switching to Linux.
Disclaimer: I don't usually install Linux boxen, I just SSH into them.
Commander Keen to the rescue!
Great, so now I need Mr. Fusion or a blot of lightning to get my computer running.
Why not just pick up some plutonium from the corner drugstore?
I wonder if the flux capacitor is an optional extra?
If my calculations are correct, you're gonna see some serious shit.
I believe it was picked to help foster in laymen the vague notion that we're just making shit up to mess with them. In order to solve this issue, I propose we now start calling them kibibikibitibobitiboobytes.
It's that image burned into our retinas when the power to our monitors dies, right? Right?
For a second I read that as 'Hydrogen can be metal' and thought of this...