(heh looks like I got modded flamebait by one of those fanatics:) ) Well it's a kernel problem that only shows up under certain circumstances (it only showed up on one of our servers), not sure whether Debian would be immune. Search for prune_icache kernel. I mean, can you really say the 2.4 kernel was a great example of stability and quality? Maybe if you compare it with Windows 9x:).
Anyway, the distros/OSes all have problems of their own. So if you're in middle management and not tech, and upper management is not supportive, you'd go with whatever that you think is defensible vs upper management.
That's how it usually works (or doesn't work;) ). In this guy's case, probably since SAP were making discouraging noises about RHL, why fight it? That way it's SAP's problem if it doesn't work in the end.
For example, if you look at the link I gave, sometimes the RH devs will release unofficial kernels to try to fix bugs (see comment 42). So the full "Crest" story might not be so simple as Crest refusing to run a diagnostic test. Maybe the problem was identified already, and there was no need to run a run-of-the-mill diagnostic test suggested by "1st level support". Or the diagnostic test was installing an unofficial and unsupported kernel and seeing what happens.
And a fair number of those unofficial kernels don't fix the problem. Just some groping in the dark by the developers. Eventually they'll probably fix it, but that often takes longer than you can wait. If it's a kernel problem, changing the distro may not help.
In summary, I'm not saying Windows is better, just saying that Linux isn't all that great, so given that there'll be problems, and possibly problems that can't be fixed in a timely manner, you'd just go with whatever is politically viable. After all, people can say there's 3rd party Support till they are blue in the face, but what matters more is whether there is upper management support.
Now if Linux was that much better for a scenario, then sure, I'd stick my neck out for it (coz who wants 10x more problems even with backing from top bosses). But sure didn't look like it was (whoopee 1.5x fewer problems and no backing from bosses? Forget it).
In one of the things we need to do, only Linux can do the job easily (we need the ipqueue features). Not FreeBSD (netgraph doesn't look as easy to get into), not Windows (something like ipqueue? heh).
They are using RHEL3 maybe they had one of those problems with kswapd. We've had problems with kswapd on RH9 too. Had to reboot a server every few days. So yeah, things aren't all that great despite the great faith some fanatics have in Linux.
If you bother to look, Linux isn't quite as stable as some people believe it is, at least for some versions of Red Hat Linux. Makes you wonder what Red Hat are doing. They are supposed to be making their kernels more stable than the developer kernels (which aren't that stable - the kernel developers nowadays don't seem to care as much about that).
More than a few Linux kernels have had some memory management issues. If he was using RedHat 9 he'd be having the same problems we had - had to reboot every few days.
Just do a google search on kswapd and cpu for some examples. If you bother to look around I'm sure you can find other stability problems with Linux.
I use FreeBSD, SuSE Linux and Windows 2000 at home. They all have their uses. They have their strengths and weaknesses.
Unlike what the fanatics believe, Linux isn't that much better than Windows. Even in terms of security and stability.
That said, I'd still prefer to use FreeBSD/Linux for most server stuff.
Wouldn't they rather make DRM available, and promote that as the preferred "treatment"?
Step 1 "Users can't be trusted to not run the wrong programs, so let's 'protect' them from themselves"
Step 2 "Users can't be trusted to not run the wrong programs, so let's 'protect' us and our friends from them"
After all, Windows really isn't less secure than Linux. They're both in the same _class_ of security.
I daresay the same "download and run everything" users given a "Desktop Linux" would do the equivalent of switching to root to install a "Kournikova screensaver".
Seeing that so many windows users actually entered a password to unlock zipfiles and then ran the trojan executables in them, it can't be difficult to get these bunch to run su -; perl trojan.jpg (where trojan.jpg is a perl script) or even "./configure; make install".
So one way to protect these people from themselves is "Trusted Computing" (see Step 1).
True he isn't being particularly insightful, but he sure is ahead of the people who actually think the Iraqis gave a damn about attacking New York (at least before the US attacked them in Gulf War II).
I mean why is that AC talking about New York and Iraq? If it's about 9/11 Iraq had less to do with 9/11 than some European countries did. Before the US attacked them, the only countries Iraq would have attacked were probably Kuwait, Iran, Israel, (not sure about Saudi Arabia).
I guess the AC might be one of the numerous US kids who got a full load of mercury/thimerosal laced vaccines and thus got brain damaged (go look that up). That might help partly explain a whole generation of stupid people.
If speed matters more than space, replace gzip with lzop.
Of course there are some dependency probs for some databases (things depending on something else and so can't be created yet), so now seems there's the -Fc switch for pg_dump and pg_restore...
You are confusing plagiarism with copying. They are not the same thing. Plagiarism involves _lying_, copying doesn't.
Depending on copyright laws, copying _may_ breach a granted limited monopoly over copying and distribution.
BTW extending copyright reach/scope is closer to stealing - since it restricts access. Whereas copying increases access (it _may_ reduce access to money but that's not really proven yet and it's a different matter).
Extending copyright is closer to stealing than copying.
When copyright terms are extended or copyright laws are made more restrictive, many things would no longer come under public domain or fair use. As such arguably the public suffers a loss - loss of access to material that would otherwise be public domain or fair use.
Thus, extending the scope and reach of copyrights is closer to stealing than copyright infringement, especially if dubious things were done in order to get laws passed.
Even more so if it's retroactive - e.g. things in public domain suddenly become copyrighted back again.
A good middle manager is like a good "middleware" between upper management and the subordinates.
Also just because you're not that up to date with tech stuff doesn't mean you can't tell when someone is bullshitting you or not.
Even if you can't tell at first whether your subordinate is bullshitting you, you can always note the stuff down and check it (with google or someone else). If you handle it well (and that's the trick), after that I doubt they'd dare bullshit significantly, and might even respect you a bit more...
If you are a manager, what matters is how well you know and handle people (you can use this for your selfish benefit or for the benefit of the company (or both), go figure).
The Art of Management isn't easily taught either. Judging from the vast quantities of silly management books and the vast numbers of crappy managers.
I guess a possible problem is the crappy managers don't know (or care) that they are crappy, and so are willing to take the jobs, whereas the slightly less crappy ones know they are crappy and thus don't want to be managers.
As for people being easily interchangeable and replaced, I prefer to use a different concept: roles/jobs can usually be filled by others. But usually good people do more than their role. And no two persons do the same "extra" things the same way. If you only want to fill a role/seat, you're being a bit stupid/negligent as an employer/manager - better to get more bang for the buck.
Re:Software Development Is not Like Engineering
on
Keeping the Lights On
·
· Score: 1
Cool. So I'm not the only one.
For quite a while, I've been telling people the difference between software engineering and civil engineering is with software, the clay/plastic "wind tunnel" models work and are sold as version 1.0. The detailed blueprints/designs "compile and run", and are sold as version 2.0. The "real thing" is version 3.0 of course, and 3.1 is after the fixes on the real thing:).
And the trouble is each step costs about as much as making the real thing. Whereas making copies costs almost nothing.
Fortunately so far many customers are willing to sponsor the preliminary stages:).
Well, there's another form of voting - you can easily vote with your feet and choose Slashdot or Kuro5hin or some other site.
Despite the complaints Slashdot seems to get more users than many other sites (which allow voting from everybody).
Different sites for different folks:).
Back to the topic: "Different sites for different folks" goes for Yahoo Mail vs Gmail.
I don't see how Yahoo Mail is significantly superior to Gmail or vice versa. They're both pretty basic in features and most people only need basic features. AND _more_importantly_ users of either service can still easily communicate with each other. So there's not that much point advocating either service.
In contrast users of Yahoo Messenger can't easily chat with users of MSN, ICQ, various IRC or Google Chat and so on, same for various services. That to me seems a topic/area of more interest and significance. Come to think of it, users of Slashdot can't easily communicate with users of Kuro5hin...
Well at the kuro5hin site most users with accounts can mod. But I find that site appears to have tons of trolls, people full of bile and hate.
Anyway, if you take things to the extreme: given enough computing resources, everyone should be able to mod, as much as they like, AND see what they'd like.
After all, most people are likely to fall into a smaller number of groups who think in similar ways.
So as you mod, the system figures out which group(s) you are likely to be in (thus saving storage and computing), and so stuff that the group(s) you belong to regards as highly modded will appear highly modded to you.
Whereas other people belonging to other groups may not see the same thing as highly modded.
Of course, the "trouble" with this is it encourages polarisation - likeminded people grouping with likeminded people and hardly ever learning from others.
If you are wise you don't surround yourself with people who keep agreeing with you.
But I suppose you also shouldn't surround yourself with stupid people/fools all the time either.
Sure you can. But most malaysian citizens aren't really that worried about that, because the Malaysia Gov isn't as efficient or ruthless as Singapore's so the Malaysian gov may lose track or lose the will or get distracted by sillier stuff (like this silliness for instance) after a while.
Whereas the S'pore Government can probably keep track of their entire population down to their fingerprints and DNA...:)
You may be surprised to know that the Malaysian Gov actually does listen to citizen complaints and thus often does things to make them happy even though it's not such a good idea - like allowing some U-turns on certain highways (which can make things a bit more dangerous).
We just got quite bad press over the past years because our previous prime minister (Mahathir) had a knack for annoying various parties in the world (he often did have a good point though;) ).
Not a good idea, but I guess someone might actually be stupid enough to do it.
I mean, what do you expect them to do when suddenly all the vid screens get this bright glare on them. They also have _people_ on the floor with radios you know...
Those friendly touchy-feely big burly people usually aren't far away too.
And what's the point in the first place?
I'd think those people using the cameras on their phones to help with roulette had a much better idea.
If anything, the casino might be the one using this against unauthorized cameras. And not the other way round.
No I'm not. Read the first, second and third lines of that post again.
I know algorithms come under math. But math people tend to think everything comes under math anyway (they haven't proven that though, and some are having some doubts).
BUT my point is: show me the math that _creates_ or help creates algorithms. And maybe that'll be useful for programming.
IMO most programming is a form of decision and work compression. The classic math and algorithm stuff tend to be just a small bit (just use google or look it up elsewhere).
Instead of handling every possible case individually, you compress it into a program.
The resulting program is expanded by the computer to solve the problem.
Please show me math that will help do that in practice.
Like I said, just saying "it's math" is missing the point entirely. It's like saying me walking from point A to point B is math, it doesn't help me very much if I still have to keep walking the same path everyday.
The advantage in practice is that x86 CISC instructions are often smaller than those of most RISC chips (except maybe POWER- which isn't really RISC;) ).
Since the x86 CISC stuff is translated to RISC like stuff, you can think of it as on-the-fly decompression.
Compressed code (x86) is stored in slow main memory and caches, and decompressed to RISC ops in the CPU (with the P4 the risc ops are in the tracecache).
So the x86 isn't that bad. Since disk and RAM is slow, smaller programs are a good thing. Caches are expensive too.
Given CPUs were gaining in speed much faster than RAM, what might be faster than x86 ISA would be a better designed CISC ISA- one that worked well with the limited memory bandwidths etc.
But I hear POWER is practically a CISC - microcode and all...
Whatever it is, the x86 chips sure are fast enough for most purposes. And provide better bang for buck in 90% of the cases.
All I see is a 200+ million transistor chip or even a 400+ million transistor chip, that can't do specint faster than x86 chips with 100+ million transistors (or even less). And only do specfp maybe 2 x faster.
And even then, I wonder if the specfp stuff the Itanium is so good at can be split up easily to multiple chips. In which case you might as well have two x86 chips using 200 million transistors (dual core).
Basically you get more performance per transistor for most tasks with x86 than you do with Itanium, unless you are doing tasks that are similar to a few of the specfp tests which the Itanium handles really really well.
I wonder if a DSP might be a good fit for those tho...
Ah, but with his method most students can use their brains all the way to the square root of 7 point, no need for a calculator.
Whereas with the normal method, most students will have to deal with the troublesome sine and cos stuff way earlier - and without a calculator or lookup tables, you'd have some problems solving the problem in time.
AND more importantly for students;), decent math teachers should give you full marks for an answer that's d1=sqrt(1400-525*sqrt(7)). Because you've done most of the brain stuff already.
Whereas with the classical method without a calculator you could get stuck trying to figure out arccos(3/4) at a very early stage in solving the problem. So if you stop there it's hard to tell whether you really could do the brain stuff or not.
His idea has merit, but it is hard to change Tradition.
More importantly, even if you can consider it as math, how can it help you?
Is there a function or math method that will help create the best procedure/algorithm for you to get your groceries?
If there isn't then who cares if it's math or not? (OK so I'm an engineer...;) ).
Get back to me when some math guy can use math to help me refactor or debug some broken code.
Maybe we're using the wrong programming languages I guess (no, I doubt Lisp is it).
Hopefully someone can come up with Computer Programming/Science with "quadrants" and "spread".
Right now I think we're still stuck in the "roman numerals" stage of Computer Programming. Look at C for instance... Sure we can solve problems with it. But hey the Romans built roads, aqueducts etc too.
Slashdot Mirror
If anyone in other countries are really bothered they can go point their DNS servers to other root servers.
(heh looks like I got modded flamebait by one of those fanatics :) ) :).
;) ). In this guy's case, probably since SAP were making discouraging noises about RHL, why fight it? That way it's SAP's problem if it doesn't work in the end.
Well it's a kernel problem that only shows up under certain circumstances (it only showed up on one of our servers), not sure whether Debian would be immune. Search for prune_icache kernel. I mean, can you really say the 2.4 kernel was a great example of stability and quality? Maybe if you compare it with Windows 9x
Anyway, the distros/OSes all have problems of their own. So if you're in middle management and not tech, and upper management is not supportive, you'd go with whatever that you think is defensible vs upper management.
That's how it usually works (or doesn't work
For example, if you look at the link I gave, sometimes the RH devs will release unofficial kernels to try to fix bugs (see comment 42). So the full "Crest" story might not be so simple as Crest refusing to run a diagnostic test. Maybe the problem was identified already, and there was no need to run a run-of-the-mill diagnostic test suggested by "1st level support". Or the diagnostic test was installing an unofficial and unsupported kernel and seeing what happens.
And a fair number of those unofficial kernels don't fix the problem. Just some groping in the dark by the developers. Eventually they'll probably fix it, but that often takes longer than you can wait. If it's a kernel problem, changing the distro may not help.
In summary, I'm not saying Windows is better, just saying that Linux isn't all that great, so given that there'll be problems, and possibly problems that can't be fixed in a timely manner, you'd just go with whatever is politically viable. After all, people can say there's 3rd party Support till they are blue in the face, but what matters more is whether there is upper management support.
Now if Linux was that much better for a scenario, then sure, I'd stick my neck out for it (coz who wants 10x more problems even with backing from top bosses). But sure didn't look like it was (whoopee 1.5x fewer problems and no backing from bosses? Forget it).
In one of the things we need to do, only Linux can do the job easily (we need the ipqueue features). Not FreeBSD (netgraph doesn't look as easy to get into), not Windows (something like ipqueue? heh).
They are using RHEL3 maybe they had one of those problems with kswapd. We've had problems with kswapd on RH9 too. Had to reboot a server every few days. So yeah, things aren't all that great despite the great faith some fanatics have in Linux.
If you bother to look, Linux isn't quite as stable as some people believe it is, at least for some versions of Red Hat Linux. Makes you wonder what Red Hat are doing. They are supposed to be making their kernels more stable than the developer kernels (which aren't that stable - the kernel developers nowadays don't seem to care as much about that).
Nah. Doesn't have to be a hardware problem.
More than a few Linux kernels have had some memory management issues. If he was using RedHat 9 he'd be having the same problems we had - had to reboot every few days.
Just do a google search on kswapd and cpu for some examples. If you bother to look around I'm sure you can find other stability problems with Linux.
I use FreeBSD, SuSE Linux and Windows 2000 at home. They all have their uses. They have their strengths and weaknesses.
Unlike what the fanatics believe, Linux isn't that much better than Windows. Even in terms of security and stability.
That said, I'd still prefer to use FreeBSD/Linux for most server stuff.
He's just speaking with a lisp ;)
Why would MS make that available?
Wouldn't they rather make DRM available, and promote that as the preferred "treatment"?
Step 1
"Users can't be trusted to not run the wrong programs, so let's 'protect' them from themselves"
Step 2
"Users can't be trusted to not run the wrong programs, so let's 'protect' us and our friends from them"
After all, Windows really isn't less secure than Linux. They're both in the same _class_ of security.
I daresay the same "download and run everything" users given a "Desktop Linux" would do the equivalent of switching to root to install a "Kournikova screensaver".
Seeing that so many windows users actually entered a password to unlock zipfiles and then ran the trojan executables in them, it can't be difficult to get these bunch to run su -; perl trojan.jpg (where trojan.jpg is a perl script) or even "./configure; make install".
So one way to protect these people from themselves is "Trusted Computing" (see Step 1).
True he isn't being particularly insightful, but he sure is ahead of the people who actually think the Iraqis gave a damn about attacking New York (at least before the US attacked them in Gulf War II).
I mean why is that AC talking about New York and Iraq? If it's about 9/11 Iraq had less to do with 9/11 than some European countries did. Before the US attacked them, the only countries Iraq would have attacked were probably Kuwait, Iran, Israel, (not sure about Saudi Arabia).
I guess the AC might be one of the numerous US kids who got a full load of mercury/thimerosal laced vaccines and thus got brain damaged (go look that up). That might help partly explain a whole generation of stupid people.
In most cases the following works:
pg_dump dbname | gzip -c | split -b - 20050927-dbname.gz-
If speed matters more than space, replace gzip with lzop.
Of course there are some dependency probs for some databases (things depending on something else and so can't be created yet), so now seems there's the -Fc switch for pg_dump and pg_restore...
You are confusing plagiarism with copying. They are not the same thing. Plagiarism involves _lying_, copying doesn't.
Depending on copyright laws, copying _may_ breach a granted limited monopoly over copying and distribution.
BTW extending copyright reach/scope is closer to stealing - since it restricts access. Whereas copying increases access (it _may_ reduce access to money but that's not really proven yet and it's a different matter).
Extending copyright is closer to stealing than copying.
When copyright terms are extended or copyright laws are made more restrictive, many things would no longer come under public domain or fair use. As such arguably the public suffers a loss - loss of access to material that would otherwise be public domain or fair use.
Thus, extending the scope and reach of copyrights is closer to stealing than copyright infringement, especially if dubious things were done in order to get laws passed.
Even more so if it's retroactive - e.g. things in public domain suddenly become copyrighted back again.
Uh good managers are not easily replaceable.
A good middle manager is like a good "middleware" between upper management and the subordinates.
Also just because you're not that up to date with tech stuff doesn't mean you can't tell when someone is bullshitting you or not.
Even if you can't tell at first whether your subordinate is bullshitting you, you can always note the stuff down and check it (with google or someone else). If you handle it well (and that's the trick), after that I doubt they'd dare bullshit significantly, and might even respect you a bit more...
If you are a manager, what matters is how well you know and handle people (you can use this for your selfish benefit or for the benefit of the company (or both), go figure).
The Art of Management isn't easily taught either. Judging from the vast quantities of silly management books and the vast numbers of crappy managers.
I guess a possible problem is the crappy managers don't know (or care) that they are crappy, and so are willing to take the jobs, whereas the slightly less crappy ones know they are crappy and thus don't want to be managers.
As for people being easily interchangeable and replaced, I prefer to use a different concept: roles/jobs can usually be filled by others. But usually good people do more than their role. And no two persons do the same "extra" things the same way. If you only want to fill a role/seat, you're being a bit stupid/negligent as an employer/manager - better to get more bang for the buck.
Cool. So I'm not the only one.
:).
:).
For quite a while, I've been telling people the difference between software engineering and civil engineering is with software, the clay/plastic "wind tunnel" models work and are sold as version 1.0. The detailed blueprints/designs "compile and run", and are sold as version 2.0. The "real thing" is version 3.0 of course, and 3.1 is after the fixes on the real thing
And the trouble is each step costs about as much as making the real thing. Whereas making copies costs almost nothing.
Fortunately so far many customers are willing to sponsor the preliminary stages
Well, there's another form of voting - you can easily vote with your feet and choose Slashdot or Kuro5hin or some other site.
:).
Despite the complaints Slashdot seems to get more users than many other sites (which allow voting from everybody).
Different sites for different folks
Back to the topic: "Different sites for different folks" goes for Yahoo Mail vs Gmail.
I don't see how Yahoo Mail is significantly superior to Gmail or vice versa. They're both pretty basic in features and most people only need basic features. AND _more_importantly_ users of either service can still easily communicate with each other. So there's not that much point advocating either service.
In contrast users of Yahoo Messenger can't easily chat with users of MSN, ICQ, various IRC or Google Chat and so on, same for various services. That to me seems a topic/area of more interest and significance. Come to think of it, users of Slashdot can't easily communicate with users of Kuro5hin...
Well at the kuro5hin site most users with accounts can mod. But I find that site appears to have tons of trolls, people full of bile and hate.
Anyway, if you take things to the extreme: given enough computing resources, everyone should be able to mod, as much as they like, AND see what they'd like.
After all, most people are likely to fall into a smaller number of groups who think in similar ways.
So as you mod, the system figures out which group(s) you are likely to be in (thus saving storage and computing), and so stuff that the group(s) you belong to regards as highly modded will appear highly modded to you.
Whereas other people belonging to other groups may not see the same thing as highly modded.
Of course, the "trouble" with this is it encourages polarisation - likeminded people grouping with likeminded people and hardly ever learning from others.
If you are wise you don't surround yourself with people who keep agreeing with you.
But I suppose you also shouldn't surround yourself with stupid people/fools all the time either.
If they want interesting statistics and all that, shouldn't it be interesting to know the sort of things different demographics choose to delete?
;).
It'll be good to know what people say "No" to.
Then maybe we would get more interesting spam
They should just have a public monthly list of the top webusers, the top URLs, and the top urls of the top webusers.
;).
That'll be fair. So if the bosses are checking their stocks every 2 minutes, everyone knows
In situations like this I usually say Aah! or Ow!
Maybe I'm weird...
Sure you can. But most malaysian citizens aren't really that worried about that, because the Malaysia Gov isn't as efficient or ruthless as Singapore's so the Malaysian gov may lose track or lose the will or get distracted by sillier stuff (like this silliness for instance) after a while.
:)
;) ).
Whereas the S'pore Government can probably keep track of their entire population down to their fingerprints and DNA...
You may be surprised to know that the Malaysian Gov actually does listen to citizen complaints and thus often does things to make them happy even though it's not such a good idea - like allowing some U-turns on certain highways (which can make things a bit more dangerous).
We just got quite bad press over the past years because our previous prime minister (Mahathir) had a knack for annoying various parties in the world (he often did have a good point though
Casinos?
Not a good idea, but I guess someone might actually be stupid enough to do it.
I mean, what do you expect them to do when suddenly all the vid screens get this bright glare on them. They also have _people_ on the floor with radios you know...
Those friendly touchy-feely big burly people usually aren't far away too.
And what's the point in the first place?
I'd think those people using the cameras on their phones to help with roulette had a much better idea.
If anything, the casino might be the one using this against unauthorized cameras. And not the other way round.
No I'm not. Read the first, second and third lines of that post again.
I know algorithms come under math. But math people tend to think everything comes under math anyway (they haven't proven that though, and some are having some doubts).
BUT my point is: show me the math that _creates_ or help creates algorithms. And maybe that'll be useful for programming.
IMO most programming is a form of decision and work compression. The classic math and algorithm stuff tend to be just a small bit (just use google or look it up elsewhere).
Instead of handling every possible case individually, you compress it into a program.
The resulting program is expanded by the computer to solve the problem.
Please show me math that will help do that in practice.
Like I said, just saying "it's math" is missing the point entirely. It's like saying me walking from point A to point B is math, it doesn't help me very much if I still have to keep walking the same path everyday.
The advantage in practice is that x86 CISC instructions are often smaller than those of most RISC chips (except maybe POWER- which isn't really RISC ;) ).
Since the x86 CISC stuff is translated to RISC like stuff, you can think of it as on-the-fly decompression.
Compressed code (x86) is stored in slow main memory and caches, and decompressed to RISC ops in the CPU (with the P4 the risc ops are in the tracecache).
So the x86 isn't that bad. Since disk and RAM is slow, smaller programs are a good thing. Caches are expensive too.
Given CPUs were gaining in speed much faster than RAM, what might be faster than x86 ISA would be a better designed CISC ISA- one that worked well with the limited memory bandwidths etc.
But I hear POWER is practically a CISC - microcode and all...
Whatever it is, the x86 chips sure are fast enough for most purposes. And provide better bang for buck in 90% of the cases.
Well, start listing the merits please.
All I see is a 200+ million transistor chip or even a 400+ million transistor chip, that can't do specint faster than x86 chips with 100+ million transistors (or even less). And only do specfp maybe 2 x faster.
And even then, I wonder if the specfp stuff the Itanium is so good at can be split up easily to multiple chips. In which case you might as well have two x86 chips using 200 million transistors (dual core).
Basically you get more performance per transistor for most tasks with x86 than you do with Itanium, unless you are doing tasks that are similar to a few of the specfp tests which the Itanium handles really really well.
I wonder if a DSP might be a good fit for those tho...
"nothing matters except Pizza and Coke"
Ah, but if you order round pizzas, you might wish to calculate which pizza establishment gives the most pizza area per dollar.
Those who don't like trig may have to stick to ordering square pizzas for easy calculations.
Then again, I guess they could google it. Someone has indeed gone and done that sort of pizza survey...
Ah, but with his method most students can use their brains all the way to the square root of 7 point, no need for a calculator.
;), decent math teachers should give you full marks for an answer that's d1=sqrt(1400-525*sqrt(7)). Because you've done most of the brain stuff already.
Whereas with the normal method, most students will have to deal with the troublesome sine and cos stuff way earlier - and without a calculator or lookup tables, you'd have some problems solving the problem in time.
AND more importantly for students
Whereas with the classical method without a calculator you could get stuck trying to figure out arccos(3/4) at a very early stage in solving the problem. So if you stop there it's hard to tell whether you really could do the brain stuff or not.
His idea has merit, but it is hard to change Tradition.
More importantly, even if you can consider it as math, how can it help you?
;) ).
Is there a function or math method that will help create the best procedure/algorithm for you to get your groceries?
If there isn't then who cares if it's math or not? (OK so I'm an engineer...
Get back to me when some math guy can use math to help me refactor or debug some broken code.
Maybe we're using the wrong programming languages I guess (no, I doubt Lisp is it).
Hopefully someone can come up with Computer Programming/Science with "quadrants" and "spread".
Right now I think we're still stuck in the "roman numerals" stage of Computer Programming. Look at C for instance... Sure we can solve problems with it. But hey the Romans built roads, aqueducts etc too.