Do note that the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" is a generally an anti-nuclear, scare-mongering publication
Utter nonsense. I remember perusing the print version of the Bulleting in my college library a few years ago, and it was anything but a knee-jerk, "scare-mongering" publication on nuclear issues. The articles were extremely informed and detailed.
There are two great articles that spring to mind. One was regarding a project run by the US government regarding how difficult it would be for countries without nuclear weapons to develop one. To test this, they found a physicist who had just gotten his PhD, making sure he that he wasn't someone with two much particular knowledge on nuclear physics. By using research from publicly-available sources he was able to eventually come up with a working design for a nuclear weapon. Just to be thorough he even designed a more complicated implosion design rather than a the simpler bullet design. The point of the article was that the difficult part for a country aspiring to create a nuclear arsenal is accumulating the proper uranium or plutonium. Creating the bomb is relatively simple.
The other article examined whether using depleted uranium for ammunition had lasting effects because of radioactivity. If I recall correctly, the radioactive aspect was not a concern. However, uranium can be poisonous without any consideration of its (limited) radioactivity. Since DU rounds piercing armor can cause the outer shell of them to vaporize, this could be a problem.
The Bulletin's conclusion was not obvious. Judging them just because of the Doomsday Clock is rash.
Plus, coming from a long time convert to Java, once you've coded Java for a while, you have to be pretty off your rocker to make actual memory leaks. I mean really really off your rocker.
I'm not so sure about that. I've heard from very experienced Java programmers who get bit by this on occasion because of something subtle.
But, if by chance you do find preventing references to objects from remaining around longer than you expect trivial to avoid memory leaks in Java, then you will find memory management in C++ equally trivial. Just apply the same principle to smart pointers.
Games are a pretty special case since they are developed to the bleeding-edge of hardware under time-crunch constraints. Given the importance of performance in these cases, a crash in 10 hours of play is a fair trade-off. The OS kernel and embedded system examples that you and everyone else ignored can be developed in a much more reasonable timeframe and work fine 99% of the time.
Any Java programmer worth his salt should have some awareness of memory management. And if he doesn't how can he evaluate the trade-offs considered when choosing between C++ and Java? Counter to what everyone else would like to believe, there are still places where manual memory management is preferable. The original poster for this thread gave a great example. Shit, half of Java developers don't even realize that most objects you use in C++ are either allocated on the stack or are managed with the STL and don't even need to have their memory tracked by the programmer.
Besides, Java can leak memory. So I get to choose between a language that claims it takes care of everything for me and then realize later that, oops, there's some fiendishly hard memory leak I have to find. Or I could just go with C++ where I know all of the possible pitfalls to look for in the beginning. Being able to predict when each object is released in memory, allowing the destructor clean-up to happen within the object itself without the finally-block kludge can (quite frankly) be a God-send in certain scenarios.
Until you're stuck trying to debug the memory leak in your C/C++ code because the server won't run more than 2 hours without barfing.
And if you hire the right developers, that never happens in the first place. Don't believe me? Consider all of the countless OS kernels, embedded devices and games developed in C or C++ that run without a hitch.
Hell the only places where C/C++ coded servers barf in 2 hours are in the fevered imaginations of Java programmers who think managing your own memory is soooooooooo hard.
IMHO the science is a minor part of it with regards to the public.
And that's quite unfortunate because it's the fundamental question of the whole thing. How can anybody come up with a political solution to a problem if they can't objectively look at what the situation is in the first place? Everything else is a secondary concern.
But if that were the case why is it that alternatives to those solutions are not given but, more often instead, it is argued that anthropogenic global warming is not happening in the first place?
At least the former tactic I can respect. People who deny all scientific evidence because it disagrees with their worldview I cannot.
The modern view of quantum mechanics is that the wavefunction never collapses. This isn't purely a matter interpretation (as many people claim): theoretical work over the last ~20 years on decoherence has shown that you can explain everything in QM with a deterministic wavefunction and no ad-hoc collapse axiom.... Thus the simplest available theory that fits experimental data is consistent with the Everett ('many-worlds') interpretation.
So your claim is that in order to avoid the complexity of wavefunction collapse, it is instead simpler to entertain the notion of infinite branches of possible worlds? What alternate version of you talks sense?
Treyvon was a young 6' 3" muscular basketball player
I'm undecided on wether Zimmerman is guilty or not without seeing further evidence myself. But it would be a stretch to call Trayvon "muscular". Kid weighed 140 pounds at 6' 3". I weigh that at 5' 7" and people think I'm too thin. He was a beanpole.
Sure, but you don't have to go as far as punching somebody to have the result the parent is talking about. It seems like after doing the mentioned nice things to a person that one cutting remark uttered when in a bad mood won't be forgiven.
English is literature, and sometimes it has nothing to do with words.
I can't tell if you're agreeing with me or not, but both English and literature essentially involve words. However, mathematics does not necessarily involve numbers.
For example, consider a problem from computer science - a branch of mathematics. (Well, maybe a branch of a branch of mathematics). Prove that there is no Turing Machine that can take any TM and tape and decide whether or not the TM will halt when given the tape as an input. This proof, and many others in math, does not use numbers at all.
My point and the point of the OP holds. Being good at math does not necessarily make you good at arithmetic. Leave the petty stuff to calculators.
I don't know why this got modded down because it is dead on. My brother has a Master's in mathematics, and teaches math for a living. (I think he's covering Statistics this year). It drives him crazy to hear someone give him a bunch of number to add in his head thinking that he must be able to do that if he's good at math. Sort of like how us software engineers like to hear questions about doing something in the Microsoft Office tool du jour since we know about "that computer stuff".
Math is proofs. And sometimes it has little to nothing to do with numbers.
Umm. Why the fuck was I modded "Overrated"? Just giving credit where credit is due for a feature that has been available from before it became part of the standard.
The new features to the standard library are brilliant. Threading has never been easier: std::thread t(foo, x, y); will call foo(x, y) in a new thread. When I decide to finish the threads and then join them I call: t.join();... Simple.
Sure. But it should be noted that this feature (along with many others brought to the new stand, I'm sure) were introduced in the Boost set of libraries first.
I think this depends on whether you consider color to be the external phenomenon you are perceiving or the actual perception that phenomenon creates within you. If it's the latter then you can argue that even the absence of light has an associated color with it. What if your mind associated the absence of light with what you currently perceive as green, and "green" wavelength light as black?
Maybe those are just guys trying the best they can when being up front, confident and handling rejection are very difficult things for them?
Kudos to you and the GP for being born with personalities where this all comes so easily. But some of us are not so blessed. Would you also like to criticize cripples who perform poorly when forced to run a marathon?
I'll have to disagree and vote for over-cooling places as the worst offense. It's a common occurrence here in the US. I can't stand having to put on bulky uncomfortable clothes to keep warm during the winter (and still be cold anyways).
But the true insult is to go into a public building in the middle of the summer and have the AC blasting to the point that it's uncomfortable. Half the time I would have been fine with them temperature with no air-conditioning at all. But then I'm in that small percentage of Americans who manages not to be fat.
You can argue that all day long, but basically everyone was for the Iraq invasion when it happened; It is possible Bush would have been "in trouble" had he not done Iraq...
Um, the reason that "basically everyone" was for the Iraq invasion is because of a concerted effort made by the Bush administration to make a case for it. A case that was full of information that can be considered, at best, distortions and, at worst, outright lies. If you don't believe me, try watching the program "Bush's War" put out by Frontline. Maybe Congress was too trusting with what was presented to them, but in the end the Iraq war was the Bush administration's cause.
I agree with you about Obama's hypocrisy regarding Libya.
No. I just think the whole argument is stupid and pointless. And you're actually splitting hairs over it.
If you want to put so much intellectual effort into something why not choose something interesting and/or useful? I hear that whole P=NP thing is still unsolved.
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Utter nonsense. I remember perusing the print version of the Bulleting in my college library a few years ago, and it was anything but a knee-jerk, "scare-mongering" publication on nuclear issues. The articles were extremely informed and detailed.
There are two great articles that spring to mind. One was regarding a project run by the US government regarding how difficult it would be for countries without nuclear weapons to develop one. To test this, they found a physicist who had just gotten his PhD, making sure he that he wasn't someone with two much particular knowledge on nuclear physics. By using research from publicly-available sources he was able to eventually come up with a working design for a nuclear weapon. Just to be thorough he even designed a more complicated implosion design rather than a the simpler bullet design. The point of the article was that the difficult part for a country aspiring to create a nuclear arsenal is accumulating the proper uranium or plutonium. Creating the bomb is relatively simple.
The other article examined whether using depleted uranium for ammunition had lasting effects because of radioactivity. If I recall correctly, the radioactive aspect was not a concern. However, uranium can be poisonous without any consideration of its (limited) radioactivity. Since DU rounds piercing armor can cause the outer shell of them to vaporize, this could be a problem.
The Bulletin's conclusion was not obvious. Judging them just because of the Doomsday Clock is rash.
I'm not so sure about that. I've heard from very experienced Java programmers who get bit by this on occasion because of something subtle.
But, if by chance you do find preventing references to objects from remaining around longer than you expect trivial to avoid memory leaks in Java, then you will find memory management in C++ equally trivial. Just apply the same principle to smart pointers.
Games are a pretty special case since they are developed to the bleeding-edge of hardware under time-crunch constraints. Given the importance of performance in these cases, a crash in 10 hours of play is a fair trade-off. The OS kernel and embedded system examples that you and everyone else ignored can be developed in a much more reasonable timeframe and work fine 99% of the time.
Any Java programmer worth his salt should have some awareness of memory management. And if he doesn't how can he evaluate the trade-offs considered when choosing between C++ and Java? Counter to what everyone else would like to believe, there are still places where manual memory management is preferable. The original poster for this thread gave a great example. Shit, half of Java developers don't even realize that most objects you use in C++ are either allocated on the stack or are managed with the STL and don't even need to have their memory tracked by the programmer.
Besides, Java can leak memory. So I get to choose between a language that claims it takes care of everything for me and then realize later that, oops, there's some fiendishly hard memory leak I have to find. Or I could just go with C++ where I know all of the possible pitfalls to look for in the beginning. Being able to predict when each object is released in memory, allowing the destructor clean-up to happen within the object itself without the finally-block kludge can (quite frankly) be a God-send in certain scenarios.
And if you hire the right developers, that never happens in the first place. Don't believe me? Consider all of the countless OS kernels, embedded devices and games developed in C or C++ that run without a hitch.
Hell the only places where C/C++ coded servers barf in 2 hours are in the fevered imaginations of Java programmers who think managing your own memory is soooooooooo hard.
And that's quite unfortunate because it's the fundamental question of the whole thing. How can anybody come up with a political solution to a problem if they can't objectively look at what the situation is in the first place? Everything else is a secondary concern.
But if that were the case why is it that alternatives to those solutions are not given but, more often instead, it is argued that anthropogenic global warming is not happening in the first place?
At least the former tactic I can respect. People who deny all scientific evidence because it disagrees with their worldview I cannot.
So your claim is that in order to avoid the complexity of wavefunction collapse, it is instead simpler to entertain the notion of infinite branches of possible worlds? What alternate version of you talks sense?
I'm undecided on wether Zimmerman is guilty or not without seeing further evidence myself. But it would be a stretch to call Trayvon "muscular". Kid weighed 140 pounds at 6' 3". I weigh that at 5' 7" and people think I'm too thin. He was a beanpole.
Sounds like this story has gone through The Science News Cycle, and forced someone to resign.
After all, who needs progress when you can have sensationalist media instead?
It's some pussy version of rugby they show on American TV in between advertisements for crappy beer.
Sure, but you don't have to go as far as punching somebody to have the result the parent is talking about. It seems like after doing the mentioned nice things to a person that one cutting remark uttered when in a bad mood won't be forgiven.
Or does that just apply to women?
I can't tell if you're agreeing with me or not, but both English and literature essentially involve words. However, mathematics does not necessarily involve numbers.
For example, consider a problem from computer science - a branch of mathematics. (Well, maybe a branch of a branch of mathematics). Prove that there is no Turing Machine that can take any TM and tape and decide whether or not the TM will halt when given the tape as an input. This proof, and many others in math, does not use numbers at all.
My point and the point of the OP holds. Being good at math does not necessarily make you good at arithmetic. Leave the petty stuff to calculators.
I don't know why this got modded down because it is dead on. My brother has a Master's in mathematics, and teaches math for a living. (I think he's covering Statistics this year). It drives him crazy to hear someone give him a bunch of number to add in his head thinking that he must be able to do that if he's good at math. Sort of like how us software engineers like to hear questions about doing something in the Microsoft Office tool du jour since we know about "that computer stuff".
Math is proofs. And sometimes it has little to nothing to do with numbers.
Sometimes you wish you could just go at such an oppressive, fucked up regime with no more half-measures.
Your explanation was awesome. Thank you.
Umm. Why the fuck was I modded "Overrated"? Just giving credit where credit is due for a feature that has been available from before it became part of the standard.
Sure. But it should be noted that this feature (along with many others brought to the new stand, I'm sure) were introduced in the Boost set of libraries first.
I think this depends on whether you consider color to be the external phenomenon you are perceiving or the actual perception that phenomenon creates within you. If it's the latter then you can argue that even the absence of light has an associated color with it. What if your mind associated the absence of light with what you currently perceive as green, and "green" wavelength light as black?
But then, do the blind see black?
Maybe those are just guys trying the best they can when being up front, confident and handling rejection are very difficult things for them?
Kudos to you and the GP for being born with personalities where this all comes so easily. But some of us are not so blessed. Would you also like to criticize cripples who perform poorly when forced to run a marathon?
I'll have to disagree and vote for over-cooling places as the worst offense. It's a common occurrence here in the US. I can't stand having to put on bulky uncomfortable clothes to keep warm during the winter (and still be cold anyways).
But the true insult is to go into a public building in the middle of the summer and have the AC blasting to the point that it's uncomfortable. Half the time I would have been fine with them temperature with no air-conditioning at all. But then I'm in that small percentage of Americans who manages not to be fat.
Um, the reason that "basically everyone" was for the Iraq invasion is because of a concerted effort made by the Bush administration to make a case for it. A case that was full of information that can be considered, at best, distortions and, at worst, outright lies. If you don't believe me, try watching the program "Bush's War" put out by Frontline. Maybe Congress was too trusting with what was presented to them, but in the end the Iraq war was the Bush administration's cause.
I agree with you about Obama's hypocrisy regarding Libya.
Nonsense. Cats love to kill things, and it's not always to eat them either. They do it out of sheer joy.
Absolutely. For arguments over video games it hovers just above zero. :P
No. I just think the whole argument is stupid and pointless. And you're actually splitting hairs over it.
If you want to put so much intellectual effort into something why not choose something interesting and/or useful? I hear that whole P=NP thing is still unsolved.
Sounds like you're a real hit at parties.