Duck? Nothing! I wanna see a plane collide with a Haast's Eagle or a Argentavis magnificens! (But it may take a while for genetic engineering to bring them back.)
Bet you anything they'd do a damn sight more damage!
Very true. I'd take a look at DSpace or Open Library for examples of software designed to handle gigantic numbers of documents and maintain sensible indexes for them.
That's just what They want you to believe. If they can't get rid of your tinfoil hat, get you to pay them for all the extras until it's too heavy to wear. THEN They get you.
The performance scales sub-linearly with the price, and ends up almost flat at the extreme end. This means you need to examine the cost of SMP vs. a more powerful CPU. Two X2 6400+ chips in an SMP should give you about the same performance at the same cost as one i7-920, after you add in the extra for the upgraded chipsets and mobo.
More powerful low-end chips become more and more effective when SMPed versus their higher-end rivals. The other benefit of going SMP is that you have fewer cores sharing the same cache, therefore increase the number of distinct tasks you can perform in parallel effectively without cache-flooding.
Of course, you can't SMP forever - the largest SMP array you can make before the system slows down by more than the CPU increases performance is 16-way. Even before then, you lose linear scaling fairly early on. So you end up balancing the different CPUs against the different methods of arranging them to get the best performance for your money.
Nope, I'm specifically thinking of the Mosquito in its nightfighter configuration, where it was battling Luftwaffe fighters over the channel and eventually in the skies of Europe.
The Mosquito's armament wasn't really superior to a whole lot - a maximum load of 500 lbs. of bombs in the bomb bay, a choice of another 500 lbs. on the wings OR 2,000 miles worth of fuel, and either front-mounted machine guns OR aerial radar.
(In fact, the Mosquito was the first aircraft to be fitted with on-board radar.)
There were plenty of enemy fighters that could out-gun a Mosquito, and the lack of any kind of armour meant the Mosquito was vulnerable to damage. Thus, its nightfighter role depended heavily on speed and manoeverability.
Actually, dogfighting wasn't too horrible, as the supercharged Merlins of the Mosquito were more powerful at low altitude, and their reverse-delta wings meant they were capable of turning incredibly rapidly.
There was no intent to imply that it merely took more skill. Rather, the intent was to say that even before computers existed, people built planes that were arguably simply too difficult for pilots to fly, that this wasn't a product of computers making it possible.
What computers did do was allow aircraft designers to push the envelope further and further, until it's almost at the point where it's almost too difficult for computers to fly. (Think: Airbus has five-fold redundancy - the same level as the Space Shuttle. And Airbus' computers are doubtless more powerful.)
I've known relations who have opted for suicide, or who have been hospitalized to prevent them. None as close as immediate family, so I can't begin to understand the pain, but in my own way I can dimly see.
One thing that makes this sort of thing doubly painful is that the sorts of minds that can consider suicide a real possibility are often very very close (and sometimes the same) as the minds that are brilliant.
We talk of genius and madness being a razor's edge away from each other, not because it is poetic but because it's true. But you don't have to be a genius to be that razor's edge away from self-destruction. You only have to have a similar biochemistry and/or neurology. There are dozens of conditions linked both to creative talent and self-harm.
Of course, not all suicides are for that reason. Utter despair (which I guess is still biochemical, but it's not a permanent condition) is another reason. There are doubtless many others.
I guess this sort of intellectualizing of suicide is my own way of dealing with the pain I have, for all that it's nothing compared to that of those close to such victims. So long as I intellectualize it, I can imagine that there will someday be solutions which help such people and prevent such tragedies happening.
Good point. From what I've read, pilots who fly through the region fly OVER the clouds where possible, but leaked reports suggest the plane flew INTO thunderclouds instead.
I think a bigger problem will turn out to be that Air France waited a year with known faulty air flow sensors before it replaced them, so as to get the newer model.
Well, I still think that one should not override the other. In the "similar stories" section of the Gimli Glider, all three airbus incidents with all engines out are casualty-free, but one of the three Boeing incidents had fatalities. Same number of incidents for each, but the more manual of the two systems has the greater number of fatalities.
Extreme cases have been around a long time. The DeHavilland Mosquito was notoriously twitchy (on the other hand, this meant it was unbelievably manoeverable in a dogfight, superior to many fighters) and "flying wings" have existed for longer than the jet engine. Computer control merely makes these economic by having fewer do landscaping.
Boeing and Airbus have had roughly identical numbers of crashes in recent years. Boeing has had just a fraction more. If one method of flying was better than the other, there would be a difference, right? Since there is no measurable difference, it follows that the differences in a crisis balance out. What is good for one sort of crisis is a disaster in another.
That's about $7/hour, which isn't a whole lot above minimum wage. Fills you with a lot of confidence, knowing that there are people in the McDonald's in the airport earning more than the guy you trust your life to.
Barnstormers got their nickname by flying through barns where the doors were open at both ends. Hey, just dump the passenger section mid-way like Thunderbird 2, and you could eliminate all those annoying waits to taxi in.
I would argue that instead of it being one or the other, it would be better if the inputs could be merged. Humans are generally better at ingenuity (unless the herustics are really good) and computers are generally better at speed of reaction (unless there's a deadlock between threads), but there's no universal rule.
What's really needed is a way for the pilot and the computer to cooperatively function, such that the failure of either at a task is not a catastrophic failure that could destroy the aircraft.
(I can just hear Boeing and Airbus chiming in: "Yeah, yeah, socialists and their cooperatives! Gimmie a good, old-fashioned dictatorship!")
Ruth Lawrence has an IQ probably in the 150-160 region, which puts her in the top 1% to top 0.1% of the population. She graduated only a little after this guy, but with a full degree. She had a PhD and was lecturing at Harvard by the time she was 18.
The US currently has around 300,000,000 people. Therefore there are 3,000,000 in the top 1%, and 300,000 in the top 0.1%. Three hundred thousand people who are arguably capable of a PhD before most get out of high school.
Of those three hundred thousand, a couple every decade actually achieve the sorts of results we should be expecting. Are the rest ALL being crippled by computer games, or is there something seriously fucked up with education?
Very much agreed. However, I'd just like to throw in my $2.75's worth (have to allow for inflation): I agree with his other comment that there are billions of others who are gifted in their own ways. But there is an implication in that - there are 6.5 billion people who have been failed by their society and educational system so badly that they are incapable of being anything other than bland Joe and Jane Averages.
The more I read about humans, the more I think the cat lady has a point. (I'm in the top 2%, but I doubt many Slashdotters would consider me a genius. A fruitcake, perhaps...)
Slashdot Mirror
Duck? Nothing! I wanna see a plane collide with a Haast's Eagle or a Argentavis magnificens! (But it may take a while for genetic engineering to bring them back.)
Bet you anything they'd do a damn sight more damage!
Guns are old-hat. Modern warfare is done with suicide bombers. Pack birdseed and fish with RDX.
Very true. I'd take a look at DSpace or Open Library for examples of software designed to handle gigantic numbers of documents and maintain sensible indexes for them.
That's just what They want you to believe. If they can't get rid of your tinfoil hat, get you to pay them for all the extras until it's too heavy to wear. THEN They get you.
The performance scales sub-linearly with the price, and ends up almost flat at the extreme end. This means you need to examine the cost of SMP vs. a more powerful CPU. Two X2 6400+ chips in an SMP should give you about the same performance at the same cost as one i7-920, after you add in the extra for the upgraded chipsets and mobo.
More powerful low-end chips become more and more effective when SMPed versus their higher-end rivals. The other benefit of going SMP is that you have fewer cores sharing the same cache, therefore increase the number of distinct tasks you can perform in parallel effectively without cache-flooding.
Of course, you can't SMP forever - the largest SMP array you can make before the system slows down by more than the CPU increases performance is 16-way. Even before then, you lose linear scaling fairly early on. So you end up balancing the different CPUs against the different methods of arranging them to get the best performance for your money.
I require experimental evidence of this. Send me a dozen for testing purposes.
Hmmm. Now can you come up with a solution that geeks can actually use in the real world?
Depends. Beating up a drunk trying to open the doors in flight might be very valuable experience at times.
Where, exactly, did you buy your U-2?
Nope, I'm specifically thinking of the Mosquito in its nightfighter configuration, where it was battling Luftwaffe fighters over the channel and eventually in the skies of Europe.
The Mosquito's armament wasn't really superior to a whole lot - a maximum load of 500 lbs. of bombs in the bomb bay, a choice of another 500 lbs. on the wings OR 2,000 miles worth of fuel, and either front-mounted machine guns OR aerial radar.
(In fact, the Mosquito was the first aircraft to be fitted with on-board radar.)
There were plenty of enemy fighters that could out-gun a Mosquito, and the lack of any kind of armour meant the Mosquito was vulnerable to damage. Thus, its nightfighter role depended heavily on speed and manoeverability.
Actually, dogfighting wasn't too horrible, as the supercharged Merlins of the Mosquito were more powerful at low altitude, and their reverse-delta wings meant they were capable of turning incredibly rapidly.
There was no intent to imply that it merely took more skill. Rather, the intent was to say that even before computers existed, people built planes that were arguably simply too difficult for pilots to fly, that this wasn't a product of computers making it possible.
What computers did do was allow aircraft designers to push the envelope further and further, until it's almost at the point where it's almost too difficult for computers to fly. (Think: Airbus has five-fold redundancy - the same level as the Space Shuttle. And Airbus' computers are doubtless more powerful.)
I've known relations who have opted for suicide, or who have been hospitalized to prevent them. None as close as immediate family, so I can't begin to understand the pain, but in my own way I can dimly see.
One thing that makes this sort of thing doubly painful is that the sorts of minds that can consider suicide a real possibility are often very very close (and sometimes the same) as the minds that are brilliant.
We talk of genius and madness being a razor's edge away from each other, not because it is poetic but because it's true. But you don't have to be a genius to be that razor's edge away from self-destruction. You only have to have a similar biochemistry and/or neurology. There are dozens of conditions linked both to creative talent and self-harm.
Of course, not all suicides are for that reason. Utter despair (which I guess is still biochemical, but it's not a permanent condition) is another reason. There are doubtless many others.
I guess this sort of intellectualizing of suicide is my own way of dealing with the pain I have, for all that it's nothing compared to that of those close to such victims. So long as I intellectualize it, I can imagine that there will someday be solutions which help such people and prevent such tragedies happening.
That only applies if you can call anything in McDonald's food.
Good point. From what I've read, pilots who fly through the region fly OVER the clouds where possible, but leaked reports suggest the plane flew INTO thunderclouds instead.
I think a bigger problem will turn out to be that Air France waited a year with known faulty air flow sensors before it replaced them, so as to get the newer model.
But... if we supplied pilots with a golden parachute, they'd hit the ground faster.
Well, I still think that one should not override the other. In the "similar stories" section of the Gimli Glider, all three airbus incidents with all engines out are casualty-free, but one of the three Boeing incidents had fatalities. Same number of incidents for each, but the more manual of the two systems has the greater number of fatalities.
Extreme cases have been around a long time. The DeHavilland Mosquito was notoriously twitchy (on the other hand, this meant it was unbelievably manoeverable in a dogfight, superior to many fighters) and "flying wings" have existed for longer than the jet engine. Computer control merely makes these economic by having fewer do landscaping.
Boeing and Airbus have had roughly identical numbers of crashes in recent years. Boeing has had just a fraction more. If one method of flying was better than the other, there would be a difference, right? Since there is no measurable difference, it follows that the differences in a crisis balance out. What is good for one sort of crisis is a disaster in another.
That's about $7/hour, which isn't a whole lot above minimum wage. Fills you with a lot of confidence, knowing that there are people in the McDonald's in the airport earning more than the guy you trust your life to.
Barnstormers got their nickname by flying through barns where the doors were open at both ends. Hey, just dump the passenger section mid-way like Thunderbird 2, and you could eliminate all those annoying waits to taxi in.
I would argue that instead of it being one or the other, it would be better if the inputs could be merged. Humans are generally better at ingenuity (unless the herustics are really good) and computers are generally better at speed of reaction (unless there's a deadlock between threads), but there's no universal rule.
What's really needed is a way for the pilot and the computer to cooperatively function, such that the failure of either at a task is not a catastrophic failure that could destroy the aircraft.
(I can just hear Boeing and Airbus chiming in: "Yeah, yeah, socialists and their cooperatives! Gimmie a good, old-fashioned dictatorship!")
Ruth Lawrence has an IQ probably in the 150-160 region, which puts her in the top 1% to top 0.1% of the population. She graduated only a little after this guy, but with a full degree. She had a PhD and was lecturing at Harvard by the time she was 18.
The US currently has around 300,000,000 people. Therefore there are 3,000,000 in the top 1%, and 300,000 in the top 0.1%. Three hundred thousand people who are arguably capable of a PhD before most get out of high school.
Of those three hundred thousand, a couple every decade actually achieve the sorts of results we should be expecting. Are the rest ALL being crippled by computer games, or is there something seriously fucked up with education?
Very much agreed. However, I'd just like to throw in my $2.75's worth (have to allow for inflation): I agree with his other comment that there are billions of others who are gifted in their own ways. But there is an implication in that - there are 6.5 billion people who have been failed by their society and educational system so badly that they are incapable of being anything other than bland Joe and Jane Averages.
The more I read about humans, the more I think the cat lady has a point. (I'm in the top 2%, but I doubt many Slashdotters would consider me a genius. A fruitcake, perhaps...)