Blue Waters is supposed to have a theorectical peak performance of 10 petaflops and sustained performance of 1. Personally I doubt that Tianhe-1A can sustain 2.5, I think the half petaflop number is probably more accurate.
Its easy to throw lots of CPUs together, its much harder to keep them all busy.
I have met many intelligent people who had very unintelligent views. Academics sometimes live in such a different world that they'll advocate action that makes perfect sense on paper, but that would fail in practice.
There is a significant difference between intelligence and wisdom. I would argue wisdom is much less common than intelligence, and that people who are wise are not a strict subset of people who are intelligent.
Left 4 Dead 2 on expert is extremely challenging. Your only chance of beating it is with really good team work, even then you better hope the director doesn't spawn a tank at an inconvenient time!
Just wanted to offer an example of a game that is both online, challenging and full of content.
Apple isn't in the business of selling computers, they are in the business of selling a "user experience." That necessarily demands that His Jobsness controls as much of the platform as possible. This shouldn't be a surprise for anyone.
If you don't like it, don't use or develop for macs, pretty simple. Its Apple's platform, they are free to do with it as they wish. The rest of us can just ignore it and use whatever we prefer.
There are many, many problems with doing this. A basic problem is that of most friction: how do you get the most friction? By rubbing wood against wood. However, that way you very quickly bore into the wood because you're using so much force, and then the point of most friction has no oxygen. This is of course assuming nothing else breaks from the huge stresses on all parts of the device.
I beg to differ, the bow-drill method of fire building is not difficult. Like anything it takes technique and practice. Back when I was in Scouts my troop took a particular interest in primitive fire building skills. We all made our own fire drill kits, and we regularly used them to start fires on our camping trips. We even had races to see who could start a fire the fastest. My best time was one minute, the troop record at the time was thirty seconds.
A proper firebow kit contains four parts, the baseboard, the thunderhead, the bow and the spindle. Your goal isn't to catch the baseboard on fire, rather it is to produce an ember, which is created by the friction between the spindle and the baseboard. The bow spins the spindle and the thunderhead you use to hold the spindle. Oxygen is not an issue if your baseboard is properly setup, you should have a hole that the spindle fits in and a notch cut into that hole. Typically you would have a piece of leather beneath the baseboard to catch your ember, which you then transfer to a birds nest (a ball of really fine tinder) and then you blow on it to feed the ember, then you get fire.
The fact that he failed just means he didn't use the proper technique. I haven't actually watched the video as I'm at work, but I'm confident that he must have done something wrong to have failed.
You know, it doesn't have to be purely one way or the other. Essential services such as fire and police protection make sense to run as socialist services. Doesn't mean social security should be mandatory, or that the government should spend public money to bail out private companies. Purely capitalistic and purely socialistic societies are both damaging to people's rights and to economic freedom. The trick is to find some balance.
Personally I'd like to see the option to opt out of social security, they can even take half of what I pay into it now and give me no benefits. I could still come out ahead investing in low risk mutual funds.
I took some game programming courses in college and played with both C++/DirectX and XNA. If they are just getting started, XNA is a good route to go if they want to build a complete game quickly to see what its like. Its a good tool if you want to focus on things such as game design, story, and just making the game fun. It is not a good indication of "real" game programming however. If they are still serious after building a complete game in XNA then throw C++ and DirectX at them.
I think too many kids want to go into game programming cause it sounds sexy, not realizing there are much more interesting programming jobs out there. As far as degrees go, definitely a four year liberal arts college with a good computer science degree. There's a lot of valuable things outside of your vocation you learn at a liberal arts school. A CS degree is also just way more flexible.
I think the main issue with a portable fission reactor would be the risk of it being stolen in an ambush and then the fuel being harvested and used in a dirty bomb. I don't think you could get material suitable for a nuclear bomb out of it, but you could definitely pack some fuel in an IED and create one heck of a mess.
Regardless of practicality, the American public would go nuts over putting portable nuclear reactors in a combat zone. I'm all for nuclear power, but I don't think you're gonna see it in a war zone until the American public gets over its fear of all things nuclear. The industry is bouncing back though so I'm hopeful.
Blame the fans? I had the original trilogy on VHS and when it came out on DVD got so excited I pre-ordered it months in advance. When it finally arrived I was dismayed that it was hacked up and edited. I just wanted the original trilogy cleaned up and on DVD!
And then I got my wish and he released the theatrical versions on DVD, but of course these were completely untouched, I'm convinced my VHS copy looks better. So I own three copies of the original trilogy, two of which I bought with false expectations. The fans have been misled, we haven't been blindly buying anything with the Star Wars name on it!
This is exactly contrary to the founding principle of democracy
True, but why would you want a democracy? Democracies are dangerous, after all half of all people are below average intelligence! I'll bet even less are informed enough on any given issue to make an intelligent decision. Do you really want ignorant or unintelligent people to decide national policy?
Not that I'm advocating a dictatorship where the smartest or most informed person rules, but democracy isn't the end all be all of government. A democratic republic is a bit more stable than a democracy, because it has extra controls in place such as the election of representatives who make decisions for the people. Unfortunately, in the US at least, a lot of those controls have been swept away. I'm not in favor of the direct election of Senators. We already directly elect representatives, to balance that Senators should be appointed by state legislators like they used to!
The state governments used to have a say in the federal government through their senators, now only the people have a say in DC. And more often than not all they say is "Give me! Give me! Give me!" This is not balanced government, this is catering to the people and if not corrected will result in the collapse of the US.
Forgive the US-centric example but I thought it illustrated my point nicely.
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Blue Waters is supposed to have a theorectical peak performance of 10 petaflops and sustained performance of 1. Personally I doubt that Tianhe-1A can sustain 2.5, I think the half petaflop number is probably more accurate.
Its easy to throw lots of CPUs together, its much harder to keep them all busy.
I have met many intelligent people who had very unintelligent views. Academics sometimes live in such a different world that they'll advocate action that makes perfect sense on paper, but that would fail in practice.
There is a significant difference between intelligence and wisdom. I would argue wisdom is much less common than intelligence, and that people who are wise are not a strict subset of people who are intelligent.
The auction isn't in time for Halloween! What were they thinking!?!
Left 4 Dead 2 on expert is extremely challenging. Your only chance of beating it is with really good team work, even then you better hope the director doesn't spawn a tank at an inconvenient time!
Just wanted to offer an example of a game that is both online, challenging and full of content.
Apathy.
Apple isn't in the business of selling computers, they are in the business of selling a "user experience." That necessarily demands that His Jobsness controls as much of the platform as possible. This shouldn't be a surprise for anyone.
If you don't like it, don't use or develop for macs, pretty simple. Its Apple's platform, they are free to do with it as they wish. The rest of us can just ignore it and use whatever we prefer.
There are many, many problems with doing this. A basic problem is that of most friction: how do you get the most friction? By rubbing wood against wood. However, that way you very quickly bore into the wood because you're using so much force, and then the point of most friction has no oxygen. This is of course assuming nothing else breaks from the huge stresses on all parts of the device.
I beg to differ, the bow-drill method of fire building is not difficult. Like anything it takes technique and practice. Back when I was in Scouts my troop took a particular interest in primitive fire building skills. We all made our own fire drill kits, and we regularly used them to start fires on our camping trips. We even had races to see who could start a fire the fastest. My best time was one minute, the troop record at the time was thirty seconds.
A proper firebow kit contains four parts, the baseboard, the thunderhead, the bow and the spindle. Your goal isn't to catch the baseboard on fire, rather it is to produce an ember, which is created by the friction between the spindle and the baseboard. The bow spins the spindle and the thunderhead you use to hold the spindle. Oxygen is not an issue if your baseboard is properly setup, you should have a hole that the spindle fits in and a notch cut into that hole. Typically you would have a piece of leather beneath the baseboard to catch your ember, which you then transfer to a birds nest (a ball of really fine tinder) and then you blow on it to feed the ember, then you get fire.
The fact that he failed just means he didn't use the proper technique. I haven't actually watched the video as I'm at work, but I'm confident that he must have done something wrong to have failed.
LP0 is on fire? Close your eyes! Don't look at it!
I remember watching shuttle launches in Elementary school. Its sorta sad that they're almost gone for good. Even more so without a clear replacement!
You know, it doesn't have to be purely one way or the other. Essential services such as fire and police protection make sense to run as socialist services. Doesn't mean social security should be mandatory, or that the government should spend public money to bail out private companies. Purely capitalistic and purely socialistic societies are both damaging to people's rights and to economic freedom. The trick is to find some balance.
Personally I'd like to see the option to opt out of social security, they can even take half of what I pay into it now and give me no benefits. I could still come out ahead investing in low risk mutual funds.
I took some game programming courses in college and played with both C++/DirectX and XNA. If they are just getting started, XNA is a good route to go if they want to build a complete game quickly to see what its like. Its a good tool if you want to focus on things such as game design, story, and just making the game fun. It is not a good indication of "real" game programming however. If they are still serious after building a complete game in XNA then throw C++ and DirectX at them.
I think too many kids want to go into game programming cause it sounds sexy, not realizing there are much more interesting programming jobs out there. As far as degrees go, definitely a four year liberal arts college with a good computer science degree. There's a lot of valuable things outside of your vocation you learn at a liberal arts school. A CS degree is also just way more flexible.
I think the main issue with a portable fission reactor would be the risk of it being stolen in an ambush and then the fuel being harvested and used in a dirty bomb. I don't think you could get material suitable for a nuclear bomb out of it, but you could definitely pack some fuel in an IED and create one heck of a mess.
Regardless of practicality, the American public would go nuts over putting portable nuclear reactors in a combat zone. I'm all for nuclear power, but I don't think you're gonna see it in a war zone until the American public gets over its fear of all things nuclear. The industry is bouncing back though so I'm hopeful.
Blame the fans? I had the original trilogy on VHS and when it came out on DVD got so excited I pre-ordered it months in advance. When it finally arrived I was dismayed that it was hacked up and edited. I just wanted the original trilogy cleaned up and on DVD!
And then I got my wish and he released the theatrical versions on DVD, but of course these were completely untouched, I'm convinced my VHS copy looks better. So I own three copies of the original trilogy, two of which I bought with false expectations. The fans have been misled, we haven't been blindly buying anything with the Star Wars name on it!
This is exactly contrary to the founding principle of democracy
True, but why would you want a democracy? Democracies are dangerous, after all half of all people are below average intelligence! I'll bet even less are informed enough on any given issue to make an intelligent decision. Do you really want ignorant or unintelligent people to decide national policy?
Not that I'm advocating a dictatorship where the smartest or most informed person rules, but democracy isn't the end all be all of government. A democratic republic is a bit more stable than a democracy, because it has extra controls in place such as the election of representatives who make decisions for the people. Unfortunately, in the US at least, a lot of those controls have been swept away. I'm not in favor of the direct election of Senators. We already directly elect representatives, to balance that Senators should be appointed by state legislators like they used to!
The state governments used to have a say in the federal government through their senators, now only the people have a say in DC. And more often than not all they say is "Give me! Give me! Give me!" This is not balanced government, this is catering to the people and if not corrected will result in the collapse of the US.
Forgive the US-centric example but I thought it illustrated my point nicely.