One only need to have been part of one of these mythical "well-funded and well-staffed" corporate teams (or to know someone who has been part of one) to know that the garage-based tech hobbyist is nowhere near extinction. High-power staffing and funds are nothing--NOTHING--next to the power of a real vision. A single person with a great idea and a little know-how can lay waste to any corporate team.
And all the major corporations know it. That's why they're busy patenting everything under the sun. It's not to hinder their major corporation competitors as they'll also have patents and it all will end in a stand off with both companies trading patent rights. No, it's to keep the small operations down. They cannot afford patent attorneys/technicians to screen their competitors for patent infringement all the time. The major electronics corporations of the world can.
About the only industry (with low financial barriers to entry, i.e. the ones where you don't have to build much of a factory) where this hasn't happened yet is of course the software industry, as there traditionally hasn't been many patents there (yet). Witness Microsofts problems with garage open source operations as a result. As that's changing, expect to see lots more patent problems for the little guy in the pure software field.
That Edison was foremost a marketing genious/entrepreneaur and a mediocre inventor at best is not up for dispute IMHO.
Following up to my own post as I can't edit the previous one.
In hindsight, "second rate" is a bit stronger than I intended. I'd instead like to say somethings along the lines of: Edison was a genious level entrepreneaur first and an inventor second.
Most of the "animal experiments" you refer to were performed by this Harold Brown, and were equally suspect.
Not all though. There was a series of experiments with sheep that demonstrated that AC did indeed kill at much lower voltages. And as that also happens to be true it's not an unreasonable claim. That Edison was foremost a marketing genious/entrepreneaur and a mediocre inventor at best is not up for dispute IMHO. (Oh, and BTW Edison suggested that the process be called Westinghousing, it didn't stick. It was 'electrocution' from the get go. The medical profession didn't use that word for obvious reaons though.
My statement about DC being more dangerous than alternating current referred to line voltages (that, after all, is the topic of discussion) and there it most definitely is, and for the reasons I described. Alternating current won't lock your muscles: they'll simply vibrate, but DC will and if you happen to be gripping that electrified object, you will find you can't let go. Bad news.
No, that's not true. AC will also "lock" your muscles (i.e. induce tetanus) happened to my father once in his youth (when he was training as an electrician). And at quite low currents. The link I gave you listed the following values: "Painful, unable to let go of wires" (held in hand that is). Men/Women 76/51 mA DC, 16/10.5 mA AC (60Hz) and 75/50 mA AC (10kHz). One source gives 20mA for men AC (60Hz). These are experimentally obtained figures (Berkley). Fibrilation is the same story though at higher currents (and this data is much more uncertain as it's based on animal research. Some sources claim human heart fibrilation possiblity as low as 17 mA AC 60Hz).
Now the reason I said that the US line voltage sitation is problematic is that the current depends on the resistance (which also depends on the geometry of the situation). If you wear your wellingtons and keep your left hand in your back pocket (and always first touch any wire with the outside of your fingers) then killing yourself with a line voltage source (even in Europe) will be very difficult. Conversely, sweaty hands gripping a bare wire wearing a gold ring standing with your bare feet in salt water is another scenario altogether. (As an aside that was Edisons suggestion for the method of electocution: Have the hands of the condemned in two baths of saline solution. That (probably wisely) wasn't chosen.) That said, DC is still safer than AC in the 50/60 Hz range (it's an unfortunate frequency choice as it affects nerves more than other frequencies would) at any voltage. The reason we use AC is purely for practical purposes, not safety related. And as we're discussing safety we should of course mention that the most common injury associated with electricity is being shocked and falling from a ladder. It's not for nothing that the old school electricians use wooden ladders. AC or DC doesn't factor in to that scenario.
There's more on the net about the biological effects of electricty than you can shake a stick at such as the frequency dependant resistance of various body tissues etc. etc. etc. ad nauseaum.
Your professor is a bit confused about the electric chair business: it was Thomas Edison who claimed publicly that Westinghouse's 60 Hz. system was much more dangerous than Edison's own direct current power system. This was strictly a marketing ploy: he and Westinghouse were going head-to-head in an all out corporate war and Edison wanted to win, badly. He had no scientific basis for his claims. In other words, he lied, publicly and repeatedly.
No that's not true. Edison had plenty of data from animal research. He even had a traveling road show that demonstrated (on sheep mostly) that they died when a comparatively much lover AC voltage was applied than when a DC voltage was applied. "You could turn the dial much higher." And it wasn't all sheep, they even electrocuted an elephant in New York (that had been condemed to death for killing its keeper). He even had billboards that said: "Don't use the executioners electricity in your homes!" (or words to that effect).
AC was indeed used for the first electrocution, suggested by Edison who build the apparatus. Westinghouse wisely refused to sell any equipment but then Edison arranged a purchase in secret and shipped it in unmarked crates to the place of execution. The first electrocution itself was a horrible botched affair, where many of the witnesses fainted from the stench of burning flesh. And the condemed man was first thought to be dead and the steam let out of the engine, only for the officials realising that he was still alive and everyone having to wait for the steam engine to be fire up again.
Also, your statement that DC is more dangerous than AC is not quite as straightforward as you make it to be. While at higher currents DC does tend to lock the skelettal muscular system more readily than AC; that doesn't in fact kill you as easily as electricity induced teatanus of the heart tends to resolve once the current is removed (hence defibrilation units use of DC), i.e. the heart starts again. AC otoh tends to cause fibrilation of the heart, which won't resolve itself and kill the patient (unless defibliration is available). We're speaking here of 50/60 Hz AC of course, as AC in the ten-kilohertz range or so is practically safe due to skin effects (your skin is a pretty decent conductor as other's have pointed out). Also, AC will also induce tetanus, though I'm not sure about 120V in the common case (Europe being on a 400/230V system. 230V can be enough to 'stick you on the circuit'.)
The best links I could find was this and this. Note the table half way down on the second page that lists the amperage needed for various effects on the body. I've had a better link before, but I can't find it now.
Can anyone explain why people think mobiles cause cancer?
Because heating while being the most straight forward concern, isn't the only one. Tests on a rat model here in Sweden seems to indicate that mobile phone radiation could make the blood-brain barrier more permeable to the protein albumin. While this doesn't cause cancer, it does cause brain damage. And brain damage was observed in the rats. No-one is quite clear why, albumin wasn't thought to be that dangerous, but a hypothesis is that it takes heavy metals with it from the rest of the body.
So in short the jury's still out on the subject. It's as you said: if heating was the only possible mechanism in which EM fields could affect humans, we'd be set.
The rest of the world is thinking "the more the better". Seriously, if the US has one more expense channel to have to pour money into, it means the rest of the world can watch the US deficit grow ever larger. Ultimately, superpowers bring themselves down. It's history lesson number 1.
Well, perhaps a few of us would if it weren't for the fact that you're going to bring us down with you. With the world finances being what they are and countries such as mine (Sweden) depending heavily on export the US falling arse over tits isn't a pretty scenario.
Much as the European Union was founded on the observation that if everybody had a hand in each others pockets; the powers that be would find war too costly, we're much to dependent on the US economy (and you on ours to a rising extent) for us to be able to stand well on our own should you go down. So there'll be no cheers over here.
That's not to say that e.g. Cuba would stand to lose much (which is kind of funny were you ever to end up in a situation where had you isolated them to punish them and in the end manged for the very same thing to help them).
I thought that was defined as the default left to right order, of course i could be wrong.
Yes, I'm afraid that's it. Look up the definition of 'sequence point' in e.g. the comp.lang.c faq that's got a very good explanation of this. IMHO the whole comp.lang.c. faq is a must read for any 'C' programmer. Trust me, time spent going through it is well spent.
Now this just confuses me more, because if your final output is video, why even bother to author in a game engine when there are much, much, better tools to create 3D such as Maya, Softimage, Max, Motionbuilder, etc...
Well, from my understanding one aspect is the ease with which you can make the animation. RvB was made (as far as I understand) by having 'actors' control the on screen figures in real time, using multi player mode. Once the scene is recorded you can add camera angles etc. Think 'pupeteering' (if that's a word) not 'animation'.
This makes production fast. A small number of people can produce long features much quicker than the same number of people doing animation. It's also quicker to do a retake. But of course, as you mention, the end result isn't as 'perfect' as it would be using other methods.
In the case of Darcs it can be said a bit stronger as Darcs relies on GHC (the Glorious Glascow Haskell Compiler) which doesn't even have an interpreter. The interactive command line of ghc (ghci) is really just an compile-then-immediately-execute line by line interactive environment.
That's not to say that Haskell is necessarily blazingly fast, it's somewhat difficult to compile lazy languages. If you want fast functional (as in micro benchmark fast) you should look towards O'Caml, that has been known to do as well as gcc in some cases.
Also, a laser is a special form of coherent light. It just means that all the wavelengths in the beam of light are the same wavelength. It also means that the beam of light doesn't disperse very much unlike incoherent light (which no one can make heads or tails of what it is trying to say).
Well, Laser light generally have the following five properties:
Monochromatic - All the photons have the same colour.
Coherent - All the photons are in phase
Polarised - All the photons "travel in the same plane". (Well, they're polarised, no useful analogue).
Parallel - The beam diverges very little over distance.
Intense - You can cut steel with it.
To my mind at least the interesting thing with lasers are that every one of these characteristics (and multiple combinations) have been used in applications.
That's not to say that all characteristics are necessary at all times and when they're not they can usually be excluded (you do not want a highly intense laser, i.e with a high power output, for reading a CDR for example). In many cases the characteristic will degrade with time/space; i.e. the coherence length of a laser can be from anywhere between nothing much to a kilometer or more. (And incidentally doesn't have much to do with the beam being parallel at that point.)
For interplanetary communication the light being parallel would be the deciding factor, you could induce much higher field strengths at the receiver than with radio at interplanetary distances for the same transmitter power output. You could do away with most others (though I guess it being monochromatic could help if there isn't much atmosphere).
It's not the same as steering by wire, but my car has power steering. (99 grand am) One day I was rounding a corner and I swear to christ my car was nearly impossible to turn; I went to move the steering wheel with its normal ease, and it would move, but it was incredibly difficult to get it to move. It felt like i was pushing/pulling against a gigantic weight that was holding the steering wheel in place.
Then again one shouldn't forget that plain old mechanical systems aren't completely foolproof either. A friend of mine did something similar to you: Coming out of a lumber yard turning left onto the road he managed to turn the wheel too far and the cogs locked on the rack leaving the wheel locked in the far left position. Fortunately he was driving very slowly and there was no traffic, but before he could react and bring the car to a complete stop he was still in the ditch having done a complete 180. (It was a narrow road, giving him little time to break as he crossed the opposing lane at right angles).
I saw the car afterwards and the wheel was indeed locked solid, but we managed to work it lose. Now this was an old SAAB 99 that should have gone to the wrecker years before this happened, and it's not a common type of failure, but that's not to say it can't happen.
Well not quite, I was really thinking of WordPerfect but it seems I got the timeline slightly wrong. They survived the rewrite to 'C' and only later sold to Novell. They were steadfast with their assembly nonsense for everything before that though, so maybe the damage was already done.
WordStar may have been a parallel though. Even though my vote in that case goes to the arcane command set:-)
I'm sorry, it's a myth? Apparently many millions of people, many far better programmers than you, have completely been deceived! Please back up this wonderfully baseless statement with some substance.
One of the core ideas behind the design of C++ is "if you don't use it, you don't pay for it". Do a quick look around at talk of the impending C++0x standard, and you'll see this mantra is alive and well to this very day... and the lack of some "language features", like forced garbage collection, don't exist it for this very reason.
Being old enough to have been around the introduction of 'C' to the masses (i.e. the PC) and the abandonment of assembler it's amusing to see the same arguments recycled all over. Only this time it's 'C' that's leet:small, fast, not bloated etc, instead of assembler. And higher level languages such as 'Python' that are 'slow/bloated/have a lot of stuff you have to pay for even if you don't use it' instead of 'C'.
Last time around the debate was settled squarely in favour of 'C', that while it was killed dead in micro benchmarks compared to assembler, when it came to projects of any size, the added ease of development actually meant that programmers weren't bogged down in detail and could actually concentrate on doing the right thing (instead of merely doing things right). With huge savings in development time and even efficiency of the developed application. Since you hadn't spent all your time getting it to work, and you could express yourself using more abstractions you could actually tune and throw away code you had written replacing it with something that implemented a better algorithm.
A few companies did stick to their guns and continued with assembly for everything ("because it was faster, God damn it!"), and perished as a result. The original company behind WordPerfect comes to mind. They folded had to sell WP (which had to be rewritten in something higher level, and that rewrite made it slip behind its competitors).
Within Ericsson we've seen that particular light and developped our own system (Erlang) which enables us to produce world class systems faster than the competition. Systems which also have better performance than our competitors. (See AXD301 and our GSN line). This despite Erlang being killed by 'C/C++' in micro benchmarks. System level it rules the roost. (That's not to say we don't use 'C', we do, just like assembler wasn't abolished by 'C'. But we use it where it belongs for device drivers and the like, not code that actually does anything. Our experiences with C++ gives us pause though, so no C++ if it can be helped.) Lots of nice papers on the Erlang site above. And note that when it comes to performance claims these are verifiable claims.
So if you're a competitor of Ericsson, please continue using C/C++, our continued success depends on it. If you're not, then you better prepare to wake up and smell the roses. History looks set to repeat itself and you don't want to be stubbornly stuck in your old ways and go the way of the WP team when the wind shifts.
How about instead of the one extreme case 6 sigmas out, we look at the mean, median, mode, and maybe the stuff between the six sigmas?
The 240 series would still place well. It and it's predecessor (the 140) series were consistently the cars in Sweden with the best longevity. The mean life expectancy of the 140 was somewhere around twenty years if memory serves (as calculated by the mandatory roadworthiness inspection), with the 240 not much behind. Can you say "Boring but dependable"? Knew you could.
Newer cars (with more electronics) will not last as long unfortunately (they'll become uneconomical to repair).
Sorry, that didn't mean anything to me. Was it supposed to?
Yes, you're a fool. You're a fool because you don't understand the very sentiment you're decrying.
I don't know I was decrying anything. But please enlighten me. What is the sentiment? (I wasn't aware of the Carl Schurz quote, and don't know the context. My remark was one of using the phrase as a form of jingoism.)
I've done that already. Why don't you read what I've already written?
I just skimmed it (what was left of it as some had falled off the end) and only found two sentences about that, which in fairness did offer some sort of explanation.
I did however find lots and lots of arguments in favour of the war in Iraq. (And the invectives 'fool' and 'traitor' used a lot). It would be interesting to hear your comments to Maj. Gen. Zinni's views as they differ from your own and I wouldn't think you to consider him neither a fool nor a traitor, given his background and close ties with the Bush administration.
Of course that's not what it means, and you're a fool if you believe for a second that that's anybody's position.
Well, me and Gen. Zinni both then, as that's the phrase he used in his rebuttal. I really don't picture him the sort of man to put up a strawman just to be able to knock it down.
I've met plenty of Americans of the 'my country right or wrong' variety (more than in any other nation in fact) so I don't think it was much of a stretch to make that leap, not really the mark of a "fool".
But now that we gotten that out of the way: Would you mind expanding on what exactly is meant by "supporting the troops?"
"Support the troops" is vitally important because not everybody does, and we need to be mindful of that fact.
Being a foreigner I don't know exactly what that statement is supposed to mean, but if it means that once was/conflict starts then all internal critisism must cease then I know I don't agree, and neither does Gen Zinni (ret):
Zinni, who now teaches international relations at the College of William and Mary, says he feels a responsibility to speak out, just as former Marine Corps Commandant David Shoup voiced early concerns about the Vietnam war nearly 40 years ago.
"It is part of your duty. Look, there is one statement that bothers me more than anything else. And that's the idea that when the troops are in combat, everybody has to shut up. Imagine if we put troops in combat with a faulty rifle, and that rifle was malfunctioning, and troops were dying as a result," says Zinni.
"I can't think anyone would allow that to happen, that would not speak up. Well, what's the difference between a faulty plan and strategy that's getting just as many troops killed? It's leading down a path where we're not succeeding and accomplishing the missions we've set out to do."
Now, Zinni is a retired Marine Corps General (and the former envoy to the middle east). So I'd think that his oppinion on this matter carries some weight even among those that don't subscribe to the same 'pinko-communist-left-liberal-what-have-you' world view as the rest of us.
I believe Nagasaki was fairly untouched by bombs also.
Well, it hadn't been left untouched and as such was the backup target. Kokura was the intended target but was obscured by smog and hence the mission redirected to the first backup target. There was substantial cloud cover but the bomb was dropped anyway through a rift in the clouds, missing the city center by several miles.
In Denmark all mileage is reported in km/l. I really can't see any reason to switch to the reciprocal times 100. Why 100? And why pick something that gets you worse mileage with larger numbers?
Interesting, didn't know that. Then again Denmark doesn't have any car industry so there's no real reason I should have, now is there.:-)
The liter / 100 km is as I mentioned the EU standard, and most (all?) cars manufactured in the EU market has it at least as an option. I know for a fact that SAAB and Volvo are delivered that way, even in the Danish market, so if you want it the other way around you'll have to do it in your head.
The only reason I can see is that it's the way it's always been. You complain that your 'mileage' will go the wrong way, but of course if you instead think in terms of fuel comsumption rate the tables are reversed. In fact all other fuel consumptions traditionally have the reciprocal the 'other' way. Stationary diesels (or semi stationary, think tractor:-) are traditionally measured in liters (or other volume) per hour. Same in aviation (though of course the Americans use gals/hour). Heavy trucks are usually liters per tonne kilometer to recognise the fact that the load the truck carries have a significant impact on fuel consumption rates.
The 100 factor I can only guess is to get nice round (small) numbers, with typical consumption rates between 5 and 15 liters per 100 kilometers. As I said in Sweden that would be 0.5 - 1.5 which is also workable, but introduces a decimal point.
In fact the question should be why there are useages that have the reciprocal with the distance as the numerator given the historical usages. It's easy enough to get used to the idea that a smaller fuel consumption is the better car. For me it's the other way around, having a larger value mean a better fuel consumption is 'backwards.'
One more thing I didn't know. Is that standard practice across Europe? What about Asia, etc.?
Well, it's the EU standard as I mentioned. Here in Northern Europe (Scandinavia etc) it used to be liters per 10 km but we changed. As in our cars changed, but we still mostly speak of "liters per (swedish) mile". (The old Swedish mile was close to 10 km so we carried it over.)
Don't know about Asia really. I'm pretty certain Volvo and SAAB are in liters per 100 km to all "metric" contries, but don't quote me.
[Parent discusses the fact that 12 can be more easily divided by more denominators than 10 can, while comparing building stuff thats one foot or one meter (which is a factor of three or so off]
Yes, and while that's true it's more a function of the number than the unit. And for that reason a standard "building module" in Europe is 60 centimeters (or rather 600 millimetres).
That beats your 23.622 inches hands down.:-). Seriously, we used to use the inch (not quite the US one but close enough) for quite a bit longer when building, I still remember as a boy when the carpenters folding rulers where switched from having both inches and millimeters to just millimeters, and people will still speak of a "two-by-four", but it's all gone away. It's just so much more convenient to build stuff in metric. Trust me. (And don't get me started on machinery, imperial is just evil there.)
P.S. And being a traditionallist (and many with me) I still only buy folding rulers with the inch/metric marking, as the purely metric one just "doesn't look right". I feeling others share, since they put the old style back into production ten years back or so.
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And all the major corporations know it. That's why they're busy patenting everything under the sun. It's not to hinder their major corporation competitors as they'll also have patents and it all will end in a stand off with both companies trading patent rights. No, it's to keep the small operations down. They cannot afford patent attorneys/technicians to screen their competitors for patent infringement all the time. The major electronics corporations of the world can.
About the only industry (with low financial barriers to entry, i.e. the ones where you don't have to build much of a factory) where this hasn't happened yet is of course the software industry, as there traditionally hasn't been many patents there (yet). Witness Microsofts problems with garage open source operations as a result. As that's changing, expect to see lots more patent problems for the little guy in the pure software field.
Following up to my own post as I can't edit the previous one.
In hindsight, "second rate" is a bit stronger than I intended. I'd instead like to say somethings along the lines of: Edison was a genious level entrepreneaur first and an inventor second.
Not all though. There was a series of experiments with sheep that demonstrated that AC did indeed kill at much lower voltages. And as that also happens to be true it's not an unreasonable claim. That Edison was foremost a marketing genious/entrepreneaur and a mediocre inventor at best is not up for dispute IMHO. (Oh, and BTW Edison suggested that the process be called Westinghousing, it didn't stick. It was 'electrocution' from the get go. The medical profession didn't use that word for obvious reaons though.
No, that's not true. AC will also "lock" your muscles (i.e. induce tetanus) happened to my father once in his youth (when he was training as an electrician). And at quite low currents. The link I gave you listed the following values: "Painful, unable to let go of wires" (held in hand that is). Men/Women 76/51 mA DC, 16/10.5 mA AC (60Hz) and 75/50 mA AC (10kHz). One source gives 20mA for men AC (60Hz). These are experimentally obtained figures (Berkley). Fibrilation is the same story though at higher currents (and this data is much more uncertain as it's based on animal research. Some sources claim human heart fibrilation possiblity as low as 17 mA AC 60Hz).
Now the reason I said that the US line voltage sitation is problematic is that the current depends on the resistance (which also depends on the geometry of the situation). If you wear your wellingtons and keep your left hand in your back pocket (and always first touch any wire with the outside of your fingers) then killing yourself with a line voltage source (even in Europe) will be very difficult. Conversely, sweaty hands gripping a bare wire wearing a gold ring standing with your bare feet in salt water is another scenario altogether. (As an aside that was Edisons suggestion for the method of electocution: Have the hands of the condemned in two baths of saline solution. That (probably wisely) wasn't chosen.) That said, DC is still safer than AC in the 50/60 Hz range (it's an unfortunate frequency choice as it affects nerves more than other frequencies would) at any voltage. The reason we use AC is purely for practical purposes, not safety related. And as we're discussing safety we should of course mention that the most common injury associated with electricity is being shocked and falling from a ladder. It's not for nothing that the old school electricians use wooden ladders. AC or DC doesn't factor in to that scenario.
There's more on the net about the biological effects of electricty than you can shake a stick at such as the frequency dependant resistance of various body tissues etc. etc. etc. ad nauseaum.
No that's not true. Edison had plenty of data from animal research. He even had a traveling road show that demonstrated (on sheep mostly) that they died when a comparatively much lover AC voltage was applied than when a DC voltage was applied. "You could turn the dial much higher." And it wasn't all sheep, they even electrocuted an elephant in New York (that had been condemed to death for killing its keeper). He even had billboards that said: "Don't use the executioners electricity in your homes!" (or words to that effect).
AC was indeed used for the first electrocution, suggested by Edison who build the apparatus. Westinghouse wisely refused to sell any equipment but then Edison arranged a purchase in secret and shipped it in unmarked crates to the place of execution. The first electrocution itself was a horrible botched affair, where many of the witnesses fainted from the stench of burning flesh. And the condemed man was first thought to be dead and the steam let out of the engine, only for the officials realising that he was still alive and everyone having to wait for the steam engine to be fire up again.
Also, your statement that DC is more dangerous than AC is not quite as straightforward as you make it to be. While at higher currents DC does tend to lock the skelettal muscular system more readily than AC; that doesn't in fact kill you as easily as electricity induced teatanus of the heart tends to resolve once the current is removed (hence defibrilation units use of DC), i.e. the heart starts again. AC otoh tends to cause fibrilation of the heart, which won't resolve itself and kill the patient (unless defibliration is available). We're speaking here of 50/60 Hz AC of course, as AC in the ten-kilohertz range or so is practically safe due to skin effects (your skin is a pretty decent conductor as other's have pointed out). Also, AC will also induce tetanus, though I'm not sure about 120V in the common case (Europe being on a 400/230V system. 230V can be enough to 'stick you on the circuit'.)
The best links I could find was this and this. Note the table half way down on the second page that lists the amperage needed for various effects on the body. I've had a better link before, but I can't find it now.
Because heating while being the most straight forward concern, isn't the only one. Tests on a rat model here in Sweden seems to indicate that mobile phone radiation could make the blood-brain barrier more permeable to the protein albumin. While this doesn't cause cancer, it does cause brain damage. And brain damage was observed in the rats. No-one is quite clear why, albumin wasn't thought to be that dangerous, but a hypothesis is that it takes heavy metals with it from the rest of the body.
So in short the jury's still out on the subject. It's as you said: if heating was the only possible mechanism in which EM fields could affect humans, we'd be set.
Well, perhaps a few of us would if it weren't for the fact that you're going to bring us down with you. With the world finances being what they are and countries such as mine (Sweden) depending heavily on export the US falling arse over tits isn't a pretty scenario.
Much as the European Union was founded on the observation that if everybody had a hand in each others pockets; the powers that be would find war too costly, we're much to dependent on the US economy (and you on ours to a rising extent) for us to be able to stand well on our own should you go down. So there'll be no cheers over here.
That's not to say that e.g. Cuba would stand to lose much (which is kind of funny were you ever to end up in a situation where had you isolated them to punish them and in the end manged for the very same thing to help them).
I'm reminded of Knuth's observation that: "Ninety percent of the programs at my installation are short, fortran and wrong."
Yes, I'm afraid that's it. Look up the definition of 'sequence point' in e.g. the comp.lang.c faq that's got a very good explanation of this. IMHO the whole comp.lang.c. faq is a must read for any 'C' programmer. Trust me, time spent going through it is well spent.
Well, from my understanding one aspect is the ease with which you can make the animation. RvB was made (as far as I understand) by having 'actors' control the on screen figures in real time, using multi player mode. Once the scene is recorded you can add camera angles etc. Think 'pupeteering' (if that's a word) not 'animation'.
This makes production fast. A small number of people can produce long features much quicker than the same number of people doing animation. It's also quicker to do a retake. But of course, as you mention, the end result isn't as 'perfect' as it would be using other methods.
In the case of Darcs it can be said a bit stronger as Darcs relies on GHC (the Glorious Glascow Haskell Compiler) which doesn't even have an interpreter. The interactive command line of ghc (ghci) is really just an compile-then-immediately-execute line by line interactive environment.
That's not to say that Haskell is necessarily blazingly fast, it's somewhat difficult to compile lazy languages. If you want fast functional (as in micro benchmark fast) you should look towards O'Caml, that has been known to do as well as gcc in some cases.
Well, Laser light generally have the following five properties:
To my mind at least the interesting thing with lasers are that every one of these characteristics (and multiple combinations) have been used in applications.
That's not to say that all characteristics are necessary at all times and when they're not they can usually be excluded (you do not want a highly intense laser, i.e with a high power output, for reading a CDR for example). In many cases the characteristic will degrade with time/space; i.e. the coherence length of a laser can be from anywhere between nothing much to a kilometer or more. (And incidentally doesn't have much to do with the beam being parallel at that point.)
For interplanetary communication the light being parallel would be the deciding factor, you could induce much higher field strengths at the receiver than with radio at interplanetary distances for the same transmitter power output. You could do away with most others (though I guess it being monochromatic could help if there isn't much atmosphere).
Wikipedia has a good introduction.
Then again one shouldn't forget that plain old mechanical systems aren't completely foolproof either. A friend of mine did something similar to you: Coming out of a lumber yard turning left onto the road he managed to turn the wheel too far and the cogs locked on the rack leaving the wheel locked in the far left position. Fortunately he was driving very slowly and there was no traffic, but before he could react and bring the car to a complete stop he was still in the ditch having done a complete 180. (It was a narrow road, giving him little time to break as he crossed the opposing lane at right angles).
I saw the car afterwards and the wheel was indeed locked solid, but we managed to work it lose. Now this was an old SAAB 99 that should have gone to the wrecker years before this happened, and it's not a common type of failure, but that's not to say it can't happen.
Well not quite, I was really thinking of WordPerfect but it seems I got the timeline slightly wrong. They survived the rewrite to 'C' and only later sold to Novell. They were steadfast with their assembly nonsense for everything before that though, so maybe the damage was already done.
WordStar may have been a parallel though. Even though my vote in that case goes to the arcane command set :-)
Being old enough to have been around the introduction of 'C' to the masses (i.e. the PC) and the abandonment of assembler it's amusing to see the same arguments recycled all over. Only this time it's 'C' that's leet:small, fast, not bloated etc, instead of assembler. And higher level languages such as 'Python' that are 'slow/bloated/have a lot of stuff you have to pay for even if you don't use it' instead of 'C'.
Last time around the debate was settled squarely in favour of 'C', that while it was killed dead in micro benchmarks compared to assembler, when it came to projects of any size, the added ease of development actually meant that programmers weren't bogged down in detail and could actually concentrate on doing the right thing (instead of merely doing things right). With huge savings in development time and even efficiency of the developed application. Since you hadn't spent all your time getting it to work, and you could express yourself using more abstractions you could actually tune and throw away code you had written replacing it with something that implemented a better algorithm.
A few companies did stick to their guns and continued with assembly for everything ("because it was faster, God damn it!"), and perished as a result. The original company behind WordPerfect comes to mind. They folded had to sell WP (which had to be rewritten in something higher level, and that rewrite made it slip behind its competitors).
Within Ericsson we've seen that particular light and developped our own system (Erlang) which enables us to produce world class systems faster than the competition. Systems which also have better performance than our competitors. (See AXD301 and our GSN line). This despite Erlang being killed by 'C/C++' in micro benchmarks. System level it rules the roost. (That's not to say we don't use 'C', we do, just like assembler wasn't abolished by 'C'. But we use it where it belongs for device drivers and the like, not code that actually does anything. Our experiences with C++ gives us pause though, so no C++ if it can be helped.) Lots of nice papers on the Erlang site above. And note that when it comes to performance claims these are verifiable claims.
So if you're a competitor of Ericsson, please continue using C/C++, our continued success depends on it. If you're not, then you better prepare to wake up and smell the roses. History looks set to repeat itself and you don't want to be stubbornly stuck in your old ways and go the way of the WP team when the wind shifts.
The 240 series would still place well. It and it's predecessor (the 140) series were consistently the cars in Sweden with the best longevity. The mean life expectancy of the 140 was somewhere around twenty years if memory serves (as calculated by the mandatory roadworthiness inspection), with the 240 not much behind. Can you say "Boring but dependable"? Knew you could.
Newer cars (with more electronics) will not last as long unfortunately (they'll become uneconomical to repair).
Sorry, that didn't mean anything to me. Was it supposed to?
I don't know I was decrying anything. But please enlighten me. What is the sentiment? (I wasn't aware of the Carl Schurz quote, and don't know the context. My remark was one of using the phrase as a form of jingoism.)
I just skimmed it (what was left of it as some had falled off the end) and only found two sentences about that, which in fairness did offer some sort of explanation.
I did however find lots and lots of arguments in favour of the war in Iraq. (And the invectives 'fool' and 'traitor' used a lot). It would be interesting to hear your comments to Maj. Gen. Zinni's views as they differ from your own and I wouldn't think you to consider him neither a fool nor a traitor, given his background and close ties with the Bush administration.
Well, me and Gen. Zinni both then, as that's the phrase he used in his rebuttal. I really don't picture him the sort of man to put up a strawman just to be able to knock it down.
I've met plenty of Americans of the 'my country right or wrong' variety (more than in any other nation in fact) so I don't think it was much of a stretch to make that leap, not really the mark of a "fool".
But now that we gotten that out of the way: Would you mind expanding on what exactly is meant by "supporting the troops?"
Being a foreigner I don't know exactly what that statement is supposed to mean, but if it means that once was/conflict starts then all internal critisism must cease then I know I don't agree, and neither does Gen Zinni (ret):
Now, Zinni is a retired Marine Corps General (and the former envoy to the middle east). So I'd think that his oppinion on this matter carries some weight even among those that don't subscribe to the same 'pinko-communist-left-liberal-what-have-you' world view as the rest of us.
Well, it hadn't been left untouched and as such was the backup target. Kokura was the intended target but was obscured by smog and hence the mission redirected to the first backup target. There was substantial cloud cover but the bomb was dropped anyway through a rift in the clouds, missing the city center by several miles.
You wouldn't have a link or two? Maybe I'm dense but; Diagnostics of what exactly? Medical diagnostics? Computer networks? Car problems?
Not in a SAAB or Volvo then I take it. What car are you driving?
Interesting, didn't know that. Then again Denmark doesn't have any car industry so there's no real reason I should have, now is there. :-)
The liter / 100 km is as I mentioned the EU standard, and most (all?) cars manufactured in the EU market has it at least as an option. I know for a fact that SAAB and Volvo are delivered that way, even in the Danish market, so if you want it the other way around you'll have to do it in your head.
The only reason I can see is that it's the way it's always been. You complain that your 'mileage' will go the wrong way, but of course if you instead think in terms of fuel comsumption rate the tables are reversed. In fact all other fuel consumptions traditionally have the reciprocal the 'other' way. Stationary diesels (or semi stationary, think tractor :-) are traditionally measured in liters (or other volume) per hour. Same in aviation (though of course the Americans use gals/hour). Heavy trucks are usually liters per tonne kilometer to recognise the fact that the load the truck carries have a significant impact on fuel consumption rates.
The 100 factor I can only guess is to get nice round (small) numbers, with typical consumption rates between 5 and 15 liters per 100 kilometers. As I said in Sweden that would be 0.5 - 1.5 which is also workable, but introduces a decimal point.
In fact the question should be why there are useages that have the reciprocal with the distance as the numerator given the historical usages. It's easy enough to get used to the idea that a smaller fuel consumption is the better car. For me it's the other way around, having a larger value mean a better fuel consumption is 'backwards.'
Well, it's the EU standard as I mentioned. Here in Northern Europe (Scandinavia etc) it used to be liters per 10 km but we changed. As in our cars changed, but we still mostly speak of "liters per (swedish) mile". (The old Swedish mile was close to 10 km so we carried it over.)
Don't know about Asia really. I'm pretty certain Volvo and SAAB are in liters per 100 km to all "metric" contries, but don't quote me.
Oh, we're even more evil than that in that we've got the rate the other way arround. The official EU standard is "litres per 100 km." :-)
Yes, and while that's true it's more a function of the number than the unit. And for that reason a standard "building module" in Europe is 60 centimeters (or rather 600 millimetres).
That beats your 23.622 inches hands down. :-). Seriously, we used to use the inch (not quite the US one but close enough) for quite a bit longer when building, I still remember as a boy when the carpenters folding rulers where switched from having both inches and millimeters to just millimeters, and people will still speak of a "two-by-four", but it's all gone away. It's just so much more convenient to build stuff in metric. Trust me. (And don't get me started on machinery, imperial is just evil there.)
P.S. And being a traditionallist (and many with me) I still only buy folding rulers with the inch/metric marking, as the purely metric one just "doesn't look right". I feeling others share, since they put the old style back into production ten years back or so.