Well, the life peers *do* tend to be qualified. They got there, in theory, by being eminent enough for some government to appoint them (unfortunately it seems new Labour has been "selling" life peerages). At least some lords *must* be eminent enough to be Chief Justices of the english and/or scottish bars, for the Lords acts as the court of last resort in the United Kingdom.
Whatever conceptual problems you find in how they are selected, the lords has, and does, provide a check on the government, particularly with regard to more authoritarian power-grabs. However, the lords can not obstruct indefinitely. They are, to my admittedly not terribly-well-informed eye, much more effective than similarly empowered upper-houses in other countries where the appointments to those houses are instead political, e.g. the Seanad in Ireland.
Where the lords is quite prepared to block OTT legislation in the UK, the Seanad rarely rises above being a comfy talking shop for pensioned politicos and some others, no doubt mindful that to act against the popular wisdom of the day could cost them at the next election. In other words, a near useless upper-house (AFAICT).
The "Autopilot" that landed in a forest was not an autopilot at all, it was the fly-by-wire computer system that overrulled the pilot by decending when he was trying to pull up....
This is a myth.
Read the accident reports - it was pilot error. IIRC he hadn't prepared properly and so was unaware of the high trees at the airpor. He miscalibrated his barometric altimeter and then ignored his radio-altimeter (which is far more accurate at low altitude) thus flying significantly lower over the runway than he had intended. Finally, he applied power way too late to get the plane above the trees at the end of the runway, instead (likely) causing a compressor stall - an operational hazard of jet engines he would have been well-trained in - which finally doomed him to fly him into the trees
The muppet then tried to blame the aircraft, claiming it ignored his inputs - hence the myth. Except there's no evidence for that all, all the evidence points to pilot error (and perhaps some measure of fault at Air France with regard to flight-planning).
Well an inheritance is an income. Even if you don't buy the egalitarian argument (which is typically used to justify inheritance taxes that are much greater than regular income tax), you then are left with "inheritance == income, so income tax applies".
If you agree with that, fine. If you think there should be/no/ tax on inheritance, you'll have to explain why it isn't an income / gain in capital.
Why should the government get ANYTHING when someone dies? I just can't understand this and am glad he wants to get this repealed.
Well, the idea here is to prevent hereditary wealth and instead have people/work/ for their living, through a progressive tax. I.e. if a wealthy person dies, let the bulk of their wealth go to society. The idea is this makes for a more egalitarian society, where wealth is based on merit rather than inheritance.
Hmm, despite being modded informative, the parent is quite badly informed in spots:
- The US warship, the USS Vincennes, which shot down the Iranian Airbus was *NOT* under attack by boats and the aircraft was not on final approach. Crew believed the Airbus was an Iranian F-14 and deliberately shot it down.
The straits of Hormuz are so narrow, it's impossible to *not* be near the Iranian shore. The same holds true, to a lesser degree, for the entire gulf.
- "In 1987, Islamic terrorists working with Libya blew up a British Airways 747 over Scotland."
Several problems with this statement: Firstly, The plane was not "shot down", as per the lead-in to your comment. Secondly, they were not Islamic terrorists - they were believed to be agents of the intelligence service(s) of Libyan (exactly who is unknown, the man convicted for the bombing may well end-up being found to have been wrongfully convicted, and may be released).
- "In 2000, the Islamic terrorist group, al-Qaida, attempted to blow up between six and twelve commercial airliners flying across the Pacific at the same time. This plot was discovered at the last minute."
This sounds a bit speculative, and you've provided little information. Can you provide more details and/or references?
- "A few years after that, Islamic terrorists based in the UK attempted to cause explosions on several airliners by mixing ordinary household liquids into explosive combinations while the plane's were in flight. This plot was foiled by inspectors who noticed several passengers attempting to board the aircraft while carrying unusually large amounts of legal but curious household chemicals."
This is utter rubbish.
Those charged had not bought tickets, so there's no way this plot could have been foiled just prior to boarding. Some didn't even have passports. Most of those arrested were not charged. The rest have not yet been tried. Even if those charged were plotting to blow up planes (and there is doubt), there is a shadow, nay a huge pall, over the viability of liquid, binary explosives being used by passengers to blow up aircraft.
E.g. here's one flash-v-h264 cpu-usage comparison which contradicts the claim that H.264 uses more CPU - not exactly lab conditions though, so pinches of salt are still needed.
I'd be surprised if Flash had significantly lower processing requirements than H.264 (bear in mind that a lot of flash video on the web tends to be very resolution). I'd be willing to be referred to some comparisons (a quick google doesnt show anything useful), but till then I call bullshit on your claim.
Article 4.1.2 of GCIII clearly states that the following is required to get POW status:
You are misinterpreting the GC, either through ignorance or quite willfully, as no where does Article 4 say those are requirements. Rather, that is a (as we shall see) inexclusive list of indicators:
Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:
If you're confused, read Article 5, which very clearly assigns a default status of "POW" to anyone detained:
Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.
If you had actually read the wiki article on the fictional "Lawful Combatant" term, you'd already know this.
You are therefore either an ignoramus, a troll or a liar.
(If you have any argument whatsoever, it would be on whether the tribunals at Gitmo are actually competant. However, it is a fact that prisoners are normally held there, outwith GC protections, prior to review by tribunal - so even that argument would be extremely weak).
First of all, the 650 thousand number you claim is discredited. The most accurate approximation, done by the Iraq Body Count project, is only around 80,000.
Uh, it's not discredited. It is in fact the most accurate approximation we have, by scientific statistical survey methods which are widely accepted (including by the US govt btw), as the most accurate approximation of deaths in conflict areas.
If you think the IBB is the most accurate approximation, then you clearly have no clue what the IBB does. If you would read their 'about' page, you'll note they say:
"IBC's figures are not 'estimates' but a record of actual, documented deaths." And by documented, they mean "documented by multiple sources". IBB is not an approximation, but the absolute lower-limit of deaths. They provide a "If anyone who says it's below this is/definitely/ wrong" number, and for quite a while (possibly still?), their figures showed that both US and Iraqi figures were wrong.
FWIW various details of what you refer to appear to be disputed by both sides (e.g. Sun claim that it was NetApp who approached Sun (then StorageTek) - NetApp might not even dispute that particular fact - just the details of what happened after that, but I'm not quite sure). Hence it's definitely not a fact. I didn't claim my post was a complete and fair overview, only that I had tried to stick to facts, and I stated my bias.
Sun used the product from the patent and created a Free version without permission. That makes them a great 'Robin Hood', but it also makes them the 'bad guy' in the eyes of the law.
You're stating as a matter of fact that Sun "used the product from the patent". This is stretching the truth somewhat. The actual facts of the matter are that NetApp claims Sun have violated their patent (WAFL, etc), and filed suit requesting relief. Sun however disagree and believe they do not violate NetApps' patents - indeed Sun claim, in their counter-suits, that NetApp are violating Suns' patents. However, no-one is violating anyone's patents until either both parties agree they are, or a judge says so.
NB: I am a Sun employee. I have tried to keep the above post be 100% fact-based and opinion-free, but I am obviously biased, I also may be wrong and finally IANAL. Lector emptor.
Your argument is because these electromagnetic waves exist in space in some form, independent of time, that, if you could freeze time and measure distances (and only distance vectors) of some subset of these waves, that therefore you could therefore work out the velocity of the source at some prior point in time?
I understand that argument, but I don't see why I should accept it: We just don't have the ability to step outside of space-time in that way. Within our space-time, there is no way to measure velocity instantaneously - we have no way to do it, that I know of. Even as our tools let us measure things over very small distances and times, we (apparently - IANAQP) start observing probabilistic effects. I.e. your argument has no application to an engineer.;)
LIDAR equipment in an aircraft had an accuracy in the order of 10cm. Which is about 100 times away from what's needed (1mms-1 to a few percent). GPS is much lower wavelength of course, so would have lower resolution - but i've no idea if that'd have any appreciable affect on attainable accuracy.
Ah, I think I've just realised at least one reason why you've attacked me, cause you keep referring to RADAR for some reason.. You seem to think I was attacking accuracy of time-based *DAR due to their ability to measure time of signal bounce? I wasn't - I'm well aware LIDAR is doppler. I was criticising their accuracy on grounds of dispersion and motion in the detector ("sweep error") - i.e. operator error.
As for GPS, I'll repeat myself and state that while you may be able to measure the doppler shift (and GPSes do I think, for signal processing), you won't be able to measure it accurately enough to derive a reasonably useful velocity across the face of the earth.
Feel free to prove me wrong, but I doubt you can get within 100 times of the accuracy needed, least not in any kind of reasonable budget.
I'm aware of quantum uncertainty, I mentioned it an a reply to another poster.
The only concrete point you've made so far is that doppler shift measurement is instantaneous, which you had to immediately qualify when I corrected you. So I've no idea what your point is, I wonder if you do. Your only other points are ad-hominem attacks.
"reflected signal hat you think most radar relies on" - So I'm also ignorant thinking radar and lidar use reflected signals.
I don't know why I'm bothering to respond since you are either obstinate, clueless, or both, but I will.
Maybe I am, who knows. I am definitely pedantic.
But any measurement takes time in that sense.
Right. Nothing happens without time. Things can be said to be in a certain place without time.
essentially instantaneous measurement.
Right: "essentially instantaneous". If you want to define "instantaneous" as being over some sufficiently small delta-t, sure. While I agree this is a useful definition for daily life, it's not at odds with my initial point.
My initial point, that there is no such thing as literal instant speed might then be seen as useless nitpicking. However if you read it in the context of my post, you'll see I make it to illustrate that instantaneous speed is precisely an arbitrary definition and that the usefulness of any such definition is limited by the *accuracy* with which we can measure things. The "more instant" the speed we try to measure, the more error we introduce OR the more accuracy (ie difficult, ie cost) we need.
I.e. in the real-world, systems have error and there is a definite trade-off between "more" and "less" "instant" speed. Your very very carefully calibrated, precision equipment (not like the LIDAR gun the cop throws in the boot, or the GPS sitting on a dash) may be able to measure photon energies to near-0-as-matters delta-t. Despite that, I'm sure you still have to deal with error and/or inaccuracy.
So, despite the very elegant mathematics that can extract conceptually-0 "instantaneous" speed, the fact it doesn't exist (at least, not so as we can measure it) has *real-world* consequences - cause it means we need to make compromises on how much time to average our measurements over.
Consequences you might think about when you get a £100 fine in the post cause a cop bounced infra-red light from your car, from many hundred metres away, using a LIDAR gun mounted on a battered and rickety tri-pod... Consequences the engineers tried to account for when designing said LIDAR guns.
Instantaneous velocity is the limit of the average velocity where the time of averaging tends to zero.
Yes, that's obvious. You'll note my original post mentions "You can/approach/ t=0," - you can take that as a not-so-subtle clue that, yes, I have in fact done at least secondary school (== high school in USA?) mathematics (and indeed, more).
You're unfortunately missing the words "approximated by", in between "is" and "the limit". Interestingly, given your post, you obviously are quite aware that physical measurements approximate the real-world. However, you seem to think, fallaciously, that your math provides infinitely precise truth.
DISCLAIMER: I was a software developer for a road engineering company for one and a half year.
But you're still not an engineer, obviously. If you were you'd know:
a) In the real-world, we can't measure things to perfect accuracy. All measurements have error. Further, the current scientific consensus around quantum theory suggests that this error is in fact *fundamental* to the universe (rather than any limitation in our tools) - we live in a probabilistic universe.
b) Mathematics is a means of modeling, at least how engineers use it.
You can make a graph of how an x kg body accelerates due to the gravity of the earth. You might be really clever and account for the following (or more):
- air pressure - altitude - the lunar cycle
In the real-world: if you drop that body from a decent height, the spot you draw on the ground, which your maths say will be the impact point, will often be wrong (and I'll let us assume a windless earth..). Because your mathematical model is just that, a *model* - very useful, but it can't (yet - probably never) model the chaos of the real-world.
I.e. your math be able to say "at this point in time, we can approximate the speed as X, for a delta-t that's so tiny, we can consider it as zero", but it's still a model, an approximate one (and yes, it's very useful..). In reality however, there is still no such thing as instantaneous speed.
The real-world is chaotic, both inherent in the systems found there, and in how we can measure them. They do not quite conform to the nice, precise graph on your screen, no matter how clever your math. It's extremely important, as an engineer dealing with physical systems at least, to know to model and then account for error.
Slashdot Mirror
You did your job too well in stamping out terrorism.
And note this was achieved *NOT* through police action, but through political dialogue.
(Even Thatcher had the MI5 start talking to the IRA, while talking tough about "no negotiation" in public).
Well, the life peers *do* tend to be qualified. They got there, in theory, by being eminent enough for some government to appoint them (unfortunately it seems new Labour has been "selling" life peerages). At least some lords *must* be eminent enough to be Chief Justices of the english and/or scottish bars, for the Lords acts as the court of last resort in the United Kingdom.
Whatever conceptual problems you find in how they are selected, the lords has, and does, provide a check on the government, particularly with regard to more authoritarian power-grabs. However, the lords can not obstruct indefinitely. They are, to my admittedly not terribly-well-informed eye, much more effective than similarly empowered upper-houses in other countries where the appointments to those houses are instead political, e.g. the Seanad in Ireland.
Where the lords is quite prepared to block OTT legislation in the UK, the Seanad rarely rises above being a comfy talking shop for pensioned politicos and some others, no doubt mindful that to act against the popular wisdom of the day could cost them at the next election. In other words, a near useless upper-house (AFAICT).
The "Autopilot" that landed in a forest was not an autopilot at all, it was the fly-by-wire computer system that overrulled the pilot by decending when he was trying to pull up....
This is a myth.
Read the accident reports - it was pilot error. IIRC he hadn't prepared properly and so was unaware of the high trees at the airpor. He miscalibrated his barometric altimeter and then ignored his radio-altimeter (which is far more accurate at low altitude) thus flying significantly lower over the runway than he had intended. Finally, he applied power way too late to get the plane above the trees at the end of the runway, instead (likely) causing a compressor stall - an operational hazard of jet engines he would have been well-trained in - which finally doomed him to fly him into the trees
The muppet then tried to blame the aircraft, claiming it ignored his inputs - hence the myth. Except there's no evidence for that all, all the evidence points to pilot error (and perhaps some measure of fault at Air France with regard to flight-planning).
Stop repeating that bogus myth.
Well an inheritance is an income. Even if you don't buy the egalitarian argument (which is typically used to justify inheritance taxes that are much greater than regular income tax), you then are left with "inheritance == income, so income tax applies".
/no/ tax on inheritance, you'll have to explain why it isn't an income / gain in capital.
If you agree with that, fine. If you think there should be
Why should the government get ANYTHING when someone dies? I just can't understand this and am glad he wants to get this repealed.
/work/ for their living, through a progressive tax. I.e. if a wealthy person dies, let the bulk of their wealth go to society. The idea is this makes for a more egalitarian society, where wealth is based on merit rather than inheritance.
Well, the idea here is to prevent hereditary wealth and instead have people
Great satirical post :).
Hmm, despite being modded informative, the parent is quite badly informed in spots:
- The US warship, the USS Vincennes, which shot down the Iranian Airbus was *NOT* under attack by boats and the aircraft was not on final approach. Crew believed the Airbus was an Iranian F-14 and deliberately shot it down.
The straits of Hormuz are so narrow, it's impossible to *not* be near the Iranian shore. The same holds true, to a lesser degree, for the entire gulf.
- "In 1987, Islamic terrorists working with Libya blew up a British Airways 747 over Scotland."
Several problems with this statement: Firstly, The plane was not "shot down", as per the lead-in to your comment. Secondly, they were not Islamic terrorists - they were believed to be agents of the intelligence service(s) of Libyan (exactly who is unknown, the man convicted for the bombing may well end-up being found to have been wrongfully convicted, and may be released).
- "In 2000, the Islamic terrorist group, al-Qaida, attempted to blow up between six and twelve commercial airliners flying across the Pacific at the same time. This plot was discovered at the last minute."
This sounds a bit speculative, and you've provided little information. Can you provide more details and/or references?
- "A few years after that, Islamic terrorists based in the UK attempted to cause explosions on several airliners by mixing ordinary household liquids into explosive combinations while the plane's were in flight. This plot was foiled by inspectors who noticed several passengers attempting to board the aircraft while carrying unusually large amounts of legal but curious household chemicals."
This is utter rubbish.
Those charged had not bought tickets, so there's no way this plot could have been foiled just prior to boarding. Some didn't even have passports. Most of those arrested were not charged. The rest have not yet been tried. Even if those charged were plotting to blow up planes (and there is doubt), there is a shadow, nay a huge pall, over the viability of liquid, binary explosives being used by passengers to blow up aircraft.
E.g. here's one flash-v-h264 cpu-usage comparison which contradicts the claim that H.264 uses more CPU - not exactly lab conditions though, so pinches of salt are still needed.
I'd be surprised if Flash had significantly lower processing requirements than H.264 (bear in mind that a lot of flash video on the web tends to be very resolution). I'd be willing to be referred to some comparisons (a quick google doesnt show anything useful), but till then I call bullshit on your claim.
MPEG-4 + H.264
Errata.. I had noted I needed to remove 'fictional' from this sentence when reviewing my post, but somehow forgot before hitting submit:
If you had actually read the wiki article on the fictional "Lawful Combatant" term, you'd already know this.
Article 4.1.2 of GCIII clearly states that the following is required to get POW status:
You are misinterpreting the GC, either through ignorance or quite willfully, as no where does Article 4 say those are requirements. Rather, that is a (as we shall see) inexclusive list of indicators:
Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:
If you're confused, read Article 5, which very clearly assigns a default status of "POW" to anyone detained:
Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.
If you had actually read the wiki article on the fictional "Lawful Combatant" term, you'd already know this.
You are therefore either an ignoramus, a troll or a liar.
(If you have any argument whatsoever, it would be on whether the tribunals at Gitmo are actually competant. However, it is a fact that prisoners are normally held there, outwith GC protections, prior to review by tribunal - so even that argument would be extremely weak).
Uh, it's not discredited. It is in fact the most accurate approximation we have, by scientific statistical survey methods which are widely accepted (including by the US govt btw), as the most accurate approximation of deaths in conflict areas.
If you think the IBB is the most accurate approximation, then you clearly have no clue what the IBB does. If you would read their 'about' page, you'll note they say: "IBC's figures are not 'estimates' but a record of actual, documented deaths." And by documented, they mean "documented by multiple sources". IBB is not an approximation, but the absolute lower-limit of deaths. They provide a "If anyone who says it's below this is
FWIW various details of what you refer to appear to be disputed by both sides (e.g. Sun claim that it was NetApp who approached Sun (then StorageTek) - NetApp might not even dispute that particular fact - just the details of what happened after that, but I'm not quite sure). Hence it's definitely not a fact. I didn't claim my post was a complete and fair overview, only that I had tried to stick to facts, and I stated my bias.
Uni of Bologna have a site on Tunguska, including a whole section on this new, possible crater - with pictures.
doh, of course yes :)
Sun used the product from the patent and created a Free version without permission. That makes them a great 'Robin Hood', but it also makes them the 'bad guy' in the eyes of the law.
You're stating as a matter of fact that Sun "used the product from the patent". This is stretching the truth somewhat. The actual facts of the matter are that NetApp claims Sun have violated their patent (WAFL, etc), and filed suit requesting relief. Sun however disagree and believe they do not violate NetApps' patents - indeed Sun claim, in their counter-suits, that NetApp are violating Suns' patents. However, no-one is violating anyone's patents until either both parties agree they are, or a judge says so.
You can read Suns' response to NetApps' complaint (which #include's most, if not all, of NetApps' complaint).
NB: I am a Sun employee. I have tried to keep the above post be 100% fact-based and opinion-free, but I am obviously biased, I also may be wrong and finally IANAL. Lector emptor.
Hmm, even if you measure waves by distance, it still represents a period of time. There's no way to avoid it really.
It may be a period of time so small that we'll call it instantaneous by convention, but it's not a point in time.
Urg.. I get you now. Sorry.
Aren't you limited in resolution by the wavelength though?
We may have to agree to disagree.
;)
Your argument is because these electromagnetic waves exist in space in some form, independent of time, that, if you could freeze time and measure distances (and only distance vectors) of some subset of these waves, that therefore you could therefore work out the velocity of the source at some prior point in time?
I understand that argument, but I don't see why I should accept it: We just don't have the ability to step outside of space-time in that way. Within our space-time, there is no way to measure velocity instantaneously - we have no way to do it, that I know of. Even as our tools let us measure things over very small distances and times, we (apparently - IANAQP) start observing probabilistic effects. I.e. your argument has no application to an engineer.
Or is your argument something else?
As an interesting datapoint:
http://www.ctre.iastate.edu/mtc/papers/2002/Veneziano.pdf
LIDAR equipment in an aircraft had an accuracy in the order of 10cm. Which is about 100 times away from what's needed (1mms-1 to a few percent). GPS is much lower wavelength of course, so would have lower resolution - but i've no idea if that'd have any appreciable affect on attainable accuracy.
Ah, I think I've just realised at least one reason why you've attacked me, cause you keep referring to RADAR for some reason.. You seem to think I was attacking accuracy of time-based *DAR due to their ability to measure time of signal bounce? I wasn't - I'm well aware LIDAR is doppler. I was criticising their accuracy on grounds of dispersion and motion in the detector ("sweep error") - i.e. operator error.
As for GPS, I'll repeat myself and state that while you may be able to measure the doppler shift (and GPSes do I think, for signal processing), you won't be able to measure it accurately enough to derive a reasonably useful velocity across the face of the earth.
Feel free to prove me wrong, but I doubt you can get within 100 times of the accuracy needed, least not in any kind of reasonable budget.
I'm aware of quantum uncertainty, I mentioned it an a reply to another poster.
The only concrete point you've made so far is that doppler shift measurement is instantaneous, which you had to immediately qualify when I corrected you. So I've no idea what your point is, I wonder if you do. Your only other points are ad-hominem attacks.
"reflected signal hat you think most radar relies on" - So I'm also ignorant thinking radar and lidar use reflected signals.
Thanks.
*plonk*
I don't know why I'm bothering to respond since you are either obstinate, clueless, or both, but I will.
Maybe I am, who knows. I am definitely pedantic.
But any measurement takes time in that sense.
Right. Nothing happens without time. Things can be said to be in a certain place without time.
essentially instantaneous measurement.
Right: "essentially instantaneous". If you want to define "instantaneous" as being over some sufficiently small delta-t, sure. While I agree this is a useful definition for daily life, it's not at odds with my initial point.
My initial point, that there is no such thing as literal instant speed might then be seen as useless nitpicking. However if you read it in the context of my post, you'll see I make it to illustrate that instantaneous speed is precisely an arbitrary definition and that the usefulness of any such definition is limited by the *accuracy* with which we can measure things. The "more instant" the speed we try to measure, the more error we introduce OR the more accuracy (ie difficult, ie cost) we need.
I.e. in the real-world, systems have error and there is a definite trade-off between "more" and "less" "instant" speed. Your very very carefully calibrated, precision equipment (not like the LIDAR gun the cop throws in the boot, or the GPS sitting on a dash) may be able to measure photon energies to near-0-as-matters delta-t. Despite that, I'm sure you still have to deal with error and/or inaccuracy.
So, despite the very elegant mathematics that can extract conceptually-0 "instantaneous" speed, the fact it doesn't exist (at least, not so as we can measure it) has *real-world* consequences - cause it means we need to make compromises on how much time to average our measurements over.
Consequences you might think about when you get a £100 fine in the post cause a cop bounced infra-red light from your car, from many hundred metres away, using a LIDAR gun mounted on a battered and rickety tri-pod... Consequences the engineers tried to account for when designing said LIDAR guns.
No, my friend, you are wrong.
;)
/approach/ t=0," - you can take that as a not-so-subtle clue that, yes, I have in fact done at least secondary school (== high school in USA?) mathematics (and indeed, more).
Don't be so sure.
Instantaneous velocity is the limit of the average velocity where the time of averaging tends to zero.
Yes, that's obvious. You'll note my original post mentions "You can
You're unfortunately missing the words "approximated by", in between "is" and "the limit". Interestingly, given your post, you obviously are quite aware that physical measurements approximate the real-world. However, you seem to think, fallaciously, that your math provides infinitely precise truth.
DISCLAIMER: I was a software developer for a road engineering company for one and a half year.
But you're still not an engineer, obviously. If you were you'd know:
a) In the real-world, we can't measure things to perfect accuracy. All measurements have error. Further, the current scientific consensus around quantum theory suggests that this error is in fact *fundamental* to the universe (rather than any limitation in our tools) - we live in a probabilistic universe.
b) Mathematics is a means of modeling, at least how engineers use it.
You can make a graph of how an x kg body accelerates due to the gravity of the earth. You might be really clever and account for the following (or more):
- air pressure
- altitude
- the lunar cycle
In the real-world: if you drop that body from a decent height, the spot you draw on the ground, which your maths say will be the impact point, will often be wrong (and I'll let us assume a windless earth..). Because your mathematical model is just that, a *model* - very useful, but it can't (yet - probably never) model the chaos of the real-world.
I.e. your math be able to say "at this point in time, we can approximate the speed as X, for a delta-t that's so tiny, we can consider it as zero", but it's still a model, an approximate one (and yes, it's very useful..). In reality however, there is still no such thing as instantaneous speed.
The real-world is chaotic, both inherent in the systems found there, and in how we can measure them. They do not quite conform to the nice, precise graph on your screen, no matter how clever your math. It's extremely important, as an engineer dealing with physical systems at least, to know to model and then account for error.