At this convention, how are you supposed to know who the crazies are?
With this crowd, maybe it would end up being like that experiment where they set up thousands of mouse traps in a room with a ping pong ball on each one.
I think that the point was that the "2003-level" specs are still about 4 orders of magnitude greater than those that were originally needed to play these games.
The topic was going on and on on how great 15 digits of PI is. I pointed out how it would be bad to just assume that therefore you can put pi (or any other number) in a double-precision variable everything will be just peachy for real-world computations.
I didn't say that 15 digits is insufficient, only that you have to be very careful about precision in general. There are plenty of algorithms where using the "obvious" implementation will cause double-precision values to blow up. I am well aware that if you restructure those to avoid ill-conditioned functions, you can usually avoid the problems.
If you plug that number into an iterative algorithm that uses any ill-conditioned functions, the 1.5-inch error can grow exponentially at every step. Ensuring that computations have acceptable error margins is an extremely complex and tricky subject.
you cannot wave your hands and make engineering go away.
If you were to make only the people who benefit from the mitigation project foot the entire bill, the engineering would go away, because it would cost more than the protected property is worth.
It IS damn useful to be able to look at an app on my phone while I'm out of the house, and see whether or not the doors are locked, or the outside motion-sensor lights are on,
It's useful for you, and even more damned useful for criminal hackers.
It's possible to write complex systems using modular design: do one thing and do it well.
And you'll soon discover your simple modules start interacting in ways that you did not anticipate or understand. There are also unlikely to be any tools available to analyze how your set of modules work as a whole.
Every nontrivial system has emergent behavior. You can't eliminate complexity with hand waving.
Correct. This close to a national election, the people should be allowed to have a say in the matter. Trying to stuff all the positions at the last minute is the height of arrogance.
If the founding fathers had wanted the people's decisions about the presidency to expire after only three years, they would have specified a 3-year term for the president.
I'm not sure that letting some dicey app and its authors control my door via the "cloud" is any more secure than just putting a key under the doormat. It certainly costs more.
A 5d ring shaped black hole might be cool, but how does one get created?
It's actually a straightforward process: You start with a 6D cylindrical black hole, and then you cleave off an infinitesimally thin slice perpendicular to its axis of symmetry.
Say you run a 5V circuit to the other end of your house with 20m of cable. To run small device with a 10W load, even with fat 12AWG copper wiring you get almost a 10% loss due to voltage drop. It would be cheaper to use even a bad wall wart than to suffer those kinds of losses and pay for all that copper.
They're fantastic for astronomy - many amateur astronomers use them to point out stars, constellations, nebulae, etc.
Great: Now you're potentially dazzling every pilot in an entire star system just to make it easier to teach your class.
Just because they're aliens doesn't mean that you shouldn't be concerned about their safety. What's worse, they might decide to come here and exact revenge on our planet for your hostile actions.
This demonstrates why the Windows Phone is clearly a superior platform.
In order to brick that, you would have to set its date all the way back to January 1, 1601. That allows the user to live in many more interesting historical eras.
If memory serves, and google says it does, the temperature of the sun is around 15 million K. I'm not gonna bother googling it, but I'm pretty sure 15 million K is lower (much, much lower) than absolute 0. So the numbers flat out don't work.
A. The reaction rates differ by about 16 orders of magnitude: The sun is going to run about 10 billion years with no refueling. A Tokamak fusion reactor would run for a few seconds or minutes. 2. The sun is using a completely different set of nuclear reactions with completely different fuel. There is no direct comparison anyway.
Does that include Sound Blaster for IBM's MicroChannel Architecture?
No, currently it only supports setting the bit that puts a positive pulse on the PC speaker. Work is in progress on support for resetting that bit, so in the meantime it's a maximum of one click sound per session.
The cool part, though, is that with the microkernel architecture, this is all managed via userspace code!
Slashdot Mirror
The issue is the crazies.
At this convention, how are you supposed to know who the crazies are?
With this crowd, maybe it would end up being like that experiment where they set up thousands of mouse traps in a room with a ping pong ball on each one.
AND long distance calls all used a 0. Area codes - required for long distance all had a 0 in the middle.
NYC: 212
Chicago: 312
LA: 213
(The list goes on)
Maybe you lived in the boondocks? That's where the area codes had time-consuming "0"s.
I think that the point was that the "2003-level" specs are still about 4 orders of magnitude greater than those that were originally needed to play these games.
WTF do you keep assuming I said?
The topic was going on and on on how great 15 digits of PI is. I pointed out how it would be bad to just assume that therefore you can put pi (or any other number) in a double-precision variable everything will be just peachy for real-world computations.
I didn't say that 15 digits is insufficient, only that you have to be very careful about precision in general. There are plenty of algorithms where using the "obvious" implementation will cause double-precision values to blow up. I am well aware that if you restructure those to avoid ill-conditioned functions, you can usually avoid the problems.
You imagine ...
No, I didn't.
If you plug that number into an iterative algorithm that uses any ill-conditioned functions, the 1.5-inch error can grow exponentially at every step. Ensuring that computations have acceptable error margins is an extremely complex and tricky subject.
you cannot wave your hands and make engineering go away.
If you were to make only the people who benefit from the mitigation project foot the entire bill, the engineering would go away, because it would cost more than the protected property is worth.
It IS damn useful to be able to look at an app on my phone while I'm out of the house, and see whether or not the doors are locked, or the outside motion-sensor lights are on,
It's useful for you, and even more damned useful for criminal hackers.
Hopefully they'll make the visuals as cool and disturbing as the tunnel boat ride in the original Willy Wonka film.
If they're trying to appeal to the French with this, why not just use the metric system?
The metric system does not have units that are any more proper for popular science articles than these French-built monuments.
The only standard units for mass in these types of articles are: Fleas, Baseballs, Volkswagen Beetles, Boeng 747s and Empire State Buildings.
There's no justifiable reason to disallow the distribution of binaries built from modified source code.
Which implies that there is no justifiable reason to deny your users the freedom to copy and redistribute those binaries as they please.
You were going to allow that, weren't you?
The ability to "compartmentalize" complexity is limited.
As I said, the complexity still exists in the way the compartments themselves interact. Mere mortals usually still can't deal with the problems.
It's possible to write complex systems using modular design: do one thing and do it well.
And you'll soon discover your simple modules start interacting in ways that you did not anticipate or understand. There are also unlikely to be any tools available to analyze how your set of modules work as a whole.
Every nontrivial system has emergent behavior. You can't eliminate complexity with hand waving.
So essentially, you advocate the standard Republican health plan: "Don't get sick. And if you do get sick, die quickly."
All we needed was tort reform and a little loosening of the ridiculous FDA restrictions,
And this brilliant plan helps families that have someone with a preexisting condition obtain insurance, HOW?
The dam was built on what's effectively ... drywall? How do you fix something like that?
You gather as much joint compound and tape as you can possibly find.
Correct. This close to a national election, the people should be allowed to have a say in the matter. Trying to stuff all the positions at the last minute is the height of arrogance.
If the founding fathers had wanted the people's decisions about the presidency to expire after only three years, they would have specified a 3-year term for the president.
I'm not sure that letting some dicey app and its authors control my door via the "cloud" is any more secure than just putting a key under the doormat. It certainly costs more.
A 5d ring shaped black hole might be cool, but how does one get created?
It's actually a straightforward process: You start with a 6D cylindrical black hole, and then you cleave off an infinitesimally thin slice perpendicular to its axis of symmetry.
Say you run a 5V circuit to the other end of your house with 20m of cable. To run small device with a 10W load, even with fat 12AWG copper wiring you get almost a 10% loss due to voltage drop. It would be cheaper to use even a bad wall wart than to suffer those kinds of losses and pay for all that copper.
Don't worry - prices will raise $2 each
So positive ROI is achieved in about 24 months. Sounds good.
They're fantastic for astronomy - many amateur astronomers use them to point out stars, constellations, nebulae, etc.
Great: Now you're potentially dazzling every pilot in an entire star system just to make it easier to teach your class.
Just because they're aliens doesn't mean that you shouldn't be concerned about their safety. What's worse, they might decide to come here and exact revenge on our planet for your hostile actions.
This demonstrates why the Windows Phone is clearly a superior platform.
In order to brick that, you would have to set its date all the way back to January 1, 1601. That allows the user to live in many more interesting historical eras.
If memory serves, and google says it does, the temperature of the sun is around 15 million K. I'm not gonna bother googling it, but I'm pretty sure 15 million K is lower (much, much lower) than absolute 0. So the numbers flat out don't work.
A. The reaction rates differ by about 16 orders of magnitude: The sun is going to run about 10 billion years with no refueling. A Tokamak fusion reactor would run for a few seconds or minutes.
2. The sun is using a completely different set of nuclear reactions with completely different fuel. There is no direct comparison anyway.
Does that include Sound Blaster for IBM's MicroChannel Architecture?
No, currently it only supports setting the bit that puts a positive pulse on the PC speaker. Work is in progress on support for resetting that bit, so in the meantime it's a maximum of one click sound per session.
The cool part, though, is that with the microkernel architecture, this is all managed via userspace code!