But if you had a car that got only 25 MPG, you would have spent less than $3000 more on gas. Do you really feel like the hybrid drive system added less than $3000 in cost to your initial purchase price (even ignoring time value of money)?
No. The Kindle does this exactly right (from a UI point of view –not talking about patent nonsense).
It's "one click" to purchase. When you've clicked, you're at the confirmation screen. From that screen, all standard navigation (back, home) works; but there's a single button on that screen. That button reads, and I paraphrase, "oops, I didn't mean to click that, un-buy."
This is awesome UI. Do NOT present a confirmation dialog for undoable actions; instead, make them easy to undo.
I know a decent amount of HTML, but that's about it as far as my programming knowledge is concerned. I'm looking to get into a programming language as a hobby, with no plans to pursue it as a profession. What would you all recommend I look at? I've gotten conflicting opinions on Ruby, PHP, C#...what would you suggest (again, just as a hobby) and why? Thanks for the time.
PowerPC or MIPS assembly. After that, you'll understand what a computer does.
Then Common Lisp or Scheme. After that, you'll understand what a programming language does.
Then Perl. After that, you'll understand the alternatives.
Wouldn't the other limitation of a computer powerful enough to simulate all of the particles in a universe be that it would have to be as big or at least a significant fraction of the universe itself?
It's not clear that we know the answer to this question. In terms of processing speed, there's no requirement for simulating at full speed, so this is not an issue. In terms of precision, a bit- (or word-) serial approach can achieve any finite precision with merely a reduction in speed, so also not an issue. So the remaining questions are (a) is a simple finite precision Turing machine sufficient for simulating the universe and (b) how much space do we need for information? (a) comes down to a strong form of the Church-Turing thesis, which Is we're not sure; (b) is a function of both maximum density of information and the actual information in the universe (taking into account redundancy), which are closely linked (see also the holographic principle).
The student version is cheap (free at most decent universities). The Wolfram folk are great if you need a deviation on the license for student stuff (running on a multi-processor machine before multiple kernel executions were included in the default license); just ask. As a long-time student, Mathematica is the greatest tool out there, and is the only software out there where I'm consistently excited about no versions, and/always/ find ways to incorporate at least a few of the new features in my existing notebooks. With Mathematica 6, Manipulate[] was an absolute game changer. With Mathematica 7, I'm betting ParallelTable[] and the new charting features will be just as big a deal, for me.
And to go one step further, the three or four times I've realized my analog scope isn't enough and been reaching for a digital, I've realized that a digital analyzer is a much better fit for what I was doing. By the time I need that much fanciness in my triggering and analysis, I really ought to (for the stuff I do) be able to assume that the waveform represents a reliable digital output, or be interested in finding the deviations from that, both of which a digital analyzer does a lot better (32 clips) than a digital scope.
You don't need a course for this, just to do some reading. The biggest thing to understand is that the things you buy in the market (whether they're shares of stock, or the short sale of stock, or options or other derivatives) are just contracts that reflect a belief. That is, a standard stock purchase is buying a contract that will give you a profit if your belief (that the company's value will increase over the time period you hold the contract) holds. A short sale is just buying a contract that will give you a profit if your opposing belief (that the company's value will decrease) holds. The mechanics of the contract are interesting (a short sale is a sale of stock you borrow for the purpose of selling; to close the contract you must return the stock by purchasing it at then-current prices), but are merely an instantiation of your goal. Once you start thinking this way, derivatives and ETFs and all those other things make lots of sense. Just state your belief -- "i think that fourteen days from now AAPL's stock price will have decreased by more than 5% but less than 10%" -- and then figure out what mechanism exists (and there's almost always something, these days) that reflects exactly that intention. Now, before you start buying based on this understanding, you need to start thinking about confidence intervals and such, but it's a major start.
The battery-backed SRAM used in devices like game cartridges is medium-speed, very-low-power SRAM. It's pretty standard to see battery ratings of five years; twenty years is available pretty readily. With times like these, there's really no reason to have secondary persistent storage, especially since the energy for doing the dump (which you must reserve) is likely to be enough to power the SRAM for another couple years.
Hardware support for thread-level parallelism is what is known as SMT (IBM, others) or hyperthreading. Basically, you have per-thread registers, and per-core ALUs. Exactly what units are replicated vs. shared (branch prediction, dispatch queues, etc.) is going to be implementation dependent.
What if he's found guilty, and the project is continued by other people, and renamed to avoid infamy, and Reiser loses his first appeal because his lawyer fails to subpoena critical records from the medical examiner's office, and Reiser 4 is finally completed and included in Linux 5.0, but develops stability issues, and around that time Hans is acquitted in a later appeal based on new evidence, and he rejoins the project? Will they change the name back?
the alternative was to not finish some assignments and get poor marks
Why is this a bad alternative? Basically no one but you cares about your marks, and you end up getting what you deserve. If you're unable to pass without copying, you don't deserve the degree. If you're unable to get an A without copying, why the hell do you think you should have an A?
So how does your code take advantage of a quad core processor if it has two threads? How about a 32-hardware-thread system, hierarchical, with separate processors, cores with shared L2, and hyperthreads with shared L1?
See other responses to my post, including the reference to the "Oh My God" particle. The universe is a heck of a lot more powerful than a bunch of monkeys.
Being cautious about a potentially real issue is one thing, but of course the big issue here is that collisions of similar energy happen, if not commonly, at least not entirely rarely due to cosmic rays. If the world could be destroyed by the side-effects of such a collision, we wouldn't be here to be nervous about it.
Slashdot Mirror
But if you had a car that got only 25 MPG, you would have spent less than $3000 more on gas. Do you really feel like the hybrid drive system added less than $3000 in cost to your initial purchase price (even ignoring time value of money)?
No. The Kindle does this exactly right (from a UI point of view –not talking about patent nonsense).
It's "one click" to purchase. When you've clicked, you're at the confirmation screen. From that screen, all standard navigation (back, home) works; but there's a single button on that screen. That button reads, and I paraphrase, "oops, I didn't mean to click that, un-buy."
This is awesome UI. Do NOT present a confirmation dialog for undoable actions; instead, make them easy to undo.
Gas density is around 6 lbs/gallon, not 3.4 lbs/gallon.
I know a decent amount of HTML, but that's about it as far as my programming knowledge is concerned. I'm looking to get into a programming language as a hobby, with no plans to pursue it as a profession. What would you all recommend I look at? I've gotten conflicting opinions on Ruby, PHP, C#...what would you suggest (again, just as a hobby) and why? Thanks for the time.
PowerPC or MIPS assembly. After that, you'll understand what a computer does.
Then Common Lisp or Scheme. After that, you'll understand what a programming language does.
Then Perl. After that, you'll understand the alternatives.
Then C, and you can write some real code.
This is why you always pay for things like computers with a credit card.
Also, when you figure out reentry, you get a supply of human-flavored jam and jelly.
Wouldn't the other limitation of a computer powerful enough to simulate all of the particles in a universe be that it would have to be as big or at least a significant fraction of the universe itself?
It's not clear that we know the answer to this question. In terms of processing speed, there's no requirement for simulating at full speed, so this is not an issue. In terms of precision, a bit- (or word-) serial approach can achieve any finite precision with merely a reduction in speed, so also not an issue. So the remaining questions are (a) is a simple finite precision Turing machine sufficient for simulating the universe and (b) how much space do we need for information? (a) comes down to a strong form of the Church-Turing thesis, which Is we're not sure; (b) is a function of both maximum density of information and the actual information in the universe (taking into account redundancy), which are closely linked (see also the holographic principle).
In summary, who knows?
If you're not good enough at arithmetic to understand that this isn't an issue, should you really be developing software?
s/no/new. My bad.
The student version is cheap (free at most decent universities). The Wolfram folk are great if you need a deviation on the license for student stuff (running on a multi-processor machine before multiple kernel executions were included in the default license); just ask. As a long-time student, Mathematica is the greatest tool out there, and is the only software out there where I'm consistently excited about no versions, and /always/ find ways to incorporate at least a few of the new features in my existing notebooks. With Mathematica 6, Manipulate[] was an absolute game changer. With Mathematica 7, I'm betting ParallelTable[] and the new charting features will be just as big a deal, for me.
And to go one step further, the three or four times I've realized my analog scope isn't enough and been reaching for a digital, I've realized that a digital analyzer is a much better fit for what I was doing. By the time I need that much fanciness in my triggering and analysis, I really ought to (for the stuff I do) be able to assume that the waveform represents a reliable digital output, or be interested in finding the deviations from that, both of which a digital analyzer does a lot better (32 clips) than a digital scope.
You don't need a course for this, just to do some reading. The biggest thing to understand is that the things you buy in the market (whether they're shares of stock, or the short sale of stock, or options or other derivatives) are just contracts that reflect a belief. That is, a standard stock purchase is buying a contract that will give you a profit if your belief (that the company's value will increase over the time period you hold the contract) holds. A short sale is just buying a contract that will give you a profit if your opposing belief (that the company's value will decrease) holds. The mechanics of the contract are interesting (a short sale is a sale of stock you borrow for the purpose of selling; to close the contract you must return the stock by purchasing it at then-current prices), but are merely an instantiation of your goal. Once you start thinking this way, derivatives and ETFs and all those other things make lots of sense. Just state your belief -- "i think that fourteen days from now AAPL's stock price will have decreased by more than 5% but less than 10%" -- and then figure out what mechanism exists (and there's almost always something, these days) that reflects exactly that intention. Now, before you start buying based on this understanding, you need to start thinking about confidence intervals and such, but it's a major start.
The new ones (just got mine last week!) are blue and green plastic, much nicer. Still no photo, of course.
The battery-backed SRAM used in devices like game cartridges is medium-speed, very-low-power SRAM. It's pretty standard to see battery ratings of five years; twenty years is available pretty readily. With times like these, there's really no reason to have secondary persistent storage, especially since the energy for doing the dump (which you must reserve) is likely to be enough to power the SRAM for another couple years.
Did you know you're google's first and only hit for "tofu fisting"? Congratulations, Malevolyn, you're the world's first tofu fister!
Hardware support for thread-level parallelism is what is known as SMT (IBM, others) or hyperthreading. Basically, you have per-thread registers, and per-core ALUs. Exactly what units are replicated vs. shared (branch prediction, dispatch queues, etc.) is going to be implementation dependent.
Not that moderators ever mod anything off-topic around here...
I mod anything I don't like off topic!
What if he's found guilty, and the project is continued by other people, and renamed to avoid infamy, and Reiser loses his first appeal because his lawyer fails to subpoena critical records from the medical examiner's office, and Reiser 4 is finally completed and included in Linux 5.0, but develops stability issues, and around that time Hans is acquitted in a later appeal based on new evidence, and he rejoins the project? Will they change the name back?
A fish.
the alternative was to not finish some assignments and get poor marks
Why is this a bad alternative? Basically no one but you cares about your marks, and you end up getting what you deserve. If you're unable to pass without copying, you don't deserve the degree. If you're unable to get an A without copying, why the hell do you think you should have an A?
So how does your code take advantage of a quad core processor if it has two threads? How about a 32-hardware-thread system, hierarchical, with separate processors, cores with shared L2, and hyperthreads with shared L1?
See other responses to my post, including the reference to the "Oh My God" particle. The universe is a heck of a lot more powerful than a bunch of monkeys.
Being cautious about a potentially real issue is one thing, but of course the big issue here is that collisions of similar energy happen, if not commonly, at least not entirely rarely due to cosmic rays. If the world could be destroyed by the side-effects of such a collision, we wouldn't be here to be nervous about it.
Just change priority.c and recompile the kernel.
Oh, they don't let you do that? Sounds like your "soft"ware is a little brittle.
Try 10Gb ethernet.
Just use ctrl-a and ctrl-e. They're used by everything. And they're on the main keyboard, not off to the side somewhere.