For any heat base power generation system, like nuclear, gas, coal, oil, the best efficiency that thermodynamics allows is 50%. So, a 1 Gigawatt power plant must produce at least 1 gigawatt of heat.
Lines of code are not a worthless metric, as is sometimes concluded from arguments such as those in the article. I do agree that LOC is questionable as a productivity metric. However, if LOC is considered a cost rather than an asset, then it is a much more useful metric.
For instance, if two people solve the same problem, all else being equal, the one with fewer LOC is likely to be the one that was easier to write and to understand. Barring deliberate obfuscation, higher LOC correlates with complexity and complication. Fewer lines to write, read, and understand make a system more maintainable.
It follows, of course, that LOC should not be a measure of productivity. That would be like judging a contractor based on how many dollars he spends per day.
Of course, code terseness can be taken to extremes, but I think there's an 80-20 rule involved: you can trim the code by 80%, with proportional benefits in conciseness and simplicity, with only 20% of the drawbacks due to terseness and obfuscation. Code could (and should) be much smaller than it is today with no loss of clarity; on the contrary, the clarity would be improved by careful editing and refactoring.
It would be ironic if I loved rain and it rained on my wedding day.
...
Ironic means that there are multiple, disparate, but related meanings associated with a statement or scenario (as opposed to sarcasm, which is when something is said when the opposite is meant).
You know, it would be so easy for you just to look it up in the dictionary.
But in trying to be witty and sarcastic, you end up, ironically, sounding like a dense jerk.
Now that is indeed ironic: that I would try to appear witty by doing something that makes me look dense. The key to irony is contradiction. Look it up and see for yourself.
Re:Even 333hr per month is pushing it
on
IBM 120GXP Revisited
·
· Score: 2, Funny
my 75GXP failed on me (ironically in the middle of my first real backup)
Clearly you earned top marks from the Alanis Morissette School of Irony.
I think you just proved my point. You can prove that something is harmful based only on the elements it contains, but not that it is harmless, which is what you are claiming to do.
I'll bet you a shiny new nickel that nanotubes will be found to be harmful to the environment somehow.
You can predict the harmful effects of a substance based solely on the elements it contains? Wow, that's news to me. I think I'll go eat a bowl full of diamond shards.
To do this with an LED would require that the LED be actually driven by the data signal. Most of them go on at the start of the packet or byte and go off at the end, they don't go on for 1 and off for 0.
This got Score:5, Interesting? Dude, read the paper.
You're talking about electrical conductivity, methinks. Salt water actually has a lower thermal conductivity than pure water.
Thermal conductivity doesn't matter all that much for a water cooling systems, though, because the primary heat transfer mechanism is convection. You need a tiny little bit of conduction to heat up a tiny bit of water, and then convection carries that water elsewhere to a radiator which dissipates the heat.
Oh please. Make it "...remains of creatures who lived on Mars before February 26, 2002..." then. The point is, the nonexistence of life, once stated in a manner precise enough to satisfy Monsieur, seems to me to be just as valid a hypothesis as any other.
The distinction between CS and SE is not (unfortunately) as clear-cut as that. The University of Toronto, for instance, has both Computer Science and Computer Engineering (which, of course, includes software), and the two are certainly not as distinct as physics and mechanical engineering.
Software is a strange beast. There is nothing else so abstract and yet so directly practical. It defies analogy with other fields.
I don't understand. Why can't I hypothesize that there is and never has been life on Mars?
Would you also say "until now we have never seen anything travel faster than light" and claim that relativity is not a hypothesis/theory? What is the difference?
According to Popper's falsifiability criterion, the claim that there is life on Mars is unscientific, because it can never be disproven. Thus, the only scientific claim we can make here is "There is no life on Mars" and hope that we are proven wrong.
But systems don't tend toward conserving energy. On the contrary, they tend toward expending it, in order to end up in a lower-energy state.
The way this all makes sense to me is to consider that any movement besides antiphase vibration causes the common support to move very slightly, which damps that vibration. Thus, all vibration besides antiphase is damped, and after a long time, all that "remains" is the antiphase vibration.
The continual amplification caused by the clock spring "normalizes" whatever tiny antiphase component existed originally or develops later, until finally the pendulums (pendula?) are swinging in antiphase at full amplitude.
Slashdot Mirror
Lines of code are not a worthless metric, as is sometimes concluded from arguments such as those in the article. I do agree that LOC is questionable as a productivity metric. However, if LOC is considered a cost rather than an asset, then it is a much more useful metric.
For instance, if two people solve the same problem, all else being equal, the one with fewer LOC is likely to be the one that was easier to write and to understand. Barring deliberate obfuscation, higher LOC correlates with complexity and complication. Fewer lines to write, read, and understand make a system more maintainable.
It follows, of course, that LOC should not be a measure of productivity. That would be like judging a contractor based on how many dollars he spends per day.
Of course, code terseness can be taken to extremes, but I think there's an 80-20 rule involved: you can trim the code by 80%, with proportional benefits in conciseness and simplicity, with only 20% of the drawbacks due to terseness and obfuscation. Code could (and should) be much smaller than it is today with no loss of clarity; on the contrary, the clarity would be improved by careful editing and refactoring.
And your evidence that this happens "more than most would expect" is that you "read an article somewhere"?
Way to stamp out those charlatans, chief.
That man really is the ultimate computer geek, isn't he?
Hear hear. I was just thinking the same thing. If you substitute one of these "acronyms" into the other, the result makes no sense.
Did you really just say "analyzation"?
I think you just proved my point. You can prove that something is harmful based only on the elements it contains, but not that it is harmless, which is what you are claiming to do.
I'll bet you a shiny new nickel that nanotubes will be found to be harmful to the environment somehow.
You can predict the harmful effects of a substance based solely on the elements it contains? Wow, that's news to me. I think I'll go eat a bowl full of diamond shards.
You're talking about electrical conductivity, methinks. Salt water actually has a lower thermal conductivity than pure water.
Thermal conductivity doesn't matter all that much for a water cooling systems, though, because the primary heat transfer mechanism is convection. You need a tiny little bit of conduction to heat up a tiny bit of water, and then convection carries that water elsewhere to a radiator which dissipates the heat.
Oh please. Make it "...remains of creatures who lived on Mars before February 26, 2002..." then. The point is, the nonexistence of life, once stated in a manner precise enough to satisfy Monsieur, seems to me to be just as valid a hypothesis as any other.
Um, I think this has already happened.
The distinction between CS and SE is not (unfortunately) as clear-cut as that. The University of Toronto, for instance, has both Computer Science and Computer Engineering (which, of course, includes software), and the two are certainly not as distinct as physics and mechanical engineering.
Software is a strange beast. There is nothing else so abstract and yet so directly practical. It defies analogy with other fields.
Uh, what happens to the snow when the belt goes back up the underside of the hill?
Yeah? Well, my guess is that tucking brings me closer to the molten core of the Earth, causing my molecules to heat up, thereby moving faster.
Anyone else have a guess?
I predict that nobody will ever find remains of living creatures on Mars. That is a falsifiable hypothesis.
I don't understand. Why can't I hypothesize that there is and never has been life on Mars?
Would you also say "until now we have never seen anything travel faster than light" and claim that relativity is not a hypothesis/theory? What is the difference?
According to Popper's falsifiability criterion, the claim that there is life on Mars is unscientific, because it can never be disproven. Thus, the only scientific claim we can make here is "There is no life on Mars" and hope that we are proven wrong.
Just some food for thought...
But systems don't tend toward conserving energy. On the contrary, they tend toward expending it, in order to end up in a lower-energy state.
The way this all makes sense to me is to consider that any movement besides antiphase vibration causes the common support to move very slightly, which damps that vibration. Thus, all vibration besides antiphase is damped, and after a long time, all that "remains" is the antiphase vibration.
The continual amplification caused by the clock spring "normalizes" whatever tiny antiphase component existed originally or develops later, until finally the pendulums (pendula?) are swinging in antiphase at full amplitude.
Nope, I was wrong. The 1541 had 2kb of ram according this.
If I recall, the 1541 had a 6502 and 14kb of ram. That was ironic, because I used it with my VIC-20 "computer" that had a 6502 and 3.5kb of ram.