my sister acquired language at a much younger age than I did
Don't worry. It is quite normal for girls to acquire language earlier than boys.
I believe that it is the development of mind that invalidates the earliest long-term memories. The development of the new associations requires discarding the old ones. When the old associations are (slowly) discarded, the old memories go as well.
I tested my daugther when she was about 1.5 years. At that time she could remember things half a year back (IMHO, a proof of existence of long-term memory at that age). Later, at the age of 4, she could remember things at the age 2. Today she is 7 years and can remember some things at the age 3.
My earliest memories are from the age of 2-3 years. It is impossible to date them exactly, as most of them are something that only a child would remember. Also, I am not sure if I really remember them -- or if I remember me remembering them.
This is indeed a good question.
Some people have classified a stone that most of the time orbits sun and only part of the time orbits the earth, a moon of the earth. It seems that there is a continuum between moon orbits and these orbits, and it is possible that our moon will escape earth by using similar trajectory, and in the end being our moon and start orbiting the sun -- and possibly even collide the earth after that.
Do not worry, that will not happen anytime soon. Moon's current escape rate is some 38 mm per year and the other smaller "moon" of earth is "safe" for the next 5000 years, too.
There is also the J002E3, already though of as another moon of earth, but turned out to be space junk from the apollo program. Usually, natural moons do not have the spectral characteristics of titaniumoxide.
Re:"fastest supercomputing server per square foot"
on
SGI launches R16000
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· Score: 1
What is the fastest supercomputer supporting the metric system?
I have seen several multi-million dollar mistakes induced by young enthusiastic engineers knowing only one textbook method, which did not happen to work in practice in these occasions. Some of the older engineers knew what was going on, but could not convince the management to stop the young for making the costly mistakes.
A senior software engineer is well worth her higher salary, especially if she has remembered to maintain her technological knowledge.
Note, that loudspeakers also modify sound, probably much more than the mp3 conversion. It can be considered harmful to listen to music from bad loudspeakers.
Seriously, I believe that if you get some level of exposure to normal sounds, the long-term adaptive feedback processes in your inner-ears should work for you, not against you -- even if you listen to mp3s.
I am not so sure about the safety on listening WMAs, though...;-)
No it is not. The inner ear itself is quite active for filtering signals and these feedback processes are accomodate (extremely slowly, in weeks) to the signal that is listened to.
I agree that reading the document is not a big deal. The real interoperability issue is interpretation and there the largest problem is in layout algorithms. It may be impossible to reconstruct or reverse engineer a bit-perfect layout algorithm so that any document written by a Word would look the same elsewhere. Bit perfect rendering in interoperability is difficult enough even without secret rendering algorithms in one end.
Note, that a single roundation error of 0.499999999999 instead of 0.500000000001 may lead to different pagination or image layout and consequently render the whole document differently. For seamless interoperability, bit perfect computation is required, not just approximations (or "improved" algorithms).
It may not be that simple for the liver to recover from the surgery after radiotherapy. Radiotherapy reduces cell growth temporarily quite strongly. Also, modern radiotherapy with IMRT does not affect the critical organs that much.
If there are anything in radiotherapy that slashdot people should know it is IMRT. It is implemented by clever inverse calculation algorithms and quite fancy control equipment, and even better, is proven, provides better 5 year life quality, less complications, improved local control, etc.
IMHO, what is outside the 1.5E7 light years is pure guesswork and should not be presented in what is intended as (basic) educative material. They start from 1E7 light years, which is not several orders of magnitude away, but just about right. If they would have added 1E8 light years, they could have had a single picture labeled "entire known universe" and I don't know how to add several orders of (non-religious) magnitudes after that.
ratio between +13 and +14 is too small.
on
Java Powers of Ten
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· Score: 1
Thanks for the great applet.
However, I think the difference between 10^13 and 10^14 is way too small. That is more like 2.3 instead of 10. Artistically, that can be considered as a 10, but to me, it only rises suspicion about the other ratios, i.e., what is the selected balance of artistic and scientific ratios. IMHO, to maintain credibility, the scale ratio should be very close to 10 between each two pictures.
Re:I wouldn't build it for others, but for myself.
on
PC Prices to Rise?
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· Score: 1
>buying for the future is a joke
I always buy the hard disk "for the future" to reduce the frequency of a completely new installation.
It means that during the last 10 years the Linux kernel has been improved by volunteers. The company in question has participated by writing the glossy paged marketing material.
I played the original Civilization (was that almost ten years ago?) and found out that the first thing to do was to sell the palace to gain some capital for some more important things. If you did this during your first round, it was hilariously easy to beat the computer players. I hope they don't have this particular feature still in place.
Any modern OS should be fairly good at analysing usage and keeping the important things in memory.
I agree. They should.
However, in practise, I have seen Windows NT 4.0 server operating as a file server to use only 1/4 of its memory for file caching. Temporarily it may exceed this, but it removes the exceeding part
from the cache. Linux, working in a file server,
allows caching of a much larger set of files.
I believe that Windows want to keep some part of the memory truely free due to some really strange technical aspects in the NT memory management performance. Perhaps they optimize the file cache size so, that they always get the minimal startup time for starting applications - and their file
cache deallocation routines are just way too slow.
A NT workstation seems to use even a smaller portion of the memory for file caching. For slightly longer caches (after several minutes of doing nothing) only 10% of the memory is allowed for file caching. This can be mitigated by copying
a few register keys from an NT server to a NT workstation.
However, due to the problems and inefficiencies in NT file caching it is best to buy hardware (a disc controller with lots and lots of memory) that does caching instead of the operating system. Then it almost really works. Another solution for the NT file caching problem is to use Linux;-). Its file caching is quite efficient.
Square wheels are not as good as round wheels.
on
IgNobel Awards
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· Score: 1
If you accelerate a square wheel over a surface made of series of half-circles with a constant torque, the acceleration will have a wave pattern in it.
Thus, it is more practical to have round wheels
and enjoy from constant acceleration.
I have had really bad luck with this hard drive type.
The first one run well a couple of days. Then it started to make a loud (around 70 db) high-pitched sound, which makes it impossible to stay in the same room for longer than a minute. I returned the disk. The next one was not detected by the bios (nor the OSes) - It was just plain old broken. At this
time I asked for two 30 GB drives that could replace that drive, but they sent me the third 60 MB drive.
This one is starting to fail (makes the high-picthed sound every now and then) so I cannot really use it because it will fail any time, but cannot return it either - the sound is there only a couple of hours in a month.
I have used approximately 200 hard disk types (ranging from old 5 MB drives to the modern large scsi drives) and the IBM DeskStar 60 GB 75GXP seems to be the worst.
Higher refersh rates for 3D
on
2.2 GHz Xeon
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· Score: 1
This is true
This is absolutely not true. 100 Hz will be much more enjoyable virtual experience than 80 Hz.
Of course, you need to syncronize the updates with
the refresh rate of the monitor. The higher refresh leads to a noticeable decrease in temporal aliasing, i.e., the motion is less jerky. I believe that you
will get an improvement at least up to 400 Hz. Of course, you would get much of this benefit with proper temporal anti-aliasing and a lower refresh rate.
For the common user not involved in this sort of technical computation, a faster processor can take some responsibility from the
user and let the user focus on the really creative part.
The article mentioned one book about physics of tones. I have one definite favorite in this area. Actually it is more psychoacustics (physics of the basilar membrane in the inner ear) than just good old traditional physics...
If you really want to understand tuning and how
it is connected with spectra of sounds you should
read Bill Sethares excellent book
"Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale".
Take a look at this article to get a preview about what the book is all about.
He is not using the concept of a harmonic template at all, but relies solely on sensory dissonance (by Plompt and Levelt).
The results are still quite usable in composing music.
IMHO, this book is about the only way the usual geek can understand the basics of harmony, consonance, and composition.
There are two main costs in executing Python code:
evaluation of reasonably simple stack-based byte code and string hashing. Perhaps the byte code could be
replaced with forth directly, but there is still
a lot of processing that goes to hashing. So, how
can we do fast (character string) hashing with the
x25 - with lots and lots of different hash tables.
The answer is - we cannot do it. There is probably not enough memory bandwidth to support the 25
processors all fetching hash data from the main memory. (Python code is roughly 50% evaluation, 50% hashing.)
MS breakup plan was a hoax in the first place.
It was designed to delay EUs response to
the monopoly and market behavior of Microsoft. In the case of a court case in EU against Microsoft, the MS attorneys can now refer to their successful case in US. US government (and big business, too) equipped with the light-weight spy organization called NSA and a sky full of interception satellites are not stupid enough to kill their cash-cow just to be fair. Moral in US is defined by the number of bedrooms, size of your TV, and maximal CO2 emissions. Global issues have always been a non-issue.
In my opinion a good solution would have been a split to three companies:
Microsoft Office Corporation
Microsoft Entertainment Corporation
Microsoft Winwows Corporation
For the Microsoft Winwows Corporation we would need some additional limitations - on bundling software and OEM licensing terms. However, that would have greatly reduced the US economy in favor of global economy (including developing countries) and is thus not an US interest.
I hope the guys in EU still remember their plans and restart their case against Microsoft.
While waiting for the EU vs. Microsoft case, a good corrective action for governments would be to enforce the use of other software in schools, universities, and government offices.
I thought that OpenGL is more standardized on
different cards. In directx you may get different
results on different cards, whereas with OpenGL you get more similar renderings on different implementations.
The problem with OpenGL is the ARB, which has
been slow to accept useful extensions as part of
the standard. I feel that this might be because of
one large U.S. software company that is a member of the ARB is slowing down the standartization process deliberately to build a competitive advantage for their proprietary graphics library.
2) The startups base their technologies on java to get the bulk of cheap coders.
3) Most of the new "innovative" products that get out in a couple of years look like your favorite java app today (i.e., fails slowly).
4) C++ ja C will be the Cobol of tomorrow. Nobody knows them (old farts do not count here) and it is not worth to learn because java is theoretically better in every respect - as though in the university. Also, the difference between java and C++ is so small that there is not much reward in relearning all the libraries etc.
5) The java culture (compilers, patterns, coding knowledge) evolves and finally we are able to produce robust (but still slow running) software with java. We have finally reversed Moore's law in computing.
This is what can happen and it is really a nightmare. The only responsible thing to do is to stop all java training, immediately. A better training language could be python. Python and C/C++ make up a good combination even for serious engineering, so learning python is good use of time even for serious engineer students - unlike in the case of java. Java and C/C++ is not as good an interlanguage solution combination because of too much overlap in paradigm. I hope that C/C++ will be replaced, but by something that really is better in their native field, too.
In my opinion java is one of the terrible mistakes that have been implemented in modern computer science. It has been such a small step forward that it should not have been taken. Too much trouble for gaining so little.
The next target for MS is not the Internet.
According to the so-called two evangelist theory there will be The Two Big Bill G's who join their forces. They will praise the goodness and godliness of The Right Technologies in catherings of hundreds of thousands people (Football arenas will not be large enough, but larger MS innovation arenas are to be build). Mr. Graham will start the ceremonies and Mr. Gates will continue with the appraisal. After a while Microsoft will be the official religion all over the world. Installing The Holy Components five times per day clean believers' computers from The Harmful Influence.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't worry. It is quite normal for girls to acquire language earlier than boys.
I believe that it is the development of mind that invalidates the earliest long-term memories. The development of the new associations requires discarding the old ones. When the old associations are (slowly) discarded, the old memories go as well.
I tested my daugther when she was about 1.5 years. At that time she could remember things half a year back (IMHO, a proof of existence of long-term memory at that age). Later, at the age of 4, she could remember things at the age 2. Today she is 7 years and can remember some things at the age 3.
My earliest memories are from the age of 2-3 years. It is impossible to date them exactly, as most of them are something that only a child would remember. Also, I am not sure if I really remember them -- or if I remember me remembering them.
Do not worry, that will not happen anytime soon. Moon's current escape rate is some 38 mm per year and the other smaller "moon" of earth is "safe" for the next 5000 years, too.
There is also the J002E3, already though of as another moon of earth, but turned out to be space junk from the apollo program. Usually, natural moons do not have the spectral characteristics of titaniumoxide.
What is the fastest supercomputer supporting the metric system?
A senior software engineer is well worth her higher salary, especially if she has remembered to maintain her technological knowledge.
Seriously, I believe that if you get some level of exposure to normal sounds, the long-term adaptive feedback processes in your inner-ears should work for you, not against you -- even if you listen to mp3s.
I am not so sure about the safety on listening WMAs, though... ;-)
No it is not. The inner ear itself is quite active for filtering signals and these feedback processes are accomodate (extremely slowly, in weeks) to the signal that is listened to.
Note, that a single roundation error of 0.499999999999 instead of 0.500000000001 may lead to different pagination or image layout and consequently render the whole document differently. For seamless interoperability, bit perfect computation is required, not just approximations (or "improved" algorithms).
If there are anything in radiotherapy that slashdot people should know it is IMRT. It is implemented by clever inverse calculation algorithms and quite fancy control equipment, and even better, is proven, provides better 5 year life quality, less complications, improved local control, etc.
IMHO, what is outside the 1.5E7 light years is pure guesswork and should not be presented in what is intended as (basic) educative material. They start from 1E7 light years, which is not several orders of magnitude away, but just about right. If they would have added 1E8 light years, they could have had a single picture labeled "entire known universe" and I don't know how to add several orders of (non-religious) magnitudes after that.
However, I think the difference between 10^13 and 10^14 is way too small. That is more like 2.3 instead of 10. Artistically, that can be considered as a 10, but to me, it only rises suspicion about the other ratios, i.e., what is the selected balance of artistic and scientific ratios. IMHO, to maintain credibility, the scale ratio should be very close to 10 between each two pictures.
>buying for the future is a joke
I always buy the hard disk "for the future" to
reduce the frequency of a completely new
installation.
It means that during the last 10 years the Linux kernel has been improved by volunteers. The company in question has participated by writing the glossy paged marketing material.
I played the original Civilization (was that almost ten years ago?) and found out that the first thing to do was to sell the palace to gain some capital for some more important things. If you did this during your first round, it was hilariously easy to beat the computer players. I hope they don't have this particular feature still in place.
I agree. They should.
However, in practise, I have seen Windows NT 4.0 server operating as a file server to use only 1/4 of its memory for file caching. Temporarily it may exceed this, but it removes the exceeding part from the cache. Linux, working in a file server, allows caching of a much larger set of files.
I believe that Windows want to keep some part of the memory truely free due to some really strange technical aspects in the NT memory management performance. Perhaps they optimize the file cache size so, that they always get the minimal startup time for starting applications - and their file cache deallocation routines are just way too slow.
A NT workstation seems to use even a smaller portion of the memory for file caching. For slightly longer caches (after several minutes of doing nothing) only 10% of the memory is allowed for file caching. This can be mitigated by copying a few register keys from an NT server to a NT workstation.
However, due to the problems and inefficiencies in NT file caching it is best to buy hardware (a disc controller with lots and lots of memory) that does caching instead of the operating system. Then it almost really works. Another solution for the NT file caching problem is to use Linux ;-). Its file caching is quite efficient.
If you accelerate a square wheel over a surface made of series of half-circles with a constant torque, the acceleration will have a wave pattern in it. Thus, it is more practical to have round wheels and enjoy from constant acceleration.
I have used approximately 200 hard disk types (ranging from old 5 MB drives to the modern large scsi drives) and the IBM DeskStar 60 GB 75GXP seems to be the worst.
This is absolutely not true. 100 Hz will be much more enjoyable virtual experience than 80 Hz. Of course, you need to syncronize the updates with the refresh rate of the monitor. The higher refresh leads to a noticeable decrease in temporal aliasing, i.e., the motion is less jerky. I believe that you will get an improvement at least up to 400 Hz. Of course, you would get much of this benefit with proper temporal anti-aliasing and a lower refresh rate.
Naturally, the benefits of faster processors are not only in entertainment, but also in important things like optimizing radiation doses in cancer therapy.
For the common user not involved in this sort of technical computation, a faster processor can take some responsibility from the user and let the user focus on the really creative part.
If you really want to understand tuning and how it is connected with spectra of sounds you should read Bill Sethares excellent book "Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale". Take a look at this article to get a preview about what the book is all about. He is not using the concept of a harmonic template at all, but relies solely on sensory dissonance (by Plompt and Levelt). The results are still quite usable in composing music.
IMHO, this book is about the only way the usual geek can understand the basics of harmony, consonance, and composition.
There are two main costs in executing Python code: evaluation of reasonably simple stack-based byte code and string hashing. Perhaps the byte code could be replaced with forth directly, but there is still a lot of processing that goes to hashing. So, how can we do fast (character string) hashing with the x25 - with lots and lots of different hash tables. The answer is - we cannot do it. There is probably not enough memory bandwidth to support the 25 processors all fetching hash data from the main memory. (Python code is roughly 50% evaluation, 50% hashing.)
In my opinion a good solution would have been a split to three companies:
- Microsoft Office Corporation
- Microsoft Entertainment Corporation
- Microsoft Winwows Corporation
For the Microsoft Winwows Corporation we would need some additional limitations - on bundling software and OEM licensing terms. However, that would have greatly reduced the US economy in favor of global economy (including developing countries) and is thus not an US interest.I hope the guys in EU still remember their plans and restart their case against Microsoft. While waiting for the EU vs. Microsoft case, a good corrective action for governments would be to enforce the use of other software in schools, universities, and government offices.
I thought that OpenGL is more standardized on
different cards. In directx you may get different
results on different cards, whereas with OpenGL you get more similar renderings on different implementations.
The problem with OpenGL is the ARB, which has
been slow to accept useful extensions as part of
the standard. I feel that this might be because of
one large U.S. software company that is a member of the ARB is slowing down the standartization process deliberately to build a competitive advantage for their proprietary graphics library.
- The length of rat tails modeled as a Gaussian distribution.
-
It is more usual for drivers to accidently drive off the road on the convex side of the curve than the concave.
-
Cleaning staircases is more efficient top-down than bottom-up.
All of these are rumored to be worth a PhD.1) Universities are training kids java.
2) The startups base their technologies on java to get the bulk of cheap coders.
3) Most of the new "innovative" products that get out in a couple of years look like your favorite java app today (i.e., fails slowly).
4) C++ ja C will be the Cobol of tomorrow. Nobody knows them (old farts do not count here) and it is not worth to learn because java is theoretically better in every respect - as though in the university. Also, the difference between java and C++ is so small that there is not much reward in relearning all the libraries etc.
5) The java culture (compilers, patterns, coding knowledge) evolves and finally we are able to produce robust (but still slow running) software with java. We have finally reversed Moore's law in computing.
This is what can happen and it is really a nightmare. The only responsible thing to do is to stop all java training, immediately. A better training language could be python. Python and C/C++ make up a good combination even for serious engineering, so learning python is good use of time even for serious engineer students - unlike in the case of java. Java and C/C++ is not as good an interlanguage solution combination because of too much overlap in paradigm. I hope that C/C++ will be replaced, but by something that really is better in their native field, too.
In my opinion java is one of the terrible mistakes that have been implemented in modern computer science. It has been such a small step forward that it should not have been taken. Too much trouble for gaining so little.
The next target for MS is not the Internet. According to the so-called two evangelist theory there will be The Two Big Bill G's who join their forces. They will praise the goodness and godliness of The Right Technologies in catherings of hundreds of thousands people (Football arenas will not be large enough, but larger MS innovation arenas are to be build). Mr. Graham will start the ceremonies and Mr. Gates will continue with the appraisal. After a while Microsoft will be the official religion all over the world. Installing The Holy Components five times per day clean believers' computers from The Harmful Influence.
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