If you looked at what I said you would see the answer to most of you questions.
In Engalnd and Wales (population about 45 Million)the total number of homicides, as I said in my last post, averages somewhat less then 800 per year. Less then 100 of those involve deaths from being shot. The information I referenced describes this and also the proportion of homicides attributed to various tehniques including guns, strangulation, blunt implements, Sharp implements, poison etc.
I do not know what the total number of homicides are (per year) in the states. I could not find that info. Perhaps all that can be said from the comparison is that america is a more violent nation.
Perhaps I could also say that in countries where there are strict controls over guns there are less deaths caused by guns then countries with less stringent regulation. (Note that the opposite is not necessarily true). America has a large number of people being killed by guns. Perhaps there is somthing in this paragraph that sheds light on the discussion.
By the way, I do not think that a ban on guns in the US would help much. There are to many unregistered and untracable guns to be able to adequatly enforce such a law.
This thread started with one poster spouting the standard "but in the UK when guns where banned the level of gun crime increased". I was trying to correct this misconception of the situation. The stats I referenced provide a basis for my belief that the OP's statment is not as "factual" as (s)he made out.
(I use the term "gun death" cos I cannot be arsed to continually write "person who died, or was killed, by a bullet and or complications arising from the incident")
Im not a creationist and as far as I can tell intelligent design is just a rehash of creationist concepts. This is a theory that has little or no praticable use to me. Mind you, evolution is not much praticable use to me either as I am not an biologist/botonist or researching a field where the debate is of great consequence. However the theories of evolution do seem to suit the criteria of being the simplest explanation that fits our observations. I'm pretty happy with them.
If you use the a fixed point on earth as a frame of reference (which was done for may centuaries) then the sun seems to go around the earth. Stars and planets take on strange paths (precession). The concept of orbital mechanics, Newtonian or relatavistic, are theories which explain very well (not perfectly though) the behaviour that is observed. That theory, or fact as it is often called, biases peoples thinking about their interpretation of the observations. However our interpretation of observation is strongly linked to our theories and models of our environment.
Electromagentic radiation is something that can be observed, or rather we can observe something and have developed a theory from the observations which seems to be able to model and predict the observations that are made. Part of that theory is electromagnetic radiation. It works and therefore is used. Is it an absolute fact? Theoretical physics is changing the framework within which electromagnetics fit in attempts to extend our knowledge. This often involves major changes to our understanding of what it actaully is that is being measured. However jsut like Newtonian orbital mechanics is adequate for handling many problems, treating the radiation from the sun as simple waves (or even wave particle dualities) is adequate for most of our needs. In effect this is the principle of Occams Razor. Use the simplest theory which allows you to do what you need to do.
I used the term "just a theory" to emphasise the idea that theories are not absolute. They are just theories. Hopefully they will be proved wrong someday and by doing so we will learn more about what is being studied.
The earth travels round the sun? Hum, strange cos current theory say it only does so if looked at from the correct frame of reference. Now that is a good theory and is a theory which belies your FACT of the earth going round the sun. "Fact" and theory are, in some senses, not seperable as to understand the "fact" you must have a theory
Observations are measurements. They are inherently inaccurate. We can measure the relative motion of the earth wrt the sun. This measurement has errors but we are pretty sure about the bounds on those errors. However they are still open for modification as better/more accurate results come in.
As I said in my first reply to you. If your definition of "fact" does not include terms such as "with absolute certainty" or "inarguable" or "incontrovertable" then we would probably agree.
If your definition of fact does include any absolutes then we will have to agree to disagree.
I still want to know what you think the motives behind my beliefs are. If it helps I am agnostic and have been performing scientific research for about 7 years now. I don't have a score to settle with the scientific establishment.
>You're evading the real issue - I know with 100% certainty that the earth is orbiting the sun RIGHT NOW.
Have you looked out the window?:P
>Once again, you ignore what I say and cling to your logical fallacy. The following is NOT a proof:
> 1)Long held theories are sometimes regarded as facts. Yep. > 2)Sometimes long held theories are disproven Yep. There is a reason for that. > 3)There are no facts whatsoever. Scientific method, you know, the technique used by real scientists to invent amazing things such as computers, has at its core the assumption that a theory, no matter how long standing, is still just a theory. Why? because it is impossible to prove thier correctness. They are "the best we can do". To describe such a theory as an absolute fact is disingenious. Does that mean these theories have no use? Most definatly not. The reason they persist is their utility.
And Im not talking philosophy here.
Within a bounded system, such as mathematics, facts can exist. However the system itself is based on underlying assumption. So the facts are also based on the underlying assuptions. They are facts but they exist only within the defined framework.
Papers do contain the word "fact". Generally it is used either in the negative (That is factually incorrect) most often within closed systems such as mathmatics when a disproof is found. Or in the colloquial sense (The fact that this is the case is because...)
Hey this is science. Probability is the name of the game. Unless you can show 100% likelyhood of somthing happening then then it is not "certain".
Now the question becomes how confident are you that an event will happen. Earth orbit the sun 99.9999999% confidence. The position of an orbiting electron 0.00000000001% confident.
The boundary between fact and theory is often blurred because a theory that has been around for a long time without showing flaws is often treated as an absolute. In effect an incontrovertable fact. It is not and will never be incontrovertable.
1) america has 5.2 times the population of the uk but has about 300 times the number of deaths due to guns.
2) of the 30,000 odd people who died in america from gunshot wonds a bit over 17,000 of them committed suicide. 12,000 were victims of homicide and around 1,000 dies from other/accidental causes.
3) There are no legal gun related deaths in the UK. Possesion of a gun is illegal (discounting air guns of course but they only accounted for 2 deaths last year niether of which was in self defence) and as such using one to shoot someone is also illeal irrespective of what the other person was doing at the time.
4) The murder level in the UK has remained fairly low with fluctuations in the 10% range. The average number of homicides is about 760 per year (homicide being killing someone else intentionally). In california alone the number of homicides was around 2,000 http://66.102.11.104/search?q=cache:_xXoPgoKq8kJ:c aag.state.ca.us/cjsc/publications/homicide/homi200 0/cr1.pdf+homicides+US+total&hl=en&ie=UTF- 8
In america homicides are most often committed using guns. In the UK they are most often committed using "sharp" weapons.
Ok. So to sum this up there were 12,000 people who died from being shot in the US last year. (Not including attempted murder, negligent manslaughter, suicide, accident etc...). Last year there were less then 100 people who died from gunshot wounds for ANY reason in the UK (Including accidental and suicide).
Now please tell me why my interpretation of the data is horriibly skewed.
The data is from here http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/hosb0 104.pd f matfud
I am a scientist and I would prefer it if people used the term observed phenomenon rather then fact.
Here is a definition of phenomenon from a different dictionary to the one you chose (cambridge) does not mention the word fact at all.
Definition phenomenon (EXISTING THING) [Show phonetics] noun [C] plural phenomena something that exists and can be seen, felt, tasted, etc., especially something which is unusual or interesting:
Actually I don't have a problem with the word fact, I have a problem with its common usage which often makes it mean "somthing which is inarguable, absolutely known, beyond all doubt etc.". It does have this kind of conatation when most poeple use it which is why I prefer to use the term observation or even observed phenomenon.
>This idea that there are no scientific facts is a cancer. Its not a cancer, it is fundamental to the scientific process that nothing is accepted as an absolute truth. The data obtained from observing the path of the earth wrt the sun is pretty solid but only because of many many observations by many people over a large period of time which has all produced data that largly seems to agree. Note that I am not talking about the theorys as to why the earth orbits the sun they can never be known because, as I said in my earlier post, we do not have enough observations of the behaviour to be able to model it (you would need observations from all periods in time). Gravity could (unlikely I admitt) be a transitory effect which we just happen to be able to observe now.
If you take the definition of "fact" (as some dictionarys do) that a fact is: "something which is known to have happened or to exist, especially something for which proof exists, or about which there is information"
I was not trying to say the ban was good or bad. I was just trying to point out that the oft quoted "UK guncrime has increased massively since the ban" is not true.
Looking at a different set of statistics shows that from 1993 to 1995 3 police officers were shot dead in the UK. 1995-2003 0 police officiers were shot dead. Again the meaning is not obvious as this is not a statisitcally valid sample (also I believe that bullet proof vests were introduced for armed response officers (who are most likely to be around weapons).
Another interesting stat is that gun crime figures include use of air guns and tear gas. Usage of air guns has quintupled in the past ten years with 98% of the reports being related to vandalism and destruction of property.
I'm trying to say "do not believe the often quoted figures. Look a little deeper and you will find a wealth of information"
Strictly speaking there are no facts. Just observations. The earth orbits the sun, we know this because we have observed it happening. But our observations are not fact. We have not observed the earth orbiting the sun for ever. Therefore we can only assume that it will. We can build theories, such as that of gravity, to model our set of observations. But they are based on the assumption that our set of observations is comprehensive and indicative of all behaviour that the sun and earth can undergo.
matter is not decomposing. matter changes to energy, energy changes to matter. It happens all the time.
a) You say god created the universe. b) I say the universe materialised from within the ear wax of old Mrs pike at number 42. And only this very morning.
Which of these do you believe in? They have as the same degree of merit.
In the UK it is not known whether gun crime has increased markedly since the ban was passed.
The way in which the statistics are gathered changed at about the same time as the ban was introduced. Therefore stats from before the ban are NOT comparable with the stats from after the ban.
All anybody can say is that before the ban the level of gun crime was slowly increasing. Since the ban the level of gun crime has been slowly increasing. The levels from after the ban are alot higher then before but this does seem to be becuase of the changes made to the measurement(Now Gun crimes are crimes in which a gun was reported to have been used whether or not there is any evidence to support the claim. There used to be a need for evidence)
Most of that is besides the point. In the UK there are normally less then 100 fatalities due to guns per year. Please compare that to the 30,000 fatalities per year in the US.
> IT's not rocket science. Think Hemi (old style > 426) VS Buick Grand National (remember them?) Nope, Im not american. I think I know what you are talking about though.
I also was not talking about customising the engine. There are many sports cars with small(ish) engines that produce very high levels of HP/ torque due to high revs. (Ferrari, lotus, etc). (some of these use high revs AND large displacement)
Formula 1 are the exemplar of this approach. In general Smaller engines == lighter engines. The lack of raw volume can be compensated for by high revs (19000 rpm, 3 litre engines that put out a bit less then 1000 hp (thats 300 hp/litre (no turbo or super chargers allowed))
But, as I said, high reving engines do not sound nice and are put under an awful lot of stress which means more frequent service and parts changes.
Re:Magnusson Moss Warranty Act
on
Hack Your Car
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· Score: 1
In the EU high performance cars come with 155MPH governers. You can remove them, but you cannot buy stock cars without the governer.
The external address bus is often limited to 40 or so bits. There is no current need for a wider address bus then this.
64 bit internal addressing is useful because of the amount of virtual address space it provides. That virtual address space is then mapped to a much smaller physical address size (or to disks).
Current 32 bit machines can access more then 4Gig(2^32) of physical memory. However each process that runs is limited to 4Gig of virtual address space.
64 bit machines can allow each process to access 2^64 bits of virtual address.
You do realise that the graphics board in the Sun cost somewhere in the region of $2500-$3000 dot you? And that the sun comes with a built in AMD 1.4Ghz computer (with its own 512Meg of ram and its own graphics board)
It makes it equivelent to a four MP camera. Most CCD colour cameras have four real sensors per pixel not the three you would assume. The colour mask is something like
R B B G
Apparently it helps to ovecome the poor sensitivity that most commercial CCD's have to blue colours. (Although there are other techniques and colour masks)
JDK1.4 is slower at trig then JDK1.3 because the 1.3 version did NOT comply with the JLS (Java Language Spec.) for sin and cosine. 1.3 was only accurate to around 5 decimal places for these methods while 1.4 is accurate to the full range of float (15-17 places) or double (huge number of places). x86 FPU's are not designed to handle this level of accuracy. Sparc hardware is significantly better.
However, as I said in an earlier post, the Math class can now be optimised as a "low precision" "fast" version of StrictMath by implmentors that wish to do so.
SUV's are not any safter then medium to large cars in a crash. Most SUV's even test worse then most small cars. SUV's are also more dangrous for pedestrians.
for a different point of view look at some of the other testing organisations around the world. (Though they tend not to have american SUV's in them as they tend not to meet saftey and emissions standards in other parts of the world)
http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/mpaine/ncaplist.ht ml
matfud
Re:Beavis..this is the coolest thing i have ever s
on
Your Own Mecha
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· Score: 1
The skirt on a hovercraft can tke a very large amount of damage before it becomes useless. they tend to be internally segemented so damage to one area does not necessarily destroy it. I have not idea if it could survive landmines though. However they are good at not setting off water based mines which is part of the reason a number of armys/naives use them as landing craft and more recently as mine sweepers.
Curernt Hyperthreading has limitations. Namley the two "Threads" share the instruction and data cache. The caches have no idea of the SMT happening in the rest of the core. How is this relevent. Well, if your two threads (intel SMT only supports 2 at the moment) have very different memory usage profiles they can cause the caches to thrash as they try to cache what is effectivly random memory accesses. This can really hurt performance. If however the two threads have similar, or complementary, memory access patterns then SMT can work well.
SMT is about reducing the wasted execution opertunities that current CPU's (with thier multiple execution units) have. It can improve performance (by up to about 30% in benchmarks) but it can also hinder performance. More refined versions may reduce the instances in which poor performance can result.
Radar was originally researched by a german scientist. The first usable radar for locating ships and planes was british http://inventors.about.com/library/invent ors/blrad ar.htm
Jet engines are creditied to Whittle and Ohain (britain and germany) however there are a number of other claiments. http://www.aircraftenginedesign.com/hi story.html
As for the telephone, well that is also a debated area. http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/200312 08/bell.html
Javas GC's may well surprise you. (Yes there is more then one GC that you can use (different GC's map to different problems and all of them are heavily configurable for specific scenarios). Mark and sweep GC can be significantly more efficient then many C heap management implementations because of the way in which it works. It tends to reduce memory fragmentation and improve memory cleanup (by operating on larger lumps of it)
More recent versions of the GC also allow partial concurrent collection to take place which can significantly improve performance for some types of memory usage.
Wether it will solve your problem well I cannot say but don't rule it out just because you have a difficult problem.
A genral code generaion engine. http://www.jostraca.org/
A generic template engine http://compilers.iecc.com/comparch/article /96-05-0 65 (does not suport java but does support a number of other languages)
Garbage collection is not deterministic (unless you run a VM with deterministic garbage collection). That is why many classes have a manual method to release thier resources. Similar to C++ objects on the heap
Slashdot Mirror
If you looked at what I said you would see the answer to most of you questions.
In Engalnd and Wales (population about 45 Million)the total number of homicides, as I said in my last post, averages somewhat less then 800 per year. Less then 100 of those involve deaths from being shot. The information I referenced describes this and also the proportion of homicides attributed to various tehniques including guns, strangulation, blunt implements, Sharp implements, poison etc.
I do not know what the total number of homicides are (per year) in the states. I could not find that info. Perhaps all that can be said from the comparison is that america is a more violent nation.
Perhaps I could also say that in countries where there are strict controls over guns there are less deaths caused by guns then countries with less stringent regulation. (Note that the opposite is not necessarily true). America has a large number of people being killed by guns. Perhaps there is somthing in this paragraph that sheds light on the discussion.
By the way, I do not think that a ban on guns in the US would help much. There are to many unregistered and untracable guns to be able to adequatly enforce such a law.
This thread started with one poster spouting the standard "but in the UK when guns where banned the level of gun crime increased". I was trying to correct this misconception of the situation. The stats I referenced provide a basis for my belief that the OP's statment is not as "factual" as (s)he made out.
(I use the term "gun death" cos I cannot be arsed to continually write "person who died, or was killed, by a bullet and or complications arising from the incident")
matfud
Im not a creationist and as far as I can tell intelligent design is just a rehash of creationist concepts. This is a theory that has little or no praticable use to me. Mind you, evolution is not much praticable use to me either as I am not an biologist/botonist or researching a field where the debate is of great consequence. However the theories of evolution do seem to suit the criteria of being the simplest explanation that fits our observations. I'm pretty happy with them.
If you use the a fixed point on earth as a frame of reference (which was done for may centuaries) then the sun seems to go around the earth. Stars and planets take on strange paths (precession). The concept of orbital mechanics, Newtonian or relatavistic, are theories which explain very well (not perfectly though) the behaviour that is observed. That theory, or fact as it is often called, biases peoples thinking about their interpretation of the observations. However our interpretation of observation is strongly linked to our theories and models of our environment.
Electromagentic radiation is something that can be observed, or rather we can observe something and have developed a theory from the observations which seems to be able to model and predict the observations that are made. Part of that theory is electromagnetic radiation. It works and therefore is used. Is it an absolute fact? Theoretical physics is changing the framework within which electromagnetics fit in attempts to extend our knowledge. This often involves major changes to our understanding of what it actaully is that is being measured. However jsut like Newtonian orbital mechanics is adequate for handling many problems, treating the radiation from the sun as simple waves (or even wave particle dualities) is adequate for most of our needs. In effect this is the principle of Occams Razor. Use the simplest theory which allows you to do what you need to do.
I used the term "just a theory" to emphasise the idea that theories are not absolute. They are just theories. Hopefully they will be proved wrong someday and by doing so we will learn more about what is being studied.
So prey tell what are my motivations?
The earth travels round the sun? Hum, strange cos current theory say it only does so if looked at from the correct frame of reference. Now that is a good theory and is a theory which belies your FACT of the earth going round the sun. "Fact" and theory are, in some senses, not seperable as to understand the "fact" you must have a theory
Observations are measurements. They are inherently inaccurate. We can measure the relative motion of the earth wrt the sun. This measurement has errors but we are pretty sure about the bounds on those errors. However they are still open for modification as better/more accurate results come in.
As I said in my first reply to you. If your definition of "fact" does not include terms such as "with absolute certainty" or "inarguable" or
"incontrovertable" then we would probably agree.
If your definition of fact does include any absolutes then we will have to agree to disagree.
I still want to know what you think the motives behind my beliefs are. If it helps I am agnostic and have been performing scientific research for about 7 years now. I don't have a score to settle with the scientific establishment.
>You're evading the real issue - I know with 100% certainty that the earth is orbiting the sun RIGHT NOW.
:P
Have you looked out the window?
>Once again, you ignore what I say and cling to your logical fallacy. The following is NOT a proof:
> 1)Long held theories are sometimes regarded as facts.
Yep.
> 2)Sometimes long held theories are disproven
Yep. There is a reason for that.
> 3)There are no facts whatsoever.
Scientific method, you know, the technique used by real scientists to invent amazing things such as computers, has at its core the assumption that a theory, no matter how long standing, is still just a theory. Why? because it is impossible to prove thier correctness. They are "the best we can do". To describe such a theory as an absolute fact is disingenious. Does that mean these theories have no use? Most definatly not. The reason they persist is their utility.
And Im not talking philosophy here.
Within a bounded system, such as mathematics, facts can exist. However the system itself is based on underlying assumption. So the facts are also based on the underlying assuptions. They are facts but they exist only within the defined framework.
Papers do contain the word "fact". Generally it is used either in the negative (That is factually incorrect) most often within closed systems such as mathmatics when a disproof is found. Or in the colloquial sense (The fact that this is the case is because...)
matfud
Hey this is science. Probability is the name of the game. Unless you can show 100% likelyhood of somthing happening then then it is not "certain".
Now the question becomes how confident are you that an event will happen. Earth orbit the sun 99.9999999% confidence. The position of an orbiting electron 0.00000000001% confident.
The boundary between fact and theory is often blurred because a theory that has been around for a long time without showing flaws is often treated as an absolute. In effect an incontrovertable fact. It is not and will never be
incontrovertable.
1) america has 5.2 times the population of the uk
c aag.state.ca.us/cjsc/publications/homicide/homi200 0/cr1.pdf+homicides+US+total&hl=en&ie=UTF- 8
0 104.pd f
but has about 300 times the number of deaths due to guns.
2) of the 30,000 odd people who died in america from gunshot wonds a bit over 17,000 of them committed suicide. 12,000 were victims of homicide and around 1,000 dies from other/accidental causes.
3) There are no legal gun related deaths in the UK. Possesion of a gun is illegal (discounting air guns of course but they only accounted for 2 deaths last year niether of which was in self defence) and as such using one to shoot someone is also illeal irrespective of what the other person was doing at the time.
4) The murder level in the UK has remained fairly low with fluctuations in the 10% range. The average number of homicides is about 760 per year (homicide being killing someone else intentionally). In california alone the number of homicides was around 2,000 http://66.102.11.104/search?q=cache:_xXoPgoKq8kJ:
In america homicides are most often committed using guns. In the UK they are most often committed using "sharp" weapons.
Ok. So to sum this up there were 12,000 people who died from being shot in the US last year. (Not including attempted murder, negligent manslaughter, suicide, accident etc...). Last year there were less then 100 people who died from gunshot wounds for ANY reason in the UK (Including accidental and suicide).
Now please tell me why my interpretation of the data is horriibly skewed.
The data is from here
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/hosb
matfud
I am a scientist and I would prefer it if people used the term observed phenomenon rather then fact.
Here is a definition of phenomenon from a different dictionary to the one you chose (cambridge) does not mention the word fact at all.
Definition
phenomenon (EXISTING THING) [Show phonetics]
noun [C] plural phenomena
something that exists and can be seen, felt, tasted, etc., especially something which is unusual or interesting:
Actually I don't have a problem with the word fact, I have a problem with its common usage which often makes it mean "somthing which is inarguable, absolutely known, beyond all doubt etc.". It does have this kind of conatation when most poeple use it which is why I prefer to use the term observation or even observed phenomenon.
>This idea that there are no scientific facts is a cancer.
Its not a cancer, it is fundamental to the scientific process that nothing is accepted as an absolute truth. The data obtained from observing the path of the earth wrt the sun is pretty solid but only because of many many observations by many people over a large period of time which has all produced data that largly seems to agree. Note that I am not talking about the theorys as to why the earth orbits the sun they can never be known because, as I said in my earlier post, we do not have enough observations of the behaviour to be able to model it (you would need observations from all periods in time). Gravity could (unlikely I admitt) be a transitory effect which we just happen to be able to observe now.
If you take the definition of "fact" (as some dictionarys do) that a fact is:
"something which is known to have happened or to exist, especially something for which proof exists, or about which there is information"
Then we would probably be in total agreement.
I was not trying to say the ban was good or bad. I was just trying to point out that the oft quoted "UK guncrime has increased massively since the ban" is not true.
Looking at a different set of statistics shows that from 1993 to 1995 3 police officers were shot dead in the UK. 1995-2003 0 police officiers were shot dead. Again the meaning is not obvious as this is not a statisitcally valid sample (also I believe that bullet proof vests were introduced for armed response officers (who are most likely to be around weapons).
Another interesting stat is that gun crime figures include use of air guns and tear gas. Usage of air guns has quintupled in the past ten years with 98% of the reports being related to vandalism and destruction of property.
I'm trying to say "do not believe the often quoted
figures. Look a little deeper and you will find a wealth of information"
matfud
Strictly speaking there are no facts. Just observations. The earth orbits the sun, we know this because we have observed it happening. But our observations are not fact. We have not observed the earth orbiting the sun for ever. Therefore we can only assume that it will. We can build theories, such as that of gravity, to model our set of observations. But they are based on the assumption that our set of observations is comprehensive and indicative of all behaviour that the sun and earth can undergo.
matfud
matter is not decomposing. matter changes to energy, energy changes to matter. It happens all the time.
a) You say god created the universe.
b) I say the universe materialised from within the ear wax of old Mrs pike at number 42. And only this very morning.
Which of these do you believe in? They have as the same degree of merit.
In the UK it is not known whether gun crime has
increased markedly since the ban was passed.
The way in which the statistics are gathered changed at about the same time as the ban was introduced. Therefore stats from before the ban are NOT comparable with the stats from after the ban.
All anybody can say is that before the ban the level of gun crime was slowly increasing. Since the ban the level of gun crime has been slowly increasing. The levels from after the ban are alot higher then before but this does seem to be becuase of the changes made to the measurement(Now Gun crimes are crimes in which a gun was reported to have been used whether or not there is any evidence to support the claim. There used to be a need for evidence)
Most of that is besides the point. In the UK there are normally less then 100 fatalities due to guns per year. Please compare that to the 30,000 fatalities per year in the US.
matfud
> IT's not rocket science. Think Hemi (old style
> 426) VS Buick Grand National (remember them?)
Nope, Im not american. I think I know what you are talking about though.
I also was not talking about customising the
engine. There are many sports cars with small(ish)
engines that produce very high levels of HP/
torque due to high revs. (Ferrari, lotus, etc). (some of these use high revs AND large
displacement)
Formula 1 are the exemplar of this approach.
In general Smaller engines == lighter engines. The
lack of raw volume can be compensated for by high
revs (19000 rpm, 3 litre engines that put out a
bit less then 1000 hp (thats 300 hp/litre (no
turbo or super chargers allowed))
But, as I said, high reving engines do not sound
nice and are put under an awful lot of stress
which means more frequent service and parts
changes.
In the EU high performance cars come with 155MPH governers. You can remove them, but you cannot buy stock cars without the governer.
matfud
>You may add on to get the ponies, but the is no replacement for displacement.
I must counter. High reving engines can easily compete with lage displacement engines.
Admittedly they tend to need more maintenence and
sound horrible but they are a very good alternative.
The external address bus is often limited to 40
or so bits. There is no current need for a wider
address bus then this.
64 bit internal addressing is useful because of
the amount of virtual address space it provides.
That virtual address space is then mapped to a
much smaller physical address size (or to disks).
Current 32 bit machines can access more then 4Gig(2^32)
of physical memory. However each process that runs
is limited to 4Gig of virtual address space.
64 bit machines can allow each process to access
2^64 bits of virtual address.
matfud
You do realise that the graphics board in the Sun
cost somewhere in the region of $2500-$3000 dot you? And that the sun comes with a built in AMD 1.4Ghz computer (with its own 512Meg of ram and its own graphics board)
It makes it equivelent to a four MP camera. Most
CCD colour cameras have four real sensors per
pixel not the three you would assume. The colour mask is something like
R B
B G
Apparently it helps to ovecome the poor
sensitivity that most commercial CCD's have to
blue colours. (Although there are other techniques
and colour masks)
matfud
Yet another revision of my previous post.
JDK1.4 is slower at trig then JDK1.3 because the 1.3 version did NOT comply with the JLS (Java Language Spec.) for sin and cosine. 1.3 was only accurate to around 5 decimal places for these methods while 1.4 is accurate to the full range of float (15-17 places) or double (huge number of places). x86 FPU's are not designed to handle this level of accuracy. Sparc hardware is significantly better.
However, as I said in an earlier post, the Math class can now be optimised as a "low precision" "fast" version of StrictMath by implmentors that wish to do so.
Not sure about body counts but meltdown wise (in public power generating reactors) its one all.
http://groups.msn.com/AAEA/announcements1.msnw
matfud
SUV's are not any safter then medium to large cars in a crash. Most SUV's even test worse then most small cars. SUV's are also more dangrous for
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pedestrians.
http://www.hwysafety.org/vehicle_ratings/rating
for a different point of view look at some of the other testing organisations around the world. (Though they tend not to have american SUV's in them as they tend not to meet saftey and emissions standards in other parts of the world)
http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/mpaine/ncaplist.h
matfud
The skirt on a hovercraft can tke a very large amount of damage before it becomes useless. they tend to be internally segemented so damage to one area does not necessarily destroy it. I have not idea if it could survive landmines though. However they are good at not setting off water based mines which is part of the reason a number of armys/naives use them as landing craft and more recently as mine sweepers.
Curernt Hyperthreading has limitations. Namley the two "Threads" share the instruction and data cache. The caches have no idea of the SMT happening in the rest of the core. How is this relevent. Well, if your two threads (intel SMT only supports 2 at the moment) have very different memory usage profiles they can cause the caches to thrash as they try to cache what is effectivly random memory accesses. This can really hurt performance. If however the two threads have similar, or complementary, memory access patterns then SMT can work well.
SMT is about reducing the wasted execution opertunities that current CPU's (with thier multiple execution units) have. It can improve performance (by up to about 30% in benchmarks) but it can also hinder performance. More refined versions may reduce the instances in which poor performance can result.
matfud
Radar was originally researched by a german scientist. The first usable radar for locating ships and planes was britisht ors/blrad ar.htm
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http://inventors.about.com/library/inven
Jet engines are creditied to Whittle and Ohain (britain and germany) however there are a number of other claiments.
http://www.aircraftenginedesign.com/h
As for the telephone, well that is also a debated area.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20031
matfud
Javas GC's may well surprise you. (Yes there is more then one GC that you can use (different GC's map to different problems and all of them are heavily configurable for specific scenarios). Mark and sweep GC can be significantly more efficient then many C heap management implementations because of the way in which it works. It tends to reduce memory fragmentation and improve memory cleanup (by operating on larger lumps of it)
More recent versions of the GC also allow partial concurrent collection to take place which can significantly improve performance for some types of memory usage.
Wether it will solve your problem well I cannot say but don't rule it out just because you have a difficult problem.
A genral code generaion engine.
e /96-05-0 65
http://www.jostraca.org/
A generic template engine
http://compilers.iecc.com/comparch/articl
(does not suport java but does support a number of other languages)
Garbage collection is not deterministic (unless you run a VM with deterministic garbage collection). That is why many classes have a manual method to release thier resources. Similar to C++ objects on the heap
matfud