The secret in a lecture situation when you want to ask a question (by interrupting) is to ask yourself 'will this help all of us?' I have always been an extremely bad note-taker for the simple reason it doesn't help me. I try to know what the lecture is about before I go to it, and will read up after to complete my understanding. I've never been afraid to interrupt when I've felt the lecturer has missed a step or simply not been clear enough.
During a first year maths lecture in Cambridge, a member of my college fell asleep - head leaning on hands - and awoke when his head slipped out of his hands. The sound of this collapse drew the attention of almost all - in particular of the lecturer who commented humourously upon the occurrence - to the raucous laughter of the entire lecture theater. Well, except for me. And "No, the kid was not me...", either. I just slept through it all.
I know I should have left it at that, but the look on people's faces when I told them I didn't know what they were talking about when they asked me "wasn't it funny when..." was even funnier!
You have just invented a new word. Consensus means 'An opinion or position reached by a group as a whole'. Presumably 'conCensus' means 'An opinion or position reached by someone opposed to taking a census of opinion'?
Multiplication tables are usually done up to some small number - I think when I went to junior school it was 12x12 = 144 at the bottom right. Perhaps it goes to 10 or 20 elsewhere. Now I and probably every other slashdotter should be able to multiply 19x21 = 399 (=(20+1)x(20-1)=20*20-1*1). They can probably also do 199*201 etc... which is not to say that they 'know the table' up to 20 or 200 (or 2 billion). Now if you were to argue that the '10 times table' is simply the algebraic ring of the (x) operation on the subset of integers 0..9, which is of course essential to the evaluation of larger multiplications (as is of course the carry operation), then sure... but I don't think we were discussing that.
In fairness, the article does qualify it as 'software piracy' and doesn't use that term often. Why do they continue to refer to the internet protocol (IP) though? They continue to get their terms muddled!
By the way, I do think that 'software murder', 'software rape' and 'software pillaging' are very naughty things to do.
Joking aside, I'm not saying they need to be named after women. Just that calling Ronald Reagan 'she' seems odd. Mind you so would the HMS Margaret Thatcher!
No Bjarney is trying a witticism - the 0x prefix is used in C to indicate hex. Having it as a suffix would presumable come under the heading of 'remove embarrassments'. Anyway the sequel to C should have been named D or P, so this effort should be E or L, I suppose.
Ships are 'shes'. Ok, Argo, Victory and Enterprise aren't as feminine as Marie Celeste etc, but Ronald Reagan was a leading man, for crying out loud. You can't call him 'she' or 'her'. I think they should have called this ship the USS Nancy instead. And when Clinton's turn comes around, there can be the USS Hilary and the USS Chelsea and the USS Monica and the USS Jennifer and the USS (etc).
http://wine1.sb.fsu.edu/chm1045/notes/Forces/Phase/Forces06.htm has a nice phase diagram of water. The very last line says: At pressures below 4.58 torr, water will be present as either a gas or solid, there can be no liquid phase. Of course as other posters have mentioned, inside the body the temperature will not be -60 nor the pressure that low. They would probably get frostbite nice and quick over their entire skin without some kind of suit though.
As for nitrogen forming bubbles (aka 'the bends'): divers take (at least) 1 minute per 15 metres ascent, and a minute for the last 6 metres - where the proportional change (from 1.6 bar to 1) is greatest. So there shouldn't be too much of a problem given how long it will take them to get to that altitude (132,000 feet at 1000 feet per minute => more than 2 hours>
As to the original quotes from the article, they say that half a pint of water in the decompression chamber explodes in half a second. Wow! These guys aren't rocket scientists, fortunately. Any sudden change will be instantly lethal, of course. In this case, as with diving, it is imperative to plan well, including back-up systems, to go a step at a time, to gain experience, and to practice. They seem to be doing some of that, but not all. Shame that they have probably already contributed to the human gene pool.
Using 'simple math' $500K per 10Kemps is $50 per employee, scale to 800Kemps the cost would be $40M - nowhere near the 3B$ saving mentioned. The new contract is worth $1.6M (design and - presumably - development) - a drop in the ocean compared to either figure.
What is more worrying is the previous cost per employee: some $7500 per year. If that figure is correct, the first $4 per hour tax of each government employee's tax goes to pay-roll service, effectively - and it will now halve... still $2 per hour.
I somehow think they have the wrong figure somewhere along the line though.
Someone who had a job repairing escalators told me of a poor asian woman he had to rescue: she was wearing a sari, a corner got caught, she got 'unwrapped'....
The point the AC made was that the median is AN average, not THE average. There are also fault-tolerant ways of measuring averages. For calculating the mean income or wealth, it tends to be convenient to exclude bgates@microsoft.com. For multiple variables, the Mahanobilis distance can be used to detect outliers (which can then be discarded or given a lower weighting). At least you mentioned the mode (which is yet another 'average' - the most frequent occurrence) so perhaps you can be saved - but the AC was not incorrect (although just as rude as you).
This reminds me of two political translation jokes:
The first is a human interpreter in the 60s who translated 'stalk in the rushes' from Russian to 'nigger in the woodpile'. He corrected himself before the (black) US delegate could react, fortunately.
Even better in my AI course a nice example of an EU translation software mistake was given: 'Les bureaucrats vis-a-vis les agriculteurs' (apologies for missing accent and potential other errors in my French). The software omitted the accent - and dashes too - and translated it as 'the bureaucrats live to screw the farmers'. How true.
I won't go in to hydraulic rams and water sheep, such tales are apocriphal, but I will leave you with: time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. Well, it would, wouldn't it?
She still wishes it were a mac, she just knows they're far too expensive
First of all a disclaimer: I am not a Mac fanatic, indeed I haven't used one for about 15 years. Also I don't use Linux at either work (tho I would love a Kylix contract!) or play (hmm maybe NWN now?). But I think to claim Macs are too expensive (despite the fact that I can't afford one) is unfair.
Why? Well unless your mother is desperate to play the latest games or needs fast compilation/rendering/whatever, a Mac will last a bit longer. Browsing, word processing, e-mail etc. should run fine. The PC I had running in 1995 was as fast as anything since; I've probably bought 3 complete systems since. Now, as a nerd, that is fine, but it would have been cheaper in the long run to invest in a Mac if all I had wanted to do was surf etc.
In summary, my point is not against you, but our mothers who have been convinced they need to upgrade their PCs. They need a stable OS (and hardware) instead.
The odd thing is that it used to be the opposite - Windows 3.11 and Linux 0.99b come to mind. Ten years ago, at a guess? I think it was Word catching up on WordPerfect versions that started the trend, but I beg to be corrected.
I don't know about arithmetic, your subtraction seems to be accurate, but... JK Rowling is the only case I can think of of paying her advance back (she wanted more time for book 5).
An advance is just that - payment in advance - and the whole point people like Courtney Love and Janis Ian are making it is very unlikely to actually make any more.
Sadly I recently fell in to this trap myself. No contracts on the horizon, guy with small company convinces me to work (as lone developer, at relatively pathetic rate) on his niche project. Half a year later I discovered that Microsoft was in the same niche. Eighty staff & multi-million budget. Oh and their product sold for 1/10th of the price. So anyway, without a job again but at least a modicum of self-respect. I'm lucky I can (just) afford to.
Summary: bosses abuse/lie to/underpay artists, creators and developers. Go capitalism, go!
First you say 'direct access' then you immediately follow it with 'drivers'. Which is it?
Almost all (Windows) 3D nowadays is either DirectX or OpenGL. I'll ignore the former for a moment and stick to OpenGL. How hard can it be to 'emulate' a glVertex3f call? Ok, I'm not saying it is trivial, but it must be a lot easier than the average Win32 API call. I mean, the function already exists anywhere you have OpenGL.
Back to DirectX or rather Direct3D... although this uses COM interfaces, the functions available are pretty similar to those in OpenGL. Now there will be a number of 'slow' functions (loading a large texture), but these will always be slow. A little more overhead won't make a huge difference. There are only a few functions (vertex, texture coordinates, normals etc) which get called really often. It is here that optimization efforts should be directed. Not easy, but should be easier than the entire Win API.
I will admit to ignoring the problems of X being a network protocol rather than a graphics one. I suspect that to reach optimal frame rates you wouldn't want to run DirextX games in an X window on another terminal over the network. But unix has always done well at allowing multiple 'terminals', so do it that way.
Slashdot Mirror
The secret in a lecture situation when you want to ask a question (by interrupting) is to ask yourself 'will this help all of us?' I have always been an extremely bad note-taker for the simple reason it doesn't help me. I try to know what the lecture is about before I go to it, and will read up after to complete my understanding. I've never been afraid to interrupt when I've felt the lecturer has missed a step or simply not been clear enough.
I know I should have left it at that, but the look on people's faces when I told them I didn't know what they were talking about when they asked me "wasn't it funny when..." was even funnier!
Thanks for taking the ribbing in good nature :) Your post had good info.
You have just invented a new word. Consensus means 'An opinion or position reached by a group as a whole'. Presumably 'conCensus' means 'An opinion or position reached by someone opposed to taking a census of opinion'?
I'd also be suspicious of a kid (which makes me think of up to 12 or so rather than 16) returning razor blades anyway!
Your use of the word 'misabused' is the most misabused abusive misuse I've ever seen here on /.
You have been slagged off three times for highlighting sense 2 - and rightly so. The funny thing is that sense 3 is exactly what IS happening!
Multiplication tables are usually done up to some small number - I think when I went to junior school it was 12x12 = 144 at the bottom right. Perhaps it goes to 10 or 20 elsewhere. Now I and probably every other slashdotter should be able to multiply 19x21 = 399 (=(20+1)x(20-1)=20*20-1*1). They can probably also do 199*201 etc... which is not to say that they 'know the table' up to 20 or 200 (or 2 billion). Now if you were to argue that the '10 times table' is simply the algebraic ring of the (x) operation on the subset of integers 0..9, which is of course essential to the evaluation of larger multiplications (as is of course the carry operation), then sure... but I don't think we were discussing that.
In fairness, the article does qualify it as 'software piracy' and doesn't use that term often. Why do they continue to refer to the internet protocol (IP) though? They continue to get their terms muddled!
By the way, I do think that 'software murder', 'software rape' and 'software pillaging' are very naughty things to do.
No (nor with Chelsea, either).
Joking aside, I'm not saying they need to be named after women. Just that calling Ronald Reagan 'she' seems odd. Mind you so would the HMS Margaret Thatcher!
No Bjarney is trying a witticism - the 0x prefix is used in C to indicate hex. Having it as a suffix would presumable come under the heading of 'remove embarrassments'. Anyway the sequel to C should have been named D or P, so this effort should be E or L, I suppose.
Ships are 'shes'. Ok, Argo, Victory and Enterprise aren't as feminine as Marie Celeste etc, but Ronald Reagan was a leading man, for crying out loud. You can't call him 'she' or 'her'. I think they should have called this ship the USS Nancy instead. And when Clinton's turn comes around, there can be the USS Hilary and the USS Chelsea and the USS Monica and the USS Jennifer and the USS (etc).
As for nitrogen forming bubbles (aka 'the bends'): divers take (at least) 1 minute per 15 metres ascent, and a minute for the last 6 metres - where the proportional change (from 1.6 bar to 1) is greatest. So there shouldn't be too much of a problem given how long it will take them to get to that altitude (132,000 feet at 1000 feet per minute => more than 2 hours>
As to the original quotes from the article, they say that half a pint of water in the decompression chamber explodes in half a second. Wow! These guys aren't rocket scientists, fortunately. Any sudden change will be instantly lethal, of course. In this case, as with diving, it is imperative to plan well, including back-up systems, to go a step at a time, to gain experience, and to practice. They seem to be doing some of that, but not all. Shame that they have probably already contributed to the human gene pool.
Using 'simple math' $500K per 10Kemps is $50 per employee, scale to 800Kemps the cost would be $40M - nowhere near the 3B$ saving mentioned. The new contract is worth $1.6M (design and - presumably - development) - a drop in the ocean compared to either figure.
What is more worrying is the previous cost per employee: some $7500 per year. If that figure is correct, the first $4 per hour tax of each government employee's tax goes to pay-roll service, effectively - and it will now halve... still $2 per hour.
I somehow think they have the wrong figure somewhere along the line though.
Someone who had a job repairing escalators told me of a poor asian woman he had to rescue: she was wearing a sari, a corner got caught, she got 'unwrapped'....
The point the AC made was that the median is AN average, not THE average. There are also fault-tolerant ways of measuring averages. For calculating the mean income or wealth, it tends to be convenient to exclude bgates@microsoft.com. For multiple variables, the Mahanobilis distance can be used to detect outliers (which can then be discarded or given a lower weighting). At least you mentioned the mode (which is yet another 'average' - the most frequent occurrence) so perhaps you can be saved - but the AC was not incorrect (although just as rude as you).
The first is a human interpreter in the 60s who translated 'stalk in the rushes' from Russian to 'nigger in the woodpile'. He corrected himself before the (black) US delegate could react, fortunately.
Even better in my AI course a nice example of an EU translation software mistake was given: 'Les bureaucrats vis-a-vis les agriculteurs' (apologies for missing accent and potential other errors in my French). The software omitted the accent - and dashes too - and translated it as 'the bureaucrats live to screw the farmers'. How true.
I won't go in to hydraulic rams and water sheep, such tales are apocriphal, but I will leave you with: time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. Well, it would, wouldn't it?
You had a ZX-81 too huh?
First of all a disclaimer: I am not a Mac fanatic, indeed I haven't used one for about 15 years. Also I don't use Linux at either work (tho I would love a Kylix contract!) or play (hmm maybe NWN now?). But I think to claim Macs are too expensive (despite the fact that I can't afford one) is unfair.
Why? Well unless your mother is desperate to play the latest games or needs fast compilation/rendering/whatever, a Mac will last a bit longer. Browsing, word processing, e-mail etc. should run fine. The PC I had running in 1995 was as fast as anything since; I've probably bought 3 complete systems since. Now, as a nerd, that is fine, but it would have been cheaper in the long run to invest in a Mac if all I had wanted to do was surf etc.
In summary, my point is not against you, but our mothers who have been convinced they need to upgrade their PCs. They need a stable OS (and hardware) instead.
Parent: I don't know why you haven't upgraded to 2003. I did it nearly seven months ago...
I'm not sure which is more worrying: being 2 1/2 years behind the times or almost a month ahead. Or the state of the U.S. educational system?
The odd thing is that it used to be the opposite - Windows 3.11 and Linux 0.99b come to mind. Ten years ago, at a guess? I think it was Word catching up on WordPerfect versions that started the trend, but I beg to be corrected.
An advance is just that - payment in advance - and the whole point people like Courtney Love and Janis Ian are making it is very unlikely to actually make any more.
Sadly I recently fell in to this trap myself. No contracts on the horizon, guy with small company convinces me to work (as lone developer, at relatively pathetic rate) on his niche project. Half a year later I discovered that Microsoft was in the same niche. Eighty staff & multi-million budget. Oh and their product sold for 1/10th of the price. So anyway, without a job again but at least a modicum of self-respect. I'm lucky I can (just) afford to.
Summary: bosses abuse/lie to/underpay artists, creators and developers. Go capitalism, go!
Almost all (Windows) 3D nowadays is either DirectX or OpenGL. I'll ignore the former for a moment and stick to OpenGL. How hard can it be to 'emulate' a glVertex3f call? Ok, I'm not saying it is trivial, but it must be a lot easier than the average Win32 API call. I mean, the function already exists anywhere you have OpenGL.
Back to DirectX or rather Direct3D... although this uses COM interfaces, the functions available are pretty similar to those in OpenGL. Now there will be a number of 'slow' functions (loading a large texture), but these will always be slow. A little more overhead won't make a huge difference. There are only a few functions (vertex, texture coordinates, normals etc) which get called really often. It is here that optimization efforts should be directed. Not easy, but should be easier than the entire Win API.
I will admit to ignoring the problems of X being a network protocol rather than a graphics one. I suspect that to reach optimal frame rates you wouldn't want to run DirextX games in an X window on another terminal over the network. But unix has always done well at allowing multiple 'terminals', so do it that way.
I thought Windows (9x) was crap because it was 'compatible' with DOS. NT/2K is a bit better and nowadays compatible with W9x too...