Baseball is about the least subtle game around. Almost everything comes down to individual players' performance. The team aspect is nearly nonexistent. That's why you can throw a bunch of baseball players together to have an All-Star game and it's a pretty good game. The Pro Bowl sucks because that doesn't work in football: the players actually have to work as a team.
And your example is far from perfect. Sabermetrics predicts a particular positive value for the steal and a negative value for the caught stealing. A steal is clearly not a losing proposition. An *attempted steal* may be, depending on your chance of success.
I guess you know you're an obsessed gamer couple if you hire a babysitter to come over while you sit around the computer "leveling your alts" (whatever the heck that means - I still play Civilization).
That is an ion engine. My back-of-envelope calculations say that accelerating to.0002c and back to rest requires an Isp of about 5300 if you assume a mass ratio of 10:1. (Which is about as high as you can expect with current technology.) You can do a little better with staging, but not orders-of-magnitude better.
If you can improve your Isp to, say, 50,000, which is well beyond current technology, then you could accelerate to almost 0.002c. Relativistic effects won't be really evident until well over 0.2c (at that speed it's only a 2% time dilation). We're not close to rockets that can attain such speeds.
Improving the mass ratio is even less helpful, btw, since that's a logarithmic factor. An Isp of 50,000 with a mass ratio of 100 still only gets you to 0.004c. I suppose it's conceivable that an interstellar ship that needed almost no structure could have an extremely high mass ratio, but you can see how ridiculously high it has to be to matter.
The only way we're going to send starships at relativistic speeds is to use (i) some form of non-rocket propulsion, like solar sails or those reactionless Casimir-effect thrusters or some other exotic method, (ii) something with a truly enormous Isp. Current ion engine tech tops out at about 30,000 s, and even nuclear pulse tops out at 100,000 s.
Will these be accessible from ECMAScript? And will most programmers use them correctly?
If it's an implementation of 754r, then the answer to the first question is yes. As to the second, obviously I can't say.
Exactly, and that is why i think 754r is a stupid hack. Depending on it makes implementations more complicated without solving the problem it is set out to solve: Programmers that haven't done their homework.
With all due respect, 754r is not a stupid hack. It's a well-thought-out way to handle an exact datatype. From your other comment you seem to think having an exact datatype is useful, but perhaps you haven't thought through all the implications of that. (For example: take the exact number "1" and divide it by the exact number "3". What's the result? In 754r, it will be "1.33333" with some number of 3s, and will be flagged as being "rounded" and "inexact". So at least the programmer knows the number is no longer exact. Arbitrary-precision computations don't solve this problem.) 754r may not be perfect, but at least it's an effort to work through all the implications.
That said, including 754r in ECMAScript probably is stupid. It's pretty complicated, and wouldn't see all that much use. If it's really needed, code it up as an add-on library. (And provide ECMAScript with an easier way to handle... add-on libraries. Which I understand they're working on.)
First, it won't fix the stupid programmer bug. 754r can't guarantee exactness in every situation. For instance, (large_num+small_num)+small_num == large_num != large_num+(small_num + small_num).
Actually, 754r handles situations like these via exception flags. If large_num + small_num == large_num, then the "inexact" and "rounded" flags will be raised (possibly others, too; I haven't looked at this in a while), which the programmer can use to take some alternate logic.
It's certainly true that stupid programmers can use these tools incorrectly (or not use them), but isn't that true of any system? Sufficiently stupid programmers can defeat any countermeasures.
Whether dolphins are that way I'm not sure, but I think humans have definately [sic] hit a point where our current physical form can adapt to environments easily enough that there is not much natural selection to change us much from an evolutionary standpoint anymore (in essence we've become what the cockroach is: a supremely adaptable organism that can survive almost anywhere).
Considering how much evolution has occurred in humans in the past few hundred thousand years, an eyeblink on evolutionary scales, I think this assertion is far from "definite".
Ever hear of charity? Or family?
'Course not. Silly me. When someone, anyone, gets a hangnail, we need a government representative on hand to administer first aid.
The problem with the idea of creatures with lifespans millions of times longer than ours is that they wouldn't have had time to evolve. Or, if they had rapid reproductive cycles (human-scale) but very long lifespans, then (a) you have to wonder how that could have evolved and (b) how come they haven't overpopulated their planet yet? Might make for an interesting science-fiction novel background, but it's not very plausible.
The cyborg idea is a better one. Although for really long life, I think you'd have to ditch the biological component altogether.
Speaking of the Air&Space Museum - when you get bored with that, don't forget the new annex out in the 'burbs (can't remember which one - Google it). Another couple hundred aircraft and spacecraft to check out there.
RFK just wants to do an end run around reality. If you live in a utopia in which everyone's values are perfectly aligned, there are no negative externalities, and economic decisions are never necessary because there are no shortages and opportunity costs are always zero, then what he has to say is perfectly valid and interesting. We don't, though. Every one of those things he lists as a "bad thing" that GDP measures is just the result of an unavoidable economic decision. Take ambulances to "clear our roads of carnage". We drive cars. Sometimes they crash, and people are hurt or killed. This is avoidable, but only by eliminating cars. Eliminating cars would cause much more damage, though. So having cars and ambulances is more valuable than having no cars at all. (Having safer cars is also valuable. But safer cars cost more, and figuring out whether the safety is worth the cost is not obvious. RFK can't just decide for everyone.)
So I say to RFK: blah, blah, blah, sing a round of Kum-ba-ya.
The French have a higher standard of living than we do...
Where do you live, Spain?
If you're comparing France to the U.S., then the French standard of living is about 70% of the U.S. That's measured in "purchasing power parity", meaning (roughly) how many hours you have to work to buy a standard basket of goods.
Re:Talk about getting your facts right!
on
Tetraktys
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
There's one right in the review: World's first cryptographic thriller? Has he never heard of Cryptonomicon?
The system wouldn't just lose $760/year in value, it would also lose 2% in efficiency per year, which means that if he saved $3,000 the first year, he could expect to save only $2,940 the second, and so on (all else - electricity usage, cost of electricity, etc - being equal). The revenue stream then looks like this (over 10 years):
Year 0: Cost of $38400.
Year 1: Benefit of $3,000.
Year 2: Benefit of $2,940.
Year 3: Benefit of $2,880.
Year 4: Benefit of $2,820.
Year 5: Benefit of $2,760.
Year 6: Benefit of $2,700.
Year 7: Benefit of $2,640.
Year 8: Benefit of $2,580.
Year 9: Benefit of $2,520.
Year 10: Benefit of $2,460.
Value of system after 10 years: $30,400.
Plugging these numbers into the IRR formula gives you a 5.7% return per year.
If we make a slightly different assumption that the decreased output is geometric (not arithmetic) and still use the idea that the depreciated value equals the original cost times the current efficiency, then you can show that D + R = 7.9%, where D = depreciation rate and R = rate of return. So if you assume D = 2%, then R = 5.9%. But if D = 4%, then R = 3.9%, which is not great.
Doesn't sound to me like an obvious win for solar power. On the other hand, it's not an obvious money sink, either, so that's good. I'm sure things will continue to improve.
Would be interesting to see a subsidy-free comparison of both methods of electricity generation, but that's pretty hard. You can easily handle the consumer tax breaks, but how much do the producer's tax incentives affect the cost? And how much of his local coal/natural gas/hydro/nuclear generation is subsidized?
Er.. the "symbol manipulation rules", _are_ plug and chug.
I just got around to reading the whole 25-page PDF today, so I see the author of TFA is using a different meaning of "plug and chug" than I was. You see the importance of agreeing on definitions ahead of time.
If a student insisted on calling right angle "pigpens", I think I'd tolerate it for about 5 minutes unless he was the second coming of Ramanujan.:)
I don't dispute the premise that US math education sucks, or that it would be useful to add Discrete Math to the list. However, your assertion that all those courses are "just plug and chug" is just absurd. Geometry is generally centered around proofs - this is the first class most students ever have in which they are expected to learn a set of axioms and theorems, and construct new theorems from them. Trigonometry places some emphasis, at least, on trig identities, e.g. prove that tanx sinx = secx - cosx. Not extremely hard, but it's not just plugging numbers into formulas.
Calculus is similar: you work on limits, learning symbol manipulation rules like the chain rule and integration by parts, etc. Heck, even in algebra I you learn factoring polynomials, which is not at all plug and chug.
Again, don't get me wrong: I'm all in favor of more proofs and reasoning about math. But you're still mischaracterizing the rest of high-school math.
While all you say is true, let's be generous and assume that the story poster really meant "information rights".
My own thought on that question is that if Nepal wants to put in a couple of clauses of information rights, great. But it seems to me that they have bigger fish to fry: get basic freedoms, separation of powers, checks and balances, etc. right. Otherwise your information rights are pretty much irrelevant.
Related thought: It ill serves a Constitution to be long or attempt to be complete. It should be general; it should be brief; and it should only grant powers (i.e. it should say things like "the government can only do X, Y and Z", rather than "the government can do anything except X, Y and Z"). It's quite possible information rights don't make this cut (I'm not trying to make that case, just pointing out that because something is good doesn't necessarily mean it should be in the Constitution).
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Baseball is about the least subtle game around. Almost everything comes down to individual players' performance. The team aspect is nearly nonexistent. That's why you can throw a bunch of baseball players together to have an All-Star game and it's a pretty good game. The Pro Bowl sucks because that doesn't work in football: the players actually have to work as a team. And your example is far from perfect. Sabermetrics predicts a particular positive value for the steal and a negative value for the caught stealing. A steal is clearly not a losing proposition. An *attempted steal* may be, depending on your chance of success.
Perhaps the correct answer is: No, I can't.
When he's got the window seat and you've got the aisle, his business becomes your business.
I would never "depreciate your agitation", sir, and I hope you appreciate my inhibitation of the assassination of your cogitation.
Worst James Bond film of all time. FUD-Raker.
If you want some actual facts about this issue, it's worth reading this.
I guess you know you're an obsessed gamer couple if you hire a babysitter to come over while you sit around the computer "leveling your alts" (whatever the heck that means - I still play Civilization).
That is an ion engine. My back-of-envelope calculations say that accelerating to .0002c and back to rest requires an Isp of about 5300 if you assume a mass ratio of 10:1. (Which is about as high as you can expect with current technology.) You can do a little better with staging, but not orders-of-magnitude better.
If you can improve your Isp to, say, 50,000, which is well beyond current technology, then you could accelerate to almost 0.002c. Relativistic effects won't be really evident until well over 0.2c (at that speed it's only a 2% time dilation). We're not close to rockets that can attain such speeds.
Improving the mass ratio is even less helpful, btw, since that's a logarithmic factor. An Isp of 50,000 with a mass ratio of 100 still only gets you to 0.004c. I suppose it's conceivable that an interstellar ship that needed almost no structure could have an extremely high mass ratio, but you can see how ridiculously high it has to be to matter.
The only way we're going to send starships at relativistic speeds is to use (i) some form of non-rocket propulsion, like solar sails or those reactionless Casimir-effect thrusters or some other exotic method, (ii) something with a truly enormous Isp. Current ion engine tech tops out at about 30,000 s, and even nuclear pulse tops out at 100,000 s.
If it's an implementation of 754r, then the answer to the first question is yes. As to the second, obviously I can't say.
With all due respect, 754r is not a stupid hack. It's a well-thought-out way to handle an exact datatype. From your other comment you seem to think having an exact datatype is useful, but perhaps you haven't thought through all the implications of that. (For example: take the exact number "1" and divide it by the exact number "3". What's the result? In 754r, it will be "1.33333" with some number of 3s, and will be flagged as being "rounded" and "inexact". So at least the programmer knows the number is no longer exact. Arbitrary-precision computations don't solve this problem.) 754r may not be perfect, but at least it's an effort to work through all the implications.
That said, including 754r in ECMAScript probably is stupid. It's pretty complicated, and wouldn't see all that much use. If it's really needed, code it up as an add-on library. (And provide ECMAScript with an easier way to handle... add-on libraries. Which I understand they're working on.)
Actually, 754r handles situations like these via exception flags. If large_num + small_num == large_num, then the "inexact" and "rounded" flags will be raised (possibly others, too; I haven't looked at this in a while), which the programmer can use to take some alternate logic. It's certainly true that stupid programmers can use these tools incorrectly (or not use them), but isn't that true of any system? Sufficiently stupid programmers can defeat any countermeasures.
Considering how much evolution has occurred in humans in the past few hundred thousand years, an eyeblink on evolutionary scales, I think this assertion is far from "definite".
That'd be a good name for a superhero: Apocryphal Guy. You always hear about his exploits but never actually see them.
Lemme call up Marvel. I mean, Disney.
Ever hear of charity? Or family? 'Course not. Silly me. When someone, anyone, gets a hangnail, we need a government representative on hand to administer first aid.
The problem with the idea of creatures with lifespans millions of times longer than ours is that they wouldn't have had time to evolve. Or, if they had rapid reproductive cycles (human-scale) but very long lifespans, then (a) you have to wonder how that could have evolved and (b) how come they haven't overpopulated their planet yet? Might make for an interesting science-fiction novel background, but it's not very plausible.
The cyborg idea is a better one. Although for really long life, I think you'd have to ditch the biological component altogether.
Speaking of the Air&Space Museum - when you get bored with that, don't forget the new annex out in the 'burbs (can't remember which one - Google it). Another couple hundred aircraft and spacecraft to check out there.
Dude! How can we get Samuel L. Jackson involved? ("I am so m-f'ing sick of these m-f'ing aliens on this m-f'ing spaceship!")
RFK just wants to do an end run around reality. If you live in a utopia in which everyone's values are perfectly aligned, there are no negative externalities, and economic decisions are never necessary because there are no shortages and opportunity costs are always zero, then what he has to say is perfectly valid and interesting. We don't, though. Every one of those things he lists as a "bad thing" that GDP measures is just the result of an unavoidable economic decision. Take ambulances to "clear our roads of carnage". We drive cars. Sometimes they crash, and people are hurt or killed. This is avoidable, but only by eliminating cars. Eliminating cars would cause much more damage, though. So having cars and ambulances is more valuable than having no cars at all. (Having safer cars is also valuable. But safer cars cost more, and figuring out whether the safety is worth the cost is not obvious. RFK can't just decide for everyone.)
So I say to RFK: blah, blah, blah, sing a round of Kum-ba-ya.
Where do you live, Spain?
If you're comparing France to the U.S., then the French standard of living is about 70% of the U.S. That's measured in "purchasing power parity", meaning (roughly) how many hours you have to work to buy a standard basket of goods.
There's one right in the review: World's first cryptographic thriller? Has he never heard of Cryptonomicon?
Not when I combine it with a gallon of anti-gas.
FWIW, my stats over the past 6 months (plus 5 days of July):
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul (partial)
IE 82.2 80.7 79.6 77.2 78.1 77.3 75.3
Firefox 11.9 13.4 14.3 15.8 14.0 14.6 15.5
Safari 3.2 3.5 3.7 4.4 4.3 5.2 6.4
Others 2.7 2.4 2.4 2.6 3.6 2.9 2.8
The site is for a financial company and skews toward an older demographic.
The system wouldn't just lose $760/year in value, it would also lose 2% in efficiency per year, which means that if he saved $3,000 the first year, he could expect to save only $2,940 the second, and so on (all else - electricity usage, cost of electricity, etc - being equal). The revenue stream then looks like this (over 10 years):
Year 0: Cost of $38400.
Year 1: Benefit of $3,000.
Year 2: Benefit of $2,940.
Year 3: Benefit of $2,880.
Year 4: Benefit of $2,820.
Year 5: Benefit of $2,760.
Year 6: Benefit of $2,700.
Year 7: Benefit of $2,640.
Year 8: Benefit of $2,580.
Year 9: Benefit of $2,520.
Year 10: Benefit of $2,460.
Value of system after 10 years: $30,400.
Plugging these numbers into the IRR formula gives you a 5.7% return per year.
If we make a slightly different assumption that the decreased output is geometric (not arithmetic) and still use the idea that the depreciated value equals the original cost times the current efficiency, then you can show that D + R = 7.9%, where D = depreciation rate and R = rate of return. So if you assume D = 2%, then R = 5.9%. But if D = 4%, then R = 3.9%, which is not great.
Doesn't sound to me like an obvious win for solar power. On the other hand, it's not an obvious money sink, either, so that's good. I'm sure things will continue to improve.
Would be interesting to see a subsidy-free comparison of both methods of electricity generation, but that's pretty hard. You can easily handle the consumer tax breaks, but how much do the producer's tax incentives affect the cost? And how much of his local coal/natural gas/hydro/nuclear generation is subsidized?
I just got around to reading the whole 25-page PDF today, so I see the author of TFA is using a different meaning of "plug and chug" than I was. You see the importance of agreeing on definitions ahead of time.
If a student insisted on calling right angle "pigpens", I think I'd tolerate it for about 5 minutes unless he was the second coming of Ramanujan. :)
I don't dispute the premise that US math education sucks, or that it would be useful to add Discrete Math to the list. However, your assertion that all those courses are "just plug and chug" is just absurd. Geometry is generally centered around proofs - this is the first class most students ever have in which they are expected to learn a set of axioms and theorems, and construct new theorems from them. Trigonometry places some emphasis, at least, on trig identities, e.g. prove that tanx sinx = secx - cosx. Not extremely hard, but it's not just plugging numbers into formulas.
Calculus is similar: you work on limits, learning symbol manipulation rules like the chain rule and integration by parts, etc. Heck, even in algebra I you learn factoring polynomials, which is not at all plug and chug.
Again, don't get me wrong: I'm all in favor of more proofs and reasoning about math. But you're still mischaracterizing the rest of high-school math.
While all you say is true, let's be generous and assume that the story poster really meant "information rights".
My own thought on that question is that if Nepal wants to put in a couple of clauses of information rights, great. But it seems to me that they have bigger fish to fry: get basic freedoms, separation of powers, checks and balances, etc. right. Otherwise your information rights are pretty much irrelevant.
Related thought: It ill serves a Constitution to be long or attempt to be complete. It should be general; it should be brief; and it should only grant powers (i.e. it should say things like "the government can only do X, Y and Z", rather than "the government can do anything except X, Y and Z"). It's quite possible information rights don't make this cut (I'm not trying to make that case, just pointing out that because something is good doesn't necessarily mean it should be in the Constitution).