.... But *WHY* is this stuff freely available? Shouldn't it be a controlled substance of some sort?
Eh, why not? It's not like you need polonium 210 to kill someone. A big stick can be used for the same purpose, and rat-poison can also be bought over the counter. And unlike e.g. guns, polonium 210 has other uses than to kill people. Most of those reasons advance science.
Polonium 210 doesn't kill people. People do.
If you want my Polonium 210 you'll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.
I did buy magnets from there. They are freakin' awesome.
I accidentally held them too close to each other with nothing in between and they slammed together with such a force that they made sparks and got chipped. I couldn't for the life of me get the magnets apart again until I realized that I could set one on the edge of a table and put my weight on the other to slide them apart but it still hurt my hands to do that.
The strength will amaze you and I only bought the 1" cube magnets. I can't even begin to imagine the strength of the really big ones.
I always use the middle click anywhere in the tab to close the tab. I also dislike the close button because it uses up some space, but I guess some users have an easier time closing tabs with it.
This is a question of "bang for the buck". By making it available for XP they get most of the installed base of windows. There would be additional work to make it work on Windows 2000, and it might not even be remotely possible to make it work on Windows 95/98/Me.
It also gives their sales force an argument to get the remaining people to upgrade.
It is very possible that Microsoft wants IE7 to be installed for security reasons, and that there are no reasons that are important enough to outweigh that in the U.S. But lets say for example, that the language support in IE7 is broken for Japanese in some weird and newly discovered way, and that a large portion of Japanese web sites don't function properly.
So, see? While the security situation is the same in all countries, other issues may not.
I like the speed of Digg more. I also think that that is the biggest reason that Digg has gotten so much traffic. That is at least why it gets my traffic.
I think/. is better on everything else that matters. Especially the threaded discussions.
I think that what confuses me is that you are talking about parents in a linked list but I'm used to calling things parents when talking about a tree. And you are also talking about a set which also throws me off a bit.
But it sounds to me as if what you really are talking about is a linked list where you can traverse in any order, but appends are slower than prepends since it needs to traverse the list. Although, I think that you aren't really talking about a linked list in memory since you are talking about IO's.
Does that represent your problem?
In that case the first append would take 1 IO, the second would take 2 IO's and the last one would take n IO's. Is that correct so far?
So, that is the sum of 1 + 2 + 3 +... + (n - 1) + n. This can be rewritten as (n * (n-1)) / 2 and that is then an operation of n square, or O(n^2).
This is still very poor performance, and inserting in an unsorted list should never be worse than O(n).
You also say that for a list of 10 elements you could see a difference. I don't quite know how much an IO costs in your environment. But for 10 elements O(n) becomes two IOs, O(n2) becomes 100, but O(n!) becomes a staggering 3628800. And if you ever saw it finish with a list of 20 elements then it can't have been O(n!) because it wouldn't finish in our life times no matter what computer you have (at 1 billion IO's per second it would still take 70 years)
Assembly is one way to understand algorithms. And if that is how you learned algorithms, then you'll remember that as when the "coin dropped". But that doesn't mean that it is the best way, or even a good way, to learn algorithms in general.
But man, this is like upside down world. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't even understand what possible use an API creator might have from knowing assembly. Either you thought assembly was/is fun and overestimate the value of knowing assembly, or it was so long ago that I dabbled with it that I forgot how it was to not know assembly.
That doesn't make sense to me. I think you are saying one thing but mean another. People don't understand algorithms any better if you learn algorithms using assembly.
You might mean that a person knowing assembly will write more efficient code in a higher level language because they will understand approximately what will happen under the hood. Is that what you meant?
But speed is not even remotely the most important thing in most applications. Robustness and maintainability is. And understanding the order of complexity of an algorithm is far more important than knowing how many clock cycles something will take. Understanding the order of complexity of an algorithm can be done without assembly. In fact, it is easier without involving assembly.
And I doubt that the algorithm you are talking about actually is x!.
If you had 1 million CPU's that all run at 10 GHz and each operation in your algorithm takes only one clock cycle your algorithm still wouldn't finish in your lifetime for a set with 25 elements.
If there are 90 elements in your set the number of operations required to execute your algorithm exceeds the estimated number of electrons in the Universe (10**130, don't ask me how they came up with that number).
But lets say that your algorithm actually is x!. I'm not questioning that understanding how things work under the hood helps you write better code. I'm just saying that you don't need to get to the level of assembly level for that. You can read about your API and they will explain the algorithms used and that's enough.
Knowing how to make bricks = knowing how to code assembly
Knowing the properties of bricks (such as strength and weight) = knowing an API
In your analogy you are saying that you need to know how to make bricks to know the properties of a brick that matters to an architect. You are messing up your analogies to fit your opinion. It doesn't make sense.
Analogies aside, explain to me how knowledge in assembly makes a Java-programmer more productive in a significant way?
I agree that a Java-programmer that knows assembly likely is a better programmer than one that doesn't know assembly. But that is not the same as saying that learning assembly makes you a better Java-programmer.
A person that spends time learning assembly for fun, is the same person that also stays up all night to figure out regular expressions, and how XSLT is working, or install MySQL so that they can mess around with database queries. People who learn assembly tend to be passionate about programming.
If you are passionate about programming and want to learn assembly, then by all means, go ahead. It is practically a hobby activity. But it is _not_ the most energy efficient way to learn how to program in a modern environment.
Here's my tip. Ignore anyone that suggests that you learn assembly.
It's like telling an architect that he needs to learn how to make bricks to be a good architect.
You can learn only so much in a given period of time. Don't waste it on something you can't use. I understand assembly, and it is at times a comforting feeling, but in all honesty I belive the time I spent learning assembly would have been better spent learning design patterns.
I've always wondered why Sun was unable to get Dell and others to pre-install the Java VM. If they could have gotten Dell, HP, Compaq, Acer to pre-install, then everyone would have had to follow. There is no reason to _not_ preinstall Java. It is free and it doesn't use resources unless you use it.
I can think of only one reason, and that is that Microsoft had some compelling reason for _not_ installing Java.
If Sun had managed to do this 5 or 6 years ago the software map might have been looking completely different.
It's not Googles job to cry foul over things that benefit them. Especially, when it is a third party software.
Complaining about Google being default in Firefox is Microsofts job (or Yahoo or someone else). However, if Microsoft had complained about that they would have _had_ to make it optional in IE7 as well. So, Microsoft kept quiet about that.
If Google had complained about them being the default in FireFox then they would have been on the moral high ground when complaining about IE7. But they wouldn't be in a much better position to convince Microsoft though.
It is like saying. You have gone from spending $1K per month instead of $2K per month. Full stop.
If you are making $500 per month you are still losing money. If you are making $1500 per month you are now making money, whereas before you were losing money If you are making $2500 then you were making money all along, but you are making more money now.
The headline does not state whether the rate at which people are hired, are higher or lower than the rate at which people are fired.
Slashdot Mirror
BWaaahahahaha!!!!
I can totally see how that happened.
Eh, why not? It's not like you need polonium 210 to kill someone. A big stick can be used for the same purpose, and rat-poison can also be bought over the counter. And unlike e.g. guns, polonium 210 has other uses than to kill people. Most of those reasons advance science.
Polonium 210 doesn't kill people. People do.If you want my Polonium 210 you'll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.
I did buy magnets from there. They are freakin' awesome.
I accidentally held them too close to each other with nothing in between and they slammed together with such a force that they made sparks and got chipped. I couldn't for the life of me get the magnets apart again until I realized that I could set one on the edge of a table and put my weight on the other to slide them apart but it still hurt my hands to do that.
The strength will amaze you and I only bought the 1" cube magnets. I can't even begin to imagine the strength of the really big ones.
I always use the middle click anywhere in the tab to close the tab. I also dislike the close button because it uses up some space, but I guess some users have an easier time closing tabs with it.
This is a question of "bang for the buck". By making it available for XP they get most of the installed base of windows. There would be additional work to make it work on Windows 2000, and it might not even be remotely possible to make it work on Windows 95/98/Me.
It also gives their sales force an argument to get the remaining people to upgrade.
Oh come on, it isn't always black or white.
It is very possible that Microsoft wants IE7 to be installed for security reasons, and that there are no reasons that are important enough to outweigh that in the U.S. But lets say for example, that the language support in IE7 is broken for Japanese in some weird and newly discovered way, and that a large portion of Japanese web sites don't function properly.
So, see? While the security situation is the same in all countries, other issues may not.
They are making a fuss because their livelihood is on the line. Not necessarily because they are right.
Hey, I would have modded you up if I had points.
Don't use the "d"-word here. ;)
I happen to think the absolute opposite.
/. is better on everything else that matters. Especially the threaded discussions.
I like the speed of Digg more. I also think that that is the biggest reason that Digg has gotten so much traffic. That is at least why it gets my traffic.
I think
A clarification and a correction:
1)"inserting in an unsorted list should never be worse than O(n)"
For n elements.
2) "But for 10 elements O(n) becomes two IOs".
Should read 10 IOs.
Wow,
Finally someone that has a clue.
Thanks.
Thanks.
... + (n - 1) + n. This can be rewritten as (n * (n-1)) / 2 and that is then an operation of n square, or O(n^2).
I think that what confuses me is that you are talking about parents in a linked list but I'm used to calling things parents when talking about a tree. And you are also talking about a set which also throws me off a bit.
But it sounds to me as if what you really are talking about is a linked list where you can traverse in any order, but appends are slower than prepends since it needs to traverse the list. Although, I think that you aren't really talking about a linked list in memory since you are talking about IO's.
Does that represent your problem?
In that case the first append would take 1 IO, the second would take 2 IO's and the last one would take n IO's. Is that correct so far?
So, that is the sum of 1 + 2 + 3 +
This is still very poor performance, and inserting in an unsorted list should never be worse than O(n).
You also say that for a list of 10 elements you could see a difference. I don't quite know how much an IO costs in your environment. But for 10 elements O(n) becomes two IOs, O(n2) becomes 100, but O(n!) becomes a staggering 3628800. And if you ever saw it finish with a list of 20 elements then it can't have been O(n!) because it wouldn't finish in our life times no matter what computer you have (at 1 billion IO's per second it would still take 70 years)
Let me know if I still misunderstood.
Thanks for a good discussion.
Thanks for the reply.
But I'm very intrigued now. Can you explain why that algorithm is x!. I can't figure that out from your original description.
I'm curious because I can't even think of a scenario where I am even remotely at risk of producing an x! algorithm.
Assembly is one way to understand algorithms. And if that is how you learned algorithms, then you'll remember that as when the "coin dropped". But that doesn't mean that it is the best way, or even a good way, to learn algorithms in general.
But man, this is like upside down world. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't even understand what possible use an API creator might have from knowing assembly. Either you thought assembly was/is fun and overestimate the value of knowing assembly, or it was so long ago that I dabbled with it that I forgot how it was to not know assembly.
Hmm...
That doesn't make sense to me. I think you are saying one thing but mean another. People don't understand algorithms any better if you learn algorithms using assembly.
You might mean that a person knowing assembly will write more efficient code in a higher level language because they will understand approximately what will happen under the hood. Is that what you meant?
But speed is not even remotely the most important thing in most applications. Robustness and maintainability is. And understanding the order of complexity of an algorithm is far more important than knowing how many clock cycles something will take. Understanding the order of complexity of an algorithm can be done without assembly. In fact, it is easier without involving assembly.
Hmm... sorry. I don't understand what you said.
And I doubt that the algorithm you are talking about actually is x!.
If you had 1 million CPU's that all run at 10 GHz and each operation in your algorithm takes only one clock cycle your algorithm still wouldn't finish in your lifetime for a set with 25 elements.
If there are 90 elements in your set the number of operations required to execute your algorithm exceeds the estimated number of electrons in the Universe (10**130, don't ask me how they came up with that number).
But lets say that your algorithm actually is x!. I'm not questioning that understanding how things work under the hood helps you write better code. I'm just saying that you don't need to get to the level of assembly level for that. You can read about your API and they will explain the algorithms used and that's enough.
Good thought out reply. Thanks.
I would argue though, that all applications that I've encountered in my career that have been slow have been slow due to using a stupid design.
The fix to that is to figure out a better algorithm, or figuring out how to avoid a network round-trip, or something like that.
Also, not that I do a lot of recursion, but why would you say that recursion is bad?
OK, point taken.
I was assuming a full blown computer with an operating system such as Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and so on. Not embedded systems.
If you are into embedded systems then learning Assembly may not just be good, it may be essential.
Knowing how to make bricks = knowing how to code assembly
Knowing the properties of bricks (such as strength and weight) = knowing an API
In your analogy you are saying that you need to know how to make bricks to know the properties of a brick that matters to an architect. You are messing up your analogies to fit your opinion. It doesn't make sense.
Analogies aside, explain to me how knowledge in assembly makes a Java-programmer more productive in a significant way?
I agree that a Java-programmer that knows assembly likely is a better programmer than one that doesn't know assembly. But that is not the same as saying that learning assembly makes you a better Java-programmer.
A person that spends time learning assembly for fun, is the same person that also stays up all night to figure out regular expressions, and how XSLT is working, or install MySQL so that they can mess around with database queries. People who learn assembly tend to be passionate about programming.
If you are passionate about programming and want to learn assembly, then by all means, go ahead. It is practically a hobby activity. But it is _not_ the most energy efficient way to learn how to program in a modern environment.
Here's my tip. Ignore anyone that suggests that you learn assembly.
It's like telling an architect that he needs to learn how to make bricks to be a good architect.
You can learn only so much in a given period of time. Don't waste it on something you can't use. I understand assembly, and it is at times a comforting feeling, but in all honesty I belive the time I spent learning assembly would have been better spent learning design patterns.
I've always wondered why Sun was unable to get Dell and others to pre-install the Java VM. If they could have gotten Dell, HP, Compaq, Acer to pre-install, then everyone would have had to follow. There is no reason to _not_ preinstall Java. It is free and it doesn't use resources unless you use it.
I can think of only one reason, and that is that Microsoft had some compelling reason for _not_ installing Java.
If Sun had managed to do this 5 or 6 years ago the software map might have been looking completely different.
It's not Googles job to cry foul over things that benefit them. Especially, when it is a third party software.
Complaining about Google being default in Firefox is Microsofts job (or Yahoo or someone else). However, if Microsoft had complained about that they would have _had_ to make it optional in IE7 as well. So, Microsoft kept quiet about that.
If Google had complained about them being the default in FireFox then they would have been on the moral high ground when complaining about IE7. But they wouldn't be in a much better position to convince Microsoft though.
No,
It is like saying. You have gone from spending $1K per month instead of $2K per month. Full stop.
If you are making $500 per month you are still losing money.
If you are making $1500 per month you are now making money, whereas before you were losing money
If you are making $2500 then you were making money all along, but you are making more money now.
The headline does not state whether the rate at which people are hired, are higher or lower than the rate at which people are fired.
The article or article summary is written by someone that wants HD-DVD to win, and uses the UMD failure to try to achieve that.
Common FUD tactics.