The human body responds a bit strangely to altitude change. My brother is a climber/mountaineer and told me how altitude adaption is done: First you climb, say 400 metres. Now, if you're already at 4000m above sea-level, the change in altitude will be noticeable to you. Now comes the weird part; if you stay at 4400m, you will start to experience an increasing height-sickness which can potentially become dangerous. So what you do is, you climb down to 4000m, and the next day you climb back up to 4400m. You are now adapted to the height, and can repeat the procedure to rise another 400m.
Of course, once you reach a certain height it won't matter what you do; you're body will be strained to it's limits, and you will experience height-sickness.
Why anyone would actually use low athmospheric pressure for training is beyond me; isn't it the low oxygen-level that's important?
You misunderstood me, and I wasn't very clear; I think theory is very good. Software is application of the theory - research drives the development forward. I'm just saying that theory is not a substitute for actual application of theory.
Saying that you're a good programmer just because you are good at constructing algorithms and know P from NP just isn't true.
Let me guess... You're a CS Master Of Science student or graduate who take pride in having the ultimate hashkey algo memorized to the last bitshift. I'm a CS student myself, but I recognize this for the uninteresting stuff it really is (unless of course, you're planning on doing/doing actual research on this stuff).
Programming is a craft dependent on experience and routine. Sure, knowing your big-O might come in handy when you need to make a kick-ass algorithm; but this has probably already been done by somebody else.
Flashing your l33t CS skillz is going to get you nowhere when you don't know the Nintendo Graphics API (tm) and I do, and spend all my time making Zelda while you're still trying to implement the ultimate sort() and forget about structure and testing.
To quote a slashdot quote : "Fluid dynamics is to plumbing as science is to programming."
"...But I must confess that I'm also disappointed to have had absolutely no feedback so far on several of the exercises on which I worked hardest when I was preparing this material. Could it be that (1) you've said nothing about them because I somehow managed to get the details perfect? Or is it that (2) you shy away from the more difficult stuff, being unable to spend more than a few minutes on any particular topic?..."
... or could it be (3) that you'd have to be one crack-smoking codemonkey of a nut to spend your spare time doing exercises which (1) require a superbrain, (2) are boring, (3) your superbrain computer science professor already did a week ago to collect the $0.23 award for the errata report.
My guess is that developing the hologram takes about as much time as developing a regular photograph.
There are two kinds of holograms; the more expensive and complicated kind, and the less expensive and complicated and also less useful kind.
The less expensive and complicated kind (there is probably a name for this, involving something about light diffraction) requires two laserbeams of equal wavelength and phase, one to light up the object, and one as a reference laser for the film. To display the hologram, it needs to be lit by the reference laser in the exact same angle and wavelength. I have actually made a hologram of this kind myself.
The more complicated and expensive kind of hologram does not require a reference laser to display it, but is harder to make. I'd be surprised if it took less than an hour to make a holographic image using this technique, so realtime cinema is out of the question. Also, I don't see how this stuff could be projected.
"Buggy, unbalanced, uninteresting, lacking strategic or tactical depth (in the cases of StarCraft and WC3), using cheap workarounds to fix fundimental game flaws (i.e. Hey, if we let them only select a limited # of units at once, noone can rush right? right?),..."
If you're saying StarCraft is buggy and lacking "strategical or tactical depth", you need to start buying your crack somewhere else.
StarCraft is a game made up of an enormous number of variables, and it is still balanced and plays well; I have yet to play a game as strategically deep as this one. And StarCraft hasn't bugged on me as of yet (and that's about four years of play time).
...but the most annoying type-o ever:
if(thisIsAnExtremelyLongConditional && thisIsAnExtremelyLongConditionalAsWell); {
}
The long line went beyond the editor, and since the conditionals were complicated I kept searching for an hour for the reason the conditionals checked out when they shouldn't.
This has probably never happened to anyone else. My coding sk1llz are meager. Damn.
I think JUnit-style testing works great, and I plan to start using it more often.
Testing is good to verify that your code does exactly what you think it does; a lot of the time I produce code that I "think" works, using JUnit allows me to verify that it actually does.
Check out junit.org.
For those of you who are sceptic about unit-testing, you should try it. Setting up the tests are not as tedious as one might think, they force you to think your problem through, and maybe most of all: they make your build look cool:)
I develop Java software in my spare time.
When I started programming in Java a couple of years ago,
I thought that maybe I could make applications and applets that people would actually use.
Granted that my crappy applet isn't the best one around, but when you see that your site got 30000 hits, and only 5000 played your game, you start thinking that maybe this isn't all your fault.
I don't know how many times I've explained to people how they go about to download the newest JRE.
Today, I would say that there are extremely few shareware/freeware utility applications written in Java especially in light of it's wide use in the industry, and the main reason for this is that they basically require a Java programmer to install them.
No JVM is better than a crappy old one, because then people will have to download the newest JRE the first time they come across an applet; this way, maybe we Java programmers can start utilizing the 1.2+ API instead of restricting ourselves to the 1.1 API for compatibility (which is really insane, because the 1.2 has been around since 1998 and is ten times better).
Whatever the cause, the Java language has definitely suffered from the lack of standardized and widespread VM software.
I agree that it would probably be possible to quite easily kill any P2P network; imagine one of the nodes in any Gnutella-type network sending faked information all over the place or something similar, or some kind of malignant Direct Connect client.
But let's say that the music industry/whoever did this, would it be legal just because P2P networks are "possibly used" for distributing copyrighted material?
I don't see the difference between sinking someones Direct Connect hub and launching a DoS attack against a webserver.
...an excuse for that weird bearded guy in Twin Peaks to buy new a new pair of glasses.
Why Global Warming Is A Bitch
on
Baked Alaska
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Environmental science is pretty damn complex.
We don't have the statistical models and processing power to even predict tomorrows weather accurately.
The scientists are basically throwing guesses around. Maybe global warming is caused by an increase of carbon-dioxide in the athmosphere. Maybe a sufficiently large amount of carbon-dioxide will have the exact opposite effect.
What we do know is that Earth currently is in equilibrium. If the balance is disturbed, a new equilibrium will be found. Some scientists will say that this new balance just means malaria in Quebec and some new places to spend your vacation.
The truth is, this is just a guess. It is also equally possible that the new balance means ice-covered landmasses and an athmosphere with 2% oxygen.
Maybe I can sit alone on my ass in my Chevrolet Impala and drive to work every day, and keep the engine running when I stop at the McDonald's drive-in, and we'll all be alright anyway.
Who knows?
I for one though, am not willing to gamble with Mother Nature.
Slashdot Mirror
The human body responds a bit strangely to altitude change.
My brother is a climber/mountaineer and told me how altitude adaption is done:
First you climb, say 400 metres. Now, if you're already at 4000m above sea-level, the change in altitude will be noticeable to you.
Now comes the weird part; if you stay at 4400m, you will start to experience an increasing height-sickness which can potentially become dangerous. So what you do is, you climb down to 4000m, and the next day you climb back up to 4400m. You are now adapted to the height, and can repeat the procedure to rise another 400m.
Of course, once you reach a certain height it won't matter what you do; you're body will be strained to it's limits, and you will experience height-sickness.
Why anyone would actually use low athmospheric pressure for training is beyond me; isn't it the low oxygen-level that's important?
...we had this back in the 70's and it was called The Million Dollar Man. They even made a tv-series about the guy. Fascinating stuff.
You misunderstood me, and I wasn't very clear; I think theory is very good. Software is application of the theory - research drives the development forward. I'm just saying that theory is not a substitute for actual application of theory.
Saying that you're a good programmer just because you are good at constructing algorithms and know P from NP just isn't true.
Let me guess... You're a CS Master Of Science student or graduate who take pride in having the ultimate hashkey algo memorized to the last bitshift. I'm a CS student myself, but I recognize this for the uninteresting stuff it really is (unless of course, you're planning on doing/doing actual research on this stuff).
Programming is a craft dependent on experience and routine. Sure, knowing your big-O might come in handy when you need to make a kick-ass algorithm; but this has probably already been done by somebody else.
Flashing your l33t CS skillz is going to get you nowhere when you don't know the Nintendo Graphics API (tm) and I do, and spend all my time making Zelda while you're still trying to implement the ultimate sort() and forget about structure and testing.
To quote a slashdot quote : "Fluid dynamics is to plumbing as science is to programming."
"...But I must confess that I'm also disappointed to have had absolutely no feedback so far on several of the exercises on which I worked hardest when I was preparing this material. Could it be that (1) you've said nothing about them because I somehow managed to get the details perfect? Or is it that (2) you shy away from the more difficult stuff, being unable to spend more than a few minutes on any particular topic?..."
... or could it be (3) that you'd have to be one crack-smoking codemonkey of a nut to spend your spare time doing exercises which (1) require a superbrain, (2) are boring, (3) your superbrain computer science professor already did a week ago to collect the $0.23 award for the errata report.
My guess is that developing the hologram takes about as much time as developing a regular photograph.
There are two kinds of holograms; the more expensive and complicated kind, and the less expensive and complicated and also less useful kind.
The less expensive and complicated kind (there is probably a name for this, involving something about light diffraction) requires two laserbeams of equal wavelength and phase, one to light up the object, and one as a reference laser for the film. To display the hologram, it needs to be lit by the reference laser in the exact same angle and wavelength.
I have actually made a hologram of this kind myself.
The more complicated and expensive kind of hologram does not require a reference laser to display it, but is harder to make. I'd be surprised if it took less than an hour to make a holographic image using this technique, so realtime cinema is out of the question. Also, I don't see how this stuff could be projected.
Hey pal, let me guess; when you're at work, you're just bored out of your mind, right?
Dreaming about CAD-modelling your desktop is one of the classic symptoms of OBNHETD (Office Boredom by Not Having Enough To Do).
Another classic symptom is surfing slashd - WHAT - wait - maybe I should make a CAD-model of my desktop
"Buggy, unbalanced, uninteresting, lacking strategic or tactical depth (in the cases of StarCraft and WC3), using cheap workarounds to fix fundimental game flaws (i.e. Hey, if we let them only select a limited # of units at once, noone can rush right? right?),..."
If you're saying StarCraft is buggy and lacking "strategical or tactical depth", you need to start buying your crack somewhere else.
StarCraft is a game made up of an enormous number of variables, and it is still balanced and plays well; I have yet to play a game as strategically deep as this one. And StarCraft hasn't bugged on me as of yet (and that's about four years of play time).
...but the most annoying type-o ever:
if(thisIsAnExtremelyLongConditional && thisIsAnExtremelyLongConditionalAsWell); {
}
The long line went beyond the editor, and since the conditionals were complicated I kept searching for an hour for the reason the conditionals checked out when they shouldn't.
This has probably never happened to anyone else. My coding sk1llz are meager. Damn.
I think JUnit-style testing works great, and I plan to start using it more often.
:)
Testing is good to verify that your code does exactly what you think it does; a lot of the time I produce code that I "think" works, using JUnit allows me to verify that it actually does.
Check out junit.org.
For those of you who are sceptic about unit-testing, you should try it. Setting up the tests are not as tedious as one might think, they force you to think your problem through, and maybe most of all: they make your build look cool
I develop Java software in my spare time.
When I started programming in Java a couple of years ago,
I thought that maybe I could make applications and applets that people would actually use.
Granted that my crappy applet isn't the best one around, but when you see that your site got 30000 hits, and only 5000 played your game, you start thinking that maybe this isn't all your fault.
I don't know how many times I've explained to people how they go about to download the newest JRE.
Today, I would say that there are extremely few shareware/freeware utility applications written in Java especially in light of it's wide use in the industry, and the main reason for this is that they basically require a Java programmer to install them.
No JVM is better than a crappy old one, because then people will have to download the newest JRE the first time they come across an applet; this way, maybe we Java programmers can start utilizing the 1.2+ API instead of restricting ourselves to the 1.1 API for compatibility (which is really insane, because the 1.2 has been around since 1998 and is ten times better).
Whatever the cause, the Java language has definitely suffered from the lack of standardized and widespread VM software.
"The government had cited the investigation of benefit fraud rings and pirate radio stations as two examples where the new powers would be used."
About time! Pirate radio stations has been a scourge to this country for too long I tell you, TOO LONG!
I agree that it would probably be possible to quite easily kill any P2P network; imagine one of the nodes in any Gnutella-type network sending faked information all over the place or something similar, or some kind of malignant Direct Connect client.
But let's say that the music industry/whoever did this, would it be legal just because P2P networks are "possibly used" for distributing copyrighted material?
I don't see the difference between sinking someones Direct Connect hub and launching a DoS attack against a webserver.
...an excuse for that weird bearded guy in Twin Peaks to buy new a new pair of glasses.
Environmental science is pretty damn complex. We don't have the statistical models and processing power to even predict tomorrows weather accurately. The scientists are basically throwing guesses around. Maybe global warming is caused by an increase of carbon-dioxide in the athmosphere. Maybe a sufficiently large amount of carbon-dioxide will have the exact opposite effect. What we do know is that Earth currently is in equilibrium. If the balance is disturbed, a new equilibrium will be found. Some scientists will say that this new balance just means malaria in Quebec and some new places to spend your vacation. The truth is, this is just a guess. It is also equally possible that the new balance means ice-covered landmasses and an athmosphere with 2% oxygen. Maybe I can sit alone on my ass in my Chevrolet Impala and drive to work every day, and keep the engine running when I stop at the McDonald's drive-in, and we'll all be alright anyway. Who knows? I for one though, am not willing to gamble with Mother Nature.