If an atomic clock is your most accurate timepiece then how on earth can you tell if something is more accurate?
Can someone explain?
Also , given that a second is defined in terms of the ceasium atom as used in atomic clocks then surely anything that deviates from this is by definition LESS accurate (if you see what I mean)?
So far in fact that its its being swamped by the waves of derision. I can't believe anyone at MS seriously believes that whats a good UI for a handheld keyboard free tablet with touch interface is a good UI for a desktop corporate PC with a mouse. Sure, the old XP/7 style UI can be used but why should you have to dig around for it, why isn't it the default and why should app developers have to decide whether to develop for Metro or "Legacy" Windows? Sorry , this makes no sense - MS have seriously fscked up this time. I'm sure under the covers that Win8 is a very professional OS , but the Metro GUI is going to kill it in MS's cash cow sector - ie corporate unless they sort the mess out now. Many corps are only now considering Win7, there isn't a cat in hells chance of them considering Win8 with a Metro interface.
"Win 9x (95/95 OSR2/98/98SE/ME) was overall a steaming pile of dung."
Win 95 was pretty good for its time as far as MIcrosoft goes. Believe me, if you'd had to use Win 3.1 for any length of time you'd have worshipped that Win95 CD when it showed up. Ok , compared to any unix OS or even OS/2 it was shit, but compared to what MS did before it was a step change.
"One of the advantages of learning a language is that it is easy."
For you maybe, not for me. I spent 6 months trying to learn german 5 days a week because I was visiting there on holiday. Got nowhere. Some people have a talent for learning languages, others don't.
"All over the world there are amazingly stupid people who can speak their native language fluently"
Thats because children are coached in their own language 7 days a week 12 hours a day and yet it still takes 5 years until they can put together even a rudimentary sentence.
They usually end up in prison. Its only a tiny minority of them that end up doing well and thats probably despite rather than because of their mental state. If you think all CEOs are like that then I'm afraid you've been watching too much TV, most of them are just normal people who worked hard and - in part - got lucky or knew the right people.
"Come up with a less polluting way to get into space, we'll certainly listen to you."
It didn't go into space. Helium balloons can go just as high using zero fuel.
"come up with a rocket system that can move cargo along a 60-mile track in less than 30 seconds, compared to a truck that'd take an hour to do it, I still come out ahead even though the rocket pollutes more per second than the truck"
Unlikely. Say the truck does 2 mpg - that'll be 30 gallons of fuel. There is no way that a rocket would get even close to using that little fuel to push 40 tons 60 miles along the ground at sea level.
Sure, but when it is running its approximately 3600/30 = 120 times more polluting than a vehicle that weighs something like 200 times its weight. Those are not good figures for any form of propulsion.
Various shells store command history as a.[shell name]_history file in the users home directory which can be left between sessions. Thats happened for years and root can view that too.
Sure, this may be a bug but frankly its a non issue.
There's nothing incompetent about it junior, its the way most large companies do things these days. When you leave school and get a job you'll find that out.
... in 30 seconds this tiny little rocket manages to output almost the same amount of pollutants as a 40 ton truck produces in an hour? And you think thats clean??
I've nothing against this guy and his hobby, it looks fun, but please, lets not pretend that rockets are the slightest bit enviromentally friendly!
Well obviously if you alter the kernel code and intergrate the language with your modifications then you can do anything you want. Thats slightly different to what we were discussing.
... the Windows OS gets infected by a drive by web injection. How many more decades will MS continue to produce OS software thats this vulnerable? Yes I know the kernel user security is fine , but thats no use if the surrounding subsystems and apps just bypass it via administrator all the time.
You've completely missed the point. If someone has written a hash table library in C (which they have - google) then it won't be much harder to use or take many more lines of code on your part than the python equivalent.
"Nope, it's Linux. The mapping/slicing of Erlang thread to OS thread is indeed done by the Erlang runtime"
In which case it'll still be relying on the linux threading subsystem to do all the thread CPU assignment and other thread management tasks. It won't have any choice in the matter.
"Otherwise you wouldn't be using your cell phone"
I'm not sure if you believe that all base station code is written in erlang but I can assure you it isn't.
"Erlang is industry, through and through."
Erlang is telecoms, specifically Ericsson. Its barely used anywhere else.
"You obviously don't know much about Erlang."
I only know what I've read about it , however I do know about unix operating system kernels.
Anyway , your homepage states you work with Ericsson so you're hardly unbiased in this discussion.
Unless we're talking about an OS specifically written to run erlang then yes , in Erlang. It won't have a choice in the matter. The OS and only the OS creates and assigns system threads. If erlang wants to do its own internal timeslicing inside its runtime and call each context a thread then fine, but thats not an OS thread and it won't get a choice about which CPU they run on. If you don't believe me try it on Windows or Unix sometime.
When you say "built into the language" you mean someone has done the hard work for you in the python C source code. So in theory you could pull that C code out of python, roll it into a library and call it from a small C program. Or does that not count?
"Of course you can write your 100 lines of C in a library and say "hey, I'm only calling a library", but in Python what you can do in one line of ad-hoc code can take 100s of lines of ad-hoc C code"
Python is effectively 1 big C library given thats what its written in, so if you exclude using libraries from your argument then you can't use python to start with. High level languages are generally nothing more than a load of libraries rolled into an interpreter or runtime.
If those are real threads as opposed to the runtime doing timeslicing itself, erlang at some point it'll still have to interact with the OS threading subsystem. And when it does it'll still be down to the OS to decide what thread runs where.
"Posix threads are much too heavy weight."
I'm not sure what you mean by heavyweight - on unix they're just a wrapper over the OS ABI.
"And a typical "telecom router" (like the AXD 301) Erlang implementation typically has a million or more running."
Apples and oranges. A telecom router will be running a specialised OS which is probably tightly intergrated with erlang. You won't be getting that sort of threading out of erlang on an x86 running windows or linux. If you put C on that router you'd probably get the same performance.
"These projects *also* contain a lot of C, it's just used where it's good, i.e. for device drivers and stuff like that. Not code with any "intelligence" in it."
Plenty of intelligent systems are written C/C++ - eg high speed trading. Sounds to me like you've spent too long in an ivory tower.
Slashdot Mirror
If an atomic clock is your most accurate timepiece then how on earth can you tell if something is more accurate?
Can someone explain?
Also , given that a second is defined in terms of the ceasium atom as used in atomic clocks then surely anything that deviates from this is by definition LESS accurate (if you see what I mean)?
So far in fact that its its being swamped by the waves of derision. I can't believe anyone at MS seriously believes that whats a good UI for a handheld keyboard free tablet with touch interface is a good UI for a desktop corporate PC with a mouse. Sure, the old XP/7 style UI can be used but why should you have to dig around for it, why isn't it the default and why should app developers have to decide whether to develop for Metro or "Legacy" Windows? Sorry , this makes no sense - MS have seriously fscked up this time. I'm sure under the covers that Win8 is a very professional OS , but the Metro GUI is going to kill it in MS's cash cow sector - ie corporate unless they sort the mess out now. Many corps are only now considering Win7, there isn't a cat in hells chance of them considering Win8 with a Metro interface.
"Win 9x (95/95 OSR2/98/98SE/ME) was overall a steaming pile of dung."
Win 95 was pretty good for its time as far as MIcrosoft goes. Believe me, if you'd had to use Win 3.1 for any length of time you'd have worshipped that Win95 CD when it showed up. Ok , compared to any unix OS or even OS/2 it was shit, but compared to what MS did before it was a step change.
"One of the advantages of learning a language is that it is easy."
For you maybe, not for me. I spent 6 months trying to learn german 5 days a week because I was visiting there on holiday. Got nowhere. Some people have a talent for learning languages, others don't.
"All over the world there are amazingly stupid people who can speak their native language fluently"
Thats because children are coached in their own language 7 days a week 12 hours a day and yet it still takes 5 years until they can put together even a rudimentary sentence.
Well if according to those experiments everyone is a sociopath then the definition is meaningless and the whole argument moot.
... that they're currently shipping in in vast quantities? I'm sure thats doing wonders for their CO2 footprint.
They usually end up in prison. Its only a tiny minority of them that end up doing well and thats probably despite rather than because of their mental state. If you think all CEOs are like that then I'm afraid you've been watching too much TV, most of them are just normal people who worked hard and - in part - got lucky or knew the right people.
You mean the individuals of species that live in large groups need to get on with each other and not attack and kill each other all the time?
Who knew?
(Well, almost all biologists and anthropologists for decades, but hey)
"Come up with a less polluting way to get into space, we'll certainly listen to you."
It didn't go into space. Helium balloons can go just as high using zero fuel.
"come up with a rocket system that can move cargo along a 60-mile track in less than 30 seconds, compared to a truck that'd take an hour to do it, I still come out ahead even though the rocket pollutes more per second than the truck"
Unlikely. Say the truck does 2 mpg - that'll be 30 gallons of fuel. There is no way that a rocket would get even close to using that little fuel to push 40 tons 60 miles along the ground at sea level.
Sure, but when it is running its approximately 3600/30 = 120 times more polluting than a vehicle that weighs something like 200 times its weight. Those are not good figures for any form of propulsion.
Various shells store command history as a .[shell name]_history file in the users home directory which can be left between sessions. Thats happened for years and root can view that too.
Sure, this may be a bug but frankly its a non issue.
If someone has physically stolen your computer then the thief being able to read old terminal sessions is the least of your worries.
There's nothing incompetent about it junior, its the way most large companies do things these days. When you leave school and get a job you'll find that out.
... in 30 seconds this tiny little rocket manages to output almost the same amount of pollutants as a 40 ton truck produces in an hour? And you think thats clean??
I've nothing against this guy and his hobby, it looks fun, but please, lets not pretend that rockets are the slightest bit enviromentally friendly!
... to have videos that work through company firewalls - ie use port 80? youtube can manage it along with dozens of other sites. Why can't you??
Wordpress is the vector.
Fscking moron.
"It's not a "stock" kernel."
Well obviously if you alter the kernel code and intergrate the language with your modifications then you can do anything you want. Thats slightly different to what we were discussing.
... the Windows OS gets infected by a drive by web injection. How many more decades will MS continue to produce OS software thats this vulnerable? Yes I know the kernel user security is fine , but thats no use if the surrounding subsystems and apps just bypass it via administrator all the time.
You've completely missed the point. If someone has written a hash table library in C (which they have - google) then it won't be much harder to use or take many more lines of code on your part than the python equivalent.
"Nope, it's Linux. The mapping/slicing of Erlang thread to OS thread is indeed done by the Erlang runtime"
In which case it'll still be relying on the linux threading subsystem to do all the thread CPU assignment and other thread management tasks. It won't have any choice in the matter.
"Otherwise you wouldn't be using your cell phone"
I'm not sure if you believe that all base station code is written in erlang but I can assure you it isn't.
"Erlang is industry, through and through."
Erlang is telecoms, specifically Ericsson. Its barely used anywhere else.
"You obviously don't know much about Erlang."
I only know what I've read about it , however I do know about unix operating system kernels.
Anyway , your homepage states you work with Ericsson so you're hardly unbiased in this discussion.
"Not in Erlang"
Unless we're talking about an OS specifically written to run erlang then yes , in Erlang. It won't have a choice in the matter. The OS and only the OS creates and assigns system threads. If erlang wants to do its own internal timeslicing inside its runtime and call each context a thread then fine, but thats not an OS thread and it won't get a choice about which CPU they run on. If you don't believe me try it on Windows or Unix sometime.
When you say "built into the language" you mean someone has done the hard work for you in the python C source code. So in theory you could pull that C code out of python, roll it into a library and call it from a small C program. Or does that not count?
"Of course you can write your 100 lines of C in a library and say "hey, I'm only calling a library", but in Python what you can do in one line of ad-hoc code can take 100s of lines of ad-hoc C code"
Python is effectively 1 big C library given thats what its written in, so if you exclude using libraries from your argument then you can't use python to start with. High level languages are generally nothing more than a load of libraries rolled into an interpreter or runtime.
"Erlang even uses it's own threading model"
If those are real threads as opposed to the runtime doing timeslicing itself, erlang at some point it'll still have to interact with the OS threading subsystem. And when it does it'll still be down to the OS to decide what thread runs where.
"Posix threads are much too heavy weight."
I'm not sure what you mean by heavyweight - on unix they're just a wrapper over the OS ABI.
"And a typical "telecom router" (like the AXD 301) Erlang implementation typically has a million or more running."
Apples and oranges. A telecom router will be running a specialised OS which is probably tightly intergrated with erlang. You won't be getting that sort of threading out of erlang on an x86 running windows or linux. If you put C on that router you'd probably get the same performance.
"These projects *also* contain a lot of C, it's just used where it's good, i.e. for device drivers and stuff like that. Not code with any "intelligence" in it."
Plenty of intelligent systems are written C/C++ - eg high speed trading. Sounds to me like you've spent too long in an ivory tower.
"Back in the real world, threads need to communicate and they need to share data"
Which is down to the OS process model. Get a clue FFS.