> Imagine if we'd been using "quadrance" and "spread" for years - and then
> some bright spark suggested calculated using sines and cosines.
It would be an amazing breakthrough, because there are some very important things which are simpler and easier using sines and cosines. Read some of the other comments about the effect of rational geometry to calculus. Sines and cosines show up all over physics and more specialized descriptions of the real world (chemistry, thermodynamics, electrical engineering, etc).
Many people have been asking the question (and I haven't seen anybody posting an answer) about what is really easier to do using quadrance and spread that we don't already use some similar form for?
A few notes:
Linux kernel: 2.4.21-sgi240rp04051808_10074
From df, a 1 TB ram disk:
none 1023700704 0 1023700704 0%/dev/shm
From/etc/redhat-release:
Red Hat Linux Advanced Server release 2.1AS (Derry)
The machine is actually not nice to work on. It is prone to frequent short freezes (2-15 seconds long; about one every 2-3 minutes, although not evenly spaced out).
> That being said, it should look the same on every browser, YMMV but to me it doesn't. Opera looks > confused, IE looks the same, Konqueror and Galeon look as good as normal. One geek's opinion....
For me the page looks significantly worse in both Opera (my normal browser) and IE. In Opera, the font of the middle column is too big, making things look funny. In IE, the font of the middle column is too small, making it hard to read.
I have had a similar problem with Wired's website since they switched over to their new format as well.
Earth Star Voyager: While the computers and special effects are quite dated, this still rates as one of my favorite movies of all time. Try finding this one at your local (or even non-local) video store. Amazon.com has never heard of it. Blockbuster.com lists it as unavailable for purchase or rent.
A better question would be "who can deny having been (directly) influenced..." since literature is part of the makeup of who we are there is no way to deny it.
I must agree with this. I have been strongly influenced by books that I have read: mysteries (Hardy Boys, Encyclopedia Brown, McGurk, Three Investigators, etc), fantasy (Dragon Lance and similar), science fiction (Asimov, Niven, and many, many others), and non-fiction (things like "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers", "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman", etc). In addition to "real" books think about magazines, newspapers, etc.
While I have certainly been influenced by TV, movies, and video games as well, books have always held my interest much deeper.
When people ask me about using Java, I always give them a simple answer: it is much nicer to program in then any other language that I use (except for API changes over different versions), but it takes way too much memory and is too slow for programs that I would use regularly.
The memo agrees with me and lists the huge memory requirements as the number 2 problem (number 1 is that Java programs require the JVM to run).
Considering that compiling Java into a native executable would seriously improve its performance (and remove the JVM requirement), I wonder why the memo doesn't discuss that possibility?
> At least right now what type of applications would this be good for? Do we really need that
> much storage?
Yes, we really need that much storage. I am currently working on a data mining/analysis project. We currently are looking at multi-terabyte datasets from astro and climate simulations.
Three dimensional super nova explosion simulations take around 50 terabytes at the current resolution. This is small compared to the petabytes of data needed for biological simulations.
Most of the discussion here appears to be over the question of whether the GPL is appropriate for tax-payer funded research, and many people have suggested a BSD type license. I haven't seen anybody address the issue of when there isn't any choice.
I am currently working on a federally funded project that is built upon GPL'd code, and cannot be released under any other license. This is a multi-year project, and so if in the future we were banned from releasing our software under GPL, we couldn't release it at all - to do so would violate the GPL license of the underlying software.
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> Imagine if we'd been using "quadrance" and "spread" for years - and then
> some bright spark suggested calculated using sines and cosines.
It would be an amazing breakthrough, because there are some very important things which are simpler and easier using sines and cosines. Read some of the other comments about the effect of rational geometry to calculus. Sines and cosines show up all over physics and more specialized descriptions of the real world (chemistry, thermodynamics, electrical engineering, etc).
Many people have been asking the question (and I haven't seen anybody posting an answer) about what is really easier to do using quadrance and spread that we don't already use some similar form for?
I am happy to say that I have worked, and continue to work on the current state of the art:
/dev/shm /etc/redhat-release:
http://www.ccs.ornl.gov/Ram/Ram.html
A few notes:
Linux kernel: 2.4.21-sgi240rp04051808_10074
From df, a 1 TB ram disk:
none 1023700704 0 1023700704 0%
From
Red Hat Linux Advanced Server release 2.1AS (Derry)
The machine is actually not nice to work on. It is prone to frequent short freezes (2-15 seconds long; about one every 2-3 minutes, although not evenly spaced out).
> That being said, it should look the same on every browser, YMMV but to me it doesn't. Opera looks
> confused, IE looks the same, Konqueror and Galeon look as good as normal. One geek's opinion....
For me the page looks significantly worse in both Opera (my normal browser) and IE. In Opera, the font of the middle column is too big, making things look funny. In IE, the font of the middle column is too small, making it hard to read.
I have had a similar problem with Wired's website since they switched over to their new format as well.
Earth Star Voyager:
While the computers and special effects are quite dated, this still rates as one of my favorite movies of all time.
Try finding this one at your local (or even non-local) video store. Amazon.com has never heard of it. Blockbuster.com lists it as unavailable for purchase or rent.
I must agree with this. I have been strongly influenced by books that I have read: mysteries (Hardy Boys, Encyclopedia Brown, McGurk, Three Investigators, etc), fantasy (Dragon Lance and similar), science fiction (Asimov, Niven, and many, many others), and non-fiction (things like "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers", "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman", etc). In addition to "real" books think about magazines, newspapers, etc.
While I have certainly been influenced by TV, movies, and video games as well, books have always held my interest much deeper.
When people ask me about using Java, I always give them a simple answer: it is much nicer to program in then any other language that I use (except for API changes over different versions), but it takes way too much memory and is too slow for programs that I would use regularly.
The memo agrees with me and lists the huge memory requirements as the number 2 problem (number 1 is that Java programs require the JVM to run).
Considering that compiling Java into a native executable would seriously improve its performance (and remove the JVM requirement), I wonder why the memo doesn't discuss that possibility?
> At least right now what type of applications would this be good for? Do we really need that
> much storage?
Yes, we really need that much storage. I am currently working on a data mining/analysis project. We currently are looking at multi-terabyte datasets from astro and climate simulations.
Three dimensional super nova explosion simulations take around 50 terabytes at the current resolution. This is small compared to the petabytes of data needed for biological simulations.
Look at http://sdm.lbl.gov/sdmcenter/tasks.htm for some discussion of why we need huge storage capacities (and some of the other problems involved).
Here is an analysis which is biased from both sides: http://www.vpc.org/studies/unincont.htm
I hope it proves helpful.
Most of the discussion here appears to be over the question of whether the GPL is appropriate for tax-payer funded research, and many people have suggested a BSD type license. I haven't seen anybody address the issue of when there isn't any choice.
I am currently working on a federally funded project that is built upon GPL'd code, and cannot be released under any other license. This is a multi-year project, and so if in the future we were banned from releasing our software under GPL, we couldn't release it at all - to do so would violate the GPL license of the underlying software.