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User: Chris+Burke

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  1. Re:Those snappy Nobel guys. on Dan Shechtman Wins Chemistry Nobel For Quasicrystals · · Score: 0

    He obviously didn't try that hard, as we are still there. He IS commander and chief. He could bring them all back with the stroke of a pen if he wanted to. But he doesn't. Too profitable.

    No, too rational. There was already an agreement in place for Iraq, that was a reasonable time table to slowly withdraw and allow the Iraqi government to slowly take over and demonstrate it had the stability to remain after U.S. forces left. With U.S. forces not participating in police duties in the cities as they were, the situation has deteriorated some, but not like it would have if there had been an instant withdrawal in January 2009 that could have brought the country back towards the civil war that was narrowly avoided. As huge an irresponsible cock-up as the Iraq adventure was, just dropping it like a hot potato would have been equally irresponsible. Realistically looking at the situation as it stood then, this is a reasonably good ending.

    Similarly, abandoning Afghanistan and letting the Taliban just re-take it would have been irresponsible, as in a nightmare for everyone who celebrated the end of their rule and then would face retribution. Trying to find a reasonable solution that could maintain what had already been accomplished was the rational thing to do. Unfortunately the inherent problem of Pakistan's involvement has made this difficult, and the end result here is not looking nearly as good. This is the reason the President hasn't made a timetable for withdrawal -- because there's no strict timetable that we can be sure our progress will be maintained. I think this is a mistake and a timetable should be created, because even this highly watered-down definition of "success" may not happen in any bounded time frame.

    Anyone that thinks he is any different from Republicans is fooling themselves. Any and all "mainstream" candidates are exactly the same, and are all bought and paid for by the same monied interests.

    While I readily agree that many of Obama's actual policies are much more conservative than any liberal would want or any conservative would admit, that statement is basically just saying "I either lack or am deliberately eschewing the ability to destinguish." I will never do this in the name of cynicism-for-cynicism's-sake, so I don't have to think or distinguish or pick between realistic options.

    I'm a realist. In reality, the candidates are very different, but typically not in the way that would buck the system entirely. That's not going to happen just because you pick the 'right' President.

    Dennis Kucinich for the liberals, and Ron Paul for the (true) conservatives. I would be happy to have either as President, because they can be counted on to do what they think is best for the people, not what is best for their donors.

    You mean Ron Paul could be counted on to either:
    1) accomplish nothing because they could not get Congress to agree, and they would not compromise in order to accomplish it. They very thing you see as an advantage is a terrible disadvantage in a politician -- even the imaginary "ideal" ones. :P
    2) accomplish disaster by doing stupid things like just abandoning the Iraqi and Afghan governments instantly.

    Sticking to principles by ignoring what has already transpired and what the consequences of those principles would be is exactly the problem we had with Bush II, but I guess it's okay if you like the principles of the guy better. I guess then reality doesn't matter.

    Oh and Kuccinich is not the example I would put opposite Paul. I'd pick Russ Feingold for that. I love the man as a Senator, but he'd make a lousy President.

  2. Re:Those snappy Nobel guys. on Dan Shechtman Wins Chemistry Nobel For Quasicrystals · · Score: 1

    Assuming they give the prize to the persons primary accomplishment. Often times you find the committee doing things like giving the prize to Einstein for his work on the photoelectric effect rather than for his work on relativity. He won it for relativity, but they awarded it to a less controversial body of work.

    But just to be clear -- Einstein deserved it for the photoelectric effect, had that been his only accomplishment at the time of the award.

  3. Installation is fine, it's the stability on AMD Brings New Desktop Chips Down To 65W · · Score: 1

    With ATi/AMD... not so much; more often than not, trying to install proprietary driver is like pulling teeth out of a pitbull's mouth. Even I get it to install, it only sort-of-kind-of works. Trying to uninstall it is downright insane.

    Having recently switched to an ATI card, using Ubuntu, to these observations I say LOL no, yeah pretty much, and LOL no.

    Installation is simple. System-> Additional Drivers -> Enable ATI proprietary drivers -> Reboot (this part sucks but oh wel).

    Removal is the same procedure except the button says "Disable" instead of "Enable". There is absolutely nothing insane about it at all.

    Now as far as the "works" part, that's a different issue... It mostly works, and when it works it works excellently, but then sometimes it just craps out on a game. Sometimes there's a workaround, sometimes not.

    For example, Minecraft just crashes instantly when it tries to render the first frame of an actual level. Now that the main menu has a fuzzy rendering of a Minecraft level as the background, it crashes at the main menu.

    I found a workaround though -- Install the ATI drivers, reboot to activate them, then remove the ATI drivers, then don't reboot. Then the game runs perfectly stably, though the desktop flickers through (especially if there are other windows underneath Minecraft).

    So that's an annoying way to play the game.

    I'm hoping that by the time I want to upgrade (or the card dies, which is why I replaced my old Nvidia card), the drivers have improved. Otherwise, it's probably back to Nvidia.

    I like the idea of having actual choice in Linux video card vendor. :P

  4. Re:Why don't the nutters think THIS is faked? on New Close-Ups of Saturn's Geyser Moon · · Score: 1

    I'm curious: why do they think it's fake? Are they flat-earth creationists or something? Or do they simply believe it's too expensive to launch an actual probe into the outer solar system? What's their motivation?

    Hypothesis:

    Because being the only one to know the SECRET TRUTH makes them feel superior. Tearing down others' accomplishments as fakes makes up for the lack of accomplishment in their own life.

    But it's probably something dumber than that, like the flat-earther thing.

  5. Re:Rent-a-cop oversteps his bounds in shock horror on Theater Professor's Firefly Poster Declared Threatening · · Score: 1

    So, to summarise, UK law very roughly says that if you kill somebody they better be facing you, awake, and armed. Then it's self defence and you're the good guy.

    Mal does subscribe to a self-defense-only view of applied violence, but it is definitely not one that that matches the U.K. laws on the subject, or the U.S. ones for that matter. It's much more broad and open-ended.

    In the 2nd episode, Mal kicks Niskas' henchman through Serenity's engine while the man was tied up, because he merely promised to track down and kill Mal at some point in the future (and obviously wasn't joking since he really had tried to kill Mal just prior). While I would certainly say it falls in the category of self-defense, both U.S. and U.K. law would still view that as murder since he was not in any immediate danger. Someone merely threatening you with no opportunity to carry out that threat should be reported to the authorities, not killed.

    Obviously Mal didn't really have that luxury. :)

  6. Re:Rent-a-cop oversteps his bounds in shock horror on Theater Professor's Firefly Poster Declared Threatening · · Score: 1

    But, the Operative was already established as someone you can't truly reason with (through dialogue with Shepherd Book)--it's his way or not at all. He's a believer and willfully ignorant of why he's been ordered to do something.

    I'm not sure how much it had to do with Mal thinking the Operative couldn't be reasoned with, as much as knowing that he was a threat to them who intended to drag River back to their little medical torture lab.

    Mal doesn't really stick to the whole "Only if you're facing me and armed" thing. He regularly takes whatever advantage he can against people he knows are out to harm him or his crew. The sentiment was more that it would be a matter of self-defense. "If someone tries to kill you, you kill them back!" might be a more accurate and succinct way of putting Mal's philosophy on violence. :)

  7. Re:Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain on Intel's RISC-y Business · · Score: 1

    Microcode is implemented as a ROM in x86 processors. There is usually a small amount of programmable ucode-patch memory to allow BIOS to update ucode to fix bugs or work around performance issues. Implementing the entire microcode as a programmable memory would be needlessly wasteful.

  8. Re:3 orders of magnitude better than the lump on Graphene and Quantum Hall Effect Could Help Redefine Metrics · · Score: 2

    I don't know why AC was modded down. A kg is whatever you define as a kg. It could be the weight of my refrigerator

    Yeah, but if the kg is defined as the mass of your refrigerator, then I can't arrive at the kg using just the definition. I also need your refrigerator. I can't build a refrigerator of my own and use that to calibrate my scale, because without access to your refrigerator mine is going to mass differently than yours, and the unit is defined in terms of yours and yours alone.

    Whereas when the definition is based on a physical property of the universe, anyone anywhere can recreate the unit and calibrate their instruments without having access to a particular artifact. Using just the definition.

    So it is quite different.

    The AC was making a joke and didn't deserve to be modded down.

  9. Re:I guess I always assumed... on Graphene and Quantum Hall Effect Could Help Redefine Metrics · · Score: 1

    On of my cow-orkers was stunned when I told him how you initially set an atomic clock. (Strip away the jargon, and you're just referencing against Flamsteed's stick - when the stick has no shadow, it's noon.)

    So this only works at the equator, eh? We need to find a better metric, or Ecuador and the other equatorial nations will hold this over us like the Sword of Damocles!

  10. Re:3 orders of magnitude better than the lump on Graphene and Quantum Hall Effect Could Help Redefine Metrics · · Score: 1

    And what's the definition of a gram? 1/1000 kilogram?

    1,000,000 micrograms. The microgram is defined as 1/1000 milligrams. The milligram is defined as 1,000,000,000 picograms. The picogram is defined as shut up.

  11. Re:So Metric will change..again. on Graphene and Quantum Hall Effect Could Help Redefine Metrics · · Score: 1

    What have I missed?

    That the pound is both a unit of force and a unit of mass.

    Wonderfully confusing, no?

  12. Re:I guess I always assumed... on Graphene and Quantum Hall Effect Could Help Redefine Metrics · · Score: 1

    And so in the end, through many intermediate steps, your kitchen scales are calibrated against the single kilogram in Paris.

    The compounding error, it burns... it burns!

    Heh. Not that it's really a terrible way of doing things. Just glad to see there's enough confidence in an experimentally reproduceable metric to replace the 'lump of metal defined to be 1kg' model.

  13. Re:Eternally marked until forgiven by God--ie neve on FBI Leaves Cleared Names On Terrorist Watch List · · Score: 1

    Since there's no accusation that doesn't have some grain of truth, the accusation is enough to prove guilt.

    And I guess that statement itself counts as such an accusation. Call it circular logic, but at least it's internally consistent!

  14. Re:This will lead to nothing but confusion on Sesame Street Begins Teaching Math and Science · · Score: 2

    The best use for a cookie sheet is to fill it with cookie before cooking them and then you just cut them into squares. It gives you maximum cookie.

    If kids aren't learning this, Sesame Street should be teaching them.

  15. Re:This will lead to nothing but confusion on Sesame Street Begins Teaching Math and Science · · Score: 1

    But wouldn't you rather have cookie squared?!

  16. Re:Weird on MRI Magnets Cause Nystagmus · · Score: 2

    It's telling you use the bullshit argument of not knowing "precisely" where sensitivity ends when we're talking about effects that are orders of magnitude apart.

    Of course I'll happily change my tune when someone can demonstrate a measurable effect on the body from a magnetic bracelet (why not headbands since it's the brain that is known to be affected?), or sensitivity to a Wi-fi router or cell phone tower in a double-blind study. So far such studies have shown no effect, ergo its bullshit.

    But you're right -- surely not everyone is equally sensitive. Maybe by some coincidence everyone who thinks they're more sensitive turns actually turns out to be less sensitive!

  17. Re:Weird on MRI Magnets Cause Nystagmus · · Score: 1

    I thought magnetic fields had no effect on living tissue?

    Magnetic fields don't have the effects you and the horseshit magnetic healing bracelets and EM-"sensitives" claim it has.

    It might be easy to mistake that for "no effect under any circumstance" when you're already not worrying about reality.

  18. Re:Let's not forget... on Will Quantum Computing Make It Out of the Lab? · · Score: 1

    2^1000 is a number with more than 300 digits and most certainly qualifies as magic to me.

    And? You don't need 2^1000 qubits (or bits) to deal with 1000-binary-digit numbers. You need 1000. Your computer right now can easily handle such numbers.

    There is simply not enough matter on earth available to build a powerful enough computer based on any other known principal.

    Powerful enough to do what? Factor 1000 bit numbers? Well that's a problem with classical computers. Not an inherent principle of the universe, because the universe doesn't operate on classical principles.

    In my mind arbitrary scaling of n^qbits is in the same category as denying the conservation of energy. I don't believe in something for nothing. I reject the idea it is possible to extract ungodly amounts of computation from the universe simply because it smacks of something for nothing.

    "Arbitrary" as in unending, no, but there's little reason to think they couldn't be scaled exponentially for as long as we've done the same with transistors. Unless, as TFA says, we discover some fundamental principle that prevents it. And no, Conservation of Energy is not that principle.

    You seem to think that what matters for determining the feasibility of a quantum computer is the amount of classical computation, and thus size of classical computer, that would be required to perform an equivalent computation. It isn't. That's irrelevant. Quantum computers operate under a different computational model than classic computers. That's why in algorithm classes, when talking about algorithmic complexity, they always include the caveat "on a deterministic computer". QCs are non-deterministic.

    That doesn't make them magic. There are still things a non-deterministic computer can't do any more efficiently than a deterministic one. However there are things that it can do more efficiently. And what constitutes "ungodly" amounts of computation is based on the kind of computation you're doing. There's nothing ungodly about the computation performed in a 1000 qubit machine factoring a 1000 bit integer.

  19. Re:well... on Vision Problems For Some Returning Astronauts · · Score: 1

    To me, egotistical is believing that what you THINK makes someone qualified outweighs how they ACTUALLY perform.

    This is exactly the mentality the OP was talking about. It's bullshit. "Because of X you can't do Y as well as someone without X." Well, if that's true, then when you ask them to do Y, they won't be able to it as well whether they lied about having X or not.

    Some astronaut lies and so avoids one of your screens. Then, in the actual training and testing they undergo in preparation for a mission, their performance indicates that they are the most qualified and so they are chosen to go on the mission.

    It is not egotistical to want to be given a fair shot and demonstrate their abilities and prove they are qualified in spite of not meeting your criterion.

    Egotistical is saying that despite their performance they were actually less qualified, rather than admitting that your screening process was bullshit. They were ACTUALLY more qualified, but you were so arrogant as to call reality the fraud.

  20. Re:so let me get this straight... on Vision Problems For Some Returning Astronauts · · Score: 2

    Because lasers are magic and can fix all problems!

    To paraphrase an old adage:

    If lasers aren't solving your problem, then you just aren't using enough of them.

  21. Re:That small? on CERN Experiment Indicates Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos · · Score: 1

    How does an EPR bridge figure in?

    I have no idea how an actual wormhole would work out. I just know that going faster than light according to some reference frame -- even if you take a geometric shortcut through space-time to do it -- ends up looking like time travel in some situations.

  22. Re:That small? on CERN Experiment Indicates Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos · · Score: 1

    I don't think Einstein ruled out Star Trek warp speed. Indeed I think it's relativity that warp speed depends on. Warping space to shrink the distance between points then traveled in less time at the same speed.

    Stark Trek Warp Drive makes superficial use of general relativity to explain how it works. But it has the same causality-breaking implications as any method of FTL travel/communication. It doesn't matter how the FTL communication occurs -- warp drive, worm hole, subspace, ansible, or palantir -- from some reference frame you will have appeared to travel back in time. So either causality is wrong, or relativity (as in the principle that there is no privileged reference frame) is wrong.

  23. Re:Who cares about sRGB? on Spectrophotometer Analysis of Crayons · · Score: 1

    Well, what's cool is that the first image in the blog post is a graph of the spectra of each of the crayons.

  24. Re:Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain on Intel's RISC-y Business · · Score: 1

    Not true. The majority of common instructions are decoded directly by the decoders. Only more complex instructions are implemented in microcode.

    Unless you just meant "implemented in microcode" as in "decomposed into micro-ops", which is true; technically even a pure load instruction is decoded into a single load micro-op. But microcode usually means a ROM that is read from as a type of instruction memory to get all the micro-ops that make up one CISC instruction. That's only used for a subset of instructions.

  25. Re:RISC? on Intel's RISC-y Business · · Score: 1

    The mini example was a set of interlocked instructions, where the source operand of each is dependent upon the previous insn; thus everything is forced to be in-order. Compilers are smart enough not to do this, and the real difference in a 'wide' architecture is that it doesn't insert an interpreter (renaming, stalling, bubbling, etc..). The program ( compiler ) has to know that copying R1 to R2 has an N instruction latency before R2 is valid. If it tries to use R2 earlier, it gets junk.

    Yes, that sequence of instructions would have to executed sequentially whether for EPIC, Power, or x86, and compilers for any architecture know that they need to expose the maximum amount of ILP to the processor.

    However only compilers for EPIC need to know the latency of every operation, the number of each type of functional unit, and any slot restrictions that may apply, so that the VLIW instructions can be assembled optimally. Because only by doing so can the ILP be exploited. Otherwise, like in the example given, bubbles will occur.

    With a re-namer and out-of-order scheduler, as much ILP as the compiler can expose in however many instructions will fit in the processor's window can be exploited, automatically scheduled according to the availability and latency of each functional unit on that particular machine.

    The upshot is that the EPIC compiler has to do a lot more work to reach the same level of realised ILP as a non-EPIC compiler. It also has to know much more about the intimate details of the specific CPU being targeted. Meaning the binary will be distinctly sub-optimal for any other CPUs -- as opposed to marginally sub-optimal in the case of non-EPIC compilers. For the example given, if there were earlier or subsequent instructions visible in the window that were independent, then there may not be any bubbles at all.

    Those things which were supposed to make the compiler-centric world of EPIC better than other compilers and OoO schedulers, like branch predication which was one of the major touted features of the ISA, ended up not being worth much. Intel's own research showed that this feature was a modest positive gain on finely hand-tuned code, neutral with a very good compiler, and negative with a 'typical' compiler.

    Having the compiler have to manually do the work of an OoO scheduler in order to avoid bubbles is not a feature. But I mean it almost sounds like you think stalls are only a consequence of the 'interpreter', and don't occur on an EPIC machine.