The real world issue is that SQL has built in support for sorting and sorting algorithms in most big databases are highly optimized
This is why I do sorting in the db. Aesthetically, I would rather do it in object-land so that the logic is kept separate from the data, but obviously the db vendor has more hours to throw at optimisation than I do. Also, I can't assume that my code is the only client hitting the db -- the db may be able to cache common queries / sorts between multiple clients.
Quentin TARANTINO, USA
Enjoyed the scenes of carnage, but thought it would benefit from some colourful language and some dialogue lifted from the original Shaft.
Kathleen TURNER, USA
Told Moore it needed Danny DeVito to lighten things up a bit.
Tsui HARK, Vietnam
Thought it would have been better if Michael Moore had an indentical twin who was a martial arts expert. Hijinks ensue as Cheney can't tell one from the other in the final battle at an automated Mitsubishi production line.
Whether Iraq actually had a hand in 9/11 or not doesn't matter one damn to me.
I think it's worth giving a damn about, especially if our troops are being put at risk in Iraq. I think it's something many of the troops would give a damn about.
Of course, there is that troubling matter of the Iraqi Military Intelligence operative and member of the Fedayeen Saddam who escorted two of the 9/11 hijackers to their meeting in KL. What do you make of that?
Wait -- I thought you didn't give a damn? It's an interesting story, but I don't think it's too likely in the wake of the commisson's report. Got a (credible) link for me?
You're grossly oversimplifying the Commission's statement... and besides which, it seems pretty clear that the Commission itself jumped to conclusions.
To be fair, the commission did say that Bin Laden approached Saddam (in the 1990s), and was turned down. This supports their statement that Saddam was not involved in 9/11, via bankrolling or otherwise.
Why do you say the commission is jumping to conclusions? They've had twelve public hearing over two years -- it's not just an off the cuff statement. Check out their website: http://www.9-11commission.gov/
Yes, as are the people who supported them, bankrolled them, gave them safe harbor.
Sure.
But we're not seeking retribution for 9/11. We're not exacting punishment for a single act.
That may be your interpretation, but one of the ever-shifting reasons that Bush gave for attacking Iraq was a link with 9/11. The others being WMD and human rights abuses, both accusations that could be more meaningfully laid elsewhere (Nth Korea, Pakistan).
We're in a war against an ideology. Wherever a person commits an act of terrorism, we have an enemy. Wherever a person finances an act of terrorism, no matter who the target, we have an enemy.
Noble and quixotic words, but in practice, though, the actual fighting has been limited to Afghanistan and Iraq, and while Afghanistan may have financially supported and physically harboured Al-Qaeda, Iraq appears not to have done so.
Saddam personally bankrolled terrorism. He wrote checks to the families of murderers.
I've had a look at your link, and it claims that payments were made to familes of dead Palestinian suicide bombers. Unless this was some sort of magical time travelling money, the bombers in question were dead at the time and therefore unbankrollable. The only semi-credible reference I can find to this is at the BBC, and it attributes the accusation to Donald Rumsfeld. It's a fact that Arafat has funded militants, but it seems to only be Rumsfeld's speculation that Saddam ever funded Arafat.
Saddam planned assassinations of high-level US officials, including a former President.
This was after the first Gulf War, when Bush 1 attempted to kill Saddam. There was retaliation for the planned attempt on Bush at the time, as I recall -- Clinton got UN authorisation for a sustained cruise missile barrage on Iraqi intelligence HQ.
Saddam attacked our allies in the region, Qatar and Bahrain and Kuwait and the UAW and Israel.
Kuwait I'll give you, and perhaps Israel, but Qatar, Bahrain, UAE have not been attacked. If attacking Israel is an excuse for war, then why is the US not attacking Egypt, Syria etc?
Saddam provided aid and safe harbor to members of al-Qaida after the fall of the Taliban.
This is something that seems to be an allegation rather than a fact. Credible link welcome.
Saddam stockpiled weapons of mass destruction in contravention of US and UN surrender terms.
Really? Then why can't we find any? And why aren't we attacking
Now you're equating Iraq with 9/11. The two are unrelated, as the 9/11 comission has found. As is hopefully common knowledge, Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda are the culprits. They should be brought to justice for what they've done, and I certainly don't suggest we surrender to them.
What I am saying is that there is no reason for the west to be in Iraq. There's no 9/11 link. There's no WMD. (You can post some links to right wing blogs or magazines if you like, but the US govt hasn't actually been able to dig up any physical WMD on the ground). Saddam's government was dodgy, but no more so than, say, North Korea or Indonesia. (And North Korea actually admitted to having a WMD program to boot).
If you're uncomfortable with bringing the troops home, then perhaps they would be better used rooting out Al-Qaeda camps than dodging car bombs in Baghdad. Just a thought.
While we are allowed to talk about such things (and indeed are doing so now), I do think the OP has a point. 'Support our troops' is a non sequitir in a debate about whether we should be at war at all. Of course everyone wishes to support the troops who are risking their lives. The question is whether our leaders are justified those lives at risk.
Below is an example of the 'suppor our troops' meme as propaganda, from the Nuremburg trials. Apologies for the slight bending of Godwin's law.
"Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." -- Hermann Goering
I'd say a little bit of that goes to the labour cost of upgrading all those machines, and the rest goes to the retraining of staff. Two weeks of professional training could easily cost $2000.
Interesting. Well, I suppose if the great gurus bless it as 1, it has some merit. However, my understanding of the concept of a limiting value is that the sum never reaches the value. Dr Math seems to have a bet each way. From the page: http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/55748.htm l
.9 is not 1; neither is.999, nor.9999999999. In fact if you stop the
expansion of 9s at any finite point, the fraction you have (like.9999
= 9999/10000) is never equal to 1. But each time you add a 9, the
error is less. In fact, with each 9, the error is ten times smaller.
You can show (using calculus or other methods) that with a large
enough number of 9s in the expansion, you can get arbitrarily close to
1, and here's the key:
THERE IS NO OTHER NUMBER THAT THE SEQUENCE GETS ARBITRARILY CLOSE TO.
Thus, if you are going to assign a value to.9999... (going on
forever), the only sensible value is 1.
The key phrases above are 'arbitrarily close to' and 'assign a value'. To me this says that if you're going to treat the series as a constant (e.g. for use in engineering), the best fit / nearest constant is its limit, 1. I totally agree with this assertion -- it's the whole reason we bother to calculate limits, convergence etc. However, it doesn't make the series equal to 1, only arbitrarily close to 1 (it's like casting it to a new type, to use a computing analogy). My textbooks make a big deal out of denoting the limit or using the approximate equality sign in such cases.
But anyhoo, I still have half my degree to go and haven't gotten to the hardcore analysis stuff yet, so I may well be mistaken, especially if the various Dr Math PhDs seem to believe it. Thanks for your polite / non-snide reply.
I pray that this is a troll, but on the offchance that it isn't, and the US education system is as dubious as I suspect, have a listen to this...
While not the greatest mathematcian in world, I am about halfway through a 'serious' maths degree. Blizzard have put up this page as a joke -- they don't really consider 1 to be equal to.999~. That's why the parent linking to Blizzard is (I hope) modded Funny rather than Informative. Anyway, look at the first line of their comedy proof: (1) lim(m --> infinity) sum(n = 1)^m (9)/(10^n) = 1.
Here they define the limit of the series to be 1, not the sum of the series (that's what the 'lim' means). From their definition, the series has infinite terms (that's what the squiggly thing what looks like a sideways eight means). Then in the next line, the unwary are caught out:
(2) 0.9999... = 1
This does not follow from (1), which is talking about the limit of the series rather than its sum. In fact, (1) not only contradicts (2), it also handily disproves any line of 'maths' in your post:)
It's an infinite series with 1 as its limiting sum. You can add as many nines to the end as you like but it will never equal 1. For most applications rounding it to 1 will do. For example, if I wish to consume 0.999~ litres of beer, four throwdowns will do, will a small safety margin built in. Or I can drink a slab for a large safety margin.
The process repeats itself over the years, and the terms stop meaning anything. You could really start saying "party A" and "party B" and be about as accurate.
A good modern example of this is the Australian Liberal party, which has a similar platform to the US Republican party (pro-war, anti-gay marriage etc). On his recent US visit, Liberal PM John Howard had to explain at length to Arnie that he wasn't an actual leftist liberal. Hilarity and terrible accents ensued.
Slashdot Mirror
By the way, any particular reason your post is between /* and */ ?
He's making a comment.
I think the message that kids take away from NBA Ballers is, it's all about money...
Whereas in real life, they do it for the love, plus a small stipend for meals and cab fare.
My dad's an accountant.
Replying to yourself with 'MOD PARENT UP' is a refreshing new low in karma whoring. My nose cone is off to you, my friend.
The real world issue is that SQL has built in support for sorting and sorting algorithms in most big databases are highly optimized
This is why I do sorting in the db. Aesthetically, I would rather do it in object-land so that the logic is kept separate from the data, but obviously the db vendor has more hours to throw at optimisation than I do. Also, I can't assume that my code is the only client hitting the db -- the db may be able to cache common queries / sorts between multiple clients.
he's she's
I think you're after his and hers.
It's been out in Australia for at least six months, if that's any help.
"What about Princes Charles, Dad?"
"Lives with his mum! Indian!"
Quentin TARANTINO, USA
Enjoyed the scenes of carnage, but thought it would benefit from some colourful language and some dialogue lifted from the original Shaft.
Kathleen TURNER, USA
Told Moore it needed Danny DeVito to lighten things up a bit.
Tsui HARK, Vietnam
Thought it would have been better if Michael Moore had an indentical twin who was a martial arts expert. Hijinks ensue as Cheney can't tell one from the other in the final battle at an automated Mitsubishi production line.
If you reread my post you will notice the apology to Godwin. Second sentence, second para. : )
Whether Iraq actually had a hand in 9/11 or not doesn't matter one damn to me.
I think it's worth giving a damn about, especially if our troops are being put at risk in Iraq. I think it's something many of the troops would give a damn about.
Of course, there is that troubling matter of the Iraqi Military Intelligence operative and member of the Fedayeen Saddam who escorted two of the 9/11 hijackers to their meeting in KL. What do you make of that?
Wait -- I thought you didn't give a damn? It's an interesting story, but I don't think it's too likely in the wake of the commisson's report. Got a (credible) link for me?
You're grossly oversimplifying the Commission's statement... and besides which, it seems pretty clear that the Commission itself jumped to conclusions.
To be fair, the commission did say that Bin Laden approached Saddam (in the 1990s), and was turned down. This supports their statement that Saddam was not involved in 9/11, via bankrolling or otherwise.
Why do you say the commission is jumping to conclusions? They've had twelve public hearing over two years -- it's not just an off the cuff statement. Check out their website: http://www.9-11commission.gov/
Yes, as are the people who supported them, bankrolled them, gave them safe harbor.
Sure.
But we're not seeking retribution for 9/11. We're not exacting punishment for a single act.
That may be your interpretation, but one of the ever-shifting reasons that Bush gave for attacking Iraq was a link with 9/11. The others being WMD and human rights abuses, both accusations that could be more meaningfully laid elsewhere (Nth Korea, Pakistan).
We're in a war against an ideology. Wherever a person commits an act of terrorism, we have an enemy. Wherever a person finances an act of terrorism, no matter who the target, we have an enemy.
Noble and quixotic words, but in practice, though, the actual fighting has been limited to Afghanistan and Iraq, and while Afghanistan may have financially supported and physically harboured Al-Qaeda, Iraq appears not to have done so.
Saddam personally bankrolled terrorism. He wrote checks to the families of murderers.
I've had a look at your link, and it claims that payments were made to familes of dead Palestinian suicide bombers. Unless this was some sort of magical time travelling money, the bombers in question were dead at the time and therefore unbankrollable. The only semi-credible reference I can find to this is at the BBC, and it attributes the accusation to Donald Rumsfeld. It's a fact that Arafat has funded militants, but it seems to only be Rumsfeld's speculation that Saddam ever funded Arafat.
Saddam planned assassinations of high-level US officials, including a former President.
This was after the first Gulf War, when Bush 1 attempted to kill Saddam. There was retaliation for the planned attempt on Bush at the time, as I recall -- Clinton got UN authorisation for a sustained cruise missile barrage on Iraqi intelligence HQ.
Saddam attacked our allies in the region, Qatar and Bahrain and Kuwait and the UAW and Israel.
Kuwait I'll give you, and perhaps Israel, but Qatar, Bahrain, UAE have not been attacked. If attacking Israel is an excuse for war, then why is the US not attacking Egypt, Syria etc?
Saddam provided aid and safe harbor to members of al-Qaida after the fall of the Taliban.
This is something that seems to be an allegation rather than a fact. Credible link welcome.
Saddam stockpiled weapons of mass destruction in contravention of US and UN surrender terms.
Really? Then why can't we find any? And why aren't we attacking
Now you're equating Iraq with 9/11. The two are unrelated, as the 9/11 comission has found. As is hopefully common knowledge, Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda are the culprits. They should be brought to justice for what they've done, and I certainly don't suggest we surrender to them.
What I am saying is that there is no reason for the west to be in Iraq. There's no 9/11 link. There's no WMD. (You can post some links to right wing blogs or magazines if you like, but the US govt hasn't actually been able to dig up any physical WMD on the ground). Saddam's government was dodgy, but no more so than, say, North Korea or Indonesia. (And North Korea actually admitted to having a WMD program to boot).
If you're uncomfortable with bringing the troops home, then perhaps they would be better used rooting out Al-Qaeda camps than dodging car bombs in Baghdad. Just a thought.
While we are allowed to talk about such things (and indeed are doing so now), I do think the OP has a point. 'Support our troops' is a non sequitir in a debate about whether we should be at war at all. Of course everyone wishes to support the troops who are risking their lives. The question is whether our leaders are justified those lives at risk.
Below is an example of the 'suppor our troops' meme as propaganda, from the Nuremburg trials. Apologies for the slight bending of Godwin's law.
"Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." -- Hermann Goering
I'd say a little bit of that goes to the labour cost of upgrading all those machines, and the rest goes to the retraining of staff. Two weeks of professional training could easily cost $2000.
It's been working fine for me since the upgrade, and even Gamespot is rendering properly. I'm running the Win32 version under Win2k.
You should submit a story -- they've covered other Opera releases in the past.
Using it now, and it's waaaay faster and more reliable than 0.8. No more reloading poorly rendered Slashdot pages!
If you think the new theme is a step backwards, you can get the old theme back by going to the designer's site.
It's available on DVD now, finally.
Interesting. Well, I suppose if the great gurus bless it as 1, it has some merit. However, my understanding of the concept of a limiting value is that the sum never reaches the value. Dr Math seems to have a bet each way. From the page:m l
.9 is not 1; neither is .999, nor .9999999999. In fact if you stop the
expansion of 9s at any finite point, the fraction you have (like .9999
= 9999/10000) is never equal to 1. But each time you add a 9, the
error is less. In fact, with each 9, the error is ten times smaller.
.9999... (going on
forever), the only sensible value is 1.
http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/55748.ht
You can show (using calculus or other methods) that with a large enough number of 9s in the expansion, you can get arbitrarily close to 1, and here's the key:
THERE IS NO OTHER NUMBER THAT THE SEQUENCE GETS ARBITRARILY CLOSE TO.
Thus, if you are going to assign a value to
The key phrases above are 'arbitrarily close to' and 'assign a value'. To me this says that if you're going to treat the series as a constant (e.g. for use in engineering), the best fit / nearest constant is its limit, 1. I totally agree with this assertion -- it's the whole reason we bother to calculate limits, convergence etc. However, it doesn't make the series equal to 1, only arbitrarily close to 1 (it's like casting it to a new type, to use a computing analogy). My textbooks make a big deal out of denoting the limit or using the approximate equality sign in such cases.
But anyhoo, I still have half my degree to go and haven't gotten to the hardcore analysis stuff yet, so I may well be mistaken, especially if the various Dr Math PhDs seem to believe it. Thanks for your polite / non-snide reply.
Just don't let Servalan get her hands on the key : )
I pray that this is a troll, but on the offchance that it isn't, and the US education system is as dubious as I suspect, have a listen to this...
.999~. That's why the parent linking to Blizzard is (I hope) modded Funny rather than Informative. Anyway, look at the first line of their comedy proof:
:)
While not the greatest mathematcian in world, I am about halfway through a 'serious' maths degree. Blizzard have put up this page as a joke -- they don't really consider 1 to be equal to
(1) lim(m --> infinity) sum(n = 1)^m (9)/(10^n) = 1.
Here they define the limit of the series to be 1, not the sum of the series (that's what the 'lim' means). From their definition, the series has infinite terms (that's what the squiggly thing what looks like a sideways eight means). Then in the next line, the unwary are caught out:
(2) 0.9999... = 1
This does not follow from (1), which is talking about the limit of the series rather than its sum. In fact, (1) not only contradicts (2), it also handily disproves any line of 'maths' in your post
It's an infinite series with 1 as its limiting sum. You can add as many nines to the end as you like but it will never equal 1. For most applications rounding it to 1 will do. For example, if I wish to consume 0.999~ litres of beer, four throwdowns will do, will a small safety margin built in. Or I can drink a slab for a large safety margin.
An examination of some of the shortcomings of a trade agreement between the U.S. and Australia does not effect most people directly.
Agreed. It is rare that such an examination spontaneously generates the majority of Earth's population.
The process repeats itself over the years, and the terms stop meaning anything. You could really start saying "party A" and "party B" and be about as accurate.
A good modern example of this is the Australian Liberal party, which has a similar platform to the US Republican party (pro-war, anti-gay marriage etc). On his recent US visit, Liberal PM John Howard had to explain at length to Arnie that he wasn't an actual leftist liberal. Hilarity and terrible accents ensued.
Best. Post. Evar!!!111