The first element of an array is element 0. It's not the zeroeth element. It's the first element. But it's element index 0. That's why Programmer's Day is on the 256th day, as it would be day index 255 (January 1st being day index 0). 255 is the largest array index that fits in a byte.
I see nothing wrong with (and find quite useful) the advisory (as opposed to mandatory) role that UNIX permissions can play. If I want to make sure I don't accidentally modify something, I can mark it read-only. If I want to designate something as an executable program (to distinguish it from arbitrary data), I can do that also.
UIDs should also be treated in an advisory manner on removable media also, I'd reckon. It's useful to store who did what, but it isn't useful to enforce it, since it's not a durable and semi-permanent part of the system. It's outside all systems, really. It's a method of interchange between systems.
So, if I were to design a filesystem for USB keys and the like, I'd make it store usernames as strings rather than UIDs (if possible), I'd let it remember UNIX permissions, and I'd provide a mount option that maps everyone onto the "owner" permission field for access control purposes. Also, the filesystem would disallow SUID execution, nor allow for device nodes or other such security twiddling things.
In other words... it'd be an awful lot like "tar" as a live filesystem, although preferably with much better random access, file creation and file deletion behaviors.
It's a well known issue with the initial release of Vista that copying files (even within the same HD on the same machine on a brand-spanking-new machine) was slower than molasses in January.
Fortunately, my boss understands the value of in-code documentation. She's seen how others can pick up my code and run with it months or years after I've written it.
I never made a conscious effort to find the home row keys with F/J. But, I realized I was doing it when I sat down at an older Mac and suddenly couldn't type. See, Apple had put the nubs for the home row on D and K instead of F and J, since apparently the middle finger is slightly more sensitive than the index. (My Platinum Apple IIe in the other room also has it on D/K.) Only later Macs moved it to match PCs.
What a shock it was. I never realized I was making use of that feature until it bit me in the arse!
For those that doubt me, I happened to still have that keyboard in my garage, and I just took some pictures of its aberrant finger bumps. You can see them here and here. A picture of the complete keyboard is here. I was sad when OS/X came out and the ADB keyboards stopped working properly. (IIRC, it kept inserting extra space characters or something. I forget now. All I know is that it was annoying to the point of being unusable, which was sad, because those were decent keyboards. And yes, that keyboard needs a cleaning. Sitting in the garage for several years has definitely yellowed whatever finger residue was on it to something rather obvious and gross.)
I find people who type faster are more likely to document their work because it takes less time to do so. After all, you've spent all that time thinking, what is it to write a half page summary of what that new module does and why it does it, and why it does it the way it does it? If you're hunting and pecking, it could take you longer to write the summary than it did to think of the code. If you can touch type (or at the very least type faster than 40-50WPM by whatever means), then it's no real burden. After all, if you're spending that much time thinking about your work, then you've already worked out pretty much everything you need to say.
I type 80-90WPM from copy myself, thanks to having taking a touch typing course. Granted, I don't follow 100% proper classroom technique, but I do pretty well. Before that, I was a four-finger typer that did pretty good. I managed 35WPM from copy on my first typing test when I started my touch typing course. That was hard won from typing BASIC programs on my TI home computer as well as any other 80s machine I could get time on.
I enjoy the freedom that touch typing gives me. In the same amount of time I can write much clearer and more complete documentation, clearer, more complete emails, and generally get communication done with and out of the way much more fluidly. I can type almost as fast as I can think. When I was pecking away at 35WPM, I was thinking way faster than I wrote, and so I wrote only the minimum, and ended up with cryptic crud.
Taiwan's electricity consumption in 2004 was 206 billion kWh. Their population in 2004 was around 23 million people. That works out to just shy of 9000 kWh per capita. You can't tell me Taiwan doesn't run a lot of AC given that their hot, humid weather makes Houston look mild. (Or at least, so I was told by a Taiwanese coworker who also lived and worked in Houston for years.) He used to tell stories of apartment buildings with rows of in-window AC units blasting heat onto the street making it even hotter outdoors.
Again, a big part of it likely comes down to population density and that smaller dwellings and shorter distances are more efficient than larger homes sprawled out over larger distances.
Another point worth considering is that about half of America's energy consumption (not electricity specifically, but energy overall) actually comes from commercial and industrial use, not residential dwellings.
In general, I don't think you can point to a single factor such as land size or population that serves as a strong predictor of energy consumption. If it's proportional to anything, I'd suggest it's likely most strongly proportional to GNP and the proportion of GNP that comes from heavy manufacturing (since that seems to be the real energy eater). I admit, though, that I'm too lazy to look up all those stats at the moment.
Just use a corner reflector. 100% passive. If you're worried about putting a giant "shoot me" sign on your targets, hide the reflectors with some thin gauzy material that'll burn away very quickly without setting the whole thing on fire.
Murrh? Greater land size leads to greater sprawl and greater distances over which we need to transfer electricity (with according losses). Furthermore, it encourages building larger dwellings that consume more energy.
According to this page, the Japanese consumed 8,459 Kilowatt-Hours per capita in 2004, as compared to 14,240 for the average American. That's nearly a 2:1 difference in per capita consumption. I imagine the smaller, cramped dwellings in Japan and the closer commutes and denser living situation all contribute to that.
So, yes, this is a population density argument. Less land == greater density.
I got that impression also. AND and OR are both "monotonic", and the example videos all demonstrated pretty much the same monotonic algorithm—they are different forms of "breadth first search."
About the only way I can see getting to non-monotonic behavior would be to have an external mechanism that can sense when the crystal wavefront hits a given point, and transfers that energy to trigger crystalization at a different point (perhaps even in a different dish). With such an external mechanism, you could introduce levers or gears to add a richer set of operations.
There's also the difference between "intelligent" and "informed." There are plenty of otherwise intelligent people that ignorant on topics that they're asked to weigh in on. Ignorance is a bigger problem than lack of intelligence, I'd say. This dovetails nicely into your observation.
To see the effects of institutionalized ignorance, look at all the wasted intellectual effort of the Dark Ages. You have bright minds of the day debating over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, as opposed to advancing science and engineering. Imagine if all that effort had gone into developing the steam engine a few hundred years before James Watt got to it.
This article focused on the "entitlement issues" side of things. If someone has the attitude "I'm so much smarter than my management, they couldn't possibly understand my needs. Therefore, their rules don't matter and I can do as I please so long as I don't get caught," then there's strong potential for them to become problematic employees. The Terry Childs case seems to have some of that, in that he felt his superior knowledge and skills entitled him to special treatment and access. Quoting the original/. article:
According to the source, Childs' purview was limited to the city's FiberWAN â" a network he himself built and, believing no one competent enough to touch the network but himself, guarded religiously, sharing details with no one, including routing configuration and log-in information.
It's that attitude that the article is describing. Randal Schwartz's "hacking" case is a similar story. In the case of Microsoft having a corporate level sense of entitlement, I interpreted that to mean "Microsoft is so much smarter/better than everyone else that they ought to be able to do what they please since they know better what everyone needs."
That sense of entitlement goes beyond simple contempt for your less-skilled coworkers. I'd argue, though, if you're more skilled/talented than your coworkers, your attitude should be one of "Let's see how I can help them improve, and if those avenues are limited, how they can best apply what skills they do have." If you're interviewing someone who is obviously highly skilled, you should look for that behavioral trait, not the "I'm so great" prima donna or the "I know better than everybody" type.
I'm fully aware of that. This poster was slightly confused on that point. What NekoYasha and I were pointing out was that the building blocks they had in Wireland could be used to build NAND or NOR. If you have AND and NOT, you can build NAND, and therefore you can build all the rest. Both the XOR and AND-NOT gates could trivially provide "NOT", and so now you have a path to NAND.
The basic idea is that the question "Is this set of gates strong enough to compute all boolean functions?" can be answered definitively "yes" if you can show some combination of gates in that set can provide either NAND or NOR. If no combination of gates in the set can provide either NAND or NOR, then it's not complete.
The hot-ice computer can't make NAND or NOR yet, only AND or OR. They need to figure out how to make NAND or NOR (probably by figuring out how to make NOT, and combining it with AND or OR).
Well, there's 32GB to wear level over, so that helps, assuming they do proper full-volume wear leveling and not zone-based. I imagine much of the swap is fairly static on the phone. One hopes, at least. I know I won't be storing a bunch of stuff on it if I buy one. I'll use removable storage for that.
Where's the iPhone's 3GS 5 megapixel camera with flash (and Carl Zeiss optics and integrated lens cap), and 800x480 @25fps video? Oh, wait, iPhone 3GS only goes up to 640x480 on the video and 3 megapixels on the camera, no flash, no lens cap.
Also, what's the display resolution? The N900 ix 800x480, a whopping 384K pixels. The iPhone 3GS weighs in at a paltry 480x320, sporting less than half the screen real estate at 153K pixels.
For a subscriber to use such a disproportionate amount of bandwidth, such a bandwidth peak would have to be a sustained bandwidth peak.
There really should be different plans to cater to the hard-core users vs. the typical users. You have your average web surfer browsing You-Tube occasionally, or downloading the latest stuff off of iTunes or what have you, and then you have the hardcore folks that are streaming HD non-stop. Makes sense to me that you'd want to move the latter guys onto a different plan with different rates.
ISPs should not call something "unlimited" when it is indeed limited. If there's a bits-transferred cap or some other cap (ie. 10Mb/s peak, 3Mb/s sustained, for example), they should be up front about it.
Could you provide a reference? I tried digging through The Telecommunications Act of 1996 (available here). Looking through the combined 335 page behemoth (Communications Act of 1934 as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996), I couldn't find the needle in that haystack.
I've heard different numbers over the years for different parameters. For example, that some phone companies strive for "five 9s" service. That is, 99.999% of the time, when you pick up the phone, you'll get a dialtone. That service level though is still built assuming a given usage model. I've tried googling several different terms but have turned up no reference on the specific point of what the minimum capacity is for a CO relative to the neighborhood it serves, or between the CO and the next level up.
That said, my point still stands. If everyone in your neighborhood picked up their phone and tried to make a call, some non-trivial, non-zero percentage of them would not get through.
Slashdot Mirror
*sigh*
The first element of an array is element 0. It's not the zeroeth element. It's the first element. But it's element index 0. That's why Programmer's Day is on the 256th day, as it would be day index 255 (January 1st being day index 0). 255 is the largest array index that fits in a byte.
I see nothing wrong with (and find quite useful) the advisory (as opposed to mandatory) role that UNIX permissions can play. If I want to make sure I don't accidentally modify something, I can mark it read-only. If I want to designate something as an executable program (to distinguish it from arbitrary data), I can do that also.
UIDs should also be treated in an advisory manner on removable media also, I'd reckon. It's useful to store who did what, but it isn't useful to enforce it, since it's not a durable and semi-permanent part of the system. It's outside all systems, really. It's a method of interchange between systems.
So, if I were to design a filesystem for USB keys and the like, I'd make it store usernames as strings rather than UIDs (if possible), I'd let it remember UNIX permissions, and I'd provide a mount option that maps everyone onto the "owner" permission field for access control purposes. Also, the filesystem would disallow SUID execution, nor allow for device nodes or other such security twiddling things.
In other words... it'd be an awful lot like "tar" as a live filesystem, although preferably with much better random access, file creation and file deletion behaviors.
Well, apparently people are still having problems with it, otherwise articles wouldn't be getting posted this year describing how to "fix" it.
And which service pack fixes it fully? According to this chart, most Vista users in InfoWorld's survey are still on SP1.
It's a well known issue with the initial release of Vista that copying files (even within the same HD on the same machine on a brand-spanking-new machine) was slower than molasses in January.
What about in-code documentation in the form of comments? That counts too.
Fortunately, my boss understands the value of in-code documentation. She's seen how others can pick up my code and run with it months or years after I've written it.
I never made a conscious effort to find the home row keys with F/J. But, I realized I was doing it when I sat down at an older Mac and suddenly couldn't type. See, Apple had put the nubs for the home row on D and K instead of F and J, since apparently the middle finger is slightly more sensitive than the index. (My Platinum Apple IIe in the other room also has it on D/K.) Only later Macs moved it to match PCs.
What a shock it was. I never realized I was making use of that feature until it bit me in the arse!
For those that doubt me, I happened to still have that keyboard in my garage, and I just took some pictures of its aberrant finger bumps. You can see them here and here. A picture of the complete keyboard is here. I was sad when OS/X came out and the ADB keyboards stopped working properly. (IIRC, it kept inserting extra space characters or something. I forget now. All I know is that it was annoying to the point of being unusable, which was sad, because those were decent keyboards. And yes, that keyboard needs a cleaning. Sitting in the garage for several years has definitely yellowed whatever finger residue was on it to something rather obvious and gross.)
I find people who type faster are more likely to document their work because it takes less time to do so. After all, you've spent all that time thinking, what is it to write a half page summary of what that new module does and why it does it, and why it does it the way it does it? If you're hunting and pecking, it could take you longer to write the summary than it did to think of the code. If you can touch type (or at the very least type faster than 40-50WPM by whatever means), then it's no real burden. After all, if you're spending that much time thinking about your work, then you've already worked out pretty much everything you need to say.
I type 80-90WPM from copy myself, thanks to having taking a touch typing course. Granted, I don't follow 100% proper classroom technique, but I do pretty well. Before that, I was a four-finger typer that did pretty good. I managed 35WPM from copy on my first typing test when I started my touch typing course. That was hard won from typing BASIC programs on my TI home computer as well as any other 80s machine I could get time on.
I enjoy the freedom that touch typing gives me. In the same amount of time I can write much clearer and more complete documentation, clearer, more complete emails, and generally get communication done with and out of the way much more fluidly. I can type almost as fast as I can think. When I was pecking away at 35WPM, I was thinking way faster than I wrote, and so I wrote only the minimum, and ended up with cryptic crud.
*shrug*
Taiwan's electricity consumption in 2004 was 206 billion kWh. Their population in 2004 was around 23 million people. That works out to just shy of 9000 kWh per capita. You can't tell me Taiwan doesn't run a lot of AC given that their hot, humid weather makes Houston look mild. (Or at least, so I was told by a Taiwanese coworker who also lived and worked in Houston for years.) He used to tell stories of apartment buildings with rows of in-window AC units blasting heat onto the street making it even hotter outdoors.
Again, a big part of it likely comes down to population density and that smaller dwellings and shorter distances are more efficient than larger homes sprawled out over larger distances.
Another point worth considering is that about half of America's energy consumption (not electricity specifically, but energy overall) actually comes from commercial and industrial use, not residential dwellings.
In general, I don't think you can point to a single factor such as land size or population that serves as a strong predictor of energy consumption. If it's proportional to anything, I'd suggest it's likely most strongly proportional to GNP and the proportion of GNP that comes from heavy manufacturing (since that seems to be the real energy eater). I admit, though, that I'm too lazy to look up all those stats at the moment.
I'm a big Prisoner fan, and this was the first I've heard of this particular remake. *shrug*
Just use a corner reflector. 100% passive. If you're worried about putting a giant "shoot me" sign on your targets, hide the reflectors with some thin gauzy material that'll burn away very quickly without setting the whole thing on fire.
Murrh? Greater land size leads to greater sprawl and greater distances over which we need to transfer electricity (with according losses). Furthermore, it encourages building larger dwellings that consume more energy.
According to this page, the Japanese consumed 8,459 Kilowatt-Hours per capita in 2004, as compared to 14,240 for the average American. That's nearly a 2:1 difference in per capita consumption. I imagine the smaller, cramped dwellings in Japan and the closer commutes and denser living situation all contribute to that.
So, yes, this is a population density argument. Less land == greater density.
What about corner reflectors? Seems like they should be able to send enough energy back to the source to cause mutual damage...
You need to go back about 15-20 years before Smallville. Hint: Kent's the character's first name.
I got that impression also. AND and OR are both "monotonic", and the example videos all demonstrated pretty much the same monotonic algorithm—they are different forms of "breadth first search."
About the only way I can see getting to non-monotonic behavior would be to have an external mechanism that can sense when the crystal wavefront hits a given point, and transfers that energy to trigger crystalization at a different point (perhaps even in a different dish). With such an external mechanism, you could introduce levers or gears to add a richer set of operations.
There's also the difference between "intelligent" and "informed." There are plenty of otherwise intelligent people that ignorant on topics that they're asked to weigh in on. Ignorance is a bigger problem than lack of intelligence, I'd say. This dovetails nicely into your observation.
To see the effects of institutionalized ignorance, look at all the wasted intellectual effort of the Dark Ages. You have bright minds of the day debating over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, as opposed to advancing science and engineering. Imagine if all that effort had gone into developing the steam engine a few hundred years before James Watt got to it.
This article focused on the "entitlement issues" side of things. If someone has the attitude "I'm so much smarter than my management, they couldn't possibly understand my needs. Therefore, their rules don't matter and I can do as I please so long as I don't get caught," then there's strong potential for them to become problematic employees. The Terry Childs case seems to have some of that, in that he felt his superior knowledge and skills entitled him to special treatment and access. Quoting the original /. article:
It's that attitude that the article is describing. Randal Schwartz's "hacking" case is a similar story. In the case of Microsoft having a corporate level sense of entitlement, I interpreted that to mean "Microsoft is so much smarter/better than everyone else that they ought to be able to do what they please since they know better what everyone needs."
That sense of entitlement goes beyond simple contempt for your less-skilled coworkers. I'd argue, though, if you're more skilled/talented than your coworkers, your attitude should be one of "Let's see how I can help them improve, and if those avenues are limited, how they can best apply what skills they do have." If you're interviewing someone who is obviously highly skilled, you should look for that behavioral trait, not the "I'm so great" prima donna or the "I know better than everybody" type.
I'm fully aware of that. This poster was slightly confused on that point. What NekoYasha and I were pointing out was that the building blocks they had in Wireland could be used to build NAND or NOR. If you have AND and NOT, you can build NAND, and therefore you can build all the rest. Both the XOR and AND-NOT gates could trivially provide "NOT", and so now you have a path to NAND.
The basic idea is that the question "Is this set of gates strong enough to compute all boolean functions?" can be answered definitively "yes" if you can show some combination of gates in that set can provide either NAND or NOR. If no combination of gates in the set can provide either NAND or NOR, then it's not complete.
The hot-ice computer can't make NAND or NOR yet, only AND or OR. They need to figure out how to make NAND or NOR (probably by figuring out how to make NOT, and combining it with AND or OR).
They also have "AND-NOT" which is also trivially turned into NOT.
Steve Wozniak? Dean Kamen? Burt Rutan?
Well, there's 32GB to wear level over, so that helps, assuming they do proper full-volume wear leveling and not zone-based. I imagine much of the swap is fairly static on the phone. One hopes, at least. I know I won't be storing a bunch of stuff on it if I buy one. I'll use removable storage for that.
Where's the iPhone's 3GS 5 megapixel camera with flash (and Carl Zeiss optics and integrated lens cap), and 800x480 @25fps video? Oh, wait, iPhone 3GS only goes up to 640x480 on the video and 3 megapixels on the camera, no flash, no lens cap.
Also, what's the display resolution? The N900 ix 800x480, a whopping 384K pixels. The iPhone 3GS weighs in at a paltry 480x320, sporting less than half the screen real estate at 153K pixels.
Identical specs indeed.
Across the board? Probably not. Across the 1% of peak bandwidth users, perhaps stochastically? Much more doable.
For a subscriber to use such a disproportionate amount of bandwidth, such a bandwidth peak would have to be a sustained bandwidth peak.
There really should be different plans to cater to the hard-core users vs. the typical users. You have your average web surfer browsing You-Tube occasionally, or downloading the latest stuff off of iTunes or what have you, and then you have the hardcore folks that are streaming HD non-stop. Makes sense to me that you'd want to move the latter guys onto a different plan with different rates.
ISPs should not call something "unlimited" when it is indeed limited. If there's a bits-transferred cap or some other cap (ie. 10Mb/s peak, 3Mb/s sustained, for example), they should be up front about it.
Could you provide a reference? I tried digging through The Telecommunications Act of 1996 (available here). Looking through the combined 335 page behemoth (Communications Act of 1934 as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996), I couldn't find the needle in that haystack.
I've heard different numbers over the years for different parameters. For example, that some phone companies strive for "five 9s" service. That is, 99.999% of the time, when you pick up the phone, you'll get a dialtone. That service level though is still built assuming a given usage model. I've tried googling several different terms but have turned up no reference on the specific point of what the minimum capacity is for a CO relative to the neighborhood it serves, or between the CO and the next level up.
That said, my point still stands. If everyone in your neighborhood picked up their phone and tried to make a call, some non-trivial, non-zero percentage of them would not get through.