I don't mean to spoil the joy for all the coffee lovers out there, but how exactly do increased cholesterol level and blood pressure protect from heart disease? Also, while coffee itself might have some health benefits, the stuff consumed with it (loads of sugar/or sugar substitutes, all kinds of artificial creamers, and a donut or two) probably cancels them out.
I don't quite understand what exactly the "scientific Crown" means, but on the balance I think this is positive news - science is not a zero sum game. What's invented in US works the same in China and vice versa. I don't view it exactly as US falling behind but Asian countries catching up because growth is always faster when you have lots of room to grow but then it slows down. Of course, US needs to do more to invest into and encourage better education to stay competitive. The fact that this is not currently the case is alarming.
It is also good to hear that developing Asian countries are on a way to contribute to progress rather than dig their heels in and do everything in a futile attempt to stop it (as seems to be popular in some Middle East contries now a day).
Many good suggestions here, but I'd like to note that using multiple choice as a primary testing method is a truly horrible idea. It gives students an easy way out - "hmmm, no clue how to solve this problem, so I'll just make a (somewhat) educated guess". This often reduces the education process to a guessing game. It makes everything result oriented - the tought process doesn't count. I understand multiple choice makes grading much easier but that comes at a huge expense. In Soviet Russia (yeah, yeah, that's where I came from a looong time ago), teachers took time to read and understand each answer. That made it possible to pinpoint and address exact location of student's misunderstanding. The thing is that you don't need 20 questions. 3 to 5 problems which require real undertanding of the material is usually enough.
Oh, and did I mention that multiple choice testing makes cheating trivial?
You think that's funny? Then please explain to me why, for example, devoting your life to run 100 meters faster than any other human is not considered funny? Is it because the latter pays unbelievably well if you succeed? Laugh all you want but frankly, I don't see much of a difference...
Education system in countries like China uses one giant sieve to filter out talanted students for a programming competition. It is designed to spot the talent, throw it into rigorous traning pool, eliminate weaklings, until top dozen is left. It is not like that in US - a talented student has to express interest AND be in the right place at the right time to get into the competition.
The thing is that US system works well when there is a strong monetary reward for being the first. That's why US holds top honors in Olympic Games (sports). What's the reward for being a top, one in a million athelete? - fame, wealth, national respect. And what's the reward for being a top, one in a million programmer - well, a decent salarly, perhaps some respect from peers who are smart enough to appreciate your talent, but that's about it.
I've been waiting for MS to merge the Pocket PC and Smartphone versions of Windows Mobile for a while. Having used Dell's Axim x50v, I have to say that it is a great (and relatively inexpensive) PDA. It is very fast, has a large screen and offers many expansion choices. Also, it runs a ton of WinCE apps. One major drawback - it lasts only a fraction of time compared to an average cell phone. However, if "Magneto" (ok, the name is cheesy) were to add a "hibernate" funtion which wakes PDA up on incoming phone call, that would really make battery last *much* longer (so you don't need to keep it on to receive calls). I think that MS is in a good strategic position to take on RIM because it recently became the #1 PDA OS shipped. http://www.physorg.com/news4003.html
I was under umpression that truly random data should be completely uncomressible. If that's the case, then PI doesn't quailify because n-th hex digit of PI can be expressed using the following formula:
pi = sum (4/(8n+1) - 2/(8n+4) - 1/(8n+5) - 1/(8n+6))*(1/16)^n
That's a really good compression, if you ask me. What am I missing here?
using short, descriptive variable names 'should' be enough
Aren't they on the opposite ends? I find it much easier to have descriptive variable names which are relatively long (~25 chars in C++). Not all variable names need to be that long (most local variables don't), but I often find that using long descriptive variable names makes comments unnecessary.
Also, I don't think there is some magic ratio of comments to source code line (like 1.5 comment lines per 1 line of code). If someone tries to stick to such ratio, it would be a waste of time in some cases and insufficient in the others. The bottom line is that if code is trying to do something "clever" (tricky algortihm or complex logic flow) then be generous with your comments. Otherwise, you can get away with just a few comments and save yourself some time. If you are just starting to program, you won't go wrong putting more comments in. Otherwise, let your intuition and experience be your guide.
One final observation is that I find comments at the beginning of source file most helpful. A paragraph or two describing what a heck is going on can go a long way to helping me understand some key ideas without having to skim through the entire file.
"leave those Scientific American magazines alone!" But no, she has to throw them out!:(
Some hurdles
on
Quantum Wires
·
· Score: 1, Redundant
There is one type of carbon nanotube which is ideal for near superconductivity. Unfotunatley, right now only multiple types can be produced on a large scale. One of the proposed solutions is to "seed" the nanotube growth process with the desired type so essentialy the growth occurs through cloning. The cool thing about this is that if it works, it should be possible to have supercondutivity at room temperature.
"Enhanced" security
on
Longhorn Preview
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
High on the list of features are security enhancements
Generally speaking, it is much easier to "enhance" security of something which is not all that secure to begin with, so in itself it could hardly be touted as an advantage compared to other OSes.
It sounds like their chip is hooked up to the optical nerve, not directly into brain, so while it might help people with macular degeneration it won't do much for cases when optical nerve is damaged (like glaucoma). I hope I am wrong though.
The only way I am going to buy a thin client idea, is if the server runs on LAN over gigabit pipe and I don't have to pay a monthly fee for using it. Then I can have just one beefy machine and a bunch of thin clients (basically monitors+input devices). KURD, anyone?
Unfortunately we do not currently support Windows; the paravirtualized approach we use to get such high performance has not been usable directly for Windows to date. However recently announced hardware support from Intel and AMD will allow us to transparently support Windows XP & 2003 Server in the near future. We are working on this and intend to have support available by the time the new processors are available.
Stack overflow protection has been available in Linux for ages. I believe it is one of the standard kernel build options starting 2.4... Welcome to 21st century, Microsoft!
The semiconductor paint can be applied to a flexible substrate , such as a polymer sheet , through a simple web printing process, to create an array of ultra-thin solar cells.
Does this mean I can turn my roof into one huge solar panel by "painting" solar panel on it?
R&D expenses for other countries don't have "inflated costs and bribes for bureaucrats"? It is funny that you give Russia as an example... in case you ever go there, you'll find out what "bribe driven" economy means pretty quickly. BTW, pure alcohgol is the most common form of bribe there.
The problem is that per CPU price is the same regardless of CPU performace. How about they run a publicly available (GPLed?) becnhmark which reflects all aspects of the system related to database (CPU, disk, memory, bus, etc.) and then base their price on that benchmark. That would seem fair as long as they revise pricing every year due to ever-improving system performance.
I think that partition which fills up due to logs getting out of hand is one of the primary causes for the system to start malfunctioning. It is funny, but it used to be better when file size was limited to 2 Gigs, so the log stopped growing when it hit that limit. This is not longer the case on more modern systems.
Slashdot Mirror
including protection against heart disease
I don't mean to spoil the joy for all the coffee lovers out there, but how exactly do increased cholesterol level and blood pressure protect from heart disease? Also, while coffee itself might have some health benefits, the stuff consumed with it (loads of sugar/or sugar substitutes, all kinds of artificial creamers, and a donut or two) probably cancels them out.
I don't quite understand what exactly the "scientific Crown" means, but on the balance I think this is positive news - science is not a zero sum game. What's invented in US works the same in China and vice versa. I don't view it exactly as US falling behind but Asian countries catching up because growth is always faster when you have lots of room to grow but then it slows down. Of course, US needs to do more to invest into and encourage better education to stay competitive. The fact that this is not currently the case is alarming.
It is also good to hear that developing Asian countries are on a way to contribute to progress rather than dig their heels in and do everything in a futile attempt to stop it (as seems to be popular in some Middle East contries now a day).
Many good suggestions here, but I'd like to note that using multiple choice as a primary testing method is a truly horrible idea. It gives students an easy way out - "hmmm, no clue how to solve this problem, so I'll just make a (somewhat) educated guess". This often reduces the education process to a guessing game. It makes everything result oriented - the tought process doesn't count. I understand multiple choice makes grading much easier but that comes at a huge expense. In Soviet Russia (yeah, yeah, that's where I came from a looong time ago), teachers took time to read and understand each answer. That made it possible to pinpoint and address exact location of student's misunderstanding. The thing is that you don't need 20 questions. 3 to 5 problems which require real undertanding of the material is usually enough.
Oh, and did I mention that multiple choice testing makes cheating trivial?
You think that's funny? Then please explain to me why, for example, devoting your life to run 100 meters faster than any other human is not considered funny? Is it because the latter pays unbelievably well if you succeed? Laugh all you want but frankly, I don't see much of a difference...
"Microsoft BASHing"?
(Sorry, couldn't help it...)
Spelling is fine, it should be "grammar police" instead!
Education system in countries like China uses one giant sieve to filter out talanted students for a programming competition. It is designed to spot the talent, throw it into rigorous traning pool, eliminate weaklings, until top dozen is left. It is not like that in US - a talented student has to express interest AND be in the right place at the right time to get into the competition.
The thing is that US system works well when there is a strong monetary reward for being the first. That's why US holds top honors in Olympic Games (sports). What's the reward for being a top, one in a million athelete? - fame, wealth, national respect. And what's the reward for being a top, one in a million programmer - well, a decent salarly, perhaps some respect from peers who are smart enough to appreciate your talent, but that's about it.
I've been waiting for MS to merge the Pocket PC and Smartphone versions of Windows Mobile for a while. Having used Dell's Axim x50v, I have to say that it is a great (and relatively inexpensive) PDA. It is very fast, has a large screen and offers many expansion choices. Also, it runs a ton of WinCE apps. One major drawback - it lasts only a fraction of time compared to an average cell phone. However, if "Magneto" (ok, the name is cheesy) were to add a "hibernate" funtion which wakes PDA up on incoming phone call, that would really make battery last *much* longer (so you don't need to keep it on to receive calls). I think that MS is in a good strategic position to take on RIM because it recently became the #1 PDA OS shipped. http://www.physorg.com/news4003.html
I was under umpression that truly random data should be completely uncomressible. If that's the case, then PI doesn't quailify because n-th hex digit of PI can be expressed using the following formula:
pi = sum (4/(8n+1) - 2/(8n+4) - 1/(8n+5) - 1/(8n+6))*(1/16)^n
That's a really good compression, if you ask me. What am I missing here?
using short, descriptive variable names 'should' be enough
Aren't they on the opposite ends? I find it much easier to have descriptive variable names which are relatively long (~25 chars in C++). Not all variable names need to be that long (most local variables don't), but I often find that using long descriptive variable names makes comments unnecessary.
Also, I don't think there is some magic ratio of comments to source code line (like 1.5 comment lines per 1 line of code). If someone tries to stick to such ratio, it would be a waste of time in some cases and insufficient in the others. The bottom line is that if code is trying to do something "clever" (tricky algortihm or complex logic flow) then be generous with your comments. Otherwise, you can get away with just a few comments and save yourself some time. If you are just starting to program, you won't go wrong putting more comments in. Otherwise, let your intuition and experience be your guide.
One final observation is that I find comments at the beginning of source file most helpful. A paragraph or two describing what a heck is going on can go a long way to helping me understand some key ideas without having to skim through the entire file.
the same way that a baby's random babbling eventually becomes the proficient speech of adults
bababe baboo baeeeee bteeeink ya ma gegetting a hang of it!!!
"open source coders can butt out"
I am sure this can be trivially reverse-engineered.
"leave those Scientific American magazines alone!" But no, she has to throw them out! :(
There is one type of carbon nanotube which is ideal for near superconductivity. Unfotunatley, right now only multiple types can be produced on a large scale. One of the proposed solutions is to "seed" the nanotube growth process with the desired type so essentialy the growth occurs through cloning. The cool thing about this is that if it works, it should be possible to have supercondutivity at room temperature.
High on the list of features are security enhancements Generally speaking, it is much easier to "enhance" security of something which is not all that secure to begin with, so in itself it could hardly be touted as an advantage compared to other OSes.
It sounds like their chip is hooked up to the optical nerve, not directly into brain, so while it might help people with macular degeneration it won't do much for cases when optical nerve is damaged (like glaucoma). I hope I am wrong though.
is there a similar contest for Perl? I imagine much crazier submissions with Perl than what can be done with C (no offense to C programmers ;))
The only way I am going to buy a thin client idea, is if the server runs on LAN over gigabit pipe and I don't have to pay a monthly fee for using it. Then I can have just one beefy machine and a bunch of thin clients (basically monitors+input devices). KURD, anyone?
1.4 Does Xen support Microsoft Windows?
Unfortunately we do not currently support Windows; the paravirtualized approach we use to get such high performance has not been usable directly for Windows to date. However recently announced hardware support from Intel and AMD will allow us to transparently support Windows XP & 2003 Server in the near future. We are working on this and intend to have support available by the time the new processors are available.
Stack overflow protection has been available in Linux for ages. I believe it is one of the standard kernel build options starting 2.4... Welcome to 21st century, Microsoft!
The semiconductor paint can be applied to a flexible substrate , such as a polymer sheet , through a simple web printing process, to create an array of ultra-thin solar cells.
Does this mean I can turn my roof into one huge solar panel by "painting" solar panel on it?
But what does a company built around making inexpensive PCs know about HDTVs?
Gateway seems to do it just fine, why not Dell?
R&D expenses for other countries don't have "inflated costs and bribes for bureaucrats"? It is funny that you give Russia as an example... in case you ever go there, you'll find out what "bribe driven" economy means pretty quickly. BTW, pure alcohgol is the most common form of bribe there.
The problem is that per CPU price is the same regardless of CPU performace. How about they run a publicly available (GPLed?) becnhmark which reflects all aspects of the system related to database (CPU, disk, memory, bus, etc.) and then base their price on that benchmark. That would seem fair as long as they revise pricing every year due to ever-improving system performance.
I think that partition which fills up due to logs getting out of hand is one of the primary causes for the system to start malfunctioning. It is funny, but it used to be better when file size was limited to 2 Gigs, so the log stopped growing when it hit that limit. This is not longer the case on more modern systems.