The flu did not limit itself to the soldiers fighting in WWI. No, but this is where it found its breeding ground. The soldiers were easy targets and they carried the disease home with them when they went on leave, got dismissed, etc. And, pray tell, which effective countermeasures could have been taken? Given the state of technology at the time? The most effective countermeasures against an epidemic are still mainly non-technological: containment and isolation. Since wartime censorship prevented people from knowing there was an epidemic going on, however, those were not put into effect to the extent necessary.
The main reasons the spanish flu got so bad are 1) There was a big war on and millions of soldiers were lying around in cold, wet, unhygienic trenches just begging for a disease to come kill them and 2) There was a big war on and media censorship effectively kept the disease from being reported and therefore no effective countermeasures could be put into effect. The world at large only learned about the disease when it started spreading in Spain (which wasn't in the war) and hence its name. Its major damage came out of the European trenches, however. The army knew full well were all their soldiers were, so it is not clear how a STASI-like register would have helped at all.
The Java program is delivered as Java Bytecode. The ancient sort of VM would interpret these as some sort of half-digested shellscript and run them one by one. A JIT compiler will do this the first time, but then it may choose to remember the machine code equivalent of the bytecodes and run it directly next time. Over time, it might collect statistics on how the code is run and introduce various optimizations to make it run faster. It will also typically do some classical optimizations on its first compilation of any given code block. It's a JIT because bytecodes aren't compiled until they're about to be run anyway. It's a compiler because it may choose to remember the machine code that results from the bytecode interpretation.
If the computing industry has been getting along fine, then it is only because there has been noone to compare them to but themselves. Software always has had and still has an atrociously low level of quality. While there may be one or two software gems out there, most of it is complete crud. The only reason we can get away with this is that the consumers have become used to it and don't really expect any better. We need languages and development methodologies that can rectify this, that can enable us to make high-quality software without sinking $billions into painstaking quality control efforts which, as both NASA and ESA have shown us, doesn't really work all that well either. If garbage collection and assorted training wheels is what it takes for us to be able to produce robust code that actually works, then please bring it on. What little cost this has in CPU cycles is inconsequential to the good it will do to both the industry and society in general. Of course, if these are _not_ the tools that we need, they will eventually die and we'll come up with something else in stead. I still haven't seen a convincing argument to this effect though.
If I wanted to jump on the C/C++ side of the argument, I would point out that a lot of the runtime libraries are written in C/C++. Thus, one could argue that Java could not be fast without the native underpinnings. This only holds so long as the VM actually uses those libraries in its implementation. A JIT can choose to use its own optimized-for-the-task-at-hand machine code in stead, making it largely unaffected by the speed (or lack thereof) of the C or C++ compiler it was built with. It seems likely that a JIT compiler may choose to rely on the C or C++ libraries in some cases and use its own in other cases. As JIT technology improves, one would expect the latter to become increasingly common, thereby largely decoupling the VM speed from the quality of the C or C++ compiler.
You cant tell thats a program being interpreted. Java programs don't get interpreted on modern VMs, they get JITed. In some cases, this can result in more effecient code than a precompiled binary such as one created by a C compiler.
IP legislation, representing a state-enforced monopolization of commodities that would otherwise be freely traded in a competitive marketplace, seems to me a lot more socialistic than absence of IP legislation would ever be.
For the native Americans it was incomprehensable how anyone could own land. I would guess that this refers to the nomadic tribes? If so, then this is only natural. Their belief comes not from a deep-seated understanding that land needs to be unownable but rather from puzzlement as to why anyone would want to "own" something that they need to be away from for 75% of the year. (And, indeed, might not come back to for several years in a row.) Presumably, farming tribes (and sedentary tribes in general) would have a different view on this. You could make a parable of the same for this day. You will find few pÃeople today who would "understand" why it would be useful to own land in the Alpha Centauri star system (and hence a general agreement to the Outer Space Treaty and such), but a few hundred years down the road, this may be prime development property.
There's plenty of socialism in the US: unemployment benefits, medicare/medicaid (ok, so I'm not clear on the difference) and minimum wage laws to mention but a few. The interesting point about the US isn't their lack of socialism, but their deep-rooted fear of calling it by its real name. The word "socialism" in the US seems to have taken on a completely different meaning from the word "socialism" in Europe - it has become so bad it's almost mandatory to translate between UK English and US English just to avoid potentially fatal misunderstandings. Which, of course, might give some perspective on how, exactly, Latin managed to deform into a dozen widely different European languages over the course of 1,500 years:-)
Your best bet is probably to keep the patent secret (one way or the other) until extensive use has been made of it. Once you can point at IBM, Microsoft and GE infringing on your patent and having made $billions off of the offending products, you should easily be able to get venture capital or a 50% cut with a law firm or something to do a law suit. I think the laser inventor (whose name I forget) did something along these lines - the patent was disputed for several decades as there were two independent inventors. While this court battle raged, companies starting selling lasers left, right and center. Suddenly, one of the contenders died and the other secured the patent rights with relative ease. He then started collecting back-royalties and got filthy rich in no time.
It seems to me that what these companies are saying is "Patents stifle innovation, so we're signing them away for practically nothing so that the world may get back to being creative again". This is likely to be invaluable ammunition once patent legislation comes back under scrutiny in the US, and the next time the software patent mafia makes a serious move in the EU.
Admit it- you have been sneaking books into Barnes and Noble and putting them on the shelf. While an amusing comment, it occurs to me that this might actually be an excellent example of guerrilla marketing. Wrote a good book but can't find a publisher, or don't accept the standard contract and want some leverage? Or has your publisher failed to get a distribution deal with B&N? Smuggle books into several B&Ns, put them on the shelves and get the store manager wondering about your book when people try to buy it:-) (I should probably get myself a business method patent on this . ..)
Rome eventually stopped, drew a line and said (effectively) "inside the line is Rome, outside are barbarians" and left it at that. US, like Rome, has grown through conquest to a comfortable size and, apparantly, sees little need to grow beyond this.
Presumably, Microsoft has a trademark on "Microsoft Windows", but not on the lone word "Windows". If this guy's product was "Microsoft Windows Defender" then he'd be in trouble, but if it was simply "Windows Defender", then you'd have to find a more than averagely corrupt judge for him to lose it.
There is always X Windows. But, anyway, I routinely refer to opening up "windows" in a variety of operating systems. (And Linux is neither a windows nor an OS - it's a kernel:-)
Apparantly, according to wikipedia, they used to use "aCn" for BC, short for "ante Christum natum" or "before the birth of Christ". One wonders why they didn't just use "post" and "ante" and be done with it but that would probably be too simple I suppose.
Fair enough, but you really should take some care how you use the word "theory" in the company of scientists. "Scientific theory" is a very well defined term, and if something is not falsifiable, then it's simply not a scientific theory - with no room for personal preferences. It can still be a "theory" in the colloquial sense, but it is not advisable to mix two completely different meanings of a word in the same discussion - and doing so as part of an argument is a fallacy.
Keeping in mind that the Old Testament was passed down by word of mouth for hundreds of years before it was written down, taking it literally is probably not a good idea. Ah, but you see, that is hardly relevant. Even if errors crept into the oral tradition, even if the translation to latin, or english, or whatever, was flawed and even if the selection of the books to go into the bible was random: all you need to do is declare everyone who had a part in changing the text as prophets, and you're good to go. This way, the constant tweaking of the text becomes a bonus, because it gives god a chance to alter it along the way to fit changing circumstances.
"I believe in The Flying Spaghetti Monster and that he(yes, he), had a hand in creating the universe" Such a statement would be so preposterous as to have you rightly ostracized from any intelligent company. The Flying Spaghetti Monster could not possibly have a hand in creating the universe. Quite obviously, it was in fact a noodly appendage that was involved.
No scientific theories are provable. More to the point, however, the clockmaker hypothesis isn't falsifiable and as such it's not just a "lousy theory": in scientific terms, it's not a theory at all.
The "rational Christian" has always been around, and in the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas finally finished the work that others had begun before him and delivered a good philosophy of how and why Christianity and science were to go hand in hand. This has been the Catholic church's official policy ever since, even if church politics have gotten in the way from time to time (such as during the counter reformation when things could get really nasty).
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The flu did not limit itself to the soldiers fighting in WWI.
No, but this is where it found its breeding ground. The soldiers were easy targets and they carried the disease home with them when they went on leave, got dismissed, etc.
And, pray tell, which effective countermeasures could have been taken? Given the state of technology at the time?
The most effective countermeasures against an epidemic are still mainly non-technological: containment and isolation. Since wartime censorship prevented people from knowing there was an epidemic going on, however, those were not put into effect to the extent necessary.
The main reasons the spanish flu got so bad are
1) There was a big war on and millions of soldiers were lying around in cold, wet, unhygienic trenches just begging for a disease to come kill them and
2) There was a big war on and media censorship effectively kept the disease from being reported and therefore no effective countermeasures could be put into effect.
The world at large only learned about the disease when it started spreading in Spain (which wasn't in the war) and hence its name. Its major damage came out of the European trenches, however. The army knew full well were all their soldiers were, so it is not clear how a STASI-like register would have helped at all.
The Java program is delivered as Java Bytecode. The ancient sort of VM would interpret these as some sort of half-digested shellscript and run them one by one. A JIT compiler will do this the first time, but then it may choose to remember the machine code equivalent of the bytecodes and run it directly next time. Over time, it might collect statistics on how the code is run and introduce various optimizations to make it run faster. It will also typically do some classical optimizations on its first compilation of any given code block.
It's a JIT because bytecodes aren't compiled until they're about to be run anyway. It's a compiler because it may choose to remember the machine code that results from the bytecode interpretation.
There is only 1 test out of 26 where Java beats C . . .
This would seem to support the claim that Java can be faster than C.
If the computing industry has been getting along fine, then it is only because there has been noone to compare them to but themselves. Software always has had and still has an atrociously low level of quality. While there may be one or two software gems out there, most of it is complete crud. The only reason we can get away with this is that the consumers have become used to it and don't really expect any better.
We need languages and development methodologies that can rectify this, that can enable us to make high-quality software without sinking $billions into painstaking quality control efforts which, as both NASA and ESA have shown us, doesn't really work all that well either.
If garbage collection and assorted training wheels is what it takes for us to be able to produce robust code that actually works, then please bring it on. What little cost this has in CPU cycles is inconsequential to the good it will do to both the industry and society in general.
Of course, if these are _not_ the tools that we need, they will eventually die and we'll come up with something else in stead. I still haven't seen a convincing argument to this effect though.
If I wanted to jump on the C/C++ side of the argument, I would point out that a lot of the runtime libraries are written in C/C++. Thus, one could argue that Java could not be fast without the native underpinnings.
This only holds so long as the VM actually uses those libraries in its implementation. A JIT can choose to use its own optimized-for-the-task-at-hand machine code in stead, making it largely unaffected by the speed (or lack thereof) of the C or C++ compiler it was built with.
It seems likely that a JIT compiler may choose to rely on the C or C++ libraries in some cases and use its own in other cases. As JIT technology improves, one would expect the latter to become increasingly common, thereby largely decoupling the VM speed from the quality of the C or C++ compiler.
You cant tell thats a program being interpreted.
Java programs don't get interpreted on modern VMs, they get JITed. In some cases, this can result in more effecient code than a precompiled binary such as one created by a C compiler.
I nead a break... :-)
. . . and producing broken spelling to boot
IP legislation, representing a state-enforced monopolization of commodities that would otherwise be freely traded in a competitive marketplace, seems to me a lot more socialistic than absence of IP legislation would ever be.
For the native Americans it was incomprehensable how anyone could own land.
I would guess that this refers to the nomadic tribes? If so, then this is only natural. Their belief comes not from a deep-seated understanding that land needs to be unownable but rather from puzzlement as to why anyone would want to "own" something that they need to be away from for 75% of the year. (And, indeed, might not come back to for several years in a row.)
Presumably, farming tribes (and sedentary tribes in general) would have a different view on this.
You could make a parable of the same for this day. You will find few pÃeople today who would "understand" why it would be useful to own land in the Alpha Centauri star system (and hence a general agreement to the Outer Space Treaty and such), but a few hundred years down the road, this may be prime development property.
There's plenty of socialism in the US: unemployment benefits, medicare/medicaid (ok, so I'm not clear on the difference) and minimum wage laws to mention but a few. :-)
The interesting point about the US isn't their lack of socialism, but their deep-rooted fear of calling it by its real name. The word "socialism" in the US seems to have taken on a completely different meaning from the word "socialism" in Europe - it has become so bad it's almost mandatory to translate between UK English and US English just to avoid potentially fatal misunderstandings. Which, of course, might give some perspective on how, exactly, Latin managed to deform into a dozen widely different European languages over the course of 1,500 years
Your best bet is probably to keep the patent secret (one way or the other) until extensive use has been made of it. Once you can point at IBM, Microsoft and GE infringing on your patent and having made $billions off of the offending products, you should easily be able to get venture capital or a 50% cut with a law firm or something to do a law suit.
I think the laser inventor (whose name I forget) did something along these lines - the patent was disputed for several decades as there were two independent inventors. While this court battle raged, companies starting selling lasers left, right and center. Suddenly, one of the contenders died and the other secured the patent rights with relative ease. He then started collecting back-royalties and got filthy rich in no time.
It seems to me that what these companies are saying is "Patents stifle innovation, so we're signing them away for practically nothing so that the world may get back to being creative again".
This is likely to be invaluable ammunition once patent legislation comes back under scrutiny in the US, and the next time the software patent mafia makes a serious move in the EU.
Admit it- you have been sneaking books into Barnes and Noble and putting them on the shelf. :-) .)
While an amusing comment, it occurs to me that this might actually be an excellent example of guerrilla marketing. Wrote a good book but can't find a publisher, or don't accept the standard contract and want some leverage? Or has your publisher failed to get a distribution deal with B&N? Smuggle books into several B&Ns, put them on the shelves and get the store manager wondering about your book when people try to buy it
(I should probably get myself a business method patent on this . .
Rome eventually stopped, drew a line and said (effectively) "inside the line is Rome, outside are barbarians" and left it at that.
US, like Rome, has grown through conquest to a comfortable size and, apparantly, sees little need to grow beyond this.
Presumably, Microsoft has a trademark on "Microsoft Windows", but not on the lone word "Windows". If this guy's product was "Microsoft Windows Defender" then he'd be in trouble, but if it was simply "Windows Defender", then you'd have to find a more than averagely corrupt judge for him to lose it.
There is always X Windows. But, anyway, I routinely refer to opening up "windows" in a variety of operating systems. :-)
(And Linux is neither a windows nor an OS - it's a kernel
You're probably on to something. I keep forgetting: history wasn't designed, it just happened :-)
Apparantly, according to wikipedia, they used to use "aCn" for BC, short for "ante Christum natum" or "before the birth of Christ". One wonders why they didn't just use "post" and "ante" and be done with it but that would probably be too simple I suppose.
Fair enough, but you really should take some care how you use the word "theory" in the company of scientists. "Scientific theory" is a very well defined term, and if something is not falsifiable, then it's simply not a scientific theory - with no room for personal preferences.
It can still be a "theory" in the colloquial sense, but it is not advisable to mix two completely different meanings of a word in the same discussion - and doing so as part of an argument is a fallacy.
Keeping in mind that the Old Testament was passed down by word of mouth for hundreds of years before it was written down, taking it literally is probably not a good idea.
Ah, but you see, that is hardly relevant. Even if errors crept into the oral tradition, even if the translation to latin, or english, or whatever, was flawed and even if the selection of the books to go into the bible was random: all you need to do is declare everyone who had a part in changing the text as prophets, and you're good to go. This way, the constant tweaking of the text becomes a bonus, because it gives god a chance to alter it along the way to fit changing circumstances.
"I believe in The Flying Spaghetti Monster and that he(yes, he), had a hand in creating the universe"
Such a statement would be so preposterous as to have you rightly ostracized from any intelligent company. The Flying Spaghetti Monster could not possibly have a hand in creating the universe. Quite obviously, it was in fact a noodly appendage that was involved.
Islam is in enough trouble as it is - no reason to add insult to injury :-)
No scientific theories are provable. More to the point, however, the clockmaker hypothesis isn't falsifiable and as such it's not just a "lousy theory": in scientific terms, it's not a theory at all.
The "rational Christian" has always been around, and in the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas finally finished the work that others had begun before him and delivered a good philosophy of how and why Christianity and science were to go hand in hand. This has been the Catholic church's official policy ever since, even if church politics have gotten in the way from time to time (such as during the counter reformation when things could get really nasty).