Yes space-research benefiting tele-medecine, deeps ea exporation, etc is a good thing...
But think about how much time, money, and effort go into the parts not related to these. (such as insulating tiles,etc).
I think many people's complain about space research is that while it produces a lot of good stuff, it might have been cheaper (on multiple levels) to more directly research what we would have got. Then the rest of the money could go to medical research.... Little lost, and a lot more gained.
I also realize that many good things resulting from the space program did not have sufficient drive behind them initially to merit their own research.
Thus the value in the space program is that it catalyzes research in fields where such catalysts cannot be justified, but whereby the application of such produces important results...
Given that, there must be a better and less wasteful way.
I hate SUVs and large 4x4 trucks, but unfortunately, smaller is not necessarily better!
I have a V6 Olds Alero (~170hp). I get +30mpg in Hwy (70mph) and 25mpg in city.
I recently rented a Geo Metro. I think it was just less than 100hp. Guess what? My gas mileage was much worse, about 20mpg on hwy... Overwall city/hwy mileage was much worse than the city mileage for the Alero...
Why? The Metro's engine was so weak that it spent most of its time in 2nd (yes, not 3rd though being a 3-speed) gear. Yes it was a smaller engine. Yes the car probably weighed 1/2 of an Alero. And YES, the Geo Metro was LESS fuel efficient.
But I do agree with your main idea: We need normal people driving medium-sized cars... Not a country of morbidly obese driving Ford Excursions...
Branch prediction has been done for a long time... With most programs, there is already a high percentage of "wasted" work due to incorrect branch predictions (despite the predictors being very very accurate +95%).
Currently, processors speculatively execute down the path that is most likely to be taken again...
If a processor speculatively executed both paths of a branch simultaneously, then 50% of the work would be certainly be wasted. What if each path contained another branch? One in 5 instructions are likely to be a branch in typical instruction mixes...
If one speculatively executed both sides of 2 levels of branches, then 3/4 of the work would be wasted!!!! Which means 3/4 of the heat generated would result from no useful work.
Plus this would all require more complicated control hardware, which would likely slow down the maximum clock frequency of the chip...
Also, is it just me, or does American local news stations spend more time harping over the weather and inconsequential local events than actual real news?
Ever notice the primary basis for advertising a new program is its "dedicate team of weather forecasters", or its "super-duper doppler radar" that all the other stations don't have?
Come On! Its weather! At least in baseball, someone keeps track of batting averages to keep things interesting.
All originality is gone from American TV.
I'm very surprised you feel American TV has better quality...
As an American, I find British comedy slightly dry but very intellectual (and thoughtful).
American TV has degraded into people dancing in underwear, Paris Hilton saying "Oh My Gosh", and an endless loop of automobile commericals that each claim driving their car will elevate one to spritual nirvanna.
Does anyone remember the sitcoms in the 80s? Many were quite good without sinking to crude humor, violence, or sexuality.
I'll take "Mr Bean" over "Will and Grace" any day.
You mean like the way felons can't bear arms? Manadory concealed weapons license? 5-day Waiting period? Banning of certain classes of weapons?
Fortunately we still have the right, but our ability to exercise that right has been hampered.
Strangely bomb making is now considered a terrorist act, while your interpretation of the motivation of the 2nd amendment would tend to view such activities as a right and a means to overthrow a corrupt government.
May we live in NOT interesting times! May we live in NOT interesting times! May we live in NOT interesting times!
Disclaimer: I do not support terrorism. Unrelately, I do not make bombs at home. I am only questioning how far we have veered from the visions of our founding fathers.
(Of course, England probably viewed them as terrorisms and a threat to national securtity.
Well, paying 100% of earnings is a "%" too, but it sure not fair!
Generally, though I agree with the point that I believe you are trying to make.
It is unfair for a person making 20k/year to pay 3k in tax when an extra 3k is likely to go toward basic living expenses.. In contrast, someone making 100k/year is not going to miss 15k in tax as much.
Yes tax codes are complicated... So is life. Overly simplified tax codes make life simpler -- suffering for all.
In the old days, people used to tax based upon the number of windows in a house.. WTF!?!?!??!
MOD PARENT DOWN. 500mA != 500mw.
(Go get an EE degree).
60 Watts through firewire? 60W == 12A at 5V!!!!
What the hell are you smoking?
You are either stupid and/or a troll. Either way, you don't deserve positive mod points.
Yes, formal languages such as Prolog can make proving program correctness easier.
But I feel this benefit is more than offset by the difficulty of implementing general programs in these languages.
In terms of real-world applications, formal methods can simplfy implementation (such as the use of Dataflow models), but they do not prove correctness. Likewise, the use of computers for formal proofs can simplfy the process, but not replace it entirely.
Suppose you took the pains of proving a program is correct. Then you have to prove that "correctness" is really 'correct'. Who cares if the program maintains invariants I1, I2, I3,... is the satisfaction of those invariants really enough to show that the program is achiving is "purpose" (i.e. what you want it to do).
The above is not easy. Even if you do that, you still can't be sure that what you want it to do is correct? (Example: I wrote a program to find the arthimetic mean and standard deviation of a set of data. Suppose I formally proved the program actually calculates these correctly). However, is the arithmetic mean really the correct mean for the application (or should I have used geometric mean, harmonic mean, etc).
All of this work (if even possible), just to prove that a program is doing what we want it to do (and what we want is actually correct). Clearly, the need for human ingenuity and foresight cannot be replaced.
Proving NEW things correct is far tricker! Until computers achieve intuition (which I hope they do not!!), humans will always be far more innovative. ( What if a human, when entering a list of 'correct' axioms into a computer mistakenly types instead of =>. The computer may then come up with a brillant (abeit incorrect) proof using it. A clever human hopefully will spot this. A slightly less clever human will take the pains to find a more clever human. A not-so-clever human won't even bother and will meet failure.
rich people hiring large sets of slaves and everyone else being screwedp?
How many 'employees' does Bill Gates have under Microsoft? No similiarity here...
I have to admit, the capitalist system makes more efficient use of (specialized) labor, and thus allows a few to provide a service to many, but real wealth is still concentrated in the hands of a few. Even worse, I feel we now create large bureaucracies and even entire INDUSTRIES from over-specialization. (Management companies that manage smaller management companies that actually mange the employees of some other company).
After a while, it seems like everyone in business/managment is making all the money and the peon engineers/laborers are doing all the actual work. (I don't care how much time a sales report make take -- it's still much less difficult than actually creating something new/different/better).
Even worse, in developing countries, the tyranny (and horrors) a company exterts over its people is much like the old slave system.
Given a choice, I still choose capitalism -- but only because it seems to be the least of the past evils.
1) If keystrokes are logged that are used to convey messages in a chatroom (inter-state comm), is that a violation if wiretapping laws?
2) Is it legal to log packets between a computer and a router if only packets destined to destinations within the state are logged? (What if the destination is on a local network).
If #2 is true, what layer does it apply to (network, transport, application, etc?)
Its easy to pin all security problems upon buffer over-flows.
But think of how many cross-site-scripting vulnerabilities exist (Most, if not all, are language-indepdendent).
How is any kind of runtime system going to make sure your PHP script doesn't inject unsafe raw HTML into a webpage???
Some somehwat recent vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel were due to race-conditions -- completely unrelated to buffer overflows.
There are many other kinds of logic errors that do not result in buffer overflows (or attempted ones), but they can still present a very serious security risk.
Here, a gram of prevention (by employing very skilled & conscientious programmers, regardless of language) is worth a metric ton of cure.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes space-research benefiting tele-medecine, deeps ea exporation, etc is a good thing... But think about how much time, money, and effort go into the parts not related to these. (such as insulating tiles,etc). I think many people's complain about space research is that while it produces a lot of good stuff, it might have been cheaper (on multiple levels) to more directly research what we would have got. Then the rest of the money could go to medical research.... Little lost, and a lot more gained. I also realize that many good things resulting from the space program did not have sufficient drive behind them initially to merit their own research. Thus the value in the space program is that it catalyzes research in fields where such catalysts cannot be justified, but whereby the application of such produces important results... Given that, there must be a better and less wasteful way.
I hate SUVs and large 4x4 trucks, but unfortunately, smaller is not necessarily better!
I have a V6 Olds Alero (~170hp). I get +30mpg in Hwy (70mph) and 25mpg in city.
I recently rented a Geo Metro. I think it was just less than 100hp. Guess what? My gas mileage was much worse, about 20mpg on hwy... Overwall city/hwy mileage was much worse than the city mileage for the Alero...
Why? The Metro's engine was so weak that it spent most of its time in 2nd (yes, not 3rd though being a 3-speed) gear. Yes it was a smaller engine. Yes the car probably weighed 1/2 of an Alero. And YES, the Geo Metro was LESS fuel efficient.
But I do agree with your main idea: We need normal people driving medium-sized cars... Not a country of morbidly obese driving Ford Excursions...
Branch prediction has been done for a long time... With most programs, there is already a high percentage of "wasted" work due to incorrect branch predictions (despite the predictors being very very accurate +95%).
Currently, processors speculatively execute down the path that is most likely to be taken again...
If a processor speculatively executed both paths of a branch simultaneously, then 50% of the work would be certainly be wasted. What if each path contained another branch? One in 5 instructions are likely to be a branch in typical instruction mixes...
If one speculatively executed both sides of 2 levels of branches, then 3/4 of the work would be wasted!!!! Which means 3/4 of the heat generated would result from no useful work.
Plus this would all require more complicated control hardware, which would likely slow down the maximum clock frequency of the chip...
Nice idea on paper, bad idea in practice.
Also, is it just me, or does American local news stations spend more time harping over the weather and inconsequential local events than actual real news? Ever notice the primary basis for advertising a new program is its "dedicate team of weather forecasters", or its "super-duper doppler radar" that all the other stations don't have? Come On! Its weather! At least in baseball, someone keeps track of batting averages to keep things interesting. All originality is gone from American TV.
I'm very surprised you feel American TV has better quality...
As an American, I find British comedy slightly dry but very intellectual (and thoughtful).
American TV has degraded into people dancing in underwear, Paris Hilton saying "Oh My Gosh", and an endless loop of automobile commericals that each claim driving their car will elevate one to spritual nirvanna.
Does anyone remember the sitcoms in the 80s? Many were quite good without sinking to crude humor, violence, or sexuality.
I'll take "Mr Bean" over "Will and Grace" any day.
I prefer to communicate using a nullspace!
You mean like the way felons can't bear arms?
Manadory concealed weapons license?
5-day Waiting period?
Banning of certain classes of weapons?
Fortunately we still have the right, but our ability to exercise that right has been hampered.
Strangely bomb making is now considered a terrorist act, while your interpretation of the motivation of the 2nd amendment would tend to view such activities as a right and a means to overthrow a corrupt government.
May we live in NOT interesting times!
May we live in NOT interesting times!
May we live in NOT interesting times!
Disclaimer: I do not support terrorism. Unrelately, I do not make bombs at home. I am only questioning how far we have veered from the visions of our founding fathers.
(Of course, England probably viewed them as terrorisms and a threat to national securtity.
Well, paying 100% of earnings is a "%" too, but it sure not fair!
Generally, though I agree with the point that I believe you are trying to make.
It is unfair for a person making 20k/year to pay 3k in tax when an extra 3k is likely to go toward basic living expenses.. In contrast, someone making 100k/year is not going to miss 15k in tax as much.
Yes tax codes are complicated... So is life. Overly simplified tax codes make life simpler -- suffering for all.
In the old days, people used to tax based upon the number of windows in a house.. WTF!?!?!??!
MOD PARENT DOWN. 500mA != 500mw. (Go get an EE degree). 60 Watts through firewire? 60W == 12A at 5V!!!! What the hell are you smoking? You are either stupid and/or a troll. Either way, you don't deserve positive mod points.
While this program may not be doing a dis-service to the large majority, it is doing a huge dis-service to the brilliant minority few.
Why should we say "more power" to he who squashes the brilliant few?
I too consider myself one of the rare few who hears differences between uncompressed WAV and high-bitrate MP3s.
I particularly notice it during brief high-pitched notes (they take on a digital artifacts/"clangyness" when made into MP3).
I also hear it in movies, such as in a crash thunder...
I'm a bit envious of the people who can't hear this stuff -- their listening experience is not diminished!!! (Damn epicurus!)
Yes, formal languages such as Prolog can make proving program correctness easier.
... is the satisfaction of those invariants really enough to show that the program is achiving is "purpose" (i.e. what you want it to do).
But I feel this benefit is more than offset by the difficulty of implementing general programs in these languages.
In terms of real-world applications, formal methods can simplfy implementation (such as the use of Dataflow models), but they do not prove correctness. Likewise, the use of computers for formal proofs can simplfy the process, but not replace it entirely.
Suppose you took the pains of proving a program is correct. Then you have to prove that "correctness" is really 'correct'. Who cares if the program maintains invariants I1, I2, I3,
The above is not easy. Even if you do that, you still can't be sure that what you want it to do is correct? (Example: I wrote a program to find the arthimetic mean and standard deviation of a set of data. Suppose I formally proved the program actually calculates these correctly). However, is the arithmetic mean really the correct mean for the application (or should I have used geometric mean, harmonic mean, etc).
All of this work (if even possible), just to prove that a program is doing what we want it to do (and what we want is actually correct). Clearly, the need for human ingenuity and foresight cannot be replaced.
Proving NEW things correct is far tricker! Until computers achieve intuition (which I hope they do not!!), humans will always be far more innovative.
( What if a human, when entering a list of 'correct' axioms into a computer mistakenly types instead of =>. The computer may then come up with a brillant (abeit incorrect) proof using it. A clever human hopefully will spot this. A slightly less clever human will take the pains to find a more clever human. A not-so-clever human won't even bother and will meet failure.
The moderators must not have cooperate jobs.
15 minutes is being a bit too optimistic though...
All assuming we have enough gas to get there.... Doh! I fear in a very short time, the main mode of transportation will be only walking!
In what shapes are lawyers available?
No, Gates is from another planet. Torvalds is actually human.
rich people hiring large sets of slaves and everyone else being screwedp?
How many 'employees' does Bill Gates have under Microsoft? No similiarity here...
I have to admit, the capitalist system makes more efficient use of (specialized) labor, and thus allows a few to provide a service to many, but real wealth is still concentrated in the hands of a few. Even worse, I feel we now create large bureaucracies and even entire INDUSTRIES from over-specialization. (Management companies that manage smaller management companies that actually mange the employees of some other company).
After a while, it seems like everyone in business/managment is making all the money and the peon engineers/laborers are doing all the actual work. (I don't care how much time a sales report make take -- it's still much less difficult than actually creating something new/different/better).
Even worse, in developing countries, the tyranny (and horrors) a company exterts over its people is much like the old slave system.
Given a choice, I still choose capitalism -- but only because it seems to be the least of the past evils.
No, the tin foil hats will freak out when their hat becomes energized!
Two questions:
1) If keystrokes are logged that are used to convey messages in a chatroom (inter-state comm), is that a violation if wiretapping laws?
2) Is it legal to log packets between a computer and a router if only packets destined to destinations within the state are logged? (What if the destination is on a local network).
If #2 is true, what layer does it apply to (network, transport, application, etc?)
Regardless, crime is not the answer in the war on SPAM.
Education is a much more powerful weapon.
(Or have access to a computer for that matter).
Or you could just obey the law and lead a more simple life.
Couldn't a 3rd party reimplementation implement "IsKNOT" instead and use a preprocessor to change IsNot to is IsKNOT?
Something like
gBasic foo.bas -DIsNot=ISKNOT
Are there any major fault lines in the antarctic?
I think a more relevant question is is there any ground in the Antarctic? Yes, there is a huge slab of ice -- but ICE doesn't contain tetonic plates.
(The real ground may be too far below!).
My very limited understanding is that there are usually mountains/hills created as a result of nearby fault lines.
Hey, why don't we just save some travel time and practice on CANADA? Shook the Canucks!
Its easy to pin all security problems upon buffer over-flows.
But think of how many cross-site-scripting vulnerabilities exist (Most, if not all, are language-indepdendent).
How is any kind of runtime system going to make sure your PHP script doesn't inject unsafe raw HTML into a webpage???
Some somehwat recent vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel were due to race-conditions -- completely unrelated to buffer overflows.
There are many other kinds of logic errors that do not result in buffer overflows (or attempted ones), but they can still present a very serious security risk.
Here, a gram of prevention (by employing very skilled & conscientious programmers, regardless of language) is worth a metric ton of cure.