Do the Algebra/Logic first, it is more directly applicable to computing and will allow you to understand undecidability (Goedel) computability (Turing) and of course graphs, groups and algebras. Also modern approaches to what people call Calculus, ie diferentialability etc are much more algebraic in the arena mathematicians call Analysis. Read Don Knuth's Fundamental Algorithms in parallel
Ja, es gibt und gab es zwei Konzentrationslager, von denen ich ein in Amersfoort, NL und die andere im südlichen Deutschland in Dachau bei München besucht, nur 350k weg
Now, that paper Meehl 2004 helps make things much clearer:
It is nearly 30 years since I last read a paper like that, that time in quantitive Econometrics, and they were all wrong too. Climate Science seems like a social science, not hard science. You have a huge bunch of guys, living in Alice's Wonderland, using what is said in other papers as data and evidence.
Sorry, it is not. This paper is evidence of one thing only, that the mesh used in the (DOE) PCM is far too course ( The resolution of the atmosphere is T42, or roughly 2.8 x 2.8 degree;, with 18 levels in the vertical. Resolution in the ocean is roughly.75 x.75 degree down to a.5 x.5; in the equatorial Tropics, with 32 levels.)
The discussion of the simulations tell us little since we do not have accurate experimental data for much of the period. Linearity is moot since it depends on the model equations, which, are somewhere else,... after you have read enough of this self-serving crap, all it is an academic self promotion scheme. What is missing from all this pseudo-science is fact:
The equations an mathematical set up of the model
The computer code to implement the model. See some of the nonsense from CRU.
If this is the best answer to Can CO2 cause run-away warming? God help us.
The only Heist here is of public opinion, and potentially the public purse.
Get it through your head that every time you bring your Consensus, Peer Reviewed, 1000's of scientific papers crap near a Mathematician or Hard Scientist or Engineer he will see right through you without the ClimateGate revalations which speak to how, fraudulently, the consensus was built and how the data was cherry-picked and fudged.
What we KNOW about the leading world wide Climate Research Unit is that it was infested with self serving crooks, who conspired to lie and break the law, FOI.
We can now read the fudge-code and read how the data was cherry picked.
We can see the abysmal quality of the Statistical analysis, ignorance in modeling and placing conjectures before data.
In a very real sense, skepticism, conjecture and amateur disbelief are at the centre of the scientific method.
Again and again here I have read skeptics asking for evidence, and they are entitled to it not twee Ivory Tower Academic put downs "Meh, conjecture and amateur disbelief without having read any actual research papers", argumenta ad hominum and other obfuscation.
In a matter this serious, it should be possible to write a sort (<10 page) summary paper (not 1000+ page garbage) setting out the facts, and the conclusions they lead to without hand-waving. That this has not been done says it all, we get nothing from politicised Academics but obfuscation and lies.
Listen, I have had enough of your biased and ignorant NONSENSE.
1. To label skeptics Deniers tells us all about your agenda. This is not about Jews and the Holocaust.
2. Both NOAA and NASA data have now been shown to have gone though the HAD-CRU massaging and improvement process which is entirely mathematically mis-conceived.
It dosnt matter how, why, whether it was done for the best reasons, it is just plain wrong. If you go further and look at the CRU code, it is clearly fraudulent.
It dosnt matter who pointed out that 75% of the Russian data was omitted, it was, and it should not have been
It dosnt matter "this is all done in an automated manner" if the program was fraudulant, or even just wrong.
3. Having read Lord Dr. Monckton and Dr. Burt Rutan's re-analysis of the raw-data, now we have it thanks to UK FOI and ClimateGate it makes much more sense than Professor Jones and Dr. Mann's work and the first two are not caught up in the AGW evangelists.
The whole tone of your post, the anger that you feel about any opposition or skepticism to your own views, your use of ad hominum arguments, your twisting of plain facts means that you cannot be taken seriously.
All you are demonstrating is that YOU do not understand the Scientific Method.
A bunch or Peer-Reviewed papers and consensus proves absolutely nothing except that science has become hopelessly politicised in the US and UK.
As the ClimateGate e-mails, which are undisputed by their authors, including Jones and Mann show clearly that the Peer Review and Grant Approval processes were corruptly fixed which I hope leads to loss of Tenure and dismissal for all senior staff involved
Did you read the DRAFT paper you cited. It is amost all statistical handwaving, and profers nothing to the even the existance of "Climate sensitivity", which an input parameter of a Computer Model, not a fact of life.
Taking the existance of such a parameter is to assume the whole AGW thesis, hook, line and sinker. To attempt to estimate its value is like trying to guess the body-temperature of a Jaberwocky. What the paper is is a fairly naive demonstration that AGW Scaremongers estimate is untenable.
On the other hand the IceCore data strongly suggests that CO2 level lag, not lead temperature. Further the fall of 0.8dC over the last 8 years, which cause such anguish to Jones and Mann strongly suggests the whole thing is flawed.
Now it has taken us 9 months to find out the the H5N1 flu scare was vastly overblown, but I see no resignations at CDC or WHO, about 14 months for us to understand that the Financial crisis was caused by Bankers Behaving Badly, and inadaquate Regulatory Agencies and fraudulent Credit Rating Agencies and nothing hase been done about Naked Shorts, Mark-2-Market and Flawed Debt Consolidation and no one from SECC or Moody is in the dock.
It is time to WAIT 10 years, and gather all the raw climate data we can, insure it is properly processed and ignore the shrill cries of the media and bought Snake-oil salesmen.
Finally, Follow the Money and the concept of Wold Government so more corrupt third world tin-pot dictators can bilk us.
I am all for as much modern climate data as possible, provided by the CIA or NASA, what I do NOT want is more on the AGW bandwagon cooking the data.
It is now clear that the data in th IPCC was heavily cherry picked and the pie was then cooked. We need accurate raw data and to have it all analysed impartially.
After ClimateGate several researchers Burt Rutan and Dr. Monckton have done that and come up with widely different answers 0.6dC/centuary with data that looks normal so it is time for Congress to insist on an impartial re-eveluation.
You got a market-droid answer, once that happens in a font line computer company, you have 5 years to sell your stock and fix your 401K, the retire or start a new life. Why do you think C* negotiate a golden parachute, so they can participate in the stock pump & dump before the implosion.
DEC, Compaq, Sun are just the biggest and once, the best, to go down this road.
This is a further example of the obsession with gadgets, which is so prevalent today. What you need are BOOKS for the age of the child, 3-4 lots of pictures, 7-8 less so, 10+ none, the better the books and teacher is the quicker it goes so long as they keep trendy teaching methods.
Grammar and spelling are important, especially at the beginning before the start recognizing longer words as Gestalt.
Once they can read feed them all the interesting, to them, books you can. Done right it can be amazingly fast, my 10 year old daughter taught her 2.75 year sister to read English in about 6 months to a reading age of ~ 7. Then she started teaching basic French but by the time she was 5 she could read, and talk simply in French.
Keep away from computers, the fonts and resolution are poor, and most width is too wide to read quickley, and if you make the lines narrower they are too short.
Finally they are not intelligently reactive to the student's needs and progress.
After the release of the ClimateGate emails from the CRU, East-Anglia, I have been looking myself at some of the data, including the recently re-collated Siberian data and and weather observation station data from US and Europe. From a previously neutral position, I have rapidly concluded that the CRU presentation is fraudulent and the data, at best, indicates a.6 dC per century over the last 100 years. Mann, Jones and IPCC results can only be replicated by completely Cherry Picking the data. The Hockey Stick is horseshit. Also CO2 levels lag, not lead temperature.
AGW is a scam to persuade the population to pay more for energy, and Carbon Trading schemes, which have similar validity to CDOs.
I know, from personal knowledge, that Oil Companies regularly understate reserves, talk up risks and Peak-Oil, and fail to build reserve refining capacity in order to elevate the oil price. At USD 23.00 per barrel most US and European Oil Co(s) make a reasonable commercial profit, tax paid to producer countries. Two sets of books are normal.
Bert Rutan, the aeronautical engineer, has also come to the same conclusion and published his interim analysis here, http://rps3.com/Files/AGW/Rutan.Intro.AGW.b.pdf
Common sense tells you we are being lied to, and on a grand scale.
Thorium Fission Reactors, Fusion Reactors and Geothermal Taps and another 6 technologies are all feasible real re-newables which are not compromised by higher cost, and do not involve diverting plant crops to fuel, thereby putting up the cost of food.
Yes, but I wrote on code commenting, and project documentation is an other thing; personally I dont like doc-generators much more complex than the perldoc level, and can not figure out what most of them especially Doxygen are really trying to do, I find them useful as Xref and visualization tools, and I suppose, with great discipline you could get Javadoc... to work but at that point you are back in what, not why. I like Wikis better, and they are searchable. I use SourceNavigator as a code visualiser, and then "Read the Code, Luke [Tovolds]".
Yeh you can, put the CRAP in COMPANY_LEGALESE_JUSTIFY_OUR_EXISTENCE_AND_BILLINGS.txt file and cite (nice legal word) the file in the 1-liner just dont defacate the crap everwhere, keep the shit contained. What the lawers dont want to tell you is that you need the
Copyright (c) YYYY-YYYY, Holder, (license if any) --- in each file of code you wish to protect. See Bern Convention. In the US you MUST also REGISTER the Copyright but that dosnt apply in Europe or Asia.
Your example makes the shit-api and how not to write code points perfectly, and BTW this CRAP is 99.9% caused by OO mumbo-jumbo. The advice given by a well known British politician id perfect here "If you find yourself at the bottom of a hole, stop digging!"
If this is part of a library where is the API documentation, and why wasnt the code written sensibly in the first place:
vide:
int getUSassimilatedGrade(int employeeSystemUID_Id)
or somesuch, when I am faced with this sort of crap, which is often, I find out who, in purchasing, bought the nonsense, and get them to give me the name of their sales contact and through him get to the guy who wrote the rubbish and get some useful documentation not written by doc-writers and add that to my copy of the product data.
We are having problems unifying some aspects of (personal) reference data (stamdaten) in Europe, Names, addresses... which vary by state, and have lots of hidden semantics, often special and very local eg CH-8054 Zurich is in kreis 4, and the only way of finding about that stuff is asking questions, and having done that write it down, in the code, that is case (b) above.
You guys in the US should get out and lynch some FCC guys and the congresscritters who pander to ATT and Verizon. If I have a cell phone that they havnt been allowed to improve for their network aka cripple, how can they tell and charge me more for netbook/laptop. The simplist phones have modem functionality built in and for Android/Linux phones you will be able to use it freely even in the US.
You just neet to say NO to continue being ABUSED by your service provider.
For LSE a performant, stable system is, and was, a sine quo non, Their entire business model, credibility and revenue stream depend on it.
The CIO was 'persuaded' to go with a greenfield solution bases on M$ technology which she should have known would fail, but that has never dissuaded PHBs. The FOSS solution, done in Sirilanka, is far less complex and already well debugged and was available at the time of the CIO choice. It is already in use at other markets and hedge funds which have essentially the same problem. It is simple, the infrastructure is simple, and well supported in Linux and most important both infrastructure and implementation follow function.
Too many people do not, at the same time, understand application architecture and infrastructure. You cant use Ethernet (Gigabit, Petabit) in a low latency system because of the Phase Lock Loop preamble and jam time, especially, as in the trading case. You need Infiniband or even better, programmable, Hyperchannel communication. Linux supports both and Windoze neither well.
But you are basically right, the cost of hardware, or system support are unimportant compared to the cost of failure.
Hopefully the Internet Archive and Google will fix the 'out of print' problem.
Programmers, who cant, should not touch complex code, and NO amount of commenting stops them (fixing) it from right to wrong. If you dont know you should not fix code cos it looks wrong, I would cut your coding finger off. If you make any change to a complex algorithm you have to review/debug it ab initio.
Read a lot of Linus (Tovolds) comments about code, reading source, and what NOT to do and you will learn a lot. If you want to be a good programmer follow good examples eg Prof Sir Peter Swinerton-Dyer, Prof Tony Brooker, Dr Martin Richards, Edsker Dijkstra, Prof Don Knuth, Marc Andreeson, Linus Tovolds (for a few examples). A really good example is the early evolution of Git, when Linus was the prime implementor, it was awsome.
By reading good code you lear a lot, but if you ambition is to be a typically under-educated US code-droid, dont bother. Code, like lierature, should not be limited by essentially illiterate readers,
Slashdot Mirror
Statistics is HARD, for two reasons:
(a) Probability theory, on which all practical Statistics is based it both (i) counter-intuitive and (ii) difficult
(b) The very Mathematics on which it is based is obscure
And, worst of all, it is uniformly badly taught, even in good universities, and the Statistics for XXX are uniformly awful, blind leading the blind.
Lastly it is very hard to get a staight answer from a mathematical Statistician.
Do the Algebra/Logic first, it is more directly applicable to computing and will allow you to understand undecidability (Goedel) computability (Turing) and of course graphs, groups and algebras. Also modern approaches to what people call Calculus, ie diferentialability etc are much more algebraic in the arena mathematicians call Analysis. Read Don Knuth's Fundamental Algorithms in parallel
Ja, es gibt und gab es zwei Konzentrationslager, von denen ich ein in Amersfoort, NL und die andere im südlichen Deutschland in Dachau bei München besucht, nur 350k weg
Now, that paper Meehl 2004 helps make things much clearer:
.75 x .75 degree down to a .5 x.5; in the equatorial Tropics, with 32 levels.)
... after you have read enough of this self-serving crap, all it is an academic self promotion scheme. What is missing from all this pseudo-science is fact:
It is nearly 30 years since I last read a paper like that, that time in quantitive Econometrics, and they were all wrong too. Climate Science seems like a social science, not hard science. You have a huge bunch of guys, living in Alice's Wonderland, using what is said in other papers as data and evidence.
Sorry, it is not. This paper is evidence of one thing only, that the mesh used in the (DOE) PCM is far too course ( The resolution of the atmosphere is T42, or roughly 2.8 x 2.8 degree;, with 18 levels in the vertical. Resolution in the ocean is roughly
The discussion of the simulations tell us little since we do not have accurate experimental data for much of the period. Linearity is moot since it depends on the model equations, which, are somewhere else,
The equations an mathematical set up of the model
The computer code to implement the model. See some of the nonsense from CRU.
If this is the best answer to Can CO2 cause run-away warming? God help us.
The only Heist here is of public opinion, and potentially the public purse.
Get it through your head that every time you bring your Consensus, Peer Reviewed, 1000's of scientific papers crap near a Mathematician or Hard Scientist or Engineer he will see right through you without the ClimateGate revalations which speak to how, fraudulently, the consensus was built and how the data was cherry-picked and fudged.
What we KNOW about the leading world wide Climate Research Unit is that it was infested with self serving crooks, who conspired to lie and break the law, FOI.
We can now read the fudge-code and read how the data was cherry picked.
We can see the abysmal quality of the Statistical analysis, ignorance in modeling and placing conjectures before data.
In a very real sense, skepticism, conjecture and amateur disbelief are at the centre of the scientific method.
Again and again here I have read skeptics asking for evidence, and they are entitled to it not twee Ivory Tower Academic put downs "Meh, conjecture and amateur disbelief without having read any actual research papers", argumenta ad hominum and other obfuscation.
In a matter this serious, it should be possible to write a sort (<10 page) summary paper (not 1000+ page garbage) setting out the facts, and the conclusions they lead to without hand-waving. That this has not been done says it all, we get nothing from politicised Academics but obfuscation and lies.
NO, I just know the difference between theories, models and data. I understand the impact of Chaos theory on this kind of extrapolation.
I nkow the difference between modeling and simulation.
You seemingly do not.
Listen, I have had enough of your biased and ignorant NONSENSE.
1. To label skeptics Deniers tells us all about your agenda. This is not about Jews and the Holocaust.
2. Both NOAA and NASA data have now been shown to have gone though the HAD-CRU massaging and improvement process which is entirely mathematically mis-conceived.
It dosnt matter how, why, whether it was done for the best reasons, it is just plain wrong. If you go further and look at the CRU code, it is clearly fraudulent.
It dosnt matter who pointed out that 75% of the Russian data was omitted, it was, and it should not have been
It dosnt matter "this is all done in an automated manner" if the program was fraudulant, or even just wrong.
3. Having read Lord Dr. Monckton and Dr. Burt Rutan's re-analysis of the raw-data, now we have it thanks to UK FOI and ClimateGate it makes much more sense than Professor Jones and Dr. Mann's work and the first two are not caught up in the AGW evangelists.
The whole tone of your post, the anger that you feel about any opposition or skepticism to your own views, your use of ad hominum arguments, your twisting of plain facts means that you cannot be taken seriously.
All you are demonstrating is that YOU do not understand the Scientific Method.
A bunch or Peer-Reviewed papers and consensus proves absolutely nothing except that science has become hopelessly politicised in the US and UK.
As the ClimateGate e-mails, which are undisputed by their authors, including Jones and Mann show clearly that the Peer Review and Grant Approval processes were corruptly fixed which I hope leads to loss of Tenure and dismissal for all senior staff involved
Did you read the DRAFT paper you cited. It is amost all statistical handwaving, and profers nothing to the even the existance of "Climate sensitivity", which an input parameter of a Computer Model, not a fact of life.
Taking the existance of such a parameter is to assume the whole AGW thesis, hook, line and sinker. To attempt to estimate its value is like trying to guess the body-temperature of a Jaberwocky. What the paper is is a fairly naive demonstration that AGW Scaremongers estimate is untenable.
On the other hand the IceCore data strongly suggests that CO2 level lag, not lead temperature. Further the fall of 0.8dC over the last 8 years, which cause such anguish to Jones and Mann strongly suggests the whole thing is flawed.
Now it has taken us 9 months to find out the the H5N1 flu scare was vastly overblown, but I see no resignations at CDC or WHO, about 14 months for us to understand that the Financial crisis was caused by Bankers Behaving Badly, and inadaquate Regulatory Agencies and fraudulent Credit Rating Agencies and nothing hase been done about Naked Shorts, Mark-2-Market and Flawed Debt Consolidation and no one from SECC or Moody is in the dock.
It is time to WAIT 10 years, and gather all the raw climate data we can, insure it is properly processed and ignore the shrill cries of the media and bought Snake-oil salesmen.
Finally, Follow the Money and the concept of Wold Government so more corrupt third world tin-pot dictators can bilk us.
I am all for as much modern climate data as possible, provided by the CIA or NASA, what I do NOT want is more on the AGW bandwagon cooking the data.
It is now clear that the data in th IPCC was heavily cherry picked and the pie was then cooked. We need accurate raw data and to have it all analysed impartially.
After ClimateGate several researchers Burt Rutan and Dr. Monckton have done that and come up with widely different answers 0.6dC/centuary with data that looks normal so it is time for Congress to insist on an impartial re-eveluation.
As you will see from the rebuttals below, you are just wrong.
Put the real problem is whose head will roll for this, This needs to attract punitive damages.
You got a market-droid answer, once that happens in a font line computer company, you have 5 years to sell your stock and fix your 401K, the retire or start a new life. Why do you think C* negotiate a golden parachute, so they can participate in the stock pump & dump before the implosion.
DEC, Compaq, Sun are just the biggest and once, the best, to go down this road.
This asshole is only interested in His Royalties, he is Bog Stupid and (dosnt understand / cares nothing) for Culture.
e-mail is useful but PowerPoint is, in most hands, a work of the Devil.
My kids were staunch fans of Ronald Dahl, none of it designed for children. There are very few Childrens' books, only the Hobbit comes to mind.
This is a further example of the obsession with gadgets, which is so prevalent today. What you need are BOOKS for the age of the child, 3-4 lots of pictures, 7-8 less so, 10+ none, the better the books and teacher is the quicker it goes so long as they keep trendy teaching methods.
Grammar and spelling are important, especially at the beginning before the start recognizing longer words as Gestalt.
Once they can read feed them all the interesting, to them, books you can. Done right it can be amazingly fast, my 10 year old daughter taught her 2.75 year sister to read English in about 6 months to a reading age of ~ 7. Then she started teaching basic French but by the time she was 5 she could read, and talk simply in French.
Keep away from computers, the fonts and resolution are poor, and most width is too wide to read quickley, and if you make the lines narrower they are too short.
Finally they are not intelligently reactive to the student's needs and progress.
When I read your comment, I read it as since "I was 10" not "10 years out of school"
but in either form its dead on, Peak-Oil, Peak-Uranium are bullshit, and mean we want the price to go up.
What I find amazing is that so many sheeple fall for this, again and again.
An important point is why fusion research is still not going anywhere, that is important and deserves a much elevated political profile.
After the release of the ClimateGate emails from the CRU, East-Anglia, I have been looking myself at some of the data, including the recently re-collated Siberian data and and weather observation station data from US and Europe. From a previously neutral position, I have rapidly concluded that the CRU presentation is fraudulent and the data, at best, indicates a .6 dC per century over the last 100 years. Mann, Jones and IPCC results can only be replicated by completely Cherry Picking the data. The Hockey Stick is horseshit. Also CO2 levels lag, not lead temperature.
AGW is a scam to persuade the population to pay more for energy, and Carbon Trading schemes, which have similar validity to CDOs.
I know, from personal knowledge, that Oil Companies regularly understate reserves, talk up risks and Peak-Oil, and fail to build reserve refining capacity in order to elevate the oil price. At USD 23.00 per barrel most US and European Oil Co(s) make a reasonable commercial profit, tax paid to producer countries. Two sets of books are normal.
Bert Rutan, the aeronautical engineer, has also come to the same conclusion and published his interim analysis here,
http://rps3.com/Files/AGW/Rutan.Intro.AGW.b.pdf
Common sense tells you we are being lied to, and on a grand scale.
Thorium Fission Reactors, Fusion Reactors and Geothermal Taps and another 6 technologies are all feasible real re-newables which are not compromised by higher cost, and do not involve diverting plant crops to fuel, thereby putting up the cost of food.
Yes, but I wrote on code commenting, and project documentation is an other thing; personally I dont like doc-generators much more complex than the perldoc level, and can not figure out what most of them especially Doxygen are really trying to do, I find them useful as Xref and visualization tools, and I suppose, with great discipline you could get Javadoc ... to work but at that point you are back in what, not why. I like Wikis better, and they are searchable. I use SourceNavigator as a code visualiser, and then "Read the Code, Luke [Tovolds]".
Yeh you can, put the CRAP in COMPANY_LEGALESE_JUSTIFY_OUR_EXISTENCE_AND_BILLINGS.txt file and cite (nice legal word) the file in the 1-liner just dont defacate the crap everwhere, keep the shit contained. What the lawers dont want to tell you is that you need the
Copyright (c) YYYY-YYYY, Holder, (license if any) --- in each file of code you wish to protect. See Bern Convention. In the US you MUST also REGISTER the Copyright but that dosnt apply in Europe or Asia.
Your example makes the shit-api and how not to write code points perfectly, and BTW this CRAP is 99.9% caused by OO mumbo-jumbo. The advice given by a well known British politician id perfect here "If you find yourself at the bottom of a hole, stop digging!"
... which vary by state, and have lots of hidden semantics, often special and very local eg CH-8054 Zurich is in kreis 4, and the only way of finding about that stuff is asking questions, and having done that write it down, in the code, that is case (b) above.
If this is part of a library where is the API documentation, and why wasnt the code written sensibly in the first place:
vide:
int getUSassimilatedGrade(int employeeSystemUID_Id)
or somesuch, when I am faced with this sort of crap, which is often, I find out who, in purchasing, bought the nonsense, and get them to give me the name of their sales contact and through him get to the guy who wrote the rubbish and get some useful documentation not written by doc-writers and add that to my copy of the product data.
We are having problems unifying some aspects of (personal) reference data (stamdaten) in Europe, Names, addresses
You guys in the US should get out and lynch some FCC guys and the congresscritters who pander to ATT and Verizon. If I have a cell phone that they havnt been allowed to improve for their network aka cripple, how can they tell and charge me more for netbook/laptop. The simplist phones have modem functionality built in and for Android/Linux phones you will be able to use it freely even in the US.
You just neet to say NO to continue being ABUSED by your service provider.
Swiss dates dd.mm.yyyy, postcode CH-nnnn (nnnn is geminde number), numbers 1'234.56 ie ' is thousands seperator and . is (decimal|cent)
For LSE a performant, stable system is, and was, a sine quo non, Their entire business model, credibility and revenue stream depend on it.
The CIO was 'persuaded' to go with a greenfield solution bases on M$ technology which she should have known would fail, but that has never dissuaded PHBs. The FOSS solution, done in Sirilanka, is far less complex and already well debugged and was available at the time of the CIO choice. It is already in use at other markets and hedge funds which have essentially the same problem. It is simple, the infrastructure is simple, and well supported in Linux and most important both infrastructure and implementation follow function.
Too many people do not, at the same time, understand application architecture and infrastructure. You cant use Ethernet (Gigabit, Petabit) in a low latency system because of the Phase Lock Loop preamble and jam time, especially, as in the trading case. You need Infiniband or even better, programmable, Hyperchannel communication. Linux supports both and Windoze neither well.
But you are basically right, the cost of hardware, or system support are unimportant compared to the cost of failure.
Hopefully the Internet Archive and Google will fix the 'out of print' problem.
Programmers, who cant, should not touch complex code, and NO amount of commenting stops them (fixing) it from right to wrong. If you dont know you should not fix code cos it looks wrong, I would cut your coding finger off. If you make any change to a complex algorithm you have to review/debug it ab initio.
Read a lot of Linus (Tovolds) comments about code, reading source, and what NOT to do and you will learn a lot. If you want to be a good programmer follow good examples eg Prof Sir Peter Swinerton-Dyer, Prof Tony Brooker, Dr Martin Richards, Edsker Dijkstra, Prof Don Knuth, Marc Andreeson, Linus Tovolds (for a few examples). A really good example is the early evolution of Git, when Linus was the prime implementor, it was awsome.
By reading good code you lear a lot, but if you ambition is to be a typically under-educated US code-droid, dont bother. Code, like lierature, should not be limited by essentially illiterate readers,
I do like your sig though, very true.