It takes time to build success. Today's low success weapon is tomorrow's most useful weapon. Often it takes years to perfect the software in a weapon. It takes practice to become a sharp shooter, if the Army would get rid of all but the best they would soon have no sharp shooters as today's best retire. They need to train more all the time. Likewise, today's failure guided missile may be tomorrow's best after the bugs are worked out.
Now if you had said drop all those old weapons that were once great, but technology has superseded, I'd agree except that they are paid for and cost little to keep around, so why not save them until you don't need the best? There is no reason to build more WWII type bombs, but if we got them and they are safe, save them. (some bombs decay overtime and become unstable or useless, they need to be destroyed, but many others are good as the day there were build for hundreds of years)
Yeah cookies can remember my zip code. Big deal, I already know my zip code, and it is only 5 digits. As it happens my web browser also knows my zipcode from the last time I entered it, so the moment I type '5' it pops up a little completion box with my full zip code in it. Same for my address, city, and State. (Speaking of state, why do I have to find my state in a tiny pull down box, The standard is two letters that are easier to type than it is to navigate that stupid list)
I don't want one click shopping. It isn't hard to enter my credit card number into a web form. I'd prefer not to have that number stored in my computer at all. (Yes I know I'm protected, but it is a hassle to dispute charges)
Bill Gates has also said that his child(ren?) will not get a significant inheritance. His money is going to charity.
Most of the rich children I know spend money like it grows on trees, after a few generations there is nothing left. (I'm given to understand this isn't so in all countries, but in the US it generally is true) Not to mention there are more and more children to split it with - a few will take care of things, but I see no evidence that long term the rich keep their money. (kings do, but only until the revolution)
I don't trust economists. In any case, there are many options for implementing any "fair tax", but you can bet money the powers that be will add loop-holes for their friends.
I would avoid PHP for server sides scripts. Python is a much nicer language. Ruby on Rails gets a lot of good press from programmers I tend to trust. (I have never used Ruby) PHP is just painful. It works and has support for some of the things you need, but it falls down quick if you want a nice language.
Personal opinion, of course, but I have come to hate PHP. I think you will too, so I recommend you stay away, or at least evaluate the alternatives first.
So? We do not know the situation. Did he run the red light while there were cars trying to cross the other way, and nearly hit someone, or did he run it in broad daylight in an open intersection where he could clearly see there were no other cars around? The first situation is dangerous and he should pay. The second is less harmful than stopping and waiting, because of the needless environmental damage his car would do idling at the stoplight.
Traffic lights are to keep traffic moving when there is a lot of traffic wanting to get through a small intersection. If there is no traffic there should be no light at all - just go on through at fast as you can.
Local governments however see traffic lights as a way to control drivers. Make people stop every so often, ideally collecting some fines to help out the budget without raising taxes. It isn't about safety. (In the majority of light controlled intersections a roundabout would be safer than the light)
Red lights should be treated as yield signs: slow down, look, and then go on if it is safe to do so.
I have waited for several minutes at a red light before, for no reason - I could clearly see no cars were on the road with a green within.5 mile. There was plenty of room for me to get safely across - even if my car died in the middle of the intersection I could have pushed it. (and in any case you could see my sitting there in plenty of time to stop if I wasn't)
Money is useless unless spent. What is the point of being a billionair if you can't buy a big boat and other such things. Sure they may not buy that boat today, but at some time that money needs to be spent. You can be sure the rich will spend it sometime.
There is no reason we have to tax everything. In MN food and clothing are not taxed. Since food and clothing are the major source of spending to the poor, they pay less taxes as a portion of their spending. There is no reason we can't exempt these things in a fair tax.
You can't get around the poor having less income to spend. However you can make sure it is easy to get the essentials.
Of course Warren Buffet, is the second richest man in the world, and lives in a small house. What does he get form his money? He doesn't enjoy spending it. So despite being worth millions on paper, he has nothing (by a choice that I respect). Someday he will die, and then that money will pass one to someone who will spend it. (Actually he is leaving most to charity, but they will spend it, so it doesn't make much a difference)
Bahh. Hire a new ISP, setup servers and mirror your website. Then point your DNS servers to the new ISP. One week latter (or however long it takes for DNS to update) notify the old ISP that you are gone.
I wouldn't call it trivial, but it is easy. Yes it costs money. The point it to make it cost them money to use the old ISP, ideally more money. There will be no bad luck if they write their contract with the new ISP correctly. Maybe the cost of switching to a different ISP will actually teach them to write the "you won't host spammers" into the contract with the new ISP, which prevents this problem. (Or at least gives them their costs to move to the next ISP back)
Maybe, maybe not. The next coder shouldn't be touching that code until there is a bug or a new feature. The former is unlikely, or I would have cleaned it up already. The latter means they would spend a lot of time changing that code anyway, with no reason to believe their changes can easily fit into the clean code I come up with, so they might have to re-write it all anyway.
In any case, the next coder at least has an example that works. They also have admission by the author that this code sucks and should be cleaned up. More than once I've spent a long time looking at ugly code only to suddenly realize that it wasn't ugly, it was good, clean, fast code - that couldn't be made easier to understand without an order of magnitude more lines (and thus that many more bugs) It is really hard for a programmer to see that code is good at a glance. (though as I get better I have learned many things that are good that look bad at first sight)
Yeah, AOL is not the best target. However enough AOL users use eBay that eBay could (if they stuck it out) force a change in any large ISP, and bankrupt small ones.
It would cost eBay a lot of money in the short run, and I'm not sure that could be recovered in the gains from less phishing attacks long term. You can be sure that eBay shutting out AOL would make national news, so long as they picked a slow news week. I just don't know if eBay has the right marketing guys to not loose in the realm of public opinion.:( Too bad, this needs to be done someday. (though not necessarily to AOL)
Depends on how much the zombies are hurting. I get a lot of phishers sending email as if I have an eBay account. (I have not used eBay in years) If eBay decides these are coming from zombie machines hosted by AOL, they might decide that the loss of AOL subscribers is worth it, and AOL subscribers who like eBay will be mad enough to force AOL to act.
Though in general I agree with you: won't happen. However if the phishing problem gets much worse it might.
Keep the pressure up. The conference committee can put this back, but the house can then reject the conference results, and things start over. I'm not sure if they start over from committee or from scratch, but either way the house can block this if they want.
I don't even need to check his record to tell you that he fails to defend freedom in some area. Perhaps he is good on some freedom issues, but he fails on others. Look at his record honestly. Give him credit where due, and attack him mercilessly where he fails.
When it comes time to vote, consider his record and decide if his good points are worth the bad.
Re:But you still need organic chemicals
on
'Haute Cuisine' on Mars
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Depends on the plant. Tomatoes are in fact easy to grow in water enriched with the right stuff. Corn is extreemly difficult. Note that I said enriched water, not pure water.
Loss should not be a big deal, as this is intended to replace ~40% of the food on a mars mission, and that other 60% can be recycled into more.
In any case, that organic matter in earth soil came from other plants - it wasn't always there. If we are careful we should be able to likewise enrich Mar's soil.
You were so close to the answer. Even used the correct word: hydroponic. Yet you still missed it.
Plants just need water and nutrients to grow. They do not care much about the soil, so long as the roots get enough (but not too much) water and nutrients. Tomatoes have been grown in just water and fertilizer for years! No soil needed at all. Most plants are more picky than tomatoes, but many grow in gravel sprayed with water and fertilizer.
This is old by now. Tomatoes were first grown in the lab this way in the 1930s. (There are claims to have done it before then, but they are hard to pin down) Though tomatoes are particularly easy to grow with hydrophonics.
I'm not sure what nutrients potatoes need, but they prefer sandy soils, which generally doesn't have much in the way of nutrients. Most of the other plants in the article seem to have been selected in part because they don't need much in the way of nutrients.
In short, we know we can find CO2. We can crack that to get a little O2 to start things out. We are pretty sure we can find water. The amount of fertilizer needed is small for many plants, and thus trivial to bring. (Not to mention it is a by-product of digestion once humans are nearby) The only worry is nitrogen doesn't seem to be plentiful. It could easily end up that getting the nitrogen is the hardest part. Depending on how the greenhouse needs to be designed of course.
Since they are targeted at 40%, I would have to say that this adds to variety, not displaces it. Particularly considering the quality of most freeze dried foods.
Well I don't play MMORPGs enough to know the details, but I assure you they apply. A rogue should loose in a head to head battle with a sword fighter. However if the rogue is smart he will never get into that battle, instead using a sneak attack to kill the fighter while he is doing something else. The fighter should be unable to sneak (armor clanks too much...) up on anyone and get a kill.
A warrior will never go against a tank, as they are not balanced. The two do not belong in the same game world. A mechanic against a tank might would be interesting though, so long as the mechanic is given a good tool set. Of course tanks allow for air forces (and SAMs...), which is a whole different world.
You need balance in any multi-player game if there is more than one type of unit. Doesn't matter if the units are called "orcs" or "rogues", the need for balance is still there.
Yes, in the real world you do care. Which is why the solution I presented is best - it uses some factor to determin how many threads to start. Each thread does enough work to make the locking trivial compared to the total run time.
Note that in the simple thread you posted results do not depend on the results of the last run, and I was able to factor all the data accesses out.
You are correct that theta(n) is often useful, but I posted a solution where theta(n) isn't as important as O(n). Remember the assumption that n is very large, and this algorithm dominates run time. When either case is not true, then my solution isn't of much use.
Except that isn't all I print. Sometimes I prime a map. Sometimes I print a web page. Sometimes I print a photo of some friends kid. The first two I can leave with anything that I can read. The last demands high quality. So I use quality for everything.
Actually in my case I have a laser printer which works great, but doesn't give me anything but black. Most people I know though have the color inkjet, and use it to print pictures they care about.
No, the key is making sure every class has weakness that can be exploited. A very powerful class that just barely moves is easily defeated by lesser classes if they can attack and then move off to heal, knowing they are too far away for the powerful class to attack latter.
Powerful classes should also be more expensive in some way. That is you can have this powerful figure, but he will demand a lot more wages, and a lot more training, so you loose the ability to have many weak fighters to get him. Once that powerful class is down you may not have enough money left over to hire a replacement. It is worse if you have to train up a new one - all the time spent training the new hero while the enemy attacks, perhaps bringing it down before you are done with training...
That is just one way to balance a powerful class. You could make the powerful class weak to poison (holy water), magic, or some such. Perhaps he is powerful with a sword, but has no defense against arrows.
The most classes you add the harder this is though. However getting it right makes things interesting. Instead of my 3d4 "elf" fighers and 2d6 "elf" archers against your 3d4 "orc" fighters and 2d6 "orc" archers you can have my 1d4 elf fighters who breed like rabbits (cheap) against your 2d12 orcs that are hard to replace. Thus you need to watch out for my swarms while picking off my players one by one. (Note, I just picked some race names at random by the traditional literature the stats I picked do not match)
If you want IKEA junk you are cheaper to buy from them. Want quality furniture made of real wood, something that will fetch high dollars 100 years from now in a antique store, then you can make it yourself for less.
IKEA is cheaper because they don't make the desk fit exactly where you want it. You have to settle for MDF (which is good for some things, but won't hold beauty like real wood). Eventully you scratch it, and the IKEA stuff is tossed, while the real wood is refinished again and again.
Overall I think you are right. However it could work for some things.
Best buy could easily burn you a CD of any local (but not to the city you are in) band you care about. No way will they carry a small band that is popular in Minneapolis in New York, but if you happen to care (perhaps you have a relative in it), they could easily have a computer burn a CD, print the label (right on the disk), and build a book and insert it. You would need to wait 10 minutes, but it could be done now. Mind they would have to enforce some rules. (You get a 2 page insert, too bad if you want more) Getting reasonable royalties is harder than doing this.
Note that the above is very standardized. You get a music CD, which is already one physical size. We restrict the insert/cover to a simple physical format. This would work for CDs, but books tend to come in all different sizes.
Perhaps paperback fiction could be done on this model. These books tend to be all one size anyway. I know I would pay extra for some long out of print books (some written before I was born) to get them on acid free paper. I loved them in the library, but I can't find a source of them new. If the machine can do all the work, so long as everything is in the standard size it would be great. I'm not sure how to handle the thickness issues though.
Actually I'd love them in hard cover, but publishers never run something in hardcover once in makes it to paperback. I'd prefer to buy the paperback, and if I wear that copy out I know it is worth the hard cover.
The point is the machine needs to be automatic. The only reason it is in Barns and Nobel is that it costs $100,000 or so each, more than I could afford, but they could get enough use to pay for the machine. Otherwise it is totally automated, just put your credit card in, select the book, and 10 minutes latter you have it, hot (literally) off the printer. Once a day they put more paper and ink in. Once a week the factory rep for that state comes by to clean it. Simple. However the economics don't support inventing that machine yet.
I have to disagree. The mutex is not significant, because N is very large at least > 100,000. (Assume a processor large enough to hold the result). If N is expected to be small you are correct, if N is very large, for some value of very large, then locking time is not significant.
When doing big-O analysis in computer science we always assume n large enough to overtake constant losses. If n is known to never be more than 4, than an O(n!) algorithm may run faster than a O(1) algorithm. However the O(1) algorithm will not be any slower when n is 1000, while the O(n!) algorithm will not finish in our lifetime.
So my code would be in C++: (Sorry about the formatting, but I'm not about to figure out how to make it look nice in allowable html):
int loopCountHelper(int start, int end) {
int result = 0;
for(int i = start;i result += 1;
}
}
int AccumulateLoopCount(int N) {
int accumulator = 0;
threadList tl;
while(N >0) {
int start = N > THREADFACTOR ? N - THREADFACTOR : 0;
tl.newThread(*loopCountHelper(start, N));
N = N > THREADFACTOR ? N - THREADFACTOR : 0;
}
It has been a long time since I've done function pointers in C++ so I'm sure I did that all wrong. However I think you get the idea. For that matter now that you see what I'm trying to do I suspect you could come up with a better design. (I know I could if I had a few hours and a good editor to work with)
The point of bluffing is to make you think I have a different hand than I do during the game. Notice that I said game, and not hand. Bluffs need to be played for their affect on the entire game. Unless this is the last hand of the last game you will ever play (in which case your current bluff cannot affect anything but the current hand)
Sometimes that means you play out a hand you know you have won so the other guys think you are bad as odds and thus bid higher when you have a good hand. Of course you need to be careful. One loss large loss is more than canceled by two large wins, but you cannot play 3 large losses and 1 large win and make money.
KDE does not operate on the model. KDE doesn't have management breathing down our necks. We have programmers breaking down each others neck. We know that one day I want to make a change to the code, and I don't want to change every instance. So we insist on clean code. If support for some gimmick (ACID2) takes a little longer, so what, at least is easy to developer. In the long run this is better, because ACID3 won't require fixing a bug in two places.
That is one of the advantages of open source - we are able to say to the management demanding something now "Go away, I'm going to do it right, no matter how long it takes."
That is why Mozilla took years between netscape 4.x and mozilla 1.0 - they were able to take those years to get it right. Mozilla is now advancing fairly quick because the code is well written.
Of course if you just want feature foo now, this is a downside. If you are thinking long term, it is an advantage.
Slashdot Mirror
It takes time to build success. Today's low success weapon is tomorrow's most useful weapon. Often it takes years to perfect the software in a weapon. It takes practice to become a sharp shooter, if the Army would get rid of all but the best they would soon have no sharp shooters as today's best retire. They need to train more all the time. Likewise, today's failure guided missile may be tomorrow's best after the bugs are worked out.
Now if you had said drop all those old weapons that were once great, but technology has superseded, I'd agree except that they are paid for and cost little to keep around, so why not save them until you don't need the best? There is no reason to build more WWII type bombs, but if we got them and they are safe, save them. (some bombs decay overtime and become unstable or useless, they need to be destroyed, but many others are good as the day there were build for hundreds of years)
Yeah cookies can remember my zip code. Big deal, I already know my zip code, and it is only 5 digits. As it happens my web browser also knows my zipcode from the last time I entered it, so the moment I type '5' it pops up a little completion box with my full zip code in it. Same for my address, city, and State. (Speaking of state, why do I have to find my state in a tiny pull down box, The standard is two letters that are easier to type than it is to navigate that stupid list)
I don't want one click shopping. It isn't hard to enter my credit card number into a web form. I'd prefer not to have that number stored in my computer at all. (Yes I know I'm protected, but it is a hassle to dispute charges)
Bill Gates has also said that his child(ren?) will not get a significant inheritance. His money is going to charity.
Most of the rich children I know spend money like it grows on trees, after a few generations there is nothing left. (I'm given to understand this isn't so in all countries, but in the US it generally is true) Not to mention there are more and more children to split it with - a few will take care of things, but I see no evidence that long term the rich keep their money. (kings do, but only until the revolution)
I don't trust economists. In any case, there are many options for implementing any "fair tax", but you can bet money the powers that be will add loop-holes for their friends.
I would avoid PHP for server sides scripts. Python is a much nicer language. Ruby on Rails gets a lot of good press from programmers I tend to trust. (I have never used Ruby) PHP is just painful. It works and has support for some of the things you need, but it falls down quick if you want a nice language.
Personal opinion, of course, but I have come to hate PHP. I think you will too, so I recommend you stay away, or at least evaluate the alternatives first.
So? We do not know the situation. Did he run the red light while there were cars trying to cross the other way, and nearly hit someone, or did he run it in broad daylight in an open intersection where he could clearly see there were no other cars around? The first situation is dangerous and he should pay. The second is less harmful than stopping and waiting, because of the needless environmental damage his car would do idling at the stoplight.
Traffic lights are to keep traffic moving when there is a lot of traffic wanting to get through a small intersection. If there is no traffic there should be no light at all - just go on through at fast as you can.
Local governments however see traffic lights as a way to control drivers. Make people stop every so often, ideally collecting some fines to help out the budget without raising taxes. It isn't about safety. (In the majority of light controlled intersections a roundabout would be safer than the light)
Red lights should be treated as yield signs: slow down, look, and then go on if it is safe to do so.
I have waited for several minutes at a red light before, for no reason - I could clearly see no cars were on the road with a green within .5 mile. There was plenty of room for me to get safely across - even if my car died in the middle of the intersection I could have pushed it. (and in any case you could see my sitting there in plenty of time to stop if I wasn't)
Money is useless unless spent. What is the point of being a billionair if you can't buy a big boat and other such things. Sure they may not buy that boat today, but at some time that money needs to be spent. You can be sure the rich will spend it sometime.
There is no reason we have to tax everything. In MN food and clothing are not taxed. Since food and clothing are the major source of spending to the poor, they pay less taxes as a portion of their spending. There is no reason we can't exempt these things in a fair tax.
You can't get around the poor having less income to spend. However you can make sure it is easy to get the essentials.
Of course Warren Buffet, is the second richest man in the world, and lives in a small house. What does he get form his money? He doesn't enjoy spending it. So despite being worth millions on paper, he has nothing (by a choice that I respect). Someday he will die, and then that money will pass one to someone who will spend it. (Actually he is leaving most to charity, but they will spend it, so it doesn't make much a difference)
Bahh. Hire a new ISP, setup servers and mirror your website. Then point your DNS servers to the new ISP. One week latter (or however long it takes for DNS to update) notify the old ISP that you are gone.
I wouldn't call it trivial, but it is easy. Yes it costs money. The point it to make it cost them money to use the old ISP, ideally more money. There will be no bad luck if they write their contract with the new ISP correctly. Maybe the cost of switching to a different ISP will actually teach them to write the "you won't host spammers" into the contract with the new ISP, which prevents this problem. (Or at least gives them their costs to move to the next ISP back)
Maybe, maybe not. The next coder shouldn't be touching that code until there is a bug or a new feature. The former is unlikely, or I would have cleaned it up already. The latter means they would spend a lot of time changing that code anyway, with no reason to believe their changes can easily fit into the clean code I come up with, so they might have to re-write it all anyway.
In any case, the next coder at least has an example that works. They also have admission by the author that this code sucks and should be cleaned up. More than once I've spent a long time looking at ugly code only to suddenly realize that it wasn't ugly, it was good, clean, fast code - that couldn't be made easier to understand without an order of magnitude more lines (and thus that many more bugs) It is really hard for a programmer to see that code is good at a glance. (though as I get better I have learned many things that are good that look bad at first sight)
Yeah, AOL is not the best target. However enough AOL users use eBay that eBay could (if they stuck it out) force a change in any large ISP, and bankrupt small ones.
It would cost eBay a lot of money in the short run, and I'm not sure that could be recovered in the gains from less phishing attacks long term. You can be sure that eBay shutting out AOL would make national news, so long as they picked a slow news week. I just don't know if eBay has the right marketing guys to not loose in the realm of public opinion. :( Too bad, this needs to be done someday. (though not necessarily to AOL)
Depends on how much the zombies are hurting. I get a lot of phishers sending email as if I have an eBay account. (I have not used eBay in years) If eBay decides these are coming from zombie machines hosted by AOL, they might decide that the loss of AOL subscribers is worth it, and AOL subscribers who like eBay will be mad enough to force AOL to act.
Though in general I agree with you: won't happen. However if the phishing problem gets much worse it might.
Keep the pressure up. The conference committee can put this back, but the house can then reject the conference results, and things start over. I'm not sure if they start over from committee or from scratch, but either way the house can block this if they want.
I don't even need to check his record to tell you that he fails to defend freedom in some area. Perhaps he is good on some freedom issues, but he fails on others. Look at his record honestly. Give him credit where due, and attack him mercilessly where he fails.
When it comes time to vote, consider his record and decide if his good points are worth the bad.
Depends on the plant. Tomatoes are in fact easy to grow in water enriched with the right stuff. Corn is extreemly difficult. Note that I said enriched water, not pure water.
Loss should not be a big deal, as this is intended to replace ~40% of the food on a mars mission, and that other 60% can be recycled into more.
In any case, that organic matter in earth soil came from other plants - it wasn't always there. If we are careful we should be able to likewise enrich Mar's soil.
You were so close to the answer. Even used the correct word: hydroponic. Yet you still missed it.
Plants just need water and nutrients to grow. They do not care much about the soil, so long as the roots get enough (but not too much) water and nutrients. Tomatoes have been grown in just water and fertilizer for years! No soil needed at all. Most plants are more picky than tomatoes, but many grow in gravel sprayed with water and fertilizer.
This is old by now. Tomatoes were first grown in the lab this way in the 1930s. (There are claims to have done it before then, but they are hard to pin down) Though tomatoes are particularly easy to grow with hydrophonics.
I'm not sure what nutrients potatoes need, but they prefer sandy soils, which generally doesn't have much in the way of nutrients. Most of the other plants in the article seem to have been selected in part because they don't need much in the way of nutrients.
In short, we know we can find CO2. We can crack that to get a little O2 to start things out. We are pretty sure we can find water. The amount of fertilizer needed is small for many plants, and thus trivial to bring. (Not to mention it is a by-product of digestion once humans are nearby) The only worry is nitrogen doesn't seem to be plentiful. It could easily end up that getting the nitrogen is the hardest part. Depending on how the greenhouse needs to be designed of course.
Since they are targeted at 40%, I would have to say that this adds to variety, not displaces it. Particularly considering the quality of most freeze dried foods.
You don't count all the space lab trips in the shuttle? Or the other ESA manned missions in various other ships?
The ESA hasn't launched a mission all on the own, but they have been an important part of many missions.
Well I don't play MMORPGs enough to know the details, but I assure you they apply. A rogue should loose in a head to head battle with a sword fighter. However if the rogue is smart he will never get into that battle, instead using a sneak attack to kill the fighter while he is doing something else. The fighter should be unable to sneak (armor clanks too much...) up on anyone and get a kill.
A warrior will never go against a tank, as they are not balanced. The two do not belong in the same game world. A mechanic against a tank might would be interesting though, so long as the mechanic is given a good tool set. Of course tanks allow for air forces (and SAMs...), which is a whole different world.
You need balance in any multi-player game if there is more than one type of unit. Doesn't matter if the units are called "orcs" or "rogues", the need for balance is still there.
Yes, in the real world you do care. Which is why the solution I presented is best - it uses some factor to determin how many threads to start. Each thread does enough work to make the locking trivial compared to the total run time.
Note that in the simple thread you posted results do not depend on the results of the last run, and I was able to factor all the data accesses out.
You are correct that theta(n) is often useful, but I posted a solution where theta(n) isn't as important as O(n). Remember the assumption that n is very large, and this algorithm dominates run time. When either case is not true, then my solution isn't of much use.
Except that isn't all I print. Sometimes I prime a map. Sometimes I print a web page. Sometimes I print a photo of some friends kid. The first two I can leave with anything that I can read. The last demands high quality. So I use quality for everything.
Actually in my case I have a laser printer which works great, but doesn't give me anything but black. Most people I know though have the color inkjet, and use it to print pictures they care about.
No, the key is making sure every class has weakness that can be exploited. A very powerful class that just barely moves is easily defeated by lesser classes if they can attack and then move off to heal, knowing they are too far away for the powerful class to attack latter.
Powerful classes should also be more expensive in some way. That is you can have this powerful figure, but he will demand a lot more wages, and a lot more training, so you loose the ability to have many weak fighters to get him. Once that powerful class is down you may not have enough money left over to hire a replacement. It is worse if you have to train up a new one - all the time spent training the new hero while the enemy attacks, perhaps bringing it down before you are done with training...
That is just one way to balance a powerful class. You could make the powerful class weak to poison (holy water), magic, or some such. Perhaps he is powerful with a sword, but has no defense against arrows.
The most classes you add the harder this is though. However getting it right makes things interesting. Instead of my 3d4 "elf" fighers and 2d6 "elf" archers against your 3d4 "orc" fighters and 2d6 "orc" archers you can have my 1d4 elf fighters who breed like rabbits (cheap) against your 2d12 orcs that are hard to replace. Thus you need to watch out for my swarms while picking off my players one by one. (Note, I just picked some race names at random by the traditional literature the stats I picked do not match)
If you want IKEA junk you are cheaper to buy from them. Want quality furniture made of real wood, something that will fetch high dollars 100 years from now in a antique store, then you can make it yourself for less.
IKEA is cheaper because they don't make the desk fit exactly where you want it. You have to settle for MDF (which is good for some things, but won't hold beauty like real wood). Eventully you scratch it, and the IKEA stuff is tossed, while the real wood is refinished again and again.
Overall I think you are right. However it could work for some things.
Best buy could easily burn you a CD of any local (but not to the city you are in) band you care about. No way will they carry a small band that is popular in Minneapolis in New York, but if you happen to care (perhaps you have a relative in it), they could easily have a computer burn a CD, print the label (right on the disk), and build a book and insert it. You would need to wait 10 minutes, but it could be done now. Mind they would have to enforce some rules. (You get a 2 page insert, too bad if you want more) Getting reasonable royalties is harder than doing this.
Note that the above is very standardized. You get a music CD, which is already one physical size. We restrict the insert/cover to a simple physical format. This would work for CDs, but books tend to come in all different sizes.
Perhaps paperback fiction could be done on this model. These books tend to be all one size anyway. I know I would pay extra for some long out of print books (some written before I was born) to get them on acid free paper. I loved them in the library, but I can't find a source of them new. If the machine can do all the work, so long as everything is in the standard size it would be great. I'm not sure how to handle the thickness issues though.
Actually I'd love them in hard cover, but publishers never run something in hardcover once in makes it to paperback. I'd prefer to buy the paperback, and if I wear that copy out I know it is worth the hard cover.
The point is the machine needs to be automatic. The only reason it is in Barns and Nobel is that it costs $100,000 or so each, more than I could afford, but they could get enough use to pay for the machine. Otherwise it is totally automated, just put your credit card in, select the book, and 10 minutes latter you have it, hot (literally) off the printer. Once a day they put more paper and ink in. Once a week the factory rep for that state comes by to clean it. Simple. However the economics don't support inventing that machine yet.
I have to disagree. The mutex is not significant, because N is very large at least > 100,000. (Assume a processor large enough to hold the result). If N is expected to be small you are correct, if N is very large, for some value of very large, then locking time is not significant.
When doing big-O analysis in computer science we always assume n large enough to overtake constant losses. If n is known to never be more than 4, than an O(n!) algorithm may run faster than a O(1) algorithm. However the O(1) algorithm will not be any slower when n is 1000, while the O(n!) algorithm will not finish in our lifetime.
So my code would be in C++: (Sorry about the formatting, but I'm not about to figure out how to make it look nice in allowable html):
int loopCountHelper(int start, int end) {
int result = 0;
for(int i = start;i result += 1;
}
}
int AccumulateLoopCount(int N) {
int accumulator = 0;
threadList tl;
while(N >0) {
int start = N > THREADFACTOR ? N - THREADFACTOR : 0;
tl.newThread(*loopCountHelper(start, N));
N = N > THREADFACTOR ? N - THREADFACTOR : 0;
}
while(tl.moreThreads()) {
accumulator = tl.waitandNextGetResult();
}
}
It has been a long time since I've done function pointers in C++ so I'm sure I did that all wrong. However I think you get the idea. For that matter now that you see what I'm trying to do I suspect you could come up with a better design. (I know I could if I had a few hours and a good editor to work with)
The point of bluffing is to make you think I have a different hand than I do during the game. Notice that I said game, and not hand. Bluffs need to be played for their affect on the entire game. Unless this is the last hand of the last game you will ever play (in which case your current bluff cannot affect anything but the current hand)
Sometimes that means you play out a hand you know you have won so the other guys think you are bad as odds and thus bid higher when you have a good hand. Of course you need to be careful. One loss large loss is more than canceled by two large wins, but you cannot play 3 large losses and 1 large win and make money.
KDE does not operate on the model. KDE doesn't have management breathing down our necks. We have programmers breaking down each others neck. We know that one day I want to make a change to the code, and I don't want to change every instance. So we insist on clean code. If support for some gimmick (ACID2) takes a little longer, so what, at least is easy to developer. In the long run this is better, because ACID3 won't require fixing a bug in two places.
That is one of the advantages of open source - we are able to say to the management demanding something now "Go away, I'm going to do it right, no matter how long it takes."
That is why Mozilla took years between netscape 4.x and mozilla 1.0 - they were able to take those years to get it right. Mozilla is now advancing fairly quick because the code is well written.
Of course if you just want feature foo now, this is a downside. If you are thinking long term, it is an advantage.