Then there is the third page and "Real-time tessellation". The author seems to imply that this technique wasn't used before because, well, nobody tought about it ? While this is because real-time tessellation requires more computing power that wasn't generally available before...
Yesterday (still on the bottom of the front page): Technology Paradise Lost [...] many believe that the sector will regain its past glory and blistering growth rates. [...] it's not going to happen. [...]
Today: Critical Shortage of IT Workers in Coming Years [...] worried about the increasing demand for IT professionals [...]
If there's no sector growth, is there really increasing IT workers demand ?
> Or perhaps they could buy them out to shut them down?
How would react businesses currently using Red Hat ? Kindly switching to Windows ? I don't think so. They wouldn't be happy and would rather switch to either another Linux distro (like Suse) or another Unix vendor (like Sun).
Microsoft can't possibly buy them all, and even if they were able to, they can't buy Linux (because of it's GPL nature), so new Linux distro would just appear. Would be somewhat like a wack-a-mole game...
You will only piss users that way. As an alternative browser user, how do you like IE-only sites ?
A better alternative is to use stripped-down versions of your web site. Make your website accordingly to w3c standards, check what parts are wrong with IE, then do a less fancy IE-only simplified CSS, and put a notice along the lines of "best viewed with anything else than IE".
For example, there is no background image on the IE version of my project's homepage because IE doesn't suuport "fixed" property. If you aren't using Windows, you can directly go to the css-chooser, but be warned that the yellow.ie doesn't always display right on Mozilla/Firefox...
That way, IE users still can navigate through your site, they just would have had a better surfing experience with something else.
anyone who used computers *knew* what "kilobyte" and friends meant.
15 years ago, maybe. Nowadays, I don't think so. It's just that windows reports sizes by 2^10 chunks and not 10^3 ones, so people are thinking someone is lying, and, you know, Microsoft never lies.
OTOH, cfdisk happily reports disk sizes by 10^3 units.
I don't even think that there is some marketing push to use kilo instead of kibi :
Once upon a time, disks (like floppies) were strictly divided into cylinders, heads, sectors, a sector being 2^9 bytes (what would be interesting would be to know WHY 512 bytes ?).
You would multiply c*h*s and get your total disk capacity. But space was wasted on the outer tracks.
Now, thinks have changed. You have reserved sectors for bad sectors handling (unadvertised space!), and sector per track isn't a constant.
You just have a total number of (LBA) sectors, that is not a simple product of three factors.
Moreover, capacities became important regarding to the 512 bytes unit.
Total number of sectors still is printed on the hard disk, if you want it. And remember that all 160GB disks aren't equal (ie don't have the same number of sectors). Seriously, are you going to check the exact number of sectors when you're seeking for a new ca.200GB hard disk ? rpm, noise,... seems to me to be better criterion that the few additional sectors I might get.
And what would you think about CDs or DVDs ? Most CDR-80/700MB really are 703MiB but there might be little differences. They still are advertised 700MB and not 703MB. And DVDs however aren't 4.7GiB but 4.7GB.
USB keys, ram sticks still are using MiB. Why ? What is doing the marketing ? It's just that they still are using a binary scheme. The other way, Ethernet or modem speeds never have used powers of two.
The transition between GiB and GB was an unfortunate event but, formally speaking, it's better now in regards to (international) units.
If someone really wants an "average rank", it would be (n+1)/2. n*(n+1)/2 is the sum of all ranks, you then need to divide by the number of participants, hence (n+1)/2.
However it doesn't work anymore if there are any ex-aequo. Median still is (n+1)/2 as long as there isn't a run of 'm-th" in the middle of the list.
Doesn't make more more sense, but at least does not scale stupidly.
No, no, no. He makes a very valid point that absolut rank (top10) is less significant than percentual rank (in the top 1%).
"Percentual" rank is neither less nor more significant than "absolute" ranks. Ranks are just ranks. There might be more skill difference between the 10th an the 11th than between the 1st and the 10th.
Independant of any fluctuation due to change in skill, with more contestants, absolut rank on average will decrease, while percentual rank will not. (10 contestant -> average absolut rank = 5.5, 100 contestants -> average absolut rank = 50.5, average percentual rank = 50% in both cases)
Average rank means nothing. Rank is just a mean to order something against some criterion. And, just nitpicking, rank on average will increase. It's (n*(n+1)/2) with n participants. Are you seeing how it formally scales stupidly : it's not (n+1)/2. (n+1)/2 would be median, that's what your maths were computing.
Ironically, median is roughly defined by 50% below, 50% above, and here is your "percentual rank".
In fact, 17th place in 2005 might be better than 1st place in 1997, depending on the quality evolution of the contestants. There are quality fluctuations. And putting blanket statements about average on ranks is misleading at best.
So, the professor did get it right.
You rather made the same mistake he did.
A question he doesnt rise is if the increase in participation is only by non-us teams or if there is a similar increase in us teams too. In the later case, there shouldn't be a significant decrease in absolut rank. However, it may be that most us schools already participated 8 years ago, so that the new participants are almost exclusivly non-us.
That's somewhat my point. He might be right (note how I just wrote that the level might have increased), but for completely unrelated reasons. If you don't have notation scale elements, you can't conclude.
FTFA: News.com didn't tell you that the number of teams competing has grown nearly sevenfold from 1994 through 2005. In other words, for a team to finish at, say, third place, in 1994 would be equivalent to finishing 21st this year.
Yeah. It seems he's confusing rank with notation scale. Like if the skills of both the first and the last didn't change.
Norm Matloff, Computer science professor
When professors are making that poor argumentation, no wonder education level is falling.
Why alarming ? The internet is still up and running since that last years theft.
(I guess it should be read last year's)
Sensationnal breaking news ! The programming instructions of Linux and Free/Net/OpenBSD, which run many of big corporations servers, is avalaible to the sight of anybody! That's alarming!
Slashdot Mirror
Then there is the third page and "Real-time tessellation".
The author seems to imply that this technique wasn't used before because, well, nobody tought about it ?
While this is because real-time tessellation requires more computing power that wasn't generally available before...
My personal "favorites"
Moderators are confused. They are not able to find that "sarcastic" mod point.
And how much were locked-in using M$ ?
By the way, 10% seems a good start to me... When 10% would have switched, maybe 10 other percent might consider to switch.
Googling for 'liar' links to Tony Blair on the first page of results. Quite good :)
But we French do better :) : Chirac is also known as SUPERliar. Of course, googling for superliar, you can feel lucky. (GW Bush being in 2nd place !)
Yesterday (still on the bottom of the front page) :
:
Technology Paradise Lost
[...] many believe that the sector will regain its past glory and blistering growth rates. [...] it's not going to happen. [...]
Today
Critical Shortage of IT Workers in Coming Years
[...] worried about the increasing demand for IT professionals [...]
If there's no sector growth, is there really increasing IT workers demand ?
Aren't these mutually exclusive points of view ?
You need to look to the numbers the other way.
;)
Legal software market is currently $66 billion
In five years they expect it to be $100 billion.
Quite reasonnable growth, probably taking inflation into account.
Now about piracy... How can you think those aren't made-up numbers ?
Can I choose the middle one ?
Mmh, that one is clearly impossible :)
Or is that Firera?
Firera is something else.
Small nit to pick. It's not Manadrin but Mandarin. <|-)
Ho, and a population count can't possibly be precise to the unit.
Did anyone else read the news as "Please slashdot my web site" ?
Sadly, the pictures might not be big enough for that.
> Or perhaps they could buy them out to shut them down?
How would react businesses currently using Red Hat ? Kindly switching to Windows ? I don't think so. They wouldn't be happy and would rather switch to either another Linux distro (like Suse) or another Unix vendor (like Sun).
Microsoft can't possibly buy them all, and even if they were able to, they can't buy Linux (because of it's GPL nature), so new Linux distro would just appear. Would be somewhat like a wack-a-mole game...
You will only piss users that way. As an alternative browser user, how do you like IE-only sites ?
A better alternative is to use stripped-down versions of your web site. Make your website accordingly to w3c standards, check what parts are wrong with IE, then do a less fancy IE-only simplified CSS, and put a notice along the lines of "best viewed with anything else than IE".
For example, there is no background image on the IE version of my project's homepage because IE doesn't suuport "fixed" property. If you aren't using Windows, you can directly go to the css-chooser, but be warned that the yellow.ie doesn't always display right on Mozilla/Firefox...
That way, IE users still can navigate through your site, they just would have had a better surfing experience with something else.
In fact, it will only be part of the next interim version of Windows XP, before Longhorn ships, which will, you know, be immune to such malware. ;)
15 years ago, maybe. Nowadays, I don't think so. It's just that windows reports sizes by 2^10 chunks and not 10^3 ones, so people are thinking someone is lying, and, you know, Microsoft never lies.
OTOH, cfdisk happily reports disk sizes by 10^3 units.
I don't even think that there is some marketing push to use kilo instead of kibi :
Once upon a time, disks (like floppies) were strictly divided into cylinders, heads, sectors, a sector being 2^9 bytes (what would be interesting would be to know WHY 512 bytes ?). You would multiply c*h*s and get your total disk capacity. But space was wasted on the outer tracks.
Now, thinks have changed. You have reserved sectors for bad sectors handling (unadvertised space!), and sector per track isn't a constant. You just have a total number of (LBA) sectors, that is not a simple product of three factors. Moreover, capacities became important regarding to the 512 bytes unit.
Total number of sectors still is printed on the hard disk, if you want it. And remember that all 160GB disks aren't equal (ie don't have the same number of sectors). Seriously, are you going to check the exact number of sectors when you're seeking for a new ca.200GB hard disk ? rpm, noise, ... seems to me to be better criterion that the few additional sectors I might get.
And what would you think about CDs or DVDs ? Most CDR-80/700MB really are 703MiB but there might be little differences. They still are advertised 700MB and not 703MB. And DVDs however aren't 4.7GiB but 4.7GB.
USB keys, ram sticks still are using MiB. Why ? What is doing the marketing ? It's just that they still are using a binary scheme. The other way, Ethernet or modem speeds never have used powers of two.
The transition between GiB and GB was an unfortunate event but, formally speaking, it's better now in regards to (international) units.
TCPA/Palladium support basically won't be in Longhorn.
And it will become of almost no use when it will be cracked.
Where are the disco-dancing pits and lands ?
Oops...
Correcting myself...
If someone really wants an "average rank", it would be (n+1)/2. n*(n+1)/2 is the sum of all ranks, you then need to divide by the number of participants, hence (n+1)/2.
However it doesn't work anymore if there are any ex-aequo. Median still is (n+1)/2 as long as there isn't a run of 'm-th" in the middle of the list.
Doesn't make more more sense, but at least does not scale stupidly.
"Percentual" rank is neither less nor more significant than "absolute" ranks. Ranks are just ranks. There might be more skill difference between the 10th an the 11th than between the 1st and the 10th.
Independant of any fluctuation due to change in skill, with more contestants, absolut rank on average will decrease, while percentual rank will not. (10 contestant -> average absolut rank = 5.5, 100 contestants -> average absolut rank = 50.5, average percentual rank = 50% in both cases)
Average rank means nothing. Rank is just a mean to order something against some criterion. And, just nitpicking, rank on average will increase. It's (n*(n+1)/2) with n participants. Are you seeing how it formally scales stupidly : it's not (n+1)/2. (n+1)/2 would be median, that's what your maths were computing. Ironically, median is roughly defined by 50% below, 50% above, and here is your "percentual rank".
In fact, 17th place in 2005 might be better than 1st place in 1997, depending on the quality evolution of the contestants. There are quality fluctuations. And putting blanket statements about average on ranks is misleading at best.
So, the professor did get it right.
You rather made the same mistake he did.
A question he doesnt rise is if the increase in participation is only by non-us teams or if there is a similar increase in us teams too. In the later case, there shouldn't be a significant decrease in absolut rank. However, it may be that most us schools already participated 8 years ago, so that the new participants are almost exclusivly non-us.
That's somewhat my point. He might be right (note how I just wrote that the level might have increased), but for completely unrelated reasons. If you don't have notation scale elements, you can't conclude.
FTFA :
News.com didn't tell you that the number of teams competing has grown nearly sevenfold from 1994 through 2005. In other words, for a team to finish at, say, third place, in 1994 would be equivalent to finishing 21st this year.
Yeah. It seems he's confusing rank with notation scale. Like if the skills of both the first and the last didn't change.
Norm Matloff, Computer science professor
When professors are making that poor argumentation, no wonder education level is falling.
Why alarming ? The internet is still up and running since that last years theft.
(I guess it should be read last year's)
Sensationnal breaking news !
The programming instructions of Linux and Free/Net/OpenBSD, which run many of big corporations servers, is avalaible to the sight of anybody! That's alarming!
Nah, it's an MSIE-only worm (like most (e-)worms)
Slashdotters ALL use alternative browsers, right ? RIGHT ?
Faster than the light slashdotting.
Light hadn't enough time to pass through the mirror.
You network-install it, right from the three floppies