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  1. Re:like anything else.. on Math and Science Popular With Students Until They Realize They're Hard · · Score: 1

    I said I can do the math, what I was not sure of was whether I understand what was behind it all.

    The debate here does not change that, and you have not even touched on the argument between vector and quaternions yet and whether gimbal lock is a difficult or trivial problem.

    For examples of this debate see http://www.gamedev.net/topic/25314-why-diana-grubers-wrong-about-quats/ and http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/math-and-physics/do-we-really-need-quaternions-r1199

    Hint the real problem here is not working out a simplified 2D version with sin and cos and symbols, the real problem is coding this to handle how to display moving 3D objects (defined by arrays of floats) as seen by a virtual moving camera.

    Saying the "same principle is used for 3D" is hand waving in the context of the subject of "is math hard"

  2. Re:like anything else.. on Math and Science Popular With Students Until They Realize They're Hard · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Feynman was fantastic at inspiring people and giving them an intuition for physics with simple drawings.

    Do you think he understood partial differential equations, functions in a complex space, matrix math, group theory? Sure he did. If he wrote some of that on a blackboard in a 60 minute talk, would the audience struggle to keep up?

    I am still not sure I understand using 4x4 matrices to do transforms in three space. I can write the code though (slowly).

    My wife (English and Drama) said the biggest party people were the liberal arts students because they did not need as much time to study. And when they were studying they mostly were reading.

    A good educator can make learning calculus better than a poor one, but there it is still hard (well for me anyway).

  3. Re:29 years old on Silicon Valley In 2013 Resembles Logan's Run In 2274 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    At the coal face programmers are often young, we have a lot of graduates or people with only a few years experience.

    I am near retirement (at 65) but my companies wants me to stay on as long as I want to. I manage a small team and focus on documentation.

    We do have some designers over 50, and they are brilliant, but most younger coders either need to get very good at architecture and high-level design or extend sideways into other skills.

  4. Not T, Y on Man Campaigns For Addition of 'Th' Key To Keyboard · · Score: 1

    It should be labeled y of course.

    Unless we can have the proper thorn key http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)

  5. Re:what good is all that bandwidth? on Japan and EU Commit 18m Euro To Develop 100Gbps Internet Access · · Score: 1

    At least part of the "need" for fast download is to have a website with lots of graphics and images render as soon as you enter the URL. The peak information flow is very fast, then you sit there for 15 seconds thinking about what to click.

    this is a very different subjective experience than waiting for 15 seconds for the site to display fully.

    Most development in processors seems to be focused at shortening the delay between a key or mouse click and something happening on the display.

  6. Re:How Accurate? ... Right on WWVB Celebrates 50 Years of Broadcasting Time · · Score: 1

    If you want a frequency standard, instead of knowing what UTC is "now", you can use the chroma signal from broadcast TV. The big stations use atomic clocks as a reference.

  7. Re:Lucky Mice! on Stem Cells Used To Grow Miniature Human Livers In Mice · · Score: 1

    They are in charge you know. Well, them and the porpoises until the new road goes through.

  8. Re:Say hello to Algernon for me. on Stem Cells Used To Grow Miniature Human Livers In Mice · · Score: 2

    A BBC show on "what makes us human" identified genetic differences between human and chimps that coded for increased brain complexity (connections). When this gene was put into mice, they had more complex neurons. (Not Algernon moment yet however).

    Show (for UK only) is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b036mrrj/Horizon_20122013_What_Makes_us_Human/.

  9. Re:Intel's ARM license on ARMs Race: Licensing vs. Manufacturing Models In the Mobile Era · · Score: 2

    DEC StrongArm was released as Intel XScale but was then was sold to Marvel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale)

    According to reports, Intel has an architecture licence but does not intend to use it. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/computers/intel-we-have-arm-license-no-plans-to-use-it/5845

    Intel also brought Infineon which had an ARM licence (http://www.gomonews.com/intels-1-4-billion-infineon-mobile-chips-purchase-2g-3g-lte-wimax/) but I don't know what the status is of that going forward.

    The comment above rather garbles that story.

  10. Re:Hackerspace hype on In Praise of Hackerspaces · · Score: 2

    Remember all the fuss about whether you could change the batteries in phones? The direction of modern manufacturing is towards things that you cannot practically build or repair yourself.

    Some of the things done in hacker spaces (or described in Make magazine) do seem very kitsch (as in the finished result is not worth the material and time put into it) but that is not the point.

    People are making and repairing things.

    What is the point of Raspberry Pi? Not a very good computer. What is the point of writing your own code for a personal project? Probably not going to make much money off it. Why paint a picture? Not going to be in a museum

    People learn something and they have satisfaction in what they produced.

  11. Re:Yes on Boston Marathon Bomber Charged With Using 'Weapon of Mass Destruction' · · Score: 3, Informative

    there is a difference between federal law and state law. Murder is not generally considered a federal offense (in one of the civil rights murders it was federal only because it occurred on federal land http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ex-federal-prosecutor-who-led-historic-case-dies)

    That is why people entering the country have to say they will not commit a crime while they are here. Any crime they commit is probably only a state issue, but lying on your federal entry form ...

  12. Re:power != energy on Internet's Energy Needs Growing Faster Than Efficiency Gains · · Score: 2

    Of course using a computer as an electric heater is less efficient than a dedicated electric powered exchange pump which can have effective efficiencies many times 100%

  13. Re:lost knowledge? on Sunstone Unearthed From Sixteenth Century Shipwreck · · Score: 1

    I can't find an image for it now, but I have seen a primitive portable sundial disk. I have a modern version as a novelty.

    If you know north, you can find the time and vice versa. Aha you say, how do you know the time? Well in a "primitive" society, people could develop a sense of what time in was. This could be refined by practicing with the sundisk on land.

    In an earlier age, railway engineers were said to be able to guess the time to a few minutes and only checked their watches for the minute.

    If this crystal made it more reliable to find the sun, that made it easier.

    Some other techniques are obvious in retrospect such as changed cloud formations over islands.

  14. Re:Why would intel want to? on Why Can't Intel Kill x86? · · Score: 2

    You don't think that £90 price might be subsidized by Intel to a very large degree to get a foothold in the market?

  15. Re:how strange on Purported Relativity Paradox Resolved · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Whenever there are any really tough questions about relativity, the world waits for an electrical engineer to comment. Unfortunately their comments are not correct.

  16. Re:Not sure it would help on Learn Basic Programming So You Aren't At the Mercy of Programmers · · Score: 1

    The key point is that people who want to talk about something hard should indeed go past the "bridge of asses".

    If someone writes a real program, even if it is just extracting data from a database and formatting it based on GUI input, tests it and gets it to a bug-free state then they have a better understanding of data entry programs. It does not mean that have knowledge of AI. Each domain has its own minimum requirement.

    It worries me, when I don't find it funny, that people with only the most superficial scientific knowledge talk about the most fundamental aspects of science and dismiss people who spend their lives investigating it.

    It is complicated. We all want people to have informed opinions and not just believe authorities, but becoming informed is not trivial.

    Perhaps some BASIC is better than no programming knowledge because different roles have different requirements.

    On the other side, sometimes people who are very competent technically change dramatically when they move into management because they have different priorities. Programmers should learn a bit of MBA speak as well.

  17. Re:Short-term forecasting on 2012 Another Record-Setter For Weather, Fits Climate Forecasts · · Score: 1

    Downmodding valid for fake data. The frequency of the big lie is a classic denialist strategy in climate change and lots of right-wing thinking. For an response (from the non-idiots) see http://deepclimate.org/2009/10/19/vaclav-smil-no-global-warming-in-past-ten-year/

  18. Re:Why? on First Photos and Video of Raspberry Pi Model A · · Score: 1

    That page said the product was ready to ship in the last news update in September, but the order page still says preorder. Might be interesting if a US or European distributor picks it up. The only advantage of this over similarly priced Chinese "A10" tablets is the I/O pins.

  19. Re:Those performance numbers are BS on Toward An FSF-Endorsable Embedded Processor · · Score: 1

    High performance with eight cores doing H.264 is interesting if you are making a dedicated decoder, but general purpose CPUs target a very wide range of applications. Some are embarrassingly parallel, most are not. This project might be well intended, but I have no confidence this will surpass even the free version of the MIPS processor much less a modern processor with, and this important, a highly optimized tool chain and a range of peripherals.

    Interesting as a geek hobby project. Some might even get built.

  20. Re:Not a digital computer on The World's Oldest Original Digital Computer Springs Back Into Action At TNMOC · · Score: 4, Informative

    You do know that the term "digital" comes from "finger" so the origin is closer to base 10 than 2. The modern definition is something quantified by numbers rather than continuous properties. A digital encoding of 0.5 volts as the number 0.5.

    This does lead on to the adage that "end the end, everything is analogue" which makes more sense if you have ever used a high-frequency storage oscilloscope.

  21. Goldbach's conjecture on Ask Slashdot: Mathematical Fiction? · · Score: 1

    Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession http://www.amazon.com/Uncle-Petros-Goldbachs-Conjecture-Mathematical/dp/1582341281

  22. Re:I don't know who your god is... on From a NAND Gate To Tetris · · Score: 2

    All Boolean logic can be reduced to multiple NAND gates (or NOT AND operations on two inputs), NOR, OR, AND, XOR, NOT, XNOR can be created from NAND gates. Of course classic Boolean logic does not consider three-state or time-bound signals so it is incomplete regarding actual circuitry.

  23. Re:Failing to understand the concept of system on Quantum Measurements Leave Schrödinger's Cat Alive · · Score: 1

    That is just sophistry. You might as well say that everything in North America is in quantum superposition because I have not measured any of it directly.

  24. Re:Copenhagen Interpretation on Quantum Measurements Leave Schrödinger's Cat Alive · · Score: 3, Insightful

    1. Stop being a jerk

    2. Look up the work on collapse of interference in the double slit experiment.

    3. If you can determine conclusively what constitutes an observation of a quantum system, you will be in line for a big prize.

    4. Ignore any discussion of cats. It is a joke that everyone has fallen for.

  25. Re:Equivalent of peeking without killing it ?! on Quantum Measurements Leave Schrödinger's Cat Alive · · Score: 1

    The cat is alive or dead and not ever in a state of superposition.

    The example was (I hope intentionally) chosen to illustrate how poorly our macro world and macro thinking fail at the quantum level.

    If you have any doubt of this and are romantically tied to the "alive and dead" cat, consider this: The cat is capable of making an observation. It is a complex collection of moving parts. If the parts stop moving, that is an observation.

    It may be the case that quantum states on small particles do not have any internal world. That is a large area of discussion in physics. Is quantum mechanics the result of a hidden (to us) world that follows reasonable laws, or is it just very weird all the way down.