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User: 140Mandak262Jamuna

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  1. Nice work, but done many times before. on Visualizing Algorithms · · Score: 0
    This is interesting work, and very well presented no doubt. But it shows why your PhD guru is making you spend seemingly unreasonable time doing literature surveys. At first glance this work seems to be very close to solution adaptive meshing techniques used in computational physics.

    Using a bunch of sample points to represent a function is fundamental to computational physics. Stress Analysis, Colorful oops Computational Fluid Dynamics, Computational Electro Magnetics etc etc. Solution adaptive meshing is a very popular technique in these algorithms. Make a crude mesh and compute a crude solution, use the gradients in the function to determine where the "cells" are too large or the representation is too poor. From there we go to "p" refinement where we jack up the order of mode shapes in the finite element, or "h" refinement where we refine the mesh by adding points, or "r" refinement where we move the mesh points from less important regions to more important regions.

    In the "h" refinement technique one would insert points based on cell-centroid, cell-circumcenter or longest-edge-bisection etc.

    This work, which seems to be 2D, these techniques are first published back in 1980s, and it was extended to 3D in 1990s.

    The commercial CEM package made by Ansoft to solve 2D electromagnetics called Maxwell was using the Voronoi polygon based refinement of 2D meshes. It shipped in 1990. They were doing 3D Voronoi polyhedron based solution adaptive refinement of sample points in 1993 version of their 3D product HFSS.

    http://www.google.com/search?q...

  2. Humans are not made of fermions on New Chemical Process Could Make Ammonia a Practical Car Fuel · · Score: 1

    The fundamental particle humans are made of is not fermions. That particle is called moron. That is why they are able to occupy mutually contradictory policy positions simultaneously.

  3. Of course they did. Mango salsa too. on Neanderthals Ate Their Veggies · · Score: 1

    I have seen them order the roast duck with the magno salsa.

  4. Re:The public face of mensa vs on Match.com, Mensa Create Dating Site For Geniuses · · Score: 1

    Are you sure all those jerks were really Mensa members? It is quite possible to falsely claim mensa membership to elevate their obnoxiousness to the next level.

  5. We need butterfly wranglers, not walls. on A Physicist Says He Can Tornado-Proof the Midwest With 1,000-Foot Walls · · Score: 1

    Why are we even thinking of this humongous expensive castles in the air projects? All we need are a set of trained butterfly wranglers in the Amazon to make butterflies to beat their wings at 180 degress out of phase with the tornado seeds. Like Bose noise cancelling device these counter wing beats will cancel the tornadoes. People never think of simple solutions. Always it has to be a huge multi trillion dollar project.. sheesh.

  6. Build failure is just the beginning. on Why Software Builds Fail · · Score: 1
    Large distributed development. Multiple point check ins. (Our divisional build is around 100 execuables and 300 dlls. Corporate level build would easily exceed 1000 executables). Our build group will launch builds on every library every hour and immediately report compilation failures and link failures. But that is just the beginning

    Then comes the installation and packaging failures. The dynamic libs get out of synch, wrong dll gets packaged in, etc

    Then the build is good, it does not crash on every project. But it fails daily validation suite. After clearing that hurdle the build fails certification (same as validation but more detailed comparison with golden results).

    So typically our last daily build is about one day old, last validated build is two or may be three days old. Last certified build could be three to five days old.

    And this is a great improvement compared to the past.

    Biggest advancement that helped us were dirt cheap prices for storage. So we are able to keep multiple older working builds for the developers. Not all of them need the latest build. Second biggest thing was the multicore machines with enough horsepower to launch all the library builds simultaneously. Third was the drop in network bandwidth prices, we are able to consolidate and synch the source code repo with very small (for a developer I mean, not for a video watcher) latencies.

  7. So behind in technology. on Half of Germany's Power Supplied By Solar, Briefly · · Score: 1

    I don't know why they are making such a big deal about 22 Gigawatts briefly. Is it really worth bragging in this day and age? In 2014? It is on the record someone generated 1.21 Gigwatts briefly at 10:04 PM November 5, 1955 using some home made contraptions, extension cords and a lightning conductor, in Hill Valley California. By Moore's law, we should be generating so much more than mere 22 Gigawatts.

  8. Yes, it could be but is it AG? on The Higgs Boson Should Have Crushed the Universe · · Score: 3, Funny

    OK, OK, Higgs field is quite dangerous, and right now we seem to be sitting in the just-the-right-value. And if the Higgs field gets more energy the whole universe might collapse. But the most important question is, "Is the lower Higgs field energy anthropogenetic?". Do we have any kind of plans to absorb sudden injection of high energy into Higgs field in Andromeda galaxy? I never trusted the Andromedans and we are just trusting them not to energize the Higgs field? Just bomb them just to be safe.

  9. Re:Use a dash cam, not a jammer. on Florida Man Faces $48k Fine For Jamming Drivers' Cellphones · · Score: 1

    You are correct in those aspects. Speed limits are violated by 100% of the people 80% of the time. And all the violations you mention are common. But stop sign compliance is quite high if you count rolling through at below 5 mph as a reasonable approximation of stopping.

  10. EEE is gone. EGA is in. on First Phone Out of Microsoft-Nokia -- and It's an Android · · Score: 1
    EEE for Embrace, Extend and Extinguish was the old strategy that worked in the PC era when Microsoft leveraged its monopoly on OS to kill the competition that played by the old rules. For it to work, Microsoft needs to have a monopoly to begin with.

    EGA is the name of the game in the Android. Embrace & Get Assimilated.

    All your bases are now belong to us.

  11. Re:Use a dash cam, not a jammer. on Florida Man Faces $48k Fine For Jamming Drivers' Cellphones · · Score: 1

    It appears that way. And I do my fair share of calling other drivers idiots and imbeciles. But by and large Americans obey traffic laws very well, the compliance rate is very very high. I know for a fact that the violations are at least two orders of magnitude higher in India. The accidents/fatalities/injuries per 1000 passenger kilometer stats tell the whole story. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

  12. Use a dash cam, not a jammer. on Florida Man Faces $48k Fine For Jamming Drivers' Cellphones · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Jamming signals is illegal, and it could affect lots of legitimate use of cell phone use without being distracted. Data link for emergency and police vehicles, streaming in music, passengers using cell phones etc. So what he did was wrong.

    But he could could have bought one of those russian style dash cams. Mounted it on near the roof line, looking sideways and downwards. May be two such cams on either side of the vehicle. Record it continuously and report the actual distracted drivers, along with the video footage to police. Or without even going to police upload them into some kind of YouTube channel and shame them into compliance. When they see how seriously long, their "momentary" glance at the texts, the distance covered when they were distracted, most sane people will feel compelled to comply. After all, 99.9% of the people do come to full stop at stop signs even when there is no other vehicle is in sight, without any one policing it.

  13. Sample size of 18K? on The Bursting Social Media Advertising Bubble · · Score: 1
    http://www.gallup.com/poll/171... is what this report is based on.

    Survey Methods These results are based on a Gallup Panel Web and mail study of 18,525 U.S. adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Dec. 12, 2012, to Jan. 22, 2013. All surveys were completed in English. The Gallup Panel is a probability-based longitudinal panel of U.S. adults who are selected using random-digit-dial (RDD) telephone interviews that cover landline and cellphone telephone numbers. Address-based sampling methods are also used to recruit panel members. The Gallup Panel is not an opt-in panel, and members are not given incentives for participating. The sample for this study was weighted to be demographically representative of the U.S. adult population, using 2012 Current Population Survey figures. For results based on this sample, the margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage point at the 95% confidence level. Margins of error are higher for subsamples. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error and bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

    18000 is a very high number for phone interviews. I think most were internet polls. So 18000 people who clicked on and took a survey while casually surfing said they are not influenced by social media? If such click-any-dialog-that-pops-up-randomly people are not influenced by social media, what about the people who are actually skeptical of the "series of tubes"?

  14. The difference. on The Bursting Social Media Advertising Bubble · · Score: 1

    but Gallup says "consumers are highly adept at tuning out brand-related Facebook and Twitter content."

    I go one step further. I tune out Facebook and Twitter entirely, not just brand-related content.

  15. Parallel processing still remains elusive. on Researchers Unveil Experimental 36-Core Chip · · Score: 2
    Parallel processing has made big strides, but only in some limited areas. Graphics rendering where each pixel can be updated independent of other pixels. Or in fluid mechanics (CFD) using time marching techniques where updating the solution at one point needs data from a limited set of neighbors, or in iterative solvers of matrices. Even something very structured without if statements like inverting a matrix, parallel methods have suffered.

    Basic problem is this, even if just 5% of the work has to be serial, the maximum speedup is 20x, that is the theoretical maximum. YMMV, and it does. Internet and search has opened up another vast area where a thread can do lots of work and send just very small set of results back to the caller. Hits are so small compared to misses, you can make some headway. Even then we have found very few applications suitable for massively parallel solutions.

    We need a big breakthrough. If you divide a 3D domain into a number of sub domains, the interfaces between the subdomains is 2D. The volume of 3D domain represents computational load, and the area interfaces represent the communication load. If we could come up with domain-division algorithms that guarantee the interfaces would be an order of magnitude smaller, even as we go from 3D to higher number of dimensions, and if we could organize these subdomains into hierarchies, we would be able to deploy more and more of computational work, and be confident the communication load would not overwhelm the algorithm. This break through is yet to come. Delaunay Tessellations (and its dual Voronoi polygons) have been defined in higher dimensions. But the number of "cells" to number of "vertices" ratio explodes in higher dimensions, last time we tried, we could not even fit a 10 dimensional mesh of 10 points into all the available memory of the machine. It did not look promising.

  16. Re: Two things on The Game Theory of Life · · Score: 1

    You didn't get the "you insensitive clod" meme, you insensitive clod!

  17. Re:manucturer dealers could be worse on NADA Is Terrified of Tesla · · Score: 1
    Right the policies, laws and contracts of auto dealerships allow for only two models: Direct sale by manufacturer without any dealerships or All sales via dealership without any direct sales.

    If NADA believes dealers are great let them relax the contracts and allow direct sales by manufacturer and also sales through dealerships. It is the auto dealers who seek monopoly and misuse the term competition and choice.

  18. Re:Two things on The Game Theory of Life · · Score: 1

    Languages are not created in the "a designer sits down and invents it" sense, but in the sense of continuous improvement.

    My first language is FORTRAN and now I speak C++, they are all designed languages, you insensitive clod.

  19. Musk must finish what he started on Elon Musk: I'll Put a Human On Mars By 2026 · · Score: 1
    Tesla is not producing affordable family car yet. He needs a gigafactory to make batteries first. Then got side tracked into packing people into some sort of tubes used by the tellers in drive through banking window. Then he is going on to Solar city that hopes to become a distributed power supplying utility that does not need any public rights of way. That requires mega billions in investments. Now suddenly putting a man in Mars.

    Musk, any one project you have done would earn you a lasting place in history. If you successfully complete the solar city and electric passenger car alone, you will be compared to the likes of Ford, Bell, Edison... Please focus on finishing what you started instead of constantly shifting focus like someone afflicted with attention deficit disorder.

  20. Grad school. 1990. on X Window System Turns 30 Years Old · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Sun diskless workstations. Knew motif window manager inside out. Had taught a unix course using a strange Sony workstation that had a TV card in it displaying live TV in X windows. Eventually became the root (of all evil, according to my students) of the lab.

    Employer morphed from being a Unix shop (1990-2000) to Microsoft + Mainwin (2000-2010) shop, then slowly coming back to display agnostic (2011 - till date) (but limited to X11+OpenGL or MSWin) shop.

  21. Kindle, ... fire ... next in line is: on Amazon Announces 'Fire Phone' · · Score: 1

    Inferno. Unfortunately the next product in line to take that brand name happens to be a line of refrigerators.

  22. Re:Build the plants on blue states. on Elon Musk's Solar City Is Ramping Up Solar Panel Production · · Score: 1
    Powerplants have to go where the sun shines. But Solar City business model is to install the panels at homes. So it will sell where the customers want the panels to be. But production of the cells can happen anywhere, preferably in communities that support green technologies.

    Utility company stocks have fallen 60% in Germany. Big stock rating companies are down grading the utility company stock, the veritable widows-and-orphans stock. This time Solar will make it big.

  23. Musk, please takes steps and be careful. on Elon Musk's Solar City Is Ramping Up Solar Panel Production · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Musk is treading on some big toes. When he went into electric cars, no one took him seriously. But he proved them wrong, smeared eggs on the faces of performance/luxury car makers, earned the enmity of car dealers across the nation. That has earned him a reputation and now he is being taken quite seriously.

    Now he is upsetting another huge industry with trillion dollars in assets, the electric utility companies. And the technique he is using requires someone with great credibility to raise incredible sums of money. Solar never threatened utilities before because, the system cost was high, and individual home owners had to do some complex breakeven analysis, raise funds and take some risk. But Solar City is zero risk to the home owners, perfect distributed competitor to the utilities, plans to make electricity using zero cost fuel (sunlight). The entire cost is cost of servicing debt. Interest rates are lowest in known memory.

    The technology and the business model will make it immaterial who the prime-movers are backing it. But the speed at which change happens depends on a charisma and credibility of players like Musk. The utility companies would not hesitate to find scandals, astro turf to create fake scandals, engage in character assassination etc to bring him down personally. So he should be careful with his dealings.

  24. Re:Git on Code Spaces Hosting Shutting Down After Attacker Deletes All Data · · Score: 1

    Why git? Even clearcase snap shot views are full copies of the repository. (Granted, snapshot views dont have history in themselves and levels of roll backs will be limited). Almost all the source control systems that clone the source repository create full backups. Of course git is much nicer and has replicated history as well.

  25. Build the plants on blue states. on Elon Musk's Solar City Is Ramping Up Solar Panel Production · · Score: 0

    Please please please, pretty please with a bow around it, do not build these plants in states voting for legislators who are hostile to climate science, hostile to green technology, hostile to EPA.