...and instead of "clearly optimal", I should have said "a likely improvement" because no heuristic is guaranteed to provide an improvement in performance 100% of the time.
It requires nothing of the sort. It just requires that you sometimes try going up instead of down.
Depending on the terrain, however, "sometimes going down" could almost always result in worse performance.
One solution is more randomness in the culling heuristics, as well as bigger populations and occasional bigger mutations.
Of course, this applies to whole populations, not individuals. Simply saying "follow the gradient and occasionally don't" is more likely to result in degraded average performance. Actually knowing when going against the gradient is helpful and not harmful, and knowing which direction to take against the gradient, OR having a good heuristic for guessing when it's a good idea, on the other hand, is clearly optimal.
Randomly doing something counterintuitive may reveal clues toward a more optimal solution, but in itself it is no guarantee of improvement.
Vista is a very good example of what happens when you take tough theoretical problems and throw entry-level programmers at them who haven't spent enough time converting C code to assembly on 4-bit microcontrollers with 64 bits of onboard RAM to appreciate the inherent value in code optimization and algorithm design, and there's enough processor speed and memory available that nobody notices or cares about the inefficiencies until it hits shelves and millions of end-users are forced to hit "Allow" 300 times a day.
Except following the gradient is just an example of using a suboptimal solution that works in the majority of cases, and is significantly less difficult to implement than the "next step up," which requires, at the very least, an internal model of the surrounding terrain. If it is actually known that going down will help you get higher, it's not actually a dumb decision despite how it may appear to agents without the "internal model" algorithm.
In fact, the gradient follower in that case is actually the dumber process, because it takes only one factor into account. But if the gradient follower is able to observe the internal modeler performing counterintuitive steps and achieving greater results, it may attempt to modify its own behavior without understanding the justification behind it, or the full ramifications thereof. This is where IT Managers come from.
"Given the rapid advance of Moore's Law, when does it make sense to throw hardware at a programming problem? As a general rule, I'd say almost always.
even the most rudimentary math will tell you that it'd take a massive hardware outlay to equal the yearly costs of even a modest five person programming team
All the hardware in the world isn't going to fix an insidious segmentation fault, or ensure that your database queries properly handle all inputs, or rework a poorly designed algorithm that runs in O(n^n) time. "Throwing hardware at a programming problem" is like trying to fix a flat tire by putting more gas in your car.
What was extremely helpful for me was I kept writing code in my own spare time, and set up a local support consulting business, while looking for that first programming gig out of college. I was able to present my down-time work in interviews, which really helped out a lot. It showed that I was ambitious, capable, and passionate about programming, and not just looking for a cushy desk job.
You keep using the word "bigot". I don't think it means what you think it means.
Bigotry is viewing a certain category/categories of people as inferior to another category. You can be any of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, atheist, agnostic, Wiccan, etc. without being a bigot. Saying "you're wrong and I'm right" is not bigotry. It's just stubborn.
I can now no more question the existance of God than you can question the existance of anything you have experienced in life.
Actually, you can question pretty much anything you experience. I have had experiences what I thought to be "conversing with God" that in retrospect were probably no more than dialog between different parts of my own consciousness. Consider this survey in which people were asked to assess the will of God: http://www.religioustolerance.org/god_pra2.htm. If people were truly able to "meet God face to face" and hear what he/she/it has to say, don't you think there would be a *bit* more consensus?
Hell is more a Jewish and Muslim concept, from the Torah (Old Testament).
Sorry, but eternal torment of the damned in a lake of unquenchable flame is only ever mentioned in the NT, and mostly by Jesus himself and the author of Revelation. Even Paul, essentially the author of modern Christianity, barely touches the concept.
Every time a word is rendered "Hell" in English translations of the OT, it is a mistranslation. Most conservative and liberal scholars agree that the OT authors only had a very vague concept of afterlife as some sort of mysterious dwelling place where dead spirits go, righteous and unrighteous alike.
And saying that the OT has to be interpreted in light of the NT is like saying the Bible has to be interpreted in light of the Book of Mormon or the Qur'an.
Slashdot Mirror
Erm, "0b" is a common prefix for binary numbers in many programming languages. GP was not saying "b1" as in "base 1".
I think it's great. I never knew how to pronounce it before. Skiffy?
served by QZHTTP. This web server is used by QQ to serve millions of Qzone sites beneath the qq.com domain
A quorum of queasy, quitting queens, quaffing questionable quaaludes, quietly quote quips of quality quite exquisitely.
Anyone can see the machine code on your closed-source software and hack you with ease.
Security through obscurity is worthless. These are blatant, obvious lies.
Then, when both inevitably explode on some mission, we start sending four. One of THOSE is definitely bound to make it.
Use XFCE. It has the versatility of GTK without the bloat and overhead of GNOME.
chmod 600 sign
It's the ice-9 strangelets that have me worried.
Ugh. That should read:
Oh, totally. But when my boss needs someone to spend 6 months of nothing but writing automated regression tests, shit, forget it.
When you need 5k lines of code intimately tied to the internals of the C library and you have under a month to do it, I'm useful.
Oh, totally. But when my boss needs someone to write 6 months of nothing but writing automated regression tests, shit, forget it.
...and instead of "clearly optimal", I should have said "a likely improvement" because no heuristic is guaranteed to provide an improvement in performance 100% of the time.
It requires nothing of the sort. It just requires that you sometimes try going up instead of down.
Depending on the terrain, however, "sometimes going down" could almost always result in worse performance.
One solution is more randomness in the culling heuristics, as well as bigger populations and occasional bigger mutations.
Of course, this applies to whole populations, not individuals. Simply saying "follow the gradient and occasionally don't" is more likely to result in degraded average performance. Actually knowing when going against the gradient is helpful and not harmful, and knowing which direction to take against the gradient, OR having a good heuristic for guessing when it's a good idea, on the other hand, is clearly optimal.
Randomly doing something counterintuitive may reveal clues toward a more optimal solution, but in itself it is no guarantee of improvement.
Vista is a very good example of what happens when you take tough theoretical problems and throw entry-level programmers at them who haven't spent enough time converting C code to assembly on 4-bit microcontrollers with 64 bits of onboard RAM to appreciate the inherent value in code optimization and algorithm design, and there's enough processor speed and memory available that nobody notices or cares about the inefficiencies until it hits shelves and millions of end-users are forced to hit "Allow" 300 times a day.
Except following the gradient is just an example of using a suboptimal solution that works in the majority of cases, and is significantly less difficult to implement than the "next step up," which requires, at the very least, an internal model of the surrounding terrain. If it is actually known that going down will help you get higher, it's not actually a dumb decision despite how it may appear to agents without the "internal model" algorithm.
In fact, the gradient follower in that case is actually the dumber process, because it takes only one factor into account. But if the gradient follower is able to observe the internal modeler performing counterintuitive steps and achieving greater results, it may attempt to modify its own behavior without understanding the justification behind it, or the full ramifications thereof. This is where IT Managers come from.
Dammit, infinite regress only works when you don't acknowledge it!
You've doomed us all. I hope you're happy.
"Given the rapid advance of Moore's Law, when does it make sense to throw hardware at a programming problem? As a general rule, I'd say almost always.
even the most rudimentary math will tell you that it'd take a massive hardware outlay to equal the yearly costs of even a modest five person programming team
All the hardware in the world isn't going to fix an insidious segmentation fault, or ensure that your database queries properly handle all inputs, or rework a poorly designed algorithm that runs in O(n^n) time. "Throwing hardware at a programming problem" is like trying to fix a flat tire by putting more gas in your car.
It's so obvious now.
The Higgs Boson was a front. The LHC is a prototype of the hardware intended to run Duke Nukem Forever.
Very well. I suppose it's down to me. ...Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
What was extremely helpful for me was I kept writing code in my own spare time, and set up a local support consulting business, while looking for that first programming gig out of college. I was able to present my down-time work in interviews, which really helped out a lot. It showed that I was ambitious, capable, and passionate about programming, and not just looking for a cushy desk job.
While not, strictly speaking, *space* (it was filmed on a vomit comet), microgravity porn HAS been produced already:
http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/movies/uranus_experiment_000516.html
Power cycle it with a city-wide EMP.
Night time on the moon is kinda long (weeks). What do you do then?
Really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really long wires.
Leela: When you were organizing this protest, did you realize that spaceships can move in three dimensions?
Free Waterfall, Sr.: No, I did not.
Er, I'm agnostic too but...
You keep using the word "bigot". I don't think it means what you think it means.
Bigotry is viewing a certain category/categories of people as inferior to another category. You can be any of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, atheist, agnostic, Wiccan, etc. without being a bigot. Saying "you're wrong and I'm right" is not bigotry. It's just stubborn.
I can now no more question the existance of God than you can question the existance of anything you have experienced in life.
Actually, you can question pretty much anything you experience. I have had experiences what I thought to be "conversing with God" that in retrospect were probably no more than dialog between different parts of my own consciousness. Consider this survey in which people were asked to assess the will of God: http://www.religioustolerance.org/god_pra2.htm. If people were truly able to "meet God face to face" and hear what he/she/it has to say, don't you think there would be a *bit* more consensus?
Hell is more a Jewish and Muslim concept, from the Torah (Old Testament).
Sorry, but eternal torment of the damned in a lake of unquenchable flame is only ever mentioned in the NT, and mostly by Jesus himself and the author of Revelation. Even Paul, essentially the author of modern Christianity, barely touches the concept.
Every time a word is rendered "Hell" in English translations of the OT, it is a mistranslation. Most conservative and liberal scholars agree that the OT authors only had a very vague concept of afterlife as some sort of mysterious dwelling place where dead spirits go, righteous and unrighteous alike.
And saying that the OT has to be interpreted in light of the NT is like saying the Bible has to be interpreted in light of the Book of Mormon or the Qur'an.