Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Maybe (Score 2) 293

Possible, although unlikely. The -CDM model does an astonishingly good job of modeling the observed universe. But, that doesn't mean it is right.

In the case of aether, people didn't stop investigating it until a) experiments that should have observed no matter what saw no evidence of it and b) another theory that agreed with this new data came along.

People who trot out the tired old "dark matter is just like aether!" line typically do so while patting themselves on the back for their cleverness, while neglecting the above.

If there isn't WIMP dark matter, or even isn't dark matter at all, then we'll find out. That's how science works.

Comment Re:Fortran (Score 2) 465

This is exactly the right answer. Never write code that someone else has already written. If you can compose standard operations to do your calculations, then do so in a high-level language. Spend more time thinking and less time coding. OTOH, if you need to code up something custom and you're REALLY sure that you can't use standard operations to do it, then think again about whether or not you can do it with standard operations. You probably can. But, if you can't, then go with FORTRAN. Or maybe C or even C++. But probably FORTRAN. But even then, code as little as you can in FORTRAN. Don't write the whole thing in FORTRAN. Create small operations, and compose them in a high-level language as if they were the standard operations.

Comment Re:TDD (Score 4, Insightful) 156

For the purpose of release testing, though, the only thing you care about is whether or not there was a crash. If there was a crash, don't release. Back out the busted patch and release the working version. Then you can spend your time debugging the busted patch, which requires the logs and all.

Comment Re:Five Star (Score 1) 627

It is extremely reactive, so I'd imagine refining it is pretty difficult as well. Also, it is not "right up there on the most abundent element on this planet". It's actually only the 33rd most abundant element in the Earth's crust (out of 78 elements occuring naturally in the crust). Occurrence is only about 20 parts per million. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth's_crust

Slashdot Top Deals

The Tao is like a glob pattern: used but never used up. It is like the extern void: filled with infinite possibilities.

Working...