Comment No. (Score 1) 108
Facebook bought Occulus because it has more money than it knows what to do with these days.
Facebook bought Occulus because it has more money than it knows what to do with these days.
Again, wrong. You're (purposely?) mixing up redefinition of results vs the redefinition of algebra. Redefining the algebra behind division (and all other basic operations in the process) is a valid approach to tackle the division by zero problem. Redefining its result alone is not. And, incidentally, none of those two will do you any good with IEEE numbers.
You simply can't just say " x / 0 = 42 " without redefining division, substraction and multiplication. And all other operations in the process.
division by zero is sometimes undefined, but there is no natural reason for it to give an error. For example, IEEE defines floating point division by zero as infinity, whereas dividing an integer by zero is defined as an error.
The example is wrong since IEEE does not define division by zero as infinite to be a valid result. And, under the algebra rules used by IEEE floats there IS a very good reason for it to give an error. This is not a philosophical discussion; you don't need to sit down with a Fields medal mathematicians in order to understand why the above statement is incorrect.
You're right, thanks. I was of course refering to division under linear algebra, but there are indeed other algebras where division by zero yields a meaningful result.
It can be defined at any time in any way. You could define it as always equaling 42.
No, you cannot. It is not only not useful, it breaks math - you can't arbitrarily define a division result without breaking all related operations, like multiplication and substraction.
What you can do, as maxwell demon correctly pointed out, is to extend algebra so division by zero makes sense. This means, of course, to redefine all basic operations, and since IEEE floats are built around basic linear algebra there is a natural reason why division by zero gives errors: it its either indeterminate or has no solution. When IEEE defined division by zero as infinity was not to provide a valid solution for it but to ease error handling afterwards.
You should consider toning down the patronizing. Your original statement is incorrect.
Division by zero is mathematically undefineable.
If A * B = C and C / B = A, you can't have B being zero without C being also zero (in which case the equation is valid for all values of A, a.k.a undefined). For every other value of C the equation has no solution. The only reason IEEE defined division by zero as infinity was to make errors easier to handle.
"Some speculative monetary moves" = buying $1,500,000 USD at a 8,70 ARS rate when the official rate was 8,50 and climbing fast. If buying 1,500,000 accounts as "speculation" from a huge oil company we're in deeper waters than we thought.
Gah, "Contact" was written by Sagan, not Asimov. I hereby surrender my geek cards...
Not Snapchat!
...in no particular order.
"Passage", by Connie Willis. Yes, "The Doomsday Book" is probably her better known work, but "Passage" is immensely gripping. A light read but quite thought provoking.
"Contact" by Isaac Asimov. Forget the movie (which wasn't half bad either); the book is great and focuses more on the characters' religion and spirituality. I've recommended it to a number of relatives who hate sci-fi and they all thanked me.
"Atlas shrugged" by Ayn Rand. Yes, it is long. Yes, some dialogs are way longer than they should. And yes, it is heavy handed. Love it or hate it, it will make you rethink
"Brave new word" by Aldous Huxley. People keep saying we live in a 1984-future, but Huxley's work reflects our present much better than Orwell could ever imagine. Or fear.
"Rendevouz with Rama" by Arthur C. Clarke. Perhaps the first real page-turner i ever read; if the first chapter grabs your attention you'll have a hard time putting this one down.
"A man without a country" by Kurt Vonnegut. A series of essays by Vonnegut which are short, humorous, depressing and thought-provoking all at the same time. Highly recommended.
"Starship troopers" by Robert A. Heinlein. Also heavy-handed and infused with Heinleins' view of politics, but it is very well-written and leaves you pondering after the last page is done. Rico's discussions with his history and philosophy teacher are though-provoking indeed.
"In cold blood" by Truman Capote. Non-fictional account of the Clutter murders on 1959 which is so well written and researched that feels like a novel.
"Foucault's Pendulum" by Umberto Eco. Long and slow in parts, but stylishly definitely one of the best written works i've ever read. The thinking man's version of "The Da Vinci Code".
Pun aside, i had E17 segfaulting a couple times (i've been using me as my DE of choice for over a year now) and it handles crashes surprisingly nice. The screen goes black for a second while the windows manager restarts and you get all your applications back, running as if nothing happened, along a "Sorry, i've crashed" dialog.
Yes, Darwinia, from the same guys who gave us Uplink and DEFCON.
The thought of a planetary-scale standing wave just boggles my mind.
This guy was the major driving force for the FPS genre and the adoption of GPUs
I think you are giving Carmack too much credit.
Am i? I remember it well. When the first Voodoo cards showed up they were expensive as hell and Quake 2 was the reason to get one. In the span of less than a year after its release most games were supporting either OpenGL or Glide in some way.
Games with excellent gameplay can overcome lack of engineering and graphics, but games with excellent engineering cannot overcome lack of gameplay.
Much agreed. But at least until Q3 no one will argue that iD games were simply fun to play.
Maybe 5 years for now you'll be raving about how good his VR headsets are.
I'm pretty sure that you are wrong, and here are my arguments:
Sure, a "software guy" who worked closely with GPU engineers, helped created cutting edge software for the past 15 years, designs and builds rockets and founded one of the most successful indie game companies in history. You don't make it for almost to decades by being "lucky".
I really hate how this makes me sound like a fanboy but the amount of bashing on this thread is increidble. Give credit where credit is due.
you'll be raving about how good his VR headsets are
I'm pretty disturbed by this sentence: do you imply that Carmack will design the VR headsets alone ?
No. Not by a long shot.
Oh for crap's sake. I know i'm answering to a troll here, but if you don't understand how pivotal was Quake with its "out-of-date" software rendered back in the day then you clearly didn't live the 90s, where the only widespread GPU product out there was the S3 ViRGE. It single-handedly revolutionized the game industry and started a trend to use 3D, without GPUs... which didn't really become popular until Quake 2 showcased what could be achieved with them. 3DFX owes them pretty much all of their business, as everyone else then followed suit, including Romero which had to (yet again) rewrite his glorious Daikatana.
Give credit where due. "Humiliates himself"? This guy was the major driving force for the FPS genre and the adoption of GPUs, and was coding state of the art game engines while you were still picking your nose. Doze off. Maybe 5 years for now you'll be raving about how good his VR headsets are.
Much, much agreed. I would *love* to see Lua on a browser. It is Python after a marahton diet.
To write good code is a worthy challenge, and a source of civilized delight. -- stolen and paraphrased from William Safire
