Comment Re:What is this stuff? (Score 1) 217
many of the chemicals contained in Aspirin
Say what? Aspirin contains only one chemical: acetylsalicylic acid. Nothing else.
United States Begins Flying Stealth Bombers Over South Korea 567
skade88 writes "The New York Times is reporting that the United States has started flying B-2 stealth bomber runs over South Korea as a show of force to North Korea. The bombers flew 6,500 miles to bomb a South Korean island with mock explosives. Earlier this month the U.S. Military ran mock B-52 bombing runs over the same South Korean island. The U.S. military says it shows that it can execute precision bombing runs at will with little notice needed. The U.S. also reaffirmed their commitment to protecting its allies in the region. The North Koreans have been making threats to turn South Korea into a sea of fire. North Korea has also made threats claiming they will nuke the United States' mainland."
Comment Re:Do companies really use Big Iron anymore? (Score 2, Interesting) 230
It's not the number of decimal plaaces that's the issue. Mainframes can store and manipulate a number like 1.23 as EXACTLY 1.23, whereas a lesser machine would have to use some binary floating-point approximation (1.230000001234 or 1.229999999993241 for example) with rounding, etc. Even the programming languages used on mainframes (mainly COBOL and PL/I but also RPG) have specific provision for fixed-point decimal data types, whereas C and its derivatives (C++, C#, Java, Objective-C, D, etc) are utterly clueless.
But mainframe financial applications do relatively little actual arithmetic. Most of their time is spent moving strings and structures around - something that C and its derivatives also just can't do efficiently, if at all, whereas COBOL and PL/I do it easily and quickly.
In mainframe software, anything that can be static is static; data is only dynamic if it absolutely has to be. This is the basis for the high efficiency of mainframe software. COBOL has no equivalent of C's 'new'; PL/I does (of course - 'ALLOCATE') but it's used relatively rarely. You therefore almost NEVER see memory leaks in mainframe software.
Comment Glicko (better than Elo) has been around for years (Score 1) 133
The Glicko chess rating system and its successor Glicko2 (creative, huh?) are better than Elo and have been around for years. Various online chess sites use it, as does the Australian Chess Federation.
Microsoft Won't Vouch For Linux 208
theodp writes "Gov. Christine Gregoire applauded Microsoft's job training partnership with WA state and county government agencies, which calls for the distribution of 30,625 training vouchers statewide during the next 90 days. 'This program [Elevate America] is all about equipping people with the new skills they'll need to get a job in the changing economy,' said Microsoft Counsel Brad Smith, who also made it very clear that getting 'workforce ready' won't involve acquiring any Linux skills. At least this offer appears to be no-cost, unlike the $35 Microsoft requested in an e-mail come-on for 'The Stimulus Package for Your Career' (so much for Smith's and Gregoire's war on spam)."
