Big Stuff ?

[sbr]

Back when I was far less educated about computer science, I remember being struck by the full implication of what an exponential run time entails, usually after bumping into it the hard way. 

Want to try a brute-force approach that tries every combination of 5 lowercase letters?  Sure, write a very clever and efficient code, and wait a couple of minutes.  Want to move up to 10 characters?  It'll finish when you retire.  Want to try 15 characters?  The sun will probably go out before you're done.

What about adding capital letters or *gasp* a special symbol or two?

It's going to take even longer.

[Berkut]

Yeah, you need a really good PC to run some of those calculations quickly.

[grumbler]

At 6'3" you as tall as my children.

I are grammar better than your children, too.

When you grow up let me know.

When you learn to write, let me know.

[mongers]

What have we learnt from this thread so far?



That CC likes to look down upon all people ?   

And for a change, in this instance, Garbon doesn't.   

[Capetan Mihali]

Spending 10, 20, 30 years of one's life in prison.  Never getting out of prison.

[Malthus]

It gave me a sort of mental vertigo that is difficult to explain.

Now you get a sense of what it is like to be around so many short people.

I have a vision of your future:

http://www.thehistoryblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Skeleton-Charles-Byrne-display.jpg

[derspiess]

I remember as a kid going fossil collecting with my dad, and being struck like a hammer with the notion of "deep time". The fossils we were collecting were of creatures from a time so old that vertebrates did not exist yet ... just inconceivably old. Ordovician, around 480 million years ago ... yet there they were, under our picks. It gave me a sort of mental vertigo that is difficult to explain.

Had the same mental vertigo when I first tried to comprehend the endlessness of space.

[KRonn]

When I used to hunt in some remote woods of Maine or other New England state I was amazed t seeing stone walls in the middle of the woods. Those were all farmer's fields and property separated by the walls. A century or two ago most of that land was barren of trees or in the process of becoming barren as so much was chopped down for fuel and to clear fields. Now though there's more forest in New England than in the mid 1800s. That's always amazed me how that could have been at a time of much fewer people.

[crazy canuck]

That CC likes to look down upon all people ?   

The point is I dont.  It hurts my neck.

But it is cute that someone standing a mere 6'3'' believes he is tall. 

[Syt]

I remember as a kid going fossil collecting with my dad, and being struck like a hammer with the notion of "deep time". The fossils we were collecting were of creatures from a time so old that vertebrates did not exist yet ... just inconceivably old. Ordovician, around 480 million years ago ... yet there they were, under our picks. It gave me a sort of mental vertigo that is difficult to explain.

It can be. I have a similar feeling about imagining pre-historic times or the surfaces of other planets, or other solar systems - because it makes you aware of how much stuff goes on in the universe, and how many wonders there are without humans having any effect on it, or even being there to observe it. It gives me a desperate feeling of loneliness. Being stranded on Earth, say, 5 million years ago is also one of the most depressing thoughts.


Actually, it might be what turned me off Brin's Uplift books, where spaceships are millions of years old (constantly repaired/updated), races are indentured to one another for hundreds of millennia, and the (genetically engineered) individual just seems so incredibly insignificant that I failed to get emotionally involved in this. It's a fascinating setting, but I couldn't connect to it.

[Savonarola]

I was in college when this strip was published; and had taken a course in modern physics the year before.  Since the speed of light is a hard constant all sorts of strange things begin to happen once you approach the speed of light; (many not requiring you to teach gym.)  Like most of the things I studied in modern physics it seemed to be of no use to an engineer; since when are you going to travel at 90% of the speed of light?

As it turns out wireless communications systems today have such large throughput that they run up against this limit.  As users move his signal becomes distorted by the limitations of the speed of light (called the Dopler shift) and throughput is lowered.  I was astonished when I ran through the calculations and discovered a radio on a train traveling at 100 Kmph would be impacted by the speed of light.  The difference in scale between light and a train is so vast that it seems impossible; but the receive rate is so fast that it occurs.

Even more astonishing was that I found a use for something I learned in my modern physics class.

[derspiess]

When I used to hunt in some remote woods of Maine or other New England state I was amazed t seeing stone walls in the middle of the woods. Those were all farmer's fields and property separated by the walls. A century or two ago most of that land was barren of trees or in the process of becoming barren as so much was chopped down for fuel and to clear fields. Now though there's more forest in New England than in the mid 1800s. That's always amazed me how that could have been at a time of much fewer people.

A large portion of West Virginia had been clear-cut by the mid to late 1800s.  But there are more trees there now than there were in the late 1700s.

[Malthus]

When I used to hunt in some remote woods of Maine or other New England state I was amazed t seeing stone walls in the middle of the woods. Those were all farmer's fields and property separated by the walls. A century or two ago most of that land was barren of trees or in the process of becoming barren as so much was chopped down for fuel and to clear fields. Now though there's more forest in New England than in the mid 1800s. That's always amazed me how that could have been at a time of much fewer people.

Heh, we have that up at our "near cottage" in Oro-Medonte township, Ontario. The land was crappy for farming, but had nonetheless been farmed until the 1930s, then abandoned. You can still find farming artifacts - stone walls, a row of fruit trees growing in otherwise mixed forest, remains of old roads, and in some places, foundations of buildings.

There used to exist a 'genuine' haunted house back in the woods a ways, with a very sad history. It was the last inhabited house on the land - it had an old woman living in it in the 1940s, the last remnant of the family that used to farm that land: all her kids and relations were dead. She was totally demented, and her neighbours brought her food from time to time (social services were I guess pretty primitive back then). One day in winter, the neighbours came and found the door open and the old woman gone. She was never seen again and her body was not found; the house then proceeded to molder.

When I was a child, it was still standing, with massive brambles growing out of its smashed windows - the very picture of depressing decay. We kids were very frightened of it and avoided it, though we did not know the story above (I learned that as an adult). My brothers used it to scare the shit out of me, and doing so, endangered themselves, as I think I've told elsewhere.

[grumbler]

When I used to hunt in some remote woods of Maine or other New England state I was amazed t seeing stone walls in the middle of the woods. Those were all farmer's fields and property separated by the walls. A century or two ago most of that land was barren of trees or in the process of becoming barren as so much was chopped down for fuel and to clear fields. Now though there's more forest in New England than in the mid 1800s. That's always amazed me how that could have been at a time of much fewer people.

That was the best land available when it was cleared, but when better land became available, New England was abandoned by farmers.  Those people clearly were not as stupid as someone who thinks a person taller than 97% of the male population is not tall.

[crazy canuck]

When I used to hunt in some remote woods of Maine or other New England state I was amazed t seeing stone walls in the middle of the woods. Those were all farmer's fields and property separated by the walls. A century or two ago most of that land was barren of trees or in the process of becoming barren as so much was chopped down for fuel and to clear fields. Now though there's more forest in New England than in the mid 1800s. That's always amazed me how that could have been at a time of much fewer people.

That was the best land available when it was cleared, but when better land became available, New England was abandoned by farmers.  Those people clearly were not as stupid as someone who thinks a person taller than 97% of the male population is not tall.

Not as stupid as someone who doesnt realize that if he is tall at a mere 6'3" then that proves my initial point that the rest of the world is truly short.