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mlooney

Pinup, Single, Mall-Goth Elliot, Wed March 29 2017

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6 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Malliot?

Since she is presumably shopping for clothes, why not Maillot?

Or how about Maillot Jaune and enter her in the Tour de France?

I don't think any of the cast takes performance enhancing drugs, so that might be out.

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3 minutes ago, mlooney said:

I don't think any of the cast takes performance enhancing drugs, so that might be out.

We know Grace drinks Coffee.  And don't try to tell me Java is not a performance enhancing drug.  Joe DiMaggio should have been stripped of his records and kicked out of Hall of Fame when he started hawking for Mr Coffee.

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4 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

We know Grace drinks Coffee.  And don't try to tell me Java is not a performance enhancing drug. 

There is a "drug" and a "drug".  Like I tell people, yes, I'm a caffeine addict.  My drug happens to be cheap, legal, easy to find, and normally doesn't cause problems driving home.

 

ObGeek:
I find the idea that Java is a performance enhancer laughable. The only reason Java is a reasonable language for application development today is the invention of JiT compilers and CPU speeds being way much faster.

 

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12 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

And don't try to tell me Java is not a performance enhancing drug.

Energy-wise, they say. I favor taste (and tea more).

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On den 1 april 2017 at 4:25 PM, mlooney said:

ObGeek:

I find the idea that Java is a performance enhancer laughable. The only reason Java is a reasonable language for application development today is the invention of JiT compilers and CPU speeds being way much faster.
 

And never having written a single line of Java I'm not claiming to know any better. I do however remember an interesting, experiment I guess you could call it.

Someone ported the Quake II engine to Java. This was after ID published the source for it so people could play around with it. The interesting part were that when benchmark-ed the Java version was shown to be almost as fast, and occasionally faster than the original version which was written in C.

I can only assume that there were extensive optimization done, but it still shows that Java can achieve quite impressive performance. Remember that while the Quake engine is very light weight by today's standards it was once state of the art, and it was considered quite well optimized. And it had to be as the computational power of the average PC just wasn’t anywhere near what we take for granted today.

As it was something like ten years ago I saw this the JVM used was less efficient than what we have today, and yet they managed this level of performance.

A quick google search found me Jake 2 and the sourceforge page.


 

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9 minutes ago, Cpt. Obvious said:

I can only assume that there were extensive optimization done, but it still shows that Java can achieve quite impressive performance. Remember that while the Quake engine is very light weight by today's standards it was once state of the art, and it was considered quite well optimized. And it had to be as the computational power of the average PC just wasn’t anywhere near what we take for granted today.

Also, they had less memory. Some optimization might've been skipped on C code because it would effectively trade speed for memory and they needed to be careful for both. The division of work between GPU and CPU might've also needed to be different.

(I'm saying might, as I never looked at Quake code.)

11 minutes ago, Cpt. Obvious said:

A quick google search found me Jake 2 and the sourceforge page.

Their own bragging page claims they are getting closer but didn't match C yet.

13 minutes ago, Cpt. Obvious said:

As it was something like ten years ago I saw this the JVM used was less efficient than what we have today, and yet they managed this level of performance.

Getting better performance is getting harder and harder the closer you get to optimum. Current JVMs are likely better at running bad code, but may have similar performance on hand-pre-optimized code Jake 2 is using. Also, even ten years ago it was JiT compilation. Without JiT, your only chance to get reasonable performance from ANY interpreted language is if most work is done by

a) GPU

b.) library code which was written in C or assembler and hand-optimized

c) completely different program (for example, database server)

Compiled languages are and must be always faster than interpreted ones. The JiT was an attempt to compromise which ended surprisingly well ... in some cases, JiT can get better performance than compiled code because it has access to performance data normal compiler doesn't. It can never be as good as hand-optimized code of course, but hand-optimized code is extremely hard to make and even in "state-of-the-art" programs, only the parts which consumes most CPU are really hand-optimized.

(Was different when the whole program fit into 64KB with data of course, but that wasn't case of Quake. Also today, you can't optimize so much as in past, simply because the CPUs got more complicated and less deterministic.)

 

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14 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Compiled languages are and must be always faster than interpreted ones. The JiT was an attempt to compromise which ended surprisingly well ... in some cases, JiT can get better performance than compiled code because it has access to performance data normal compiler doesn't. It can never be as good as hand-optimized code of course, but hand-optimized code is extremely hard to make and even in "state-of-the-art" programs, only the parts which consumes most CPU are really hand-optimized.

(Was different when the whole program fit into 64KB with data of course, but that wasn't case of Quake. Also today, you can't optimize so much as in past, simply because the CPUs got more complicated and less deterministic.)
 

The most satisfying language I've used is Forth. I'm not claiming that it's "the best" or anything, just that for some reason I find it so satisfying writing the code. Back when memory was at premium it was also known to generate extremely small executables while still being very fast. It did however suffer from the same weaknesses all compiled languages suffer from, most notably portability.

When a program has been compiled the resulting executable is not portable to other computer architectures. If the program uses anything other than basic console, file or stream input and output porting a program between platforms is likely to require some work. This is where interpreted languages can have an advantage, and Java using it's own virtual machine is theoretically portable between both operating systems and computer architectures. I remember that back when Java was new and hot there were talk about creating processors able to run Java p-code natively. I have no idea if any of these were ever released, but the idea was interesting.

I used to follow the demo scene, but that was way back. In my opinion the most impressive class was the 4 KB demo. I remember one competition where a group managed to write a simple 3D engine that they used to create a scene with a ship flying through a labyrinth. Once it reached the exit it seamlessly transited to flying through a simple city where three other crafts were dogfighting. And all of this was able to fit in a executable that was 4 KB. They were however disqualified as they had included a music track and the rules said that for this class music wasn't allowed...
 

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6 hours ago, Cpt. Obvious said:

The most satisfying language I've used is Forth. I'm not claiming that it's "the best" or anything

I like Ruby. It's definitely not best yet, in fact I'm not sure if it's out of beta phase already (author's claims notwithstanding), but one day it could be great language ... if they keep it off rails.

6 hours ago, Cpt. Obvious said:

This is where interpreted languages can have an advantage, and Java using it's own virtual machine is theoretically portable between both operating systems and computer architectures.

Theoretically.

6 hours ago, Cpt. Obvious said:

I used to follow the demo scene, but that was way back. In my opinion the most impressive class was the 4 KB demo. I remember one competition where a group managed to write a simple 3D engine that they used to create a scene with a ship flying through a labyrinth. Once it reached the exit it seamlessly transited to flying through a simple city where three other crafts were dogfighting. And all of this was able to fit in a executable that was 4 KB. They were however disqualified as they had included a music track and the rules said that for this class music wasn't allowed...

I didn't actually follow the demo scene and still saw several simple 3D engines fitting into unbelievably small space. But note that those are generally optimized so extremely there is no way to change anything. Real programs needs to be modifiable. And, again, interpreted languages generally allows easier modifications. (Java being exception.)

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On 3/31/2017 at 2:49 PM, Vorlonagent said:

I'd quibble that video rental stores only survive where they cater to a niche market.  The days of Blockbuster herds thundering across the prairie are sadly behind us, never to come again.

They just did a Shetland Pony/Sheepdog thing and shrank into RedBox kiosks, which are in or outside a whole lot if grocery stores and Walgreens now.

On 4/1/2017 at 9:20 AM, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

We know Grace drinks Coffee.  And don't try to tell me Java is not a performance enhancing drug.  Joe DiMaggio should have been stripped of his records and kicked out of Hall of Fame when he started hawking for Mr Coffee.

Actually, coffee only brings performance back up to where it would have been originally.  Coffee drinkers in the original trials would be told to stay off caffeine for a day or two before getting the baseline no-coffee performance level, so they were in the throes of caffeine withdrawl when they did the no-coffee tests, which dropped their scores.  Their scores once they were allowed their caffeine fix were naturally better.  Non-coffee-drinkers never had that drop in the first set of scores.  Once someone figured out to control for whether a subject was already addicted to caffeine or not, they found that the with-coffee scores of the coffee-drinkers were no better than the baseline scores of the non-coffee-drinkers.  Rather than giving themselves a boost with their morning coffee, coffee-drinkers were impairing their performance without coffee, and then crediting the coffee for an improvement that was really just taking away that impairment.

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4 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:
On 4/1/2017 at 10:20 AM, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

We know Grace drinks Coffee.  And don't try to tell me Java is not a performance enhancing drug.  Joe DiMaggio should have been stripped of his records and kicked out of Hall of Fame when he started hawking for Mr Coffee.

Actually, coffee only brings performance back up to where it would have been originally.  Coffee drinkers in the original trials would be told to stay off caffeine for a day or two before getting the baseline no-coffee performance level, so they were in the throes of caffeine withdrawl when they did the no-coffee tests, which dropped their scores.  Their scores once they were allowed their caffeine fix were naturally better.  Non-coffee-drinkers never had that drop in the first set of scores.  Once someone figured out to control for whether a subject was already addicted to caffeine or not, they found that the with-coffee scores of the coffee-drinkers were no better than the baseline scores of the non-coffee-drinkers.  Rather than giving themselves a boost with their morning coffee, coffee-drinkers were impairing their performance without coffee, and then crediting the coffee for an improvement that was really just taking away that impairment.

I still say that the whole "coffee stunts your growth" claim is a crock, I've been drinking coffee since I was 13 and I'm 6'4.5" tall. You cannot expect me to believe that I'd be over 7' tall if I didn't drink coffee.

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8 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:
On 04/01/2017 at 4:20 PM, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

We know Grace drinks Coffee.  And don't try to tell me Java is not a performance enhancing drug.  Joe DiMaggio should have been stripped of his records and kicked out of Hall of Fame when he started hawking for Mr Coffee.

Actually, coffee only brings performance back up to where it would have been originally.  Coffee drinkers in the original trials would be told to stay off caffeine for a day or two before getting the baseline no-coffee performance level, so they were in the throes of caffeine withdrawl when they did the no-coffee tests, which dropped their scores.  Their scores once they were allowed their caffeine fix were naturally better.  Non-coffee-drinkers never had that drop in the first set of scores.  Once someone figured out to control for whether a subject was already addicted to caffeine or not, they found that the with-coffee scores of the coffee-drinkers were no better than the baseline scores of the non-coffee-drinkers.  Rather than giving themselves a boost with their morning coffee, coffee-drinkers were impairing their performance without coffee, and then crediting the coffee for an improvement that was really just taking away that impairment.

1) We have some data about how coffeine affects people, but not how it affects squirrels.

2) Coffee does help with MOVING the top performance time. The tests were likely not done too much in the morning. Non-coffee-drinkers need some time (I would guess hour or two based on my own experience) AND breakfast to get to their normal performance, coffee drinkers can get there faster.

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13 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

They just did a Shetland Pony/Sheepdog thing and shrank into RedBox kiosks, which are in or outside a whole lot if grocery stores and Walgreens now.

I tend to think shrinking from a brick and mortar store to a vending machine is a more radical shift than just ponying up.  It's more like going from an Orca to a penguin (and I don't mean emperor penguin either).  It's a radical enough shift that orcas go completely out the (metaphorical) window.  You only see orcas where orcas have some kind of advantage sufficient to counterbalance their disadvantages in footprint (flipperprint, I suppose) and upkeep.

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12 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

I tend to think shrinking from a brick and mortar store to a vending machine is a more radical shift than just ponying up.

Hence why I specified Shetland ponies instead of just regular ponies.  Horses can be over two meters at the wither (shoulder).  The "pony" definition is smaller than 140-150 cm at the shoulder.  A Shetland pony can be as small as 71 cm.

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6 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

Hence why I specified Shetland ponies instead of just regular ponies.  Horses can be over two meters at the wither (shoulder).  The "pony" definition is smaller than 140-150 cm at the shoulder.  A Shetland pony can be as small as 71 cm.

..sort of a teacup pony...

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22 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

 A Shetland pony can be as small as 71 cm.

 

15 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

..sort of a teacup pony...

What makes them come in various pastel colors?

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