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[i2amroy]

Is that actually workable? I suppose you could use different combinations of notes to represent words, and use accidentals, time signatures, articulations, or even vary octaves to get something resembling grammar out of it. It'd probably end up being very simple (or pure cacophony) either way, but it would be fascinating to work as a code. It'd be like a needlessly complicated PA system that only certain people can understand.

It's totally possible to write things out using notes as letters. I did it before with a friend where we used slightly more than one octave of quarter and half notes to represent all of the letters, with rests for spaces and half rests for periods, just as a very simple example. There's plenty enough possibilities to encode just about any letter/sound based language, and you could probably even get most of them to sound fairly close to music.

(For example if you locked yourself into a single key and then went to two octaves, or started to use dual notes to represent a single letter you could get something that almost certainly wouldn't be very melodic, but it wouldn't necessarily be cacophonous either.)

[timferius]

Say, what does being a 'fixed resident' mean?
I tried to search it up, but it keeps directing me towards Resident Evil videos -_-

I would assume it means the same as a permanent resident, someone with a fixed address at a location essentially? Can't back it up with a source though.

[i2amroy]

According to the books I'm finding through google (the '-X' command is your friend!), it's to differentiate between people who live in a town as opposed to those wandering through the town or those who are living there in conjunction with a larger company project (for example the workers on something like Spaceport America, despite living in a town for a few years while they worked on the project, would not be "fixed residents").

[Sergarr]

Anyone knows how many calculations a computer makes per second? How much time do modern computers need to calculate 10^12 relatively simple operations (adding, comparing two numbers, reading/writing in operative memory, that sort of stuff)?

[Levi]

Anyone knows how many calculations a computer makes per second? How much time do modern computers need to calculate 10^12 relatively simple operations (adding, comparing two numbers, reading/writing in operative memory, that sort of stuff)?

I just checked the bogomips of a 2.67GHZ processor at work, and it had about 5300 bogomips.  That means it can calculate nothing about 5.3 billion times per second. 

Bogomips are bogus, but its probably roughly in the right range.

[Sergarr]

So about... 200 seconds?

That's much less than I thought.

It's fast enough for my Secret Project™, hehehehe....

[i2amroy]

The question you should be asking yourself is "why do I need to do 10^12 basic operations quickly?". In most scenarios there's going to be an algorithm improvement or something similar you can do that should be able to cut that number pretty drastically.

[Avis-Mergulus]

Hey, I have a purely theoretical question. What would be more fun to minor in: System Programming or Neural Net Theory?

[Reelya]

System Programming sounds like it would be more useful. Unless you want to specialize in Neural Net research or something, but I'd say you want postgrad for that to be worthwhile. Being a systems programmer is more likely to get you a good job at the bachelor's degree level. I can't see being a dabbling NN person having the same effect.

[i2amroy]

Yeah, if you're asking which one sounds (to me) to be more fun/interesting I'd say Neural Net hands down, but if you want to know which one is more likely to actually be useful I'd say System Programming.

[Arx]

Neural Net would almost certainly be more fun, yeah.

[Sergarr]

The question you should be asking yourself is "why do I need to do 10^12 basic operations quickly?". In most scenarios there's going to be an algorithm improvement or something similar you can do that should be able to cut that number pretty drastically.

Nah I'm afraid there's no way to cut this number down without significantly losing the algorithm's power. I need to construct a cause-effect web for a significant number of events of various qualities with various intermediate factors in play. That 10^12 (actually 6*10^12 because I forgot to account for permutations) number is for about 100 000 events of 100 different types with 5 different criterias to check in between each of them up to the third order (A-B-C-D). It would be really surprising if it took less time than that.

[Draxis]

I think system programming is pretty neat actually, but then I've never done it as more than abandoned personal projects.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

((On the subject of college))
I've been wondering about my future recently and would like to know how expensive college would be.

I'm getting an state funded college thing that will pay for and state operated college for two years ((as in two years of free classes and books) and a year and a half of college free from a family member (let's not get into the details) and the second one is for any college I choose to go to.

How much out of pocket ((I'm laughing that this is all I'm probably going to need)) would I need to pay for a four year degree (or whatever you need to work at a reactor) in nuclear engineering including board/dorms and food. Cut out the price of books and classes for the first three and a half years.

[Flying Dice]

It vastly differs depending on how much funding your state gives to post-secondary institutions, how much the individual school gets in grant money, what their spending is directed towards, the quality of the school, the amount they give you in scholarships, the amount of non-school-specific money you get from your state, even things like which dorm you live in and which meal plan you get can change things by hundreds or thousands of dollars.

The only real rules are:
-Out of state = more expensive
-Lower-quality dorms = lower cost

By the 'price of classes' do you mean tuition? Because tuition is far and away the biggest cost almost everywhere, unless you get a scholarship.

But yeah, even within state schools you'll see pretty divergent costs; my university is a state school and the total cost per year before scholarships and such is ~$15,000 (with me living in the cheapest dorm and using the cheapest meal plan), but there are public universities in my state that can approach double that, and private schools that can hit upwards of $60,000 per year.

One thing to consider, if you do your research beforehand re: transferring credits and such, is to do two years at a community college for all of your gen-eds and transfer those in to the state school you want to attend for your major-specific courses. Obviously only do this if you've talked to people at the latter and know that you'll be able to get transfer credits.

Usually your best bet will be to target a smaller (but not tiny) state university which offers you good scholarship money, preferably one which still gets decent grant funding, at least if cost is an issue. Your goal there is to balance out the cost of attendance with the quality of education; a school which is really small and has little/no funding for research isn't going to give you an acceptable environment or education, but a really big school with 30k+ students is also not going to give you a good education unless you're super-good at networking and get into a lot of field-specific courses with professors who know you personally.