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12:00 AM
Gilgamesh (; Akkadian cuneiform: [], Gilgameš, often given the epithet of the King, also known as Bilgames in the earliest Sumerian texts) was the fifth king of Uruk, modern day Iraq (Early Dynastic II, first dynasty of Uruk), placing his reign ca. 2500 BC. According to the Sumerian king list he reigned for 126 years. In the Tummal Inscription, Gilgamesh, and his son Urlugal, rebuilt the sanctuary of the goddess Ninlil, in Tummal, a sacred quarter in her city of Nippur. Gilgamesh is the central character in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the greatest surviving work of early Mesopotamian liter...
The Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem from Mesopotamia, is amongst the earliest surviving works of literature. The literary history of Gilgamesh begins with five independent Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh, king of Uruk. Four of these were used as source material for a combined epic in Akkadian. This first, "Old Babylonian" version of the epic dates to the 18th century BC and is titled Shūtur eli sharrī ("Surpassing All Other Kings"). Only a few fragments of it survive. The later, Standard Babylonian version dates from the 13th to the tenth centuries and bears the title Sha naqba īmuru ("He...
 
acl
@belisarius reading this sounds like a good plan
 
Hello belisarius and acl.
 
Think about this:
This first, "Old Babylonian" version of the epic dates to the 18th century BC
@MrWizard Mr~Hi~Wizard!
 
acl
@MrWizard hi
@belisarius yes, this is as much older than the homeric epics as they are from classical greece (if not more)
thinking about this is interesting
 
Homer is modern compared with Gilgamesh
Almost everything is modern compared with him
 
acl
12:06 AM
@belisarius how old is it? I remember something about 2000BC?
 
yep
 
acl
yes looked it up in wikipedia :)
homer's epics are set in ~1200BC (or anyway that's the number I have in my head)
 
Gilgamesh is "He who Saw the Deep"
 
acl
it's hard to get a perspective on this sort of thing
 
Hi @Rojo!
 
12:07 AM
Hey @belisarius
 
@acl Think of your grandparents, but older
 
and all
 
acl
@belisarius and deader?
could work
 
@acl I don't know your granpa
 
acl
@belisarius two of us then :)
 
12:09 AM
@acl Oh well ... I am not going to regret it
 
@RM You need to host a Gold-farming clinic! O_o
 
@MrWizard Take a look a this "silly" Q
1
Q: Adding a Parabola to a Catenary in Plot with the same Length

Zellel BI wanted add a Parabola to my Manipulate/Plot, that have the same length and the same hanging points as the Catenary, so that when I Manipulate(Modify) the position of the Points A and B of the Catenary, it will also modify the form of the Parabola. So I'm trying to interpose the Parabola of the ...

sorry for the delay :D it is late here
 
acl
@belisarius how come? it's late here
 
@acl I woke up at 5 today
 
acl
@belisarius always an excuse
 
12:18 AM
@acl A teenager kid needed help with his homework
 
acl
@belisarius a teenager, up at 5? I don't believe you
or was he/she about to go to bed?
 
@acl Yep. That's my son
 
acl
@belisarius in addition to other indications, that proves definitively that I am not your son
 
Would you all please run some code for me and post the result?
core1[l_, p_] := MapThread[l~Take~{##} &, {{0}~Join~Most@p + 1, p}]
core2[l_, p_] := MapThread[l[[# ;; #2]] &, {{0}~Join~Most@p + 1, p}]
core3[l_, p_] := Inner[l~Take~{##} &, {0}~Join~Most@p + 1, p, List]
core4[l_, p_] := Inner[l[[# ;; #2]] &, {0}~Join~Most@p + 1, p, List]

list = Range@1*^7~Append~"x";
pt = Accumulate@RandomInteger[999, 15000];
First@Timing@Do[#[list, pt], {20}] & /@ {core1, core2, core3, core4}
First@Timing@Do[#[list, pt], {20}] & /@ {core4, core3, core2, core1}
 
@MrWizard Nope
 
acl
12:19 AM
@MrWizard I'm running some other things so can't now
 
Much help you two are. ;-p
 
How long does it take?
 
About 10 seconds on my machine, but you could use a smaller number in Do if you want to. I'm just curious to see the relative timings.
 
ok running
 
{5.506, 5.663, 5.538, 5.569}
and {5.476, 5.523, 5.896, 5.382}
 
12:22 AM
{7., 8.5, 6.968, 8.375}
and {8.313, 7.109, 8.5, 6.938}
 
I'm also starting to doubt the value in micro-benchmarking as WReach once said; I am certain I tested Take versus Part in the same version of Mathematica I use now and found Part faster; now on a new machine I am finding Take faster.
 
I imagined Take would be a little faster
 
acl
@MrWizard really? I found large differences in linear algebra-related timings between machines, but did not notice differences otherwise
 
@MrWizard It's like wine.
 
Gosh you guys are either running antiques or v8 is a pig. My results are:
{0.983, 1.576, 1.107, 1.529}

{1.56, 1.045, 1.56, 1.014}
 
acl
12:24 AM
I get
{2.11458, 2.72413, 1.83663, 2.47748}
 
I am running an Apple II
 
acl
{2.5348, 1.99254, 2.84281, 2.0652}
 
@belisarius :D
 
acl
on a macbook air (i7 "1.8 GHz", it ramps up to 2.8GHz on single core I think)
 
@Rojo He forgets he is talking to the third world
 
12:25 AM
Yeah
CPUs run slower in here
 
Sorry :-o
 
acl
and
{2.48262, 2.99854, 2.44863, 2.96655}
 
What are you using @MrWizard
 
acl
{3.36149, 2.77258, 3.39448, 2.80757}
 
@Rojo i5-2500K at 4.5GHz
 
acl
12:26 AM
on a xeon E5540
 
@MrWizard I am making some voodoo dance and invoking the rain God while we talk
 
@belisarius That's going in my profile quotes. LOL
 
Nice @belisarius
I like sleeping with rain
Cheerio everyone
zz
 
@Rojo Bye!
 
Bye Rojo.
And hello Verbeia.
 
12:28 AM
{3.573, 3.619, 3.494, 3.541} and {3.51, 3.573, 3.822, 3.728}
 
@Verbeia Hullo
 
Just dropping. Work beckons. Bye again!
 
acl
@MrWizard certainly with mma it is not the way to go in general
 
@Verbeia Thanks. It's really interesting to see that the relative speeds between these two are not constant on different systems.
 
Voting patterns are very different here (compared with SO)
rant ..
 
acl
12:29 AM
@belisarius how so?
there are more votes, but what else?
 
@acl Good questions get much more upvotes. And silly questions get none
 
acl
@belisarius yes that's true
 
seems a more educated audience is hanging here
also, less downvotes
@acl have you seen what @VitaliyKaurov did?
 
acl
@belisarius the puzzle thing? nice, yes
 
@acl It is a wonderful advertisment for this site
 
acl
12:34 AM
@belisarius and to a more palatable (to me) audience than reddit
3
 
@acl On the average, yes
 
acl
guess I'm getting older and less tolerant
(even less tolerant)
 
@acl Try to stay out of the "grinch state"
 
acl
@belisarius that is my ground state
so much for gilgamesh being old:
 
@MrWizard Core 2 Quad 3.2GHz, 1600MHz FSB, dual channel 800MHz 5-5-5-15 RAM:
Version 8.0.4:
{4.031, 4.141, 3.859, 4.032}
{4.047, 3.765, 3.875, 3.828}
Version 7.0.1:
{3.093, 3.375, 3.047, 3.219}
{2.938, 2.953, 3.422, 2.812}
Version 5.2 (`Span` replaced by `Range`):
{2.953 Second, 3.703 Second, 3.234 Second, 3.704 Second}
{3.625 Second, 3. Second, 3.968 Second, 3.016 Second}
 
12:39 AM
@belisarius Your humor is on point today. :-)
@OleksandrR Thanks for the extensive results!
 
@MrWizard sorry they're a bit late. :)
 
acl
@OleksandrR how come these are so slow?
 
Hardly a problem!
 
acl
(compared to mine on the air)
 
@acl I don't quite know. i7 has a more efficient cache hierarchy than Core 2 and can perform macro-op fusion for 64-bit code, but I would say memory bandwidth probably.
 
12:42 AM
@OleksandrR I must admit I am a bit disappointed that v8 is slower again; I've seen that too often now.
 
R.M
@MrWizard or you just have a faster monster crunching the numbers :)
 
@MrWizard I agree; I've often encountered this as well. On the other hand, the time between versions is ~2 years. That's about a whole iteration of Moore's law, so the comparatively minor differences between versions perhaps don't really matter.
 
@RM I'm referring to Oleksandr's timings. (Also, congrats on yet another Gold!)
 
R.M
Thanks :) Although, Sjoerd's responsible for that
And the bagels... no one can resist bagels.
 
I've got my money on the Hypno-Toad.
 
12:46 AM
@MrWizard what voltage do you have on that 2500K to get to 4.5GHz? Is that base or turbo (if you didn't disable turbo)?
 
@MrWizard Philosophical rant follows (beware): lately I am thinking that Mma is more a flexible experimentation platform than a number crunching product. Probably the finest expert aboard (Leonid) keeps posting java code to make magic happens. I believe that if some code is really important and time matters you should program it in some C variant after testing it in Mma
 
acl
@belisarius yes: it's unpredictable, if you write sufficiently complicated code (because it is too smart)
 
@OleksandrR Hang on, I'm checking that now.
 
@RM 23 kviews now, wa wa wee wa!
 
@OleksandrR Okay, the auto-regulation on these new CPUs makes this a bit more complicated. Since I cannot remember the BIOS settings I used CPU-z to check actual values. A single core runs at 4.6GHz and ~1.304v. Two cores take ~1.336v and also run at 4.6GHz. Four cores take ~1.336v and throttle to 4.1GHz. I didn't try 3 cores.
 
12:59 AM
@MrWizard OK, so not too much above standard. 3 cores will be the same as 4 IIRC.
I take it you have a pretty good cooler?
 
R.M
@OleksandrR crazy, huh? Now if only this were Stack Overflow (note when the question was asked):
1558
A: Why is processing a sorted array faster than an unsorted array?

MysticialYou are the victim of branch prediction fail. What is Branch Prediction? Consider a railroad junction: Image by Mecanismo, from Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Entroncamento_do_Transpraia.JPG Now for the sake of argument, suppose this is back in the 1800s - before...

 
Yes, a T.R.U.E. if that means anything to you?
 
@MrWizard that's the Thermalright Ultra-120, right (except solid copper)?
 
Ulta-120 Extreme, yes. I see you are an enthusiast too. (No, not the copper one.)
I know I don't really push things but I prefer low noise.
 
@MrWizard I don't have an i7 but if I did I'd probably go for 4.0-4.2 base clock, I guess, so the same as you. Currently I have a rack mount case, so it's not tall enough to fit a tower cooler; I just have a top cooler instead which isn't as efficient. But, as long as it doesn't get over 72°C running Intel LINPACK I don't mind.
 
1:06 AM
@OleksandrR I'm using Prime95 for burns; I seem to recall that LINPACK is a bit hotter; is that true for i5/i7?
 
@MrWizard for the more recent versions (of LINPACK), it should be, yes (Intel's LINPACK is pretty well optimized, as they provide it for people to produce TOP500 scores with). Problem with Prime95 is it's mostly FFTs, so you stress the cores (esp. vector units) but leave the cache and memory [controller] alone. I didn't find anything that runs hotter than LINPACK so far.
@RM that is an absurd number of views and rep points. Now I see why people on SO can get such extreme amounts of rep. But, the question and answer are quite nice.
 
@OleksandrR You are right about the shameless rep gatherers in SO. See for example:
1175
A: Understanding "randomness"

belisariusJust a clarification Although the previous answers are right whenever you try to spot the randomness of a pseudo-random variable or its multiplication, you should be aware that while Random() is usually uniformly distributed, Random() * Random() is not. Example This is a uniform random distr...

Hi @rcollyer!
 
@belisarius you're still the only one even close to being eligible for a gold badge in math.
 
@rcollyer Is that so?
 
@belisarius yep, and maybe the only one with the silver. Although, that may have changed at this point. You just have to answer 200 questions!
 
1:16 AM
@rcollyer I don't crawl much on So lately
 
@belisarius well, I think you made a point that needed making, in a clear and graphically intuitive way. The other answers are just rambling walls of text. Was this answer publicized on e.g. Reddit, or just popular?
 
@OleksandrR No idea
 
@OleksandrR I don't think it was. Just insanely popular.
 
@rcollyer Curiously enough, the OP is from Uruguay, a few kilometers from my home
 
@belisarius Weird.
 
1:18 AM
@RM I was thinking the same
 
R.M
Thanks :)
 
For what?
 
@rcollyer pest invasion alert
 
@RM I've had enough troll feeding for one lifetime, and that was just today.
 
@rcollyer where? where?
We want a link
We DEMAND a link
 
R.M
1:21 AM
the same thing happened with the waldo question... I remember Arnoud felt obliged to create an account and quell some of the comments. Of course, him being a WRI employee, the flames were hotter
 
@belisarius There really needs to be a middle finger emoticon ... :)
 
@rcollyer I can imagine it :)
 
R.M
@rcollyer ,,|,,
 
@RM yes, just denying it made it worse. I should have known better, but I thought (foolishly) that a calm explanation would do it. But, alas I forgot the first rule of life: don't argue with stupid people, with the essential corollary: most people on the internet fall into that category.
 
most people fall into "that" category.
 
1:25 AM
I'm not sure that's true, but the internet certainly gives them license.
 
@RM ,,⋂,
 
R.M
@JM you had a table saw accident or something?
 
@RM Yes, the user forgot to read the manual for the table saw...
 
@rcollyer The internet gives the anonymity. That is a like a license to exercise stupidity
 
R.M
I guess this is the only reasonable comment in that thread:
> In these examples, Mathematica did not actually compute how to make the cut: that was done by the programmer and specifed as a few formulas. All mathematica did was render (or animate) a mathematically defined surface. It's nice that it can be done in a few lines of code (you could do the same in, say, Pov-Ray, but it wouldn't be as succinct) but it doesn't show any remarkable abilities of Mathematica.
 
1:27 AM
Why the sudden discussion on GIFT?
 
@RM That is absolutely true, and correct. Better than the comparison to excel.
@JM you didn't watch reddit blow up today, did you?
 
@rcollyer Sorry, I've long made the promise to avoid wading in cesspools...
(Not all of that site is, but...)
 
@rcollyer We DEMAND a link
 
@JM It started out innocently enough, then somehow we all got drafted into some large conspiracy to take over reddit.
@belisarius ,,|,, :)
 
@rcollyer You are the best
 
1:30 AM
@rcollyer Ah feck, it's like herding cats...
 
I know how to deal with cats, it people on the internet that's the problem.
 
Yes, people are nuttier than cats, sure. :)
 
@belisarius I thought you'd appreciate it. At least it wasn't goatse.
 
@rcollyer That guy sure went through so much expansion...
 
BTW, Jens made 10k!
 
1:37 AM
Well, just checkin' on you guys. Later, y'all.
 
@JM see you later.
 
 
2 hours later…
3:10 AM
@rcollyer I wonder how many >10K users we'll have at graduation. Ten?
 
@BrettChampion Ten, at the most. Eight, definitely. Vitaliy could make it, if we give him another softball (for him) question or 3, but neither you nor I will be in that exalted crowd.
 
@rcollyer A week of rep caps would put kguler (#11) over.
 
True, but I bet Rojo will make it first.
Actually, I suspect it will be Vitaliy and then Rojo.
 
I expect people will get there pretty much in the current order, at least for the 9K crowd. I think Vitaliy's a bit busy right now
 
Ah well, work does get in the way, doesn't it?
 
3:23 AM
(Have we seen Jin's concepts yet?)
 
No, we haven't.
Hi, @Matariki
 
@rcollyer ^2
 
In an odd twist, a friend from high school posted the bagel question on facebook.
Especially odd since he's a web developer.
 
@CHM Good evening!
 
CHM
@BrettChampion Evening :)
 
3:33 AM
Hola, @CHM
 
CHM
@rcollyer Hi
I'm catching up on what was said here
 
@CHM an interesting read.
 
CHM
Be back soon, have to take care of the GF!
 
@BrettChampion I know you've seen this code before (after the edit), but is that the simplest method for dealing with a Throw that may or may not have a tag?
 
CHM
(It would be nice to have chat statuses, like /afk or /brb or /away)
 
3:39 AM
@rcollyer In what way do you want to deal with the Throw?
 
In the case used in the code, I want to catch it, do something else, and rethrow. The method used in Leonid's answer involves a double Catch. Instead, I alter the behavior of Throw to always use a tag, then deal with the effects later.
I was just wondering if there is another way to do that, as I am not a fan of using Unprotect. Although, there are times where it is necessary.
 
Personally, I'd use a double Catch. Although I generally try to avoid interfering with other people's use of Throw. Although this leads me to think it's possible to cause a memory leak by using a poorly placed Throw in some of my code. Hmmm..... (I think this is mostly an academic possibility, and not likely to arise in practice.)
 
Mostly, I don't use Throw myself, but as this was meant to bullet proof the code a bit, I put it in there.
One issue with the double Catch is the difficulty in determining that something tagless was caught as Catch[expr, form, f] doesn't work with a tagless Throw. So, a flag is necessary if you want to know you've caught something.
 
Need to go now. See you later!
 
@BrettChampion Night!
Bye all, have to go myself.
 
R.M
3:53 AM
@rcollyer And Heike crossed 20k. Congrats @Heike!
 
4:14 AM
@RM 29k views and counting! I think the term viral is appropriate. Odd to apply here, but appropriate.
@RM Yes, definitely a big congrats to @Heike!
 
CHM
4:28 AM
Back.
 
 
8 hours later…
12:22 PM
2
Q: How to demonstrate our enthusiasm for the product when newbie questions descend?

VerbeiaLeonid predicted that, as the site became better known, we would get more newbie questions. Questions like this one. I don't think we have yet seen an avalanche of such questions, but inevitably we'll get a few each day. In responding to these questions, I hope we never lose sight of what made u...

 
 
2 hours later…
2:24 PM
0
Q: Why Mathematica.SE and not ComputerAlgebra.SE?

LierreWhy at the creation of Mathematica.SE the decision was taken to focus only on Mathematica rather than the whole field of symbolic computation ? The beta seems to be successful so I can't really be critical, but I can't explain it either. Here are my arguments of the existence of SymbolicComputat...

 
Anyone around? I got stuck in the simple process of fitting a texture image to a Disk object. Any idea how I can do this easily?
 
@IstvánZachar I'm around, I just don't know how to do it easily, or at all for that matter.
 
2:46 PM
@IstvánZachar I'd use a Polygon[] instead, if I was desperate...
 
@IstvánZachar I've been meaning to ask, what did you use to generate the word cloud on your profile?
 
3:09 PM
@rcollyer Sadly I had to use Tagxedo, as until Mathematica does not develop a proper way to convert raster images to vectors, we have no fast way to create such wonders.
 
 
3 hours later…
5:54 PM
@RM the troll deleted the vast majority of his comments.
 
@Szabolcs I'm still around, just busy.
 
@rcollyer He deleted it, or did a moderator do the deletion?
 
@JM good question. I don't know if there is anyway to tell.
 
6:10 PM
Oh, no logs in Reddit? Hmm... :D
 
After the specific allegations that we were a voting block, he got a response of "go away."
At this point, I'm mostly amused. I may even post something there, again, someday. Probably not any time soon, though.
 
Yeah, let 'em cool...
 
I definitely prefer this forum. Cool heads prevail most of the time. Well, here at least, other places on SE, it depends.
Of course, than there's this question currently topping the programming reddit.
 
@rcollyer Now that's both convenient and assholish...
 
I like the comment: "Add his name to this field for every report." He's the boss, after all, so he is technically responsible. :P
 
6:56 PM
@RM @CHM thanks for the congratulations.
wow, the bagel question got 38k views in 2 days. Too bad the visits per day on area51 is a median and not a mean.
 
 
2 hours later…
CHM
8:44 PM
@All I'm really happy this site is graduating. Some months ago I thought of Mathematica as only a fancy calculator. I started using MMA days before the private beta, just in time to commit to the proposal. I'm now hooked. The community is absolutely terrific, and the programming language I'm learning is great. Both contribute to my perception that practically anything can be done with MMA and the help from this community. Thank you, and I look forward to graduation.
2
(I am aware of what has been said in the meta)
 
9:31 PM
0
Q: LeapMotion developers

CHMLeapMotion is presently looking for developers for its product. I've filed a request, but considering I've started programming a couple of months ago, I don't have that big of a chance. Would anyone be interested in filing a request, either in his/her name or in the name of the community? I woul...

 
 
2 hours later…
11:20 PM
I want to apologize to the mathematica.SE guys, especially nintegrated and wyldeling, and also to other reddditors, for my aggressive behaviour yesterday on this thread. I overreacted and didn't stop. I'll try not to be "that guy". I'm sorry.
Edit: I deleted my comments, not a mod.
5
 
@alecco Hello alecco, I'm not one of the people mentioned - I'm not on reddit but I read the thread. I just wanted to say that I appreciate your coming here and apologising. Not many people are big enough to do that. The ones you were engaging with on reddit (who go by different names here) are presumably not near their computers at the moment but I'm sure they will be along soon.
While you're here, feel free to have a look around the site. We do try to be pretty welcoming of newcomers, certainly more than StackOverflow can be sometimes.
Good morning/evening @ChrisDegnen
 
11:36 PM
@Verbeia @Verbeia - yes it's a good morning, 0.36am, checking out the chat :-)
 
@artes please join me in chat
 
CHM
@RM Ah, now I can see your point. I'll remove the question.
 
Night, people
 
CHM
@Rojo Good night.
 
Hey @CHM, how's it going
Anything interesting going on around here?
 
CHM
11:45 PM
@Rojo I thought you were saying goodbye!
 
hello and good-night Rojo.
oh lol
 
Good night is how we say hi when it's dark outside, down here in Argentina
...and I expect the rest of the world to adapt :P
Hi @MrWizard
 
@Rojo Here it would be "good evening" even if it's 10:00 PM.
 
Looks like a party.
 
Hello, Brett.
 
11:49 PM
@MrWizard and when you leave at 5pm you say good night?
Hi Brett
 
CHM
Be back in a couple of minutes, I'm having supper.
 
@BrettChampion All of a sudden
 
Night @CHM, see you back in the evening
 
Hello @MarkDominus - I don't remember seeing you here before - welcome!
 
I sometimes wish SE would easily show you what timezone a person is in, or better yet, what time it is there.
 
11:53 PM
@BrettChampion Some people put their location in their profiles, but in my case, where I live isn't always where I am.
 
Sorry, I came in by accident. I was trying to get to Mathematics.
 
@MarkDominus We're much more fun. :-)
 
I forgive you @MarkDominus
but next time... you better come here trying to get here
 
@MarkDominus feel free to stick around, especially if you use Mathematica (or even if not)
@Rojo ;-)
 
@Verbeia Even so, I don't remember what the time difference between Champaign and Australia is.
It seems the number of questions has shot up quite a lot recently; it looks like we'll pass the Mathematica tag on SO earlier than I was thinking at the beginning of the week.
 
11:59 PM
@BrettChampion It's 10am Saturday here. Gotta go soon and take my cat for her shots. Might be back later.
 

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