Can somebody explain why a square root is also considered a flop? Surely that involves more work than the other four operations the article listed. Is there some hardware algorithm for the square root that is as fast as (e.g.) division?
I think people are misunderstanding this; it's pedagogical. From the link:
'I want to use it as an exercise for you in finding hacks, attacks, defects, and bugs by going through "K&R C" to break all the code...When you are done doing this, you will have a finely honed eye for defect.'
He's trying to train his readers to think about places code can break.
In at least two articles about the X-37B, I've read about it changing orbit. But isn't that an energetically expensive operation? In a previous article (http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0824/Secret-Air-Force-...) the change seemed to be one of altitude/elevation (sorry if I'm using the wrong orbital mechanics terms ), rather than a plane change. But isn't that still relatively expensive, even with a Hohmann transfer or something? I can't imagine the X-37B can do very many orbit changes - can anyone provide more information on the physics behind this?
I think you're missing the post's author's point. He isn't saying "after wars the DJIA goes up", he's saying "after periods of inflation, the DJIA goes up" (see the title of the graph).
Note he still doesn't mention 1929-1933, which seems like a big omission, although it doesn't directly contradict the assertion.
I liked the plots they had in that chapter. Did they mention elsewhere how to generate plots like that? Would something like gnuplot work?
Edit: conciseness.