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I don't belive it would be possible to program anything on conventional computers with known technolgies that another program couldn't be written to automate.

Take a look at a Slashdot story and an article I wrote about the CAPTCHA project.

You mean like Everything 2?

No prob.
Rembember it's Phoenix, it will just raise again and start a new life!

C++ is a scrawny, bald, naked saint in a loincloth who lives in a crumbling adobe hut where the desert and the jungle meet. He speaks in terse riddles, that expand out into pages of text if you bother to solve them. He can do the work of ten engineers and a hundred strong laborers merely by tapping his staff on the ground and shouting cryptic epithets.

So tell me about C++ templates. In Python, we get generic functions by using dynamic typing, rather than putting a whole 'nother alien Turing-complete language in the compiler.

For the lurkers: "Generic programming" is the idea that when you make a class to represent a generic data structure -- like, say, a stack -- it should be instantiable as a stack of integers, a stack of strings, or any other particular data type.

In C++, you do generic programming by writing template functions, into which the compiler fills in the types you need. This is basically a fancy sort of preprocessing. However, template syntax is thoroughly alien to the C roots of C++, and as it turns out can be used to do surprisingly maniacal things. See the links above for the curiously shaped results.

In Python, as in Lisp and other dynamically typed languages, generic programming just kinda falls out of the way the language works. If you make a data structure, by default it can hold more or less any type of object. There's actually a limitation in Python here, though. In earlier versions, a lot of data structures, like dictionaries (hash tables), could only hold immutable values as their keys. (Immutables aren't exactly constants -- they're values that can't be edited in place. You can't edit the string value "foo" in Python, any more than you can change what the number 2 means.) Nowadays, any object that implements the protocol for hashability can be used as a key.

C++ is a scrawny, bald, naked saint in a loincloth who lives in a crumbling adobe hut where the desert and the jungle meet. He speaks in terse riddles, that expand out into pages of text if you bother to solve them. He can do the work of ten engineers and a hundred strong laborers merely by tapping his staff on the ground and shouting cryptic epithets.

So tell me about C++ templates. In Python, we get generic functions by using dynamic typing, rather than putting a whole 'nother alien Turing-complete language in the compiler.

For the lurkers: "Generic programming" is the idea that when you make a class to represent a generic data structure -- like, say, a stack -- it should be instantiable as a stack of integers, a stack of strings, or any other particular data type.

In C++, you do generic programming by writing template functions, into which the compiler fills in the types you need. This is basically a fancy sort of preprocessing. However, template syntax is thoroughly alien to the C roots of C++, and as it turns out can be used to do surprisingly maniacal things. See the links above for the curiously shaped results.

In Python, as in Lisp and other dynamically typed languages, generic programming just kinda falls out of the way the language works. If you make a data structure, by default it can hold more or less any type of object. There's actually a limitation in Python here, though. In earlier versions, a lot of data structures, like dictionaries (hash tables), could only hold immutable values as their keys. (Immutables aren't exactly constants -- they're values that can't be edited in place. You can't edit the string value "foo" in Python, any more than you can change what the number 2 means.) Nowadays, any object that implements the protocol for hashability can be used as a key.

Whoa. Umm. Is this a troll? You posted as Anonymous Coward instead of "the real Seth Finklestein" who has "uid#582901". Interestingly, however, on www.slashdot.org/~Seth%20Finkelstein (that's how the NY Times article spells Seth's last name), I notice that the real UID appears to be 90154; #582901 has the same user info (including a pointer to #90154) but less highly modded comments. Hm.

Your post has the kind of shameless self-aggrandizement we're supposed to suspect coming from Seth; this seems like too easy of a setup, too obvious a troll waiting for someone to say "shut up Seth". Anyway, it's hard for the rest of us to figure out what's going on but michael makes a decent case at www.stalkedbyseth.com, and if they keep him around they must think he's right at least a little.

So. Um. Mod parent troll?

A charge of murder requires premeditation of the act of murder.

I think you, and several other posters, are confused about the charge (and degrees) of "Murder".

The dictionary definition of murder indicates "The unlawful killing of one human by another, especially with premeditated malice." (emphasis added). Note that premeditation is not a mutually inclusive condition.

Some definitions, according to state statutes that I could find handily, but are essentially portable to most states in America, and quite similar to Canada's laws (if I can find them, I'll follow-up with them)

1. Murder in the First Degree
2. Murder in the Second Degree
3. Murder in the Third Degree

Additionally, there are manslaughter charges, which tend to be lesser. I believe you'll find that the minimum charge applicable to this case is Murder in the Third Degree, with Second Degree a definite possibility depending on the prosecutor and judge/jury.

You are correct, however, that drunk driving does not equate to premeditation, in that the driver does not, by virtue of consuming alcohol in and of itself, predetermine the taking of a specific human life. I'm sure there have been first degree murders committed while intoxicated, likely some comitted with a motor vehicle, but that's a whole nother kettle of fish.

Premeditation could be anything from I planned for three weeks that I was going to kill someone to I decided 5 seconds before I pulled the trigger.

Not quite. Premeditation, by nature, requires that you commit an act with the specific intention of carrying out a particular objective. If you've already got the gun in the store and kill someone as a side-effect of the armed robbery, the murder was not premeditated. You'd have to plan to kill a patron or the clerk and carry out the robbery with that intention in mind to be considered for premeditation. Of course, the prosecutor has to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that you did, in fact, premeditate the murder, otherwise the charge would be lesser.

Of course, you can take all of this with a suitable quantity of NaCL, due to the IANAL factor.

You sir, need all the help you can get. Turn that automatic spell checker back on. Now.

"Shure" is a brand of microphone. The word you are surely looking for is "sure".

Learn how to spell, Mormon!

Seriously.

Why not? People [patch binary executable files] all the time on other OSes. Games on Windows for one, come to mind.

No. As Gordonjcp mentioned they replace binaries, for precisely the reason you state next:

Now yes one will have to draw a line at which one sends the whole thing vs a diff (75%?).

A fellow often sees such an effect from a whole-program compiler optimization or from re-engineering to fix bugs, especially when the compiler uses a different register allocation or when the developer has added or removed a field or method from a class.

It's that or wait till everyone has Broadband.

I would rather not sit still for over seven years while the local cable monopolies and the local telephone monopolies get their collective poop together and push the price of broadband down to where dial-up is today. I know people who are still on 33.6 because they are banned from working and have parents too poor to fit a modem into their disposable income.

Yes, that is interesting indeed.

I think in general there may be interesting research to be done in the area of mapping/visualization of complex data: for instance this project of mapping the internet.

Does this really help in general? Are there many cases where such visual maps would help understanding of complex data?
Think for example, it may be interesting to produce such a map of everything2, which is a sort of hyperlinked online encyclopedia, to see where the clustering is.

In astrophysics, 3D maps of the universe have been produced for some time, and the human-eye understanding of large-scale structure was at first more direct than statistical analysis--for instance, people would see the famous filaments, but stats wouldn't.

A post above quoted the possible use in spotting "usefulness" of code contributions, by looking at their interdependencies for example.

And how does this enter into the claims?
SCO Your honor, IBM pays us x$ per year to license Unix (TM)
IBM That license covers a variety of uses, for instance, access to the Unix Trademark, SCO cannot claim damages for technology which we license but do not implement.

What I saw in the FA was and IP-based lawsuit. The license is a matter of commercial and contract law. The use of code and technology is a matter of copyright and patent law.

I sincerly doubt there is very much SYSV (monolithic kernel) code in AIX (microkernel) as a kernel or related userspace utilities. Because most of the interesting technology is in the *kernel* I think this is main point. As I already indicated, AIX is based on Mach, but with a *lot* of modifications in the core. Other examples of what IBM technology has found its way into Linux:

JFS -- the first *nix journaled filesystem and the Linux version is branched from the OS/2 flavor of JFS, in any case developed inside IBM.
LVM -- as near as I can tell the Linux LVM was implemented outside of IBM, and in anycase it's not AT&T/SysV derived.
ProPolice -- oss-derived techniques applied to the GCC compiler (not a Linux issue)

you neglect that some of that code was derived from the original UNIX codebase, no matter how many ringers it's been through.

Actually that was the *point* and I stand by it. The AIX kernel is *not* AT&T derived. I suggest you look over the Linux and *BSD kernels and look at the task of merging them. *Why* would IBM have done that? Aside from being stupid in terms of technology, it would create the very sort of potential license problems SCO thinks it can raise. There may well be some AT&T code there, but SCO is going to have to show that it's used in ways that violate their contract.

I imagine IBM spent a fair amount of code building a SYSV interface onto the kernel which they developed from Mach(BSD-derived). Again I doubt that will have been done using anything from the AT&T code. Whether there are infringements on SCO's patent base is another matter.

SCO's statements quoted in the article suggest that [unless ibm worked in a clean room] their Linux efforts *must be contaminated* by their exposure to SYSV.

From the Article: Eunice, who has been involved in Unix for years, questioned the accuracy of some of the history contained in the SCO suit. For example, the suit says that "AIX is a modification of (SCO's) licensed Unix that is designed to run on IBM's processor," but Eunice said IBM was unhappy with the performance of Unix kept only the interfaces higher-level software used to communicate with it.

"The AIX kernel...was not principally based on the Unix source code. It was based on their (IBM's) own development," Eunice said.

Obscure things? Try everything2! [/shameless plug]

Contrary to popular belief, ENIAC was not the first general-purpose computer. In 1973 the patent for ENIAC was invalidated by the Judge Earl Larson of the US District Court in Minneapolis. Larson found that ENIAC was based on the ideas of John Vincent Atanasoff, who constructed ABC, the first electronic computer, around 1940 [1].

John Atanasoff was finally acknowledged as the true inventor of the electronic computer. However, ABC also wasn't the first general-purpose computer, because actually it wasn't general-purpose, as it wasn't programmable. It was hardwired for solving systems of linear equations [2].

The real first ever digital programmable general-purpose electronic computer was built around the same time in Germany. In 1941 Konrad Zuse, a German engineer, built Z3, a binary computer, controlled by perforated strips of film. The machine was fully programmable and in fact it contained almost all features of a modern computer, as defined by John von Neumann in Preliminary Discussion of the Logical Design of an Electronical Computing Instrument (1946) [3]. The only exception was that the program was not stored in the internal memory of Z3, but on the perforated film strip. However, ENIAC also did not posess this ability - the programming was done by manually rewiring part of the computer.

Now let's give our due respect to Konrad Zuse [4].

Sources (to back my claims):
1 http://www.computer.org/history/development/1973.h tm
2 http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanasoff_Berry_Comp uter
3 http://www.epemag.com/zuse/part4a.htm
4 http://www.bionomics.org/text/resource/articles/ar _015.html

Try reading this entry on everything2. It is fairly comprehensive.

That site is a good one to visit when slashdot uses terms you do not recognize.

When you add something as simple as the standard logarithmic utility function (which basically means that if you have $1.000.000, your utility/happiness/survival will go down more from losing $1.000.000, than it will go up from gaining another $1.000.000), a rational agent becomes risk averse and can thus theoretically benefit from insurance. Lotteries become even more of a sucker deal when you involve the utility function.

BTW, IANAE.

For more sugestion on this wonderfully offtopic post, please visit here.

With all those veiled Internet trolls to whom Art Bell &c. give a voice.
I hope they figure out who owns what before it touches down, too, or we'll end up with frivolous lawsuits aplenty over lunar property rights.

Welcome to Wellesley College , a liberal arts college for women.

Right. Because women are the target audience for anime. And I read Maxim for the articles.

I think the descriptions at Wikipedia and at everything2 are both better.

Jako, a C-like language developed for testing Parrot

Cola, likewise, but more Java-like

BASIC

Forth

...and an extremely rudimentary Perl 6 compiler...

What do we think?

go RTFA.

If you're having trouble with acronyms, go look them up at everything2

TTYL.

If it weren't for Heinlein's razor

If the music publishers owned by the major labels (aol, umg, bmg, sony) cross-license their songs, there is no infringement. However, if you're not already affiliated with a major music publisher, and you write a song, you will be sued. And if you don't already have millions in the bank, you will lose in the end because any victory will be Pyrrhic.

Especially since 4 bars is enough to constitute a copyright violation (was it 4? Can't remember).

G. F. Handel's publisher won a lawsuit over four notes.

Ronald Mack's publisher sued George Harrison's publisher and won, despite the fact that both sides agreed that George Harrison was not aware that he was copying anything.

Google didn't invent the concept behind PageRank, just its name. See my E2 writeup on citation analysis for more.

No, the secret of Life, the Universe, and Everything cannot be found in one tenth of a joint. The secret lies in the question.

No, the secret of Life, the Universe, and Everything cannot be found in one tenth of a joint. The secret lies in the question.

+1 funny

Here, read this. Game theory is the attempt to take common situations in games, and apply them to sociological situation. THe idea is that most human interactions are at some level either simple or complicated games.

Game theory does things like take the idea of, if you are one of three people in a three-way duel, and you hit your mark 20% of the time, and you are up against two opponents who one hits their mark 40% of the time and the other hits 60%, who should you aim at? And the answer is to just fire your gun into the air, becuase of course in that case the chances are best that the other two will just kill the other off.

Game theory tries to take scenarios like that and use it as a metaphor to describe the best course of action in, say, warfare, where you are a weak power and you have two enemies that are strong powers. The assumption is that people will not act all that differently when engaging in transnational diplomacy than they will when playing poker, if the situations can be said to be comarable.

Volvo's swivelling headlights?

Didn't Tucker came up with those?

No, it will redirect to www.everything2.com/. After all, that site truly does have everything (and if you find something that's missing from Everything, you make that thing and Everything is that much closer to being everything.

(did I say that right?)

This is, incidentally, a similar issue that I have with most copy-control software, that has no provisions at all for the expiration of copyright.

You will expire before copyrights do.

May I cite the PATRIOT Act, the DMCA, and the drug war which has heavy restrictions on sedating or depressant drugs yet we have over 20 forms of legal speed available at the grocery store under the guise of dietary supplement, cold medicine and caffeine tablets? This is the new form of the fascist state that now is growing in the States?

May I direct you here, specifically to the article written by Jackson Mayhem. May I also remind you of the protests that happened months ago where the D.C. police force had buses and plastic ties waiting to arrest certain protesters. Remember fascism doesn't happen over night, but if you look at who's in power you would imagine it already has.

Reference: Flug-Revue

The parent story is reprinted from this Everything 2 article.

You mean like this?

It supports emacs keybindings, too!

What, was sixdegrees too much?

"For those of us who do not read Japanese, does that read "internet explorer" or whatever the japanese equivalent might be?"

"Intaanetto Ekusupuroa" to be precise. And fortunately for those of us who are still learning to read Japanese, it's written in Katakana and not Kanji.

"For those of us who do not read Japanese, does that read "internet explorer" or whatever the japanese equivalent might be?"

"Intaanetto Ekusupuroa" to be precise. And fortunately for those of us who are still learning to read Japanese, it's written in Katakana and not Kanji.

Kompressor logik.
Kompressor logik overtake.

Overtake your computer.
Kompressor spread virus.
Kompressor Eat Boot Sector.

Pleas have a look at this node on Everything2.com. It is a short piece I wrote up on the bombings and the massive attempt to thwart Hitler's atomic ambitions.

put something nontrivial to defeat on the account creation page. the current "type this" challenge is a joke.

But anything that's not a joke is already patented.

hopefully in 6.7 years, there won't be an EU anymore. Old Euians....

Yeah, down with Euler!

Haven't you heard? Women are gradually stealing all male names. If we stop naming our sons Jacob, those crafty women will STEAL OUR FAVORITE NAME! That is why we guard our most common names so dearly.

You miss the most important point about naming: Our names are given to us by those before us and not by ourselves.

Men and women do not get to choose their names. Your argument about why women's names change more often than men's makes no sense. But, you seem to realize this, so I won't beat a dead horse.

Instead of contriving explanations for why women's names change more often than men's, I suggest you instead think about the more salient question: Why do women's clothes become more unfashionable more quickly than men's clothes?

E2 has a lot of great guides like this(you just need to know where to find them).

see pachinko

great place that everything2 is...

see pachinko

great place that everything2 is...

It took me several times through Neuromancer to understand everything that is going on in the book in the grand sense of things thanks to unique verbal constructions and new terminology that only makes sense on multiple readings, and even then, there's probably small details that I'd catch on the next reading

I had much the same problem. I'm sot sure why, but one solution to comprehending Gibson's rather dense, James Joyceish prose is to suck up the book in audio format. There happens to be an excellent audiobook available for Neuromancer. It's read by the author. It features amazing, but subtle background music by U2 (sans Bono, thank the Maker), amongst others. It's slightly abridged, yet not butchered.

It's also quite interesting to hear Gibson do a Jamaican accent, starting from his Western Canada surfer drawl. Definitely worth a day in court.

It took me several times through Neuromancer to understand everything that is going on in the book in the grand sense of things thanks to unique verbal constructions and new terminology that only makes sense on multiple readings, and even then, there's probably small details that I'd catch on the next reading

I had much the same problem. I'm sot sure why, but one solution to comprehending Gibson's rather dense, James Joyceish prose is to suck up the book in audio format. There happens to be an excellent audiobook available for Neuromancer. It's read by the author. It features amazing, but subtle background music by U2 (sans Bono, thank the Maker), amongst others. It's slightly abridged, yet not butchered.

It's also quite interesting to hear Gibson do a Jamaican accent, starting from his Western Canada surfer drawl. Definitely worth a day in court.

It took me several times through Neuromancer to understand everything that is going on in the book in the grand sense of things thanks to unique verbal constructions and new terminology that only makes sense on multiple readings, and even then, there's probably small details that I'd catch on the next reading

I had much the same problem. I'm sot sure why, but one solution to comprehending Gibson's rather dense, James Joyceish prose is to suck up the book in audio format. There happens to be an excellent audiobook available for Neuromancer. It's read by the author. It features amazing, but subtle background music by U2 (sans Bono, thank the Maker), amongst others. It's slightly abridged, yet not butchered.

It's also quite interesting to hear Gibson do a Jamaican accent, starting from his Western Canada surfer drawl. Definitely worth a day in court.

It took me several times through Neuromancer to understand everything that is going on in the book in the grand sense of things thanks to unique verbal constructions and new terminology that only makes sense on multiple readings, and even then, there's probably small details that I'd catch on the next reading

I had much the same problem. I'm sot sure why, but one solution to comprehending Gibson's rather dense, James Joyceish prose is to suck up the book in audio format. There happens to be an excellent audiobook available for Neuromancer. It's read by the author. It features amazing, but subtle background music by U2 (sans Bono, thank the Maker), amongst others. It's slightly abridged, yet not butchered.

It's also quite interesting to hear Gibson do a Jamaican accent, starting from his Western Canada surfer drawl. Definitely worth a day in court.