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I'm not the parent poster, but many of the ideas are expressed and discussed elsewhere. See especially this sub-thread on intellectual property. Also see some quotes from historical and influential figures on IP

I created a page to parse the XML for my stats on my site with a little help from my friend Kick the Donkey. The stats, for some reason, come oldest first, so we had to switch it to be reversed, showing the most recent game at the top. It's a lot cooler than having to check Bungie.net all the time, and has links that will take me straight to each specific game. Also, and more importantly, I can't check Bungie.net from work, where most of the guys I play with are, so this helps a lot with bragging-in-your-face rights the next day. All in all, pretty cool, and you can check it out at my site, here. Strange the number of games they picked to list in the XML file though. Not 30, not 35, but 34. Huh?

A modchip is not acting as a replacement part. It does not 'unlock' or permit operation of the console. The purpose of a modchip is to bypass the signing mechanism used to prevent you from playing pirated games.

Okay, time for a list of modchip uses:

- Playing unofficial/unlicensed software (ex: Game Enhancer, which was almost definately first developed with the help of a modchip, since absolutely ZERO Sony code or patents were used to complete the software)
- Using unofficial devices (ex: New max memory devices made by Datel)
- Cheating devices (ex: Game genie by Galoob)
- Playing backups
- Bypassing region protection

These are all locks placed on the device by the manufacturer in an attempt to stop the usage of third party items, such as:

1 - Third party discs not authorized by the console manufacturer
2 - Third party software not authorized by the console manufacturer
3 - Third party hardware not authorized by the console manufacturer
4 - Authorized software from the manufacturer that was not intended to be used in your country

As far as I know, in all three situations, doing those things is legal. It is legal for me to put Maxell media in an HP burner (item 1), it's legal for me to install Windows XP to a Mac (item 2), it's legal for me to use a non sony DV tape in my Sony DV camcorder (item 3), and it's legal for me to watch a PAL videotape in the USA (item 4).

Now, for some reason, the person who built the device decided for me they didn't like items 1 - 4. So they built the device not to allow this. Now this law says such locks are illegal. And since the actions were legal to start with, where's your beef?

That someone might do items 1 - 4 with an illegal intent? Yeah, they could. In fact, you could install a pirated Windows XP on a Mac using an emulator. Does that make the emulator illegal? You could copy a copyrighted gameboy game into a blank flash memory cartridge and play it on your gameboy. Does that make computer memory illegal?

This is no different than banning box cutters on airlines because you think a terrorist is going to slash your throat with one. You're using an (extremely poor) band-aid to cover up what is a societal problem that already has PLENTY of legal recourse against the act, and you are inconveniencing and embarassing people as you do it. It's nasty and wrong, and, quite honestly, it makes me, as an outsider, afraid to enter your country. It's no different than trying to ban chewing gum just because someone might stick it under a desk.

Poof! You can prove anything you want, if you append it to an otherwise unrelated math problem.

It is not at all unrelated. This is a proof attempting construct a definition of God as defined by logic. It is not an attempt prove the existence of God as people currently conceive him to be. People's typical notion of God is rife with paradoxes anyway. This argument does prove the existence of a creative force/entity of some kind, and Hatcher attaches the label of God to it.

If you'd bothered to read some of the follow-ups, I further noted that Hatcher does go on to demonstrate other properties of "God" including goodness, love, intelligence, etc. These arguments are on much shakier ground however.

Hmm... Slashdot removed the spaces from my URL. Here's the correct URL

Agreed. I do a lot of writing (mostly articles) on my Macintosh, and I've found it more pleasant by far to use NeoOfficeJ instead of Microsoft Word v.X. Microsoft's software *looks* better on the outset, but NeoOfficeJ is actually more readable, faster responding, more usable, etc. The anti-aliased fonts are wonderful, and I've *never* had a NeoOfficeJ crash that caused me to lose work. (The Java layer they added to OOo traps the error and forces a save before close.)

The only compatibility problem I've ever had was with a mismatched font. Apparently I had accidentally used a Mac Font that my editor didn't have. It was no big deal for him to fix, and he only mentioned it in passing.

Even the OOo spreadsheet program is better. I recently did some rough calculations on the cost of doing a Moon Shot today and found NeoOfficeJ SpreadSheet to be WAY more usable than Microsoft's. I've got to hand it to the OOo & NeoOfficeJ guys. They're doing amazing work. :-)

Here are lecture notes I took on Professor Hatcher's logical proof of God. It is based on a "first cause" chain of reasoning, yet does not suffer from an infinite regression of causes. This argument is probably better than anything you're likely to find, but still unconvincing.

blog

blog

blog

1000000 USD -> GBP
564483.80778197377408

1000000 USD -> lbs XAU
172.37144322300124539
1000000 GBP -> lbs XAU
305.36118281284339625

XAU = price of gold.

In kilos this would be:

1000000 USD -> kg XAU
78.186371451841573409
1000000 GBP -> kg XAU
138.50950261808090254

It seems a pound can buy more than a dollar. British Pounds are like the US Dollars of 1984-1985:

1000000 dollars_1984 -> GBP
1.0290012819432707681e+6
1000000 dollars_1985 -> GBP
993617.40886529584398

In canada:

1000000 CAD -> GBP
437024.49295241965984
1000000 CAD -> kg Gold
60.532045150758649816
1000000 CAD -> USD
774202.0

Unfortunately there is no CAD_19XX feature in my copy of frink, so that's where I stop.

1 million
1000000
1 milliard
1000000000
1 brbillion
1000000000000
1 billiard
1000000000000000
1 brtrillion
1000000000000000000
1 trilliard
1000000000000000000000
.
.
.
1 brnovemdecillion
10000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000000000000

Here's the complete torrent for all the PDFs:

http://iambatman.homeip.net/linux-guide.torrent

Come get it while it's hot!

Ok, here's a torrent for parts 1-4. Make sure you right click and choose "save as". I didn't have a chance to reconfigure Apache. The sooner everyone stops their downloads and uses the torrent, the sooner I can get the rest of the files in a torrent.

If you figure that rads are joules per kilogram, then if you absorb 1000 watts a second under the sun, and weigh 100 kilos, then you are being exposed to 1000 rads per second of light.

$ frink
Frink - Copyright 2000-2004 Alan Eliasen, eliasen@mindspring.com.
( 1000 joules ) / ( 100 kg ) / second -> rads / second
1000

Very interesting. It seems that Real is showing a different website to Windows and Mac users. Thus we're both correct. Here's what I see on my Mac. I tried it on a PC and received a very different page. It seems that the "normal" page has been replaced for Windows machines while they run their "49 cent" promotion.

I hope this made you feel all smart and stuff, tho.

See? Now we can both be smug. :-)

Except FreeBSD can't boot on 64-bit Compaq laptops, in either 32- or 64-bit mode (i386 or amd64), without applying a patch and rebuilding your CD image. Neither can OpenBSD, with no fix in sight. Of course it runs NetBSD, but NetBSD lacks much of what make OpenBSD or FreeBSD great. For us Compaq R3000 users, Linux is the best option. Which is too bad...I'd rather run FreeBSD.

Wrote this on my blog a while ago...

Although I'm not a particular "conspiracy theory" freak, I'm starting to smell a rat on the latest moves on the DVD arena. First, the industry tries to play good sport and announces (also here and here, and discussed on Slashdot) out of a sudden it's going to "tolerate" limited copy of DVD, allowing them to be backed up and to transfer content to portable devices. The "gift" is based on technology being developed by a consortium that includes IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Sony, Toshiba, Matsushita, Warner Bros. and Disney, and is being labeled Advanced Access Content System (AACS). Trying the usual PR stunt of passing a consumer right, upheld by most Worldwide copyright laws that for a long time have entitled consumers to private copy (something that has up to now, and as you will see, in the future, been denied), as their "gift" to society, they have just, as usual, forgot to mention some "little details".

The same industry that brought us region encoding, supposedly to avoid the possibility of buying a movie in a given place before it premieres at the cinema, although it is available elsewhere, in practice a cover-up to allow regional pricing of DVD (what else justifies 20, 30, 40 year old movies being region encoded?), has "forgot" to stress that this "feature" will only be available on the upcoming new-generation DVD format, still being cooked up by the DVD Forum, former DVD Consortium. So, to keep it short, they want us to buy all over again our DVD collection, now in a neat DRM crippled format.

After failing miserably with the CSS content encryption of current DVD, quickly cracked by the uber-reverse-engineer DVD Jon, and being at the present time little more than a nuisance, they want to have another go. But this time they are making their homework. Lets take the steps and see.

A little more than one year ago, Microsoft unveiled its plans for a new DRM system, nicknamed Janus. One year later it is confirmed and Microsoft lets out a few more details on the features, licensing and partners. A few weeks later, the DVD Forum announces it is going to include Microsoft WM9 codec in its upcoming HD-DVD specification (as a mandatory requirement). Although it may seem they are going down the same road and bound again to be reverse-engineered and fail miserably all over again, things are now different: of course Microsoft is going to patent its DRM scheme. So, while CSS was qualified as a "trade secret", not allowing the ones who cracked it to be prosecuted, reverse-engineering Microsoft DRM scheme will be violating patent law, and the all-mighty DMCA, what makes it a completely different scenario.

Microsoft has already shown it is very interested in the media turf. After developing its own audio and video codecs and using its dominating position to spread them to the web and hardware devices like portable players and even some standalone players, and after including its Media Player in all current Windows version (earning them the current EU law suit), that will of course support both the WM9 codec and the Janus DRM, we can already see they are trying to broaden their scope. This can be seen on their Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004, and it would not surprise me to see it ported to standalone devices, either on its current packaging or by porting it to Windows CE.

So what can we see as the outcome of this scenario?

As part of this, I found the movies with the greatest variance in ratings, and did some weighting to balance out movies that hadn't been rated much. Movies with the highest variance indicated the most disagreement as to whether people loved or hated the movie.

The movie with the biggest variance? (Assuming certain weighting, of course...) The Blair Witch Project. People either loved it or hated it. (I liked it, by the way.)

The top movies that divide us:

1. Blair Witch Project, The (1999)
2. Plan 9 from Outer Space (1958)
3. Rocky Horror Picture Show, The (1975)
4. Natural Born Killers (1994)
5. Dumb & Dumber (1994)
6. Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
7. Starship Troopers (1997)
8. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
9. Mars Attacks! (1996)
10. South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut (1999)
11. Armageddon (1998)

The problem with that analysis is that it's much too kind to the underdog operating systems.

I'm having a hard tiime finding good numbers, but it seems that Apple's market share has generally been in decline over the years, with most sources citing a market share or install base fluttering around three or four percent for the past couple of years, with some wildly optimistic speculation that Apple could hit eight percent by 2008.

In the most recent report I could find, Apple's market share was put at 3.7%, with recent quarter growth of 9.3% -- but this is in a market where Dell alone has a share of 32.9%, and the market overall grew by 10.9% in the USA and 15.5% globally. That is to say, even though Apple is "growing" relative to their own recent performance, they're still not growing at a rate that keeps up with the industry as a whole, and they're especially slipping behind global figures. Their market share trend is going down, even as their health as an individual company appears to be holding steady or improving.

Meanwhile, figures for Linux are harder to determine, but it seems that the past couple of years suggest that Linux has hovered at a steady 1%, so the picture isn't any stronger on that side -- they're doing at best 1/3 of what Apple is doing.

(And yes, market share figures are all voodoo that is about as reliable as hardware benchmarks (that is to say, hardly reliable at all), but still, the discussion doesn't work if you don't at least take a stab at quantifying things. So please, grant me some leeway here :-)

More to the point, it doesn't seem like Google has ever had a problem with catering to just the dominant platform. Consider the Google Toolbar, which has been available for years as an IE only plugin on Windows -- it has never been available for the Mac version of IE, and it has never been offered for other operating systems (they just meekly suggest putting links to Google in your Netscape bookmark bar, but that hardly counts for much). Admittedly, Mozilla has had third-party Google search plugins for a while now, and when Safari came out it had a built-in Google search box, but these were both provided by third-parties, not Google.

The only client-side software Google has offered in the past has been for Windows and IE, and the Picassa acquisition is just a continuation of this pattern.

I played around with Picassa for a little while last night, and it is a pretty slick application; I can see why they wanted it (the UI is quite clever, and they may want to put some of the people who thought it up to work on their existing web tools & webmail). I'd love to see a version of it for OSX (please, please something better than iPhoto), but I'm not convinced that that Google will bother porting it, based on the questionable market share trends and their past client-side offerings.

The problem with that analysis is that it's much too kind to the underdog operating systems.

I'm having a hard tiime finding good numbers, but it seems that Apple's market share has generally been in decline over the years, with most sources citing a market share or install base fluttering around three or four percent for the past couple of years, with some wildly optimistic speculation that Apple could hit eight percent by 2008.

In the most recent report I could find, Apple's market share was put at 3.7%, with recent quarter growth of 9.3% -- but this is in a market where Dell alone has a share of 32.9%, and the market overall grew by 10.9% in the USA and 15.5% globally. That is to say, even though Apple is "growing" relative to their own recent performance, they're still not growing at a rate that keeps up with the industry as a whole, and they're especially slipping behind global figures. Their market share trend is going down, even as their health as an individual company appears to be holding steady or improving.

Meanwhile, figures for Linux are harder to determine, but it seems that the past couple of years suggest that Linux has hovered at a steady 1%, so the picture isn't any stronger on that side -- they're doing at best 1/3 of what Apple is doing.

(And yes, market share figures are all voodoo that is about as reliable as hardware benchmarks (that is to say, hardly reliable at all), but still, the discussion doesn't work if you don't at least take a stab at quantifying things. So please, grant me some leeway here :-)

More to the point, it doesn't seem like Google has ever had a problem with catering to just the dominant platform. Consider the Google Toolbar, which has been available for years as an IE only plugin on Windows -- it has never been available for the Mac version of IE, and it has never been offered for other operating systems (they just meekly suggest putting links to Google in your Netscape bookmark bar, but that hardly counts for much). Admittedly, Mozilla has had third-party Google search plugins for a while now, and when Safari came out it had a built-in Google search box, but these were both provided by third-parties, not Google.

The only client-side software Google has offered in the past has been for Windows and IE, and the Picassa acquisition is just a continuation of this pattern.

I played around with Picassa for a little while last night, and it is a pretty slick application; I can see why they wanted it (the UI is quite clever, and they may want to put some of the people who thought it up to work on their existing web tools & webmail). I'd love to see a version of it for OSX (please, please something better than iPhoto), but I'm not convinced that that Google will bother porting it, based on the questionable market share trends and their past client-side offerings.

Personally, I use all my screen real estate for my current app. I might be in a minority but how many people don't maximize the application that they're working in?

My operating mode is quite the opposite. I multitask my workload and find myself switching windows 2-3 times/minute when I'm compiling multiple packages, working on new bash scripts, holding IM conferences, and writing a report. You could say that I need to lay off the caffeine but, oddly, I don't drink much coffee. A 3D desktop like this would be a blessing for me. No longer do I need to worry about my screen becoming cluttered with windows constantly reshuffling their order. I can send them back slightly to make them smaller or just turn them sideways.

Unfortunately my two systems probably don't have the horsepower for something like Looking Glass. I have a K6-3/400 w/ a Radeon 7500 and a PII/400 w/ a Viper 550.

I've recently learned about Expocity. Expocity is a python patch for metacity.

Screenshot here and here and here.

Hopefully it will be a little less resource hungry for what I want to do.

As a geek stuck in the managed account zone (grounding.. blech!!), I had to find a way around it or go crazy. I found that way within 20 minutes of logging on.

The article I wrote is here: http://jranieri.homeip.net/~joe/articles/exploit.t xt

TheMadRedHatter

Generally when one turns binary information into audio they just slap a WAV header (or MIDI) on the file and the compress it to an MP3. The result is just static or a mess of notes.

A Better way to do it, is to read in the file as tones. DeCSS.mp3 actually has a deep base beat and repeating melody that's able to be listened to. I ran two versions of DeCSS C code through it and it's very easy to recognize when it gets to the key.

The way it works is that the forumla for piano key frequencies is used and only every other key is used. The result is always harmonies. In the INI file you can specify the number of simultanious tones that make up the chords and the delay between them. If you have say 8 tones, the first 8 bytes will make up a chord. If in the next 8 bytes one of the values is repeated the note is "held." This results in a more fluid "composition."

It's a slightly older version of MathSound. The newest revision will be posted probably this weekend.

It allows for MiddleC to be defined (currently it's 440Hz which is actually A) and what byte value represents it. Currently zero is middle C. It also allows you to limit the number of keys so you don't get too high pitched or too deep.

Ben

The form was a dropdown list, the HTML source for which was:

<option value="" selected class="formText01" SELECTED>(Pick From List)
<option value="99" >iMac G5
<option value="01" >iMac G4
<option value="02" >iMac G3
<option value="03" >iBook
<option value="04" >PowerBook G4
<option value="05" >PowerMac
<option value="06" >Server G4
<option value="07" >Cinema Display
<option value="08" >Studio Display
<option value="09" >iPod
<option value="10" >Airport
<option value="99" >Other
</select>

This doesn't seem to have been a typo.

I'd post the URL, but I can't tell if they have my information encoded in it, so I'd rather not.

As a substitute, I'll leave up a screenshot for a little while. Astute readers will pick up on the fact that the URL is on a buysub.com server -- I have no idea who they are, but that's the URL that Apple's subscription invitation sent me to, and it seems to be legit.

(Now, i'm trying to be generous here, but please don't melt my puny server. If the load gets too bad I'll have to shut it down, so if there's interest in seeing that screenshot, mirrors would be welcome.)

No philosophy regarding human life(or its value) is relevant unless you are willing to apply it to your own life and use it to guide your own actions.

I agree.

The proper decision for the believer in infinitely-valuable human life is the decision to preserve as much human life as possible, regardless of who or what that life might represent in the long run.

This is incorrect; you are conveniently forgetting the nature of infinity. Infinity multiplied by any number is still infinity; if one accepts that life is infinitely valuable, must must then accept that one life is just as important as 6 billion lives; after all, 6 billion times infinity is still infinity! Mathematically speaking, your statement is incorrect and thus, logically, your conclusion is erroneous.

To accept the statement that a moral theory must choose the path that saves the greatest number of lives is to accept that lives have finite value which can be directly compared. This is what I have been maintaining from the outset.

Here's a more concrete example to illustrate the contradiction in your statements: if someone said they would give you a trillion dollars to kill one person of little note (ie. no significant positive or negative impact on other lives), what would you do? You have stated that life is infinitely valuable, so obviously the money could not possibly be enough. But, you could save thousands if not millions of people from starvation with that money, so obviously the tradeoff is acceptable. Oh oh, a contradiction. What to do?

Let's throw out the contradictory proposition "preserve as much human life as possible"; this was not stated in the original post, and is not what I was arguing against anyhow. Let's solely focus on "a human life is priceless". As I mentioned above, any number of priceless lives is mathematically and logically equal in value to a single priceless life. Thus, in accepting this proposition, we must be willing to sacrifice the entire human race to save a single life. In the interests of our species, I will deem this unacceptable.

Note that this has no bearing on your other arguments. I fully agree that mitigating circumstances can radically alter the decisions one makes. The consequences of one's actions determine one's choice in a proper system of ethics. However, as I have already stated, this has little to do with the philosophical exercise I was pursuing. Furthermore, simply because a life has finite value does not mean the value is even attainable monetarily.

Any consistent, valid moral theory should be able to adequately answer any moral dilemma given a set of parameters. Simultaneously accepting that human life is priceless while believing in the "greater good" produces a contradiction, as I have illustrated, and thus is inconsistent and unacceptable. Accepting only that human life is priceless produces undesirable consequences, and is thus unacceptable. The only logical resolution is to accept that human life has finite value, and that we must properly assess and perform cost-benefit analyses when deciding whether to protect or terminate a life. Callous? Perhaps. Necessary? Absolutely.

How to assess the value of another's life is the really tricky question... left as an exercise for the reader of course.

No philosophy regarding human life(or its value) is relevant unless you are willing to apply it to your own life and use it to guide your own actions.

I agree.

The proper decision for the believer in infinitely-valuable human life is the decision to preserve as much human life as possible, regardless of who or what that life might represent in the long run.

This is incorrect; you are conveniently forgetting the nature of infinity. Infinity multiplied by any number is still infinity; if one accepts that life is infinitely valuable, must must then accept that one life is just as important as 6 billion lives; after all, 6 billion times infinity is still infinity! Mathematically speaking, your statement is incorrect and thus, logically, your conclusion is erroneous.

To accept the statement that a moral theory must choose the path that saves the greatest number of lives is to accept that lives have finite value which can be directly compared. This is what I have been maintaining from the outset.

Here's a more concrete example to illustrate the contradiction in your statements: if someone said they would give you a trillion dollars to kill one person of little note (ie. no significant positive or negative impact on other lives), what would you do? You have stated that life is infinitely valuable, so obviously the money could not possibly be enough. But, you could save thousands if not millions of people from starvation with that money, so obviously the tradeoff is acceptable. Oh oh, a contradiction. What to do?

Let's throw out the contradictory proposition "preserve as much human life as possible"; this was not stated in the original post, and is not what I was arguing against anyhow. Let's solely focus on "a human life is priceless". As I mentioned above, any number of priceless lives is mathematically and logically equal in value to a single priceless life. Thus, in accepting this proposition, we must be willing to sacrifice the entire human race to save a single life. In the interests of our species, I will deem this unacceptable.

Note that this has no bearing on your other arguments. I fully agree that mitigating circumstances can radically alter the decisions one makes. The consequences of one's actions determine one's choice in a proper system of ethics. However, as I have already stated, this has little to do with the philosophical exercise I was pursuing. Furthermore, simply because a life has finite value does not mean the value is even attainable monetarily.

Any consistent, valid moral theory should be able to adequately answer any moral dilemma given a set of parameters. Simultaneously accepting that human life is priceless while believing in the "greater good" produces a contradiction, as I have illustrated, and thus is inconsistent and unacceptable. Accepting only that human life is priceless produces undesirable consequences, and is thus unacceptable. The only logical resolution is to accept that human life has finite value, and that we must properly assess and perform cost-benefit analyses when deciding whether to protect or terminate a life. Callous? Perhaps. Necessary? Absolutely.

How to assess the value of another's life is the really tricky question... left as an exercise for the reader of course.

For sure! I don't know Quake personally (I'm not into video games at all), but I assume that it's another one of the 3D videogames where your surroundings change with your perspective.

That requires loads of matrix transformations directly out of linear algebra. It sounds terrifying, but it's just about having a group of numbers called a matrix. By multiplying them with a bunch of (x,y) coordinate in a certain order, you can do all sorts of warps and shrinks and stuff. If those (x,y) coordinates correspond to a bitmap of an object, you've just warped or shrunk the object, exactly as you'd have to do in a 3D maze or similar.

Then, there's calculus. There are two courses *everyone* should have to take in high school - auto mechanics (so you know how to change a tire, among other things) and calculus. Calculus means "small stones", as for counting. It's all about rates of change. You could tell the speed of your car by looking at your odometer and your watch, but that will give you only the average speed over a given time or distance. The speedometer, on the other hand, gives you your instantaneous speed - which is the derivative (calculus term) of your position (odometer) with respect to time. This makes sense when you think about it: speed is the rate of change of position.

(Actually, it's velocity, but that's a whole other kettle of fish if you don't know about vectors from Linear Algebra yet.)

Don't worry about the math. It's usually the easiest course in your university schedule - and I tell you that as someone who failed high school math classes constantly and who dropped out of high school because of math (that's a long story, though). Math *is* your friend. How's that? You can be guaranteed that if you do all your homework, you will get an A+ in the course. That's it. No reading, no stupid assignments which get marked by TAs who know less than you, nothing. It doesn't even matter how good or bad your teacher is. Just do all your homework and you'll get an A+. It's a non-linear relationship, do 50% of your homework (every second assigned problem) and you'll get a B+. Do 25% of your homework and you'll get a C+.

As an EE, I had to take 7 university level math classes.

• Calculus I: Basic calculus, a re-hash of high school which introduced Integration by Parts (table method!)
• Linear Algebra: Matrices, parametric equations, Gaussian elimination, eigenvalues and eigenvectors. Don't let the names scare you, it's all very easy.
• Calculus II: Differential equations and infinite series. Always had a hard time with infinite series... but I passed it.
• Calculus III: Multivariable Calculus and Fourier Series. Very fun course, allowed me to become conversant in Vector Calculus (which is always good for scaring people, though it's actually dead easy). Fourier is really neat, allowing you to express any function (think waveform) as a sum of easily-manipulated sines and cosines.
• Numerical Methods: A whole course on how to make numerical approximations when you come across something that is impossible to integrate. Mostly programming in MATLAB. Open book exam, I used LyME (MATLAB clone) on my Palm.
• Calculus IV: Mathematical Methods. All about how to solve partial differential equations like the heat equation and wave equation, also Laplace and Fourier transforms, Sturm-Liouville differential equations, etc. Scary sounding, but actually rather easy once you get your head around it. Doing homework on the blackboard with your friends in an empty classroom is recommended - the arts class which came into the room after our homework sessions always looked at us like we were geniuses. We're not.
• Statisitics: Ugh. Mostly just plug numbers into equ

Best calculator ever (Why do I need buttons with a perfectly good keyboard attached to my computer) is Frink. Automatic unit conversion and a real programming language behind it. Java makes it cross-platform too.

Counting cards dosent really help you untill atleast half way through the deck. Hence why most good cheats will bet the minimum every hand and count the cards as they play, then bring in another player to bet the max while relying on signals from the player who has the count.

I'm not saying player swapping is nessisary in a PHP implementation, but anyone working on this should not rely on the count data untill atleast half the cards are gone. Which will leave another loophole for the programmer to account for: there can be anywhere from 1 to 10 decks.

A good blackjack player (not just a cheat) can not only count cards, but intimately knows their favorite version of the blackjack odds table, and most importantly how to bet to minimize the risk to their seed money and maximize profits when the cards are in their favor.

Another thing that must be compensated for is the greatest tool in any players bag of tricks. The ability to just get up and walk away. If the cards aren't treating you right, move to another table. This dosen't work in tournements, but is a great tactic for limiting your losses.. which is casino speak for "winning".

Oh, and when testing, make sure your shuffle is truely random.

As Usual, KDE ROCKS

More info here.

I'm very tempted to pre-order it along with Richard Morgan's new books (Broken Angels and Market Force) from amazon.co.uk, if shipping wasn't so much.

We must ask, "what is being patented or copyrighted?". Copyrights cover artistic creations, patents cover knowledge (often technical). These are both necessarily finite in that we must be able to describe them in finite time and in a way that we can understand. Thus, creations, knowledge and the rest are or can be fully described by a sequence of descriptive sentences, symbols and images; in other words, an idea is simply information. According to information theory, any information can be fully described by a sequence of bits (which is essentially a number).

"Intellectual Property" posits that knowledge and ideas are actual property which should remain in the creators' control in perpetuity, or until he voluntarily relinquishes said control. Since we see that any such idea can simply be represented as a sequence of bits, this position essentially reduces to saying that a creator has exclusive ownership rights on that particular bit string/number, and no one may ever use this particular arrangement of bits without permission.

Doesn't that seem a tad dubious? From this information-centric perspective, ideas and knowledge are more akin to discoveries rather than creations. While it certainly takes intelligence, time and hard work to discover something (be it scientific or artistic), I don't think anyone would agree that one should be forbidden from ever using some knowledge that one discovered merely because someone else discovered it first.

We must ask, "what is being patented or copyrighted?". Copyrights cover artistic creations, patents cover knowledge (often technical). These are both necessarily finite in that we must be able to describe them in finite time and in a way that we can understand. Thus, creations, knowledge and the rest are or can be fully described by a sequence of descriptive sentences, symbols and images; in other words, an idea is simply information. According to information theory, any information can be fully described by a sequence of bits (which is essentially a number).

"Intellectual Property" posits that knowledge and ideas are actual property which should remain in the creators' control in perpetuity, or until he voluntarily relinquishes said control. Since we see that any such idea can simply be represented as a sequence of bits, this position essentially reduces to saying that a creator has exclusive ownership rights on that particular bit string/number, and no one may ever use this particular arrangement of bits without permission.

Doesn't that seem a tad dubious? From this information-centric perspective, ideas and knowledge are more akin to discoveries rather than creations. While it certainly takes intelligence, time and hard work to discover something (be it scientific or artistic), I don't think anyone would agree that one should be forbidden from ever using some knowledge that one discovered merely because someone else discovered it first.

Religion is losing power rather rapidly (in western nations, at least).

I agree, and I disagree. I observe that large organized religions are losing power. Smaller, new faiths are absorbing the rest. See The Evolution of Religion.

Being cloned without your knowledge really isn't all that bad.

I don't think it's that big a deal, but most people's sense of identity is so wrapped up in their physical body that they see it as a violation.

While I think it's a bit sick and twisted (vision of self as perfect, vicarious living, etc.), it's not something I'm about to legislate against or get worked up about. If you're so obsessed with yourself that you want a genetically identical (at point of conception) kid, go right ahead. I won't hold it against the kid (though I will hold it against you, sicko).

Well, who knows what a person's reasons are? I'm sure there are legitimate reasons/cirumstances for making a clone of oneself, just as there are sometimes legitimate reasons for killing another person.

Actually, the Enlightenment Window Manager had a feature for years which is similar to Expose. The pager created small thumbs of windows, and you could even interact with the windows in the pager.

Sure, Apple's Expose goes a step further and they do know how to polish a gui, but it's unfair to not consider that Enlightenment had a similar feature (window thumbnailing) 5 or so years ago.

Nothing wrong with self-centredness as a pillar of ethics; these kids simply lack sufficient reasoning skills; their capacity for critical thought is far too shallow, since they do not understand the depth of their own ignorance, they over-estimate their own abilities.

See this recent study: Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.

Interesting that you mention consequential ethics. Is it actually a field of ethical study? I ask because I recently wrote about what I viewed as consequentialist versus intrinsic ethics and I was wondering whether it was the same thing (I have yet to come across it in my readings, though I admit I haven't read everything).

Nothing wrong with self-centredness as a pillar of ethics; these kids simply lack sufficient reasoning skills; their capacity for critical thought is far too shallow, since they do not understand the depth of their own ignorance, they over-estimate their own abilities.

See this recent study: Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.

Interesting that you mention consequential ethics. Is it actually a field of ethical study? I ask because I recently wrote about what I viewed as consequentialist versus intrinsic ethics and I was wondering whether it was the same thing (I have yet to come across it in my readings, though I admit I haven't read everything).

My solution: The anti-spam screensaver

It shouldn't be a Caldera logo anymore anyway. I think a picture of someone shooting themself in the foot is much more apropos :-)

vischeck.com has a tool to change the colors of websites to show what they might look like to someone who suffers from colorblindness. Here's slashdot through a colorblind eye.

I do this all the time so that I can quake but also check gaim / IRC messages as they come in, without having to stop the game. Lessee, where's that link...ah here it is: http://freefall.homeip.net/stuff/quakescript/

"The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." -> Spanish -> Ingles
The alcohol is arranged but the meat is weak.

My favorite example was my friend Brian entering "Yo quiero un burrito" and the translation came out "I love a young donkey." Perfectly legitimate translation, too.

This will never work for translating instant messages until people learn to spell correctly, though.

The kinetic energy involved is huge. I don't have a good intuitive grasp of "a basketball thrown at 500 mph" so I used Frink to put the kinetic energy into other terms.

Using KE = 1/2 m v^2, the foam had the same energy as a 16-pound bowling ball travelling at 173 mph! (In Frink notation, which is usually just normal mathematical notation, this is:)

KE = 1/2 1.7 lb 531 mph
(KE / (1/2 16 lb))^(1/2) -> mph

I still don't have a good intuition of a bowling ball being thrown that fast, (it's like dropping it from 300 feet!) but I have a very good feeling from dropping one on my foot from just a few inches that it could do some damage.

Using a larger object, a 2000-lb car, it's like that car moving about 15 mph and crashing into the wing!

(KE / (1/2 2000 lb))^(1/2) -> mph

Put another way, this is like dropping that 2000-lb car from a height of 8 feet onto the wing! (Knowing potential energy is mass * gravity * height, this is, in Frink notation:)

KE / (2000 lb gravity) -> feet

The F=ma relation can give us a ballpark figure for the forces involved. From their statistics, the chunk of foam weighed 1.7 lb and had a volume of 1200 in^3. If it were a cube, it would be about 10 inches on a side, (in Frink, this is found by (1200 in^3)^(1/3)->in ) but we can see from the test photos that it was maybe more like 2 feet at its longest dimension.

If the piece struck squarely, and compressed along its longest dimension, it would still have to decelerate from 531 mph to 0 within its length of 2 feet:

2 feet/(531 mph)

(If it didn't compress, the acceleration would be higher--think of running into a brick wall vs. running into foam.) That would take about 2.5 milliseconds. Going from 531 mph to 0 in that short of time would give an acceleration of about 9400 times the acceleration of gravity!

531 mph / (2 feet/(531 mph)) -> gravity

Taking F = m a, the force would be on the order of 16000 pounds-force on the wing!

1.7 lb 531 mph / (2 feet/(531 mph)) -> lbf

Even if the piece didn't strike squarely, and delivered only 1/10 of this force, that's still going to severely damage any wing that's light enough to get off the ground--much less one that has to be sealed so that superheated plasma can't get inside! Once there was an opening for the ultra-hot plasma to burn its way inside, it was probably already too late to save the shuttle.

By the way, pound is a unit of mass.

The kinetic energy involved is huge. I don't have a good intuitive grasp of "a basketball thrown at 500 mph" so I used Frink to put the kinetic energy into other terms.

Using KE = 1/2 m v^2, the foam had the same energy as a 16-pound bowling ball travelling at 173 mph! (In Frink notation, which is usually just normal mathematical notation, this is:)

KE = 1/2 1.7 lb 531 mph
(KE / (1/2 16 lb))^(1/2) -> mph

I still don't have a good intuition of a bowling ball being thrown that fast, (it's like dropping it from 300 feet!) but I have a very good feeling from dropping one on my foot from just a few inches that it could do some damage.

Using a larger object, a 2000-lb car, it's like that car moving about 15 mph and crashing into the wing!

(KE / (1/2 2000 lb))^(1/2) -> mph

Put another way, this is like dropping that 2000-lb car from a height of 8 feet onto the wing! (Knowing potential energy is mass * gravity * height, this is, in Frink notation:)

KE / (2000 lb gravity) -> feet

The F=ma relation can give us a ballpark figure for the forces involved. From their statistics, the chunk of foam weighed 1.7 lb and had a volume of 1200 in^3. If it were a cube, it would be about 10 inches on a side, (in Frink, this is found by (1200 in^3)^(1/3)->in ) but we can see from the test photos that it was maybe more like 2 feet at its longest dimension.

If the piece struck squarely, and compressed along its longest dimension, it would still have to decelerate from 531 mph to 0 within its length of 2 feet:

2 feet/(531 mph)

(If it didn't compress, the acceleration would be higher--think of running into a brick wall vs. running into foam.) That would take about 2.5 milliseconds. Going from 531 mph to 0 in that short of time would give an acceleration of about 9400 times the acceleration of gravity!

531 mph / (2 feet/(531 mph)) -> gravity

Taking F = m a, the force would be on the order of 16000 pounds-force on the wing!

1.7 lb 531 mph / (2 feet/(531 mph)) -> lbf

Even if the piece didn't strike squarely, and delivered only 1/10 of this force, that's still going to severely damage any wing that's light enough to get off the ground--much less one that has to be sealed so that superheated plasma can't get inside! Once there was an opening for the ultra-hot plasma to burn its way inside, it was probably already too late to save the shuttle.

By the way, pound is a unit of mass.

I assumed that the heat capacity of beer was just about that of water (1 calorie/degC/g). So, using Frink, a calculating tool/programming language I've developed, the power needed to lower a lovely 12 floz beverage by a relatively scant 10 degrees F in a minute is given by:

12 floz water (1 calorie/degC/gram) 10 degF/min -> W

Which gives about 137 watts given perfect efficiency! You actually need to divide the left-hand side by the Coefficient of Performance of your Peltier junction which is probably--what--0.4? And then divide by all your other efficiency losses due to imperfect heat transfer and heat input from the environment...which, as the saying goes, "is left as an exercise for the reader."

(You can use the web-based interface to Frink to plug in your own numbers and units like liters or degC, or K, or recalculate the numbers using the heat capacity of ultra-high-ethanol concoctions.)

No wonder that Peltier-junction cooled ice chest I bought many years ago didn't work worth a lick. It kept things cool if you filled it with a big bag of ice. :)

Wonderfully fun experiment, in any case. I'd sure like to see the thermometer placed in the liquid, though.

I assumed that the heat capacity of beer was just about that of water (1 calorie/degC/g). So, using Frink, a calculating tool/programming language I've developed, the power needed to lower a lovely 12 floz beverage by a relatively scant 10 degrees F in a minute is given by:

12 floz water (1 calorie/degC/gram) 10 degF/min -> W

Which gives about 137 watts given perfect efficiency! You actually need to divide the left-hand side by the Coefficient of Performance of your Peltier junction which is probably--what--0.4? And then divide by all your other efficiency losses due to imperfect heat transfer and heat input from the environment...which, as the saying goes, "is left as an exercise for the reader."

(You can use the web-based interface to Frink to plug in your own numbers and units like liters or degC, or K, or recalculate the numbers using the heat capacity of ultra-high-ethanol concoctions.)

No wonder that Peltier-junction cooled ice chest I bought many years ago didn't work worth a lick. It kept things cool if you filled it with a big bag of ice. :)

Wonderfully fun experiment, in any case. I'd sure like to see the thermometer placed in the liquid, though.

Not only is it difficult, it's impossible. There can be no logical proof of God's existence, and there can be no logical proof of God's non-existence. In addition, there can be no logical proof that there is no proof of God's existence.

So you claim, yet I see no convincing argument.

But there is a logical proof that there is no logical proof of God's existence.

Where? I am genuinely interested.

What I mean by "logical" proof is just that that can be derived from logic. God does not follow from logic itself.

Professor Hatcher thinks he has found one.

Here it is, Professor Hatcher's Proof Of The Logical Existence of God (or at least my transcript of it). Followups outline his assumptions and possible flaws. But overall, the most convincing argument yet.