Slashback: Hilbert's, Transgenic, Silicon

Slashback tonight with another round of updates and corrections to recent stories, including transgenic fish, Hilbert's 16th problem, Microsoft's FAT patent plans, Utah's hyped public fiber network, and more. Read on for the details.

Still an acorn at this point. Jose Nazario writes with a correction to my recent post claiming that OpenBSD had gained a "fuzzy" user-profiling IDS. Jose writes: "It is NOT in tree. it is a privately developed research project. It is not an official project."

And Yes, the Apple I schematics were available, too. In response to the recent article about the freely available chip design from opencores.org implemented by Flextronics, Henry Keultjes offers a reminder that this is not the first time chip whose internals have been open for inspection:

"Happened quite some time ago with PowerPC. That's the essence of Microsoft's deal with IBM because without that Open Architecture Microsoft would have had to buy a lot more than it did. This for example is used in a roughly $150 French set-top box that has USB and, according to a friend in the UK who has tried that, runs just fine as a PC with the attached USB HDD, KB and rodent."

Could Wayne Inouye sell you an eMachine? After reading many pointed comments in the story about eMachine's Athlon offerings, arrasmith writes "To add to the topic of AMD64 eMachines and the launch of "I hate eMachine" posts I'll throw out why you should buy one.

eMachines are the number-3 seller of computers, only behind Dell and HP. If you are wondering about how that happened, you need to read about the new CEO.

Wayne Inouye has had some articles published about him in Business Week and Forbes. Great articles on how you can sell good computers at reasonable prices. And if you are wondering why eMachines is selling an AMD64 system read the Business Week article."

OK, as long as you buy it from us. Alien54 writes "As reported in the most recent Spyware Info Newsletter, Dell seems to have listened to the criticism handed to them last week, after their decision to forbid tech support persons from providing assistance to spyware-infected customers became public knowledge. They have partnered with PestPatrol, Inc. to sell Pest Patrol's spyware removal software to Dell customers. It is interesting to note that Dell does not recommend any freeware or shareware product because 'we cannot test these open source utilities reliably.' Which is simply silly, of course."

Utah may not be Utopia after all. brysnot writes "The Salt Lake Tribune reports that the Utopia project, which plans to run fiber to every home in Utah, has miscalculated its 2003 budget and now needs each member cities to come up with an additional $250,000. Also reported is that 'Its largest member, Salt Lake City, is uncertain whether to provide financial backing to guarantee payment of the principal and interest on the bonds the project needs -- a development that could force the project to be scaled back.'"

Writes Lighthop "The best way to overcome Qwest's vast resources and well orchestrated opposition is for citizens and business owners to speak out and let their city council members know we support them in approving UTOPIA's funding. We have to be visible and give them some political cover.

The 18 UTOPIA member cities are Brigham City, Cedar City, Cedar Hills, Centerville, Layton, Lindon, Midvale, Murray, Orem, Payson, Perry, Riverton, Roy, Salt Lake City, South Jordan, Taylorsville, Tremonton and West Valley."

Hilbert's 16th is still a problem. commodoresloat writes "The work of Elin Oxenhielm, the 22-year old Swedish student who apparently solved part of the 16th Hilbert problem, is coming under heavy fire from some prominent mathematicians, including her own adviser, who said the work contained "serious mistakes, which I think any educated mathematician can easily see." Here's an article in English. Oxenhielm responded to the criticism by saying that the journal that accepted her work, which now owns the copyright, is responsible for any errors. More information on this weblog."

Periscope is up, showdown commences. McSpew writes "The Register states that Microsoft's patents on the FAT filesystem may be subject to new scrutiny, thanks to their announced plan to collect royalties from media and CE manufacturers. The Public Patent Foundation is behind the effort to get the USPTO to start from scratch with Microsoft's FAT patents."

FDA gives GM fish sales the eerie green light. fishfishfish writes "The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Tuesday released a statement saying that it will not be stopping the sale of transgenic Zebra danios in the USA. The move could allow fish retailers in any U.S. state to sell the fish. Apart from California, where Arnie has banned them..."

Comments

From her own adviser

[Adam_Trask]

including her own adviser, who said the work contained "serious mistakes, which I think any educated mathematician can easily see."...
We know geniuses tend to be social geeks, but getting that from your own adviser while you are still doing you PhD...wow! Good luck with that PhD!!

Re:From her own adviser

[Noren]

Zhou was her advisor when she got her Master's degree, but is no longer her advisor now that she's working on her PhD. From the blog cited in the story:

Finally, I have a correction. I have spoken of Yishao Zhou as being both Elin Oxenhielm's professor and supervisor. The fact is, though, that Zhou was an advisor for Oxenhielm's masters degree. She is neither her professor nor her current advisor. And the paper submitted to Nonlinear Analysis isn't a paper that Zhou has been an advisor for.

Re:From her own adviser

[kramer2718]

She's still very hot, and obviously very intelligent. I'm in love with her regardless whether or not the proof stands.

Re:From her own adviser

[Anonymous Coward]

"She's still very hot, and obviously very intelligent. I'm in love with her regardless whether or not the proof stands."

1) Publish solutions to hilbert equations, along with cute photo
2) ???
3) Boyfriend

(sorry!)

Dell is mixing upo OSS with Shareware/Freeware...

[Androgynous Coward]

...Dell does not recommend any freeware or shareware product becausefreeware or shareware product because 'we cannot test these open source utilities reliably.'

Someone should inform Dell that freeware and/or shareware products are not necessarily open-source.

AMD 64bit CPU's and linux

[Space cowboy]

So, assuming I get hold of one of these AMD 64-bit boxes, how hard/easy is it to get Linux compiled for 64-bit. What are the pitfalls with gcc (is an int 64 bit in 64-bit mode ?)

The only reviews I've seen are on Windows OS's running in 32 bit mode (why, for crying out loud, if linux runs on them cleanly...) I think I saw that RH and Suse have 64-bit offerings, but RH is expensive... never tried Suse ....

Just curious. Pointers to informative articles would be welcome :-)

Simon

Re:AMD 64bit CPU's and linux

[Fulcrum of Evil]

o, assuming I get hold of one of these AMD 64-bit boxes, how hard/easy is it to get Linux compiled for 64-bit. What are the pitfalls with gcc (is an int 64 bit in 64-bit mode ?)

Here is a list of supported distros. And yes, I believe an int is 64 bits in 64 bit mode

Re:AMD 64bit CPU's and linux

[Roadkills-R-Us]

An int *should* be 64 bits with a 64 bit processor. If not, somebody goofed up!

``RH is expensive...'' If it's Linux, they have to provide source for free, remember? The source they compiled from? Right?

Though we've been primarily a Red Hat shop to date (with almost 300 RH8 boxes at the moment), we do have one copy of SuSe running - on our dual Opteron. Lovely software. We bought it with the system, but again - they have to provide free source!

Of course, if you want free binaries, that could be a bit trickier. But even most of those can be got for free. As one of the big vendors freely admits (once you corner them 8^) they aren't primarily selling software (though there may be some non-copyable material on the CDs); they're selling support.

Re:AMD 64bit CPU's and linux

[mcelrath]

An int on a 64-bit CPU is 32-bits. A long int is 64 bits and an int* is 64 bits. Thus most C code is highly compatible. The fatal flaw being when programmers assume sizeof(int)=sizeof(int*) which fails.

The other posts in this thread indicating otherwise are wrong. An int is 32 bits on 64-bit archs under linux and gcc. (I know, I have 2 alphas and a sparc)

-- Bob

Re:AMD 64bit CPU's and linux

[timeOday]

An int *should* be 64 bits with a 64 bit processor. If not, somebody goofed up!

I sure don't feel that way. Having 'long int' and 'int' mean the same thing seems pointles, and should 'short' mean 16 or 32 bits? Why not just do it like Sparc:

char 1
short 2
int 4
long 8
long long 8
void * 8
float 4
double 8
long double 16

I can't imagine there are modern general-purpose 64 bit platforms which don't handle 32 bit values efficiently.

Re:AMD 64bit CPU's and linux

[JoeBuck]

No, on 64-bit Linux platforms int is still 32 bits, while long is 64 bits. Pointers are also 64 bits.

The two most common C models are commonly referred to as ILP32 (int, long, pointers all 32 bit) or LP64 (long and pointer are 64 bit).

Re:AMD 64bit CPU's and linux

[stonecypher]

Insightfully wrong.

A 64-bit platform is a platform which has been attacked by marketroids. The C Standard says nothing about the sizes of any of the base types in comparison to any of the various sizes a 64-bit platform might choose to support, rather referring only to comparisons: char may not be longer than int, short may not be longer than int, long may not be shorter than int, et cetera.

Granted, many C compilers choose to ignore the advice of the standard, which is to implement int as the fastest integer type for native math, and implement it as a 32-bit because buttheads like you can't get through your thick skulls not to use raw types. But good compilers, and also good programmers, don't suffer such silly strictures.

vu8 * clueBat = "rtfm";

Re:AMD 64bit CPU's and linux

[ron_ivi]

"int" should but in't required be whatever type is native to the processor; but is required to be at least 16 bits (thanks to a requirement that it can hold values from INT_MIN to INT_MAX whose minimum and maximum values are -32767 and 32767 respectively.

If your code cares beyond that, use the standard C types (defined in stdint.h) that specify the sizes.

From the many year old C99 standard (part B.17 Integer types ):

• If you want an exactly 64-bit type use an int64_t.
• If you want an exactly 32-bit type, use an int32_t.
• If you want a fast type that's at least 32 bits, use a int_least64_t.

Re:AMD 64bit CPU's and linux

[bluGill]

int was defined in K&R1 to the best size for the CPU to deal with. Short and char could be shorter, long could be longer. Then they had a chart showing how several "common" machines implimented it, which included one machine that implimented all of the above types with 36 bits.

I still think that int should be the easiest size for the machine to deal with. If your intiger math is all 64 bits, when I say int I mean that I don't want you take an extra step to make the result fit into 32 bits. If your CPU is 16 bits, then by int I mean don't go through the extra effort to do 32 bit addition.

Re:AMD 64bit CPU's and linux

[ron_ivi]

No, they'll think we're stupid why we don't use the Standard C

"int_64t" where we require 64 bits, and

"int_32t" where we require 32 bits, and

"int" where we require a native size >= 16 bits.

More trivia, Some cool processors (like some TI DSPs) have 40-bit "long" datatypes, so sizeof(long)==5. Pretty cool?

Re:AMD 64bit CPU's and linux

[moncyb]

When you are talking about different processor architectures, distro does matter as it provides the precompiled binaries for your system to run. A program compiled for a PowerPC won't run on a IA32 (aka i386) system and vice versa.

The kernel and modules are even more critical. Sometimes the basic design of computers using the same processor are different, so the kernel/bootloader has to use different code to load the system. The only examples I can think of right now might be something like the Amiga, the classic Mac, and Atari ST. They all used the 680x0 processor, but I believe the rest of their designs were completely different.

It also matters which hardware options were precompiled into your kernel. If the distro left out ISA support (perhaps they assume everyone uses only PCI), then you can't boot their system on an older computer which uses ISA cards--such as a 386 or many 486s.

Even source based distros (such as Gentoo) have to use binaries at some point. You can't compile without a compiler binary, and you can't run a compiler binary (or even boot) without a kernel binary. Though with source based the maintainers probably have less work to support each new processor.

So, yes it does make a big difference which distro you use when you want to use a new (or less common or just different from what they decided to support) processor architecture. Most of them support the most common type (IA32), but some distros may wait before they try to support these new 64 bit processors, if at all. However IA32 support should work fine--assuming they are fully backwards compatible. The software just won't take advantage of the extra power.

Re:AMD 64bit CPU's and linux

[renoX]

>I still think that int should be the easiest size for the machine to deal with.

Correct, but any 64-bit CPU that I know about about instructions for manipulating 32bit variables easily too.
These "64bit" CPU manipulate 32bit value as easily as 64bit values, which means K&R rules that the int should be the "natural" int of the CPU doesn't tell you anything about wether an int should be 32 or 64 bit..

So I'm for the int=32bit and long=64bit rule..

the FDA?

[Mad_Rain]

So how come the Food and Drug Administration is the organization approving the sale of transgenic fish?

Isn't there a more appropriate group to be handling this? Sure, let the FDA approve them if you plan on eating the fish, but I figured they were for display only. ;)

Re:the FDA?

[el-spectre]

Because a day-glow fish is highly likely to become food :)

Re:the FDA?

[iminplaya]

" Isn't there a more appropriate group to be handling this?"
Maybe the ASPCA? On the other hand the FDA is involved because there is going to be a lot of pledges eating them next fall.

Zhou is currently not her advisor

[Ryne]

From the weblog:
The fact is, though, that Zhou was an advisor for Oxenhielm's masters degree. She is neither her professor nor her current advisor.

Re:Zhou is currently not her advisor

[Ryne]

Great, replying two times to my own post. The address should be:
http://www.oxenhielm.com

Re:Zhou is currently not her advisor

[Anonymous Coward]

"I think that the mathematical criticism on my paper 'On the Second Part of Hilbert's 16th Problem' has been very constructive, and I welcome it. It is an open problem and there lies a great prestige in solving it. It is a natural thing that people try to find flaws in my proof, and I was expecting this from the very start. Unfortunately, there exist many rumours about me and my paper,..."

It is a natural thing that people try to find flaws in my proof???
A proof is a proof. It may have no flaws, otherwise it is not a proof.

"I refer to Nonlinear Analysis at http://www.sciencedirect.com. They have evaluated the paper, they accepted it for publication and they have the copyright of its contents"
As much as it may seem nice, developing a mathematical proof is not the same as working for a company saying "there, I've done what I said, you did not dispute me then, so you have no recourse now...".

a mathematical proof promotes one's reputation in the math world... getting it wrong may not be all bad if you had some good ideas along the way which can be worked though (historical proofs are very tough, just getting near is great credibility). denying responsibility makes the author sound petty, childish, headline grabbing and ultimately incompetant.

Why is there no law.....

[Microsofts slave]

that makes it impossible for a patent holder to hold people hostage on a technology after it becomes ubiquitous.

Re:Why is there no law.....

[stewball]

because charging rents on the use of a patented invention is exactly the purpose of patents. they're very powerful, which is why they're limited in time and geography. they've also been pretty badly abused in the last few years, not in terms of charging license fees for legitimate patents, but in what one can ram through the pto.

you may also, if you like, challenge the whole concept of people having the exclusive rights to an invention, no matter how radical and new. people have. myself, i think it's a good idea when implemented properly.
--------------------

Re:Why is there no law.....

[Cajun Hell]

There's no market for such a law. Who would buy it?

Re:Why is there no law.....

[stonecypher]

It's called "Submarining a patent." Read Title III.

The real problem is how difficult it is to define whether a product has become ubiquitous. For a lesson in how difficult that is, refer to CompuServe's superficially compelling arguments about the dominance of JPEG that allowed them to fool a judge into thinking the resurfacing of the LZ patents was okay. Sometimes a patent really can't be judged in time, and sometimes a company gets into commercialization beforehand knowing fully well that it'll have to stop; see the issue with the chemical that made wacky wall walkers, and Klutz Press.

Re:Why is there no law.....

[GreatBallsOfFire]

Hey, did Microsoft screw up?

They did offer up a FAT32 standard for EFI, used in IA64 boot partitions. The did this, guaranteeing your safety through a mutual "no sue" clause. In effect, they actively misrepresented their intentions by luring people to use the standard, then turn around and use strong arm tactics on the semiconductor folks.

Go to their page at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/hardware/fatge n.mspx and read the agreement. It specifically says you can use their file system in any operating system that will make use of EFI, the IA64 booting standard.

What this means is:

1. That operating systems such as linux can incorporate FAT32 as long as it runs on an Itanium platform.
2. Only the semiconductor folks are screwed due to 1(b) of the agreement, because it is possible to show that a flash device is a microprocessor circuit and excluded from "Necessary Claims."

I am not a lawyer, but this is what I think I read in the agreement.

Conspiracy?

[jfmiller]

If one were a conspiracy theorist, and I am not, one might postulate that dell ether now or in the future plans to install spyware themselves and that open source programs would mess this up. Therefore they have told there techs not to recommend any of them, and now have found a willing corp. that will agree with them about the difference between marketing tools and spyware. Bu there is of course no proof and since I am not a conspiracy theorist, I will not make such accusations.

IANACT

JFMILLER

"we can not test"...

[dbc]

Well, they don't mention *why* they can not test. In a past life, I have managed both hardware and software validation laboratories. It is an expensive proposition to do it well. Windows is the worst.. Between 95, 95osr1, 95osr2, 98, 98se, 98me, variants of 2000... and the fact that every application install is an OS upgrade because of DLL-Hell... and then add in a zillion flavors of language support (OK, I was running 98me with the left-to-right Hebrew keyboard, the German version of Visual Studio, and Oriental character file name support...) ... oh, now cross all these with hardware variation, chipset, cpu, what-have-you.

So, personally, I can well believe that *if* they looked at the cost of validating some particular build of some particular OSS software for download from their web site, that they would conclude that it cost too much. So "We can't because it costs too much" is a reasonable response. Chicken, yes, and maybe doesn't server the customer the best possible way, but reasonable.

Of course, every time I've dealt with Dell in the past they've been idiots, so that might be a reason, too.

Open source testing

[gid13]

I suspect the reason they don't endorse anything open source is because if an open source project gives Dell a cut of the sale it's still nothing.

I wonder if the claim they can't reliably test them would fall under false advertising or libel or something similar. Free software has a hard enough time getting accepted without the big companies that the masses haven't yet learned not to trust spreading complete crap like this.

Re:Dell is mixing upo OSS with Shareware/Freeware.

[Bagels]

Besides which, you should be able to test open source products far better than closed source products - because you can see what makes them tick and design tests accordingly.

they're not

[dangermouse]

If you read the statement, you'll see that they're not "approving" sales of the glofish. They're saying exactly what you are-- the glofish aren't in the FDA's bailiwick.

Because tropical aquarium fish are not used for food purposes...

Drawing the Hardware/Software line

[segment]

Dell seems to have listened to the criticism handed to them last week, after their decision to forbid tech support persons from providing assistance to spyware-infected customers became public knowledge.

I'm all for helping people when necessary, and I would agree with Dell for not wanting to waste their own money on people's stupidities.

Now I work at an ISP and sub as IT staff at a mid sized college every here and there. (Fixing T1's, students' comps, all sorts of shit) main causes of students' issues? Spyware. I visited I think 80% of the campus based students for the same shit... Joe football player wants VirtuaGirl on his machine and clicks on everything in existence... Result? Spyware, viruses, and trojans. One chick had a 8k phone bill on her cellphone because she kept her info on a backdoored machine. All this after they receive bulletins, I've told the same ones over and over, etc.

I would side with Dell, just think about the costs of a persons moronicy on the Dell level. So you have say low ball figure of 100,000 morons calling you because they've just downloaded garbage...

TS = Tech Support (low ball salary) $10.00 an hour...

DU = duration of call say 5 minutes

CL = Calls (per 8 hour day)

Whats that an extra +1000 tech support staff that need to be hired? 20mill per year thrown away on morons...

Re:Drawing the Hardware/Software line

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

I think you're being a bit harsh. Part of it is a lot of this crap comes from holes in software. Is someone who got rooted (can I say Administrator'ed?) because of an IE hole a moron? And before you say "patch your systems" I can say zero-day exploits and unpatched holes in IE.

But lets say thats just part of the issue, most people are running unpacthed versions of Windows, using IE (unpacthed IE, shudder). They're browsing the web because . . . they bought the computer to browse the web. They're opening email attachments because . . . attachments are made for you to open. They're using the machien for what it's designed for. They're doing what all the nice shiny pretty people in the commercials say they can do.

Closest real world analogy I can think of would be:
guy comes home. Guy doesn't lock door. Robber comes in, beats guy up. Guy goes to hospital, but insurance refuses to pay because he was too stupid to lock the dorr, so go bleed somewhere else.

Would never happen. We'd just solve the problem. Even the door angle is too simplistic, for most people it would be closer to "robber comes in through grate at bottom of building that connects through shaft which goes to his room". Non obvious stuff.

The issue is computers are immature. Neither windows nor Unix were originally designed to be in a hostile network environment. UNIX has improved a lot more than Windows has, but there are still flaws. Until we redesign everything to live in a hostile world, we will have issues. Until then, it will be us morons who program the systems, and the marketing morons who sell a bill of goods that can't be delivered.

Re:Drawing the Hardware/Software line

[timeOday]

I disagree that Dell is particularly a hardware company in the first place. They don't make hardware any more than they make software, what they do is put together the hardware, software, and support in a convenient package for the end-user. As for the morons, well, they pay the bills. Apparently Dell thinks pleasing the customer plus their cut of the Pest Patrol proceeds will boost their profit, so where is the problem again?

Zhou is protecting herself

[GuyMannDude]

Did you read the article that was linked to? Zhou's public comments are an attempt to distance herself from Oxenhielm. Oxenhielm thanks Zhou in her (possibly flawed) paper for assistance and Zhou is terrified that the community is going to laugh at her (Zhou). It's easy to forgive a youngster for getting excited and making mistakes but they would come down very hard on Zhou for letting stuff like this slip through. Effectively Oxenhielm has put Zhou's name on this work in spite of the fact that Zhou never reviewed it. You wouldn't want to be blamed for something you had no hand in, would you?

Oxenhielm is probably too young to remember what happened to Ponds and Fleishman at University of Utah regarding cold fusion. Zhou wants to make sure that Oxenhielm doesn't take her down too when her proof gets shot down.

GMD

Re:Zhou is protecting herself

[Licensed2Hack]

You wouldn't want to be blamed for something you had no hand in, would you?

Spoken like someone who has never been married.

The journal is not responsible for the errors.

[mathematician]

Oxenhielm responded to the criticism by saying that the journal that accepted her work, which now owns the copyright, is responsible for any errors.

As one who has refereed math papers, I think that this is not true. When I am sent a letter asking me to referee, I am asked to comment on how important the result is, and I am asked to assess how correct the paper is, but often I am explicitly told that errors in the paper are the responsibility of the author, and not the referee.

Re:The journal is not responsible for the errors.

[boho]

This is from the article in Nature about this (emphasis mine):

Originally approved by one reviewer, the paper has now been sent to two more mathematicians for further round of review, along with a defence by Oxenhielm, who says that the critics do not understand her methods.

Re:Why UTOPIA?

[penguinoid]

What do the taxpayers get by building an infrastructure that will be turned over to private providers? Just wondering why I wouldn't want the private providers to build their own infrastructure.

There are things known as "natural monopolies", in which producion costs decrease as the size of the firm increases. Networks (cables, piping, roads/railroads) belong to this category. It is more efficient for there to be a single shared network, than many small ones owned by some company who does not want to share it, reducing (potentially, at least) the cost for everyone. Just my $0.02; I did not RTFA.

Little math discrepency?

[kwalker]

According to the SLTrib article:

"...needs member cities to pony up an additional $250,000 so it can continue to pursue its bond offering."

So it looks like they're just $250k short, not $4.5 million short as the poster seemed to indicate. In fact, if I'm reading this right, it means each city would only need to come up with ~$14k each, if they're going to split it equally.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Not impossible: Inevitable

[GuyMannDude]

Two non-fugly math chicks! What are the chances?

Chances are probably not as bad as you might think. Two non-fugly math girls, lonely for a little love yet repulsed by the animate male lumps of lard and sweat surrounding them. Both so lonely, so sad. Trying to concentrate on their work. Young student huddled close together with advisor, going over a math problem. Then it happens! Zhou's hair brushes ever so lightly against Oxenheilm's cheek. They pull back from each other in surprise. They both felt it. And in that moment, their lives changed forever. It was unavoidable. It was their destiny. Their professional composure decays exponentially fast as they both realize the inexorable truth. They are going to have sex and there is nothing either of them can do to stop it. Is this attraction stable? Does it matter anymore?

Clothes are pulled off each other in an optimal fashion. Each woman studies the continuous curvature of the other's body. Fingers trace the inflexion points, the saddle points, the contours, and then, utimately, the poles. Their fingers now slick with the complex residue of the other, their heart beats begin to constructively interfere with each other. The intensity of one heart increased by the feedback from the other. So wrong. So dangerous. So good.

Groups give way to gropes. Rings give way to rimjobs. Fields give way to fondles. Their fingers, so skilled at manipulating mathematical equations, now find a use in manipulating each other's boundary layers. Both women writhe and squirm in unison until they are epsilon away from a mutual orgasm (epsilon -> 0 quadratically fast).

And then it's over. No more theorems, lemmas, corrolaries or proofs. The two young women lie on the floor knowing that their relationship has changed forever. Without a word they clothe themselves and the impressionable young student leaves the office. Never again will they discuss this incident. This will be an isolated singularity hidden for all time in the vast infiniteness of time.

GMD

Whether she's right or wrong...

[dysprosia]

If she developed some new techniques in solving the problem or made some advance into solving the problem, then that's important enough. Math is a collaborative science, too, in any case...if she's not right, someone could build on her work and improve it.

Re:copyright ownership?

[thorgil]

the journal owns the text, not what the text says.
big difference.

In "ordinary errors" should have been catched in the review process. If not, the journal has bad reviewers.
It sometimes cost money to publish scientific articles.
In essance, you pay them to review your paper.
Major errors that slip through, should be blamed on the journal, yes.

Math? Blech

[NanoGator]

Can anybody give me a layman's version of what this mystical math problem is? The f'n article thinks I already know this.

Re:Math? Blech

[Ioldanach]

The problem isn't really distillable into layman's terms. If you aren't a mathematician you probably won't understand it. I've taken enough calculus to know I have no idea what the problem wants. :)

You can find a technical description Here, however.

Here's an idea for Dell...

[bckrispi]

Instead of making their customers jump through hoops to remove the preinstalled spyware, why don't they grow a pair and forbid the crap from being installed in the first place??? Don't they have some kind of say-so in what gets loaded on their products? Shouldn't they be held accountable for protecting their customers' privacy? As the saying goes: "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem". It looks like Dell has already determined which side of the line they want to be on.

Re:copyright ownership?

[praksys]

(1) Uh.. can you even "sell" the copyright of mathematical proofs like this? Mathematics is truly in a scary and sorry state if you have to hand over full copyright of such a work to get it published...

You can't copyright a mathematical proof, but you can copyright an article in which a proof is given. In accademia there is nothing unusual about having to hand over the copyright to your work in order to get it published. In some fields accademics can't even give their work away - they have to pay journals to publish their articles. No big surprise either. If you ever spend any time reading the crap that gets published you will soon wish that you were being paid to read it.

FAT Patents

[certsoft]

As was pointed out numerous times in the original slashdot article, the patents refer to long file names. If you don't implement them, then no problem, so why insist on saying the patent is on FAT?

Re:Ownership of Proof

[StrutterX]

I have always found that directly e-mailing the author of any paper buried like this always results in them getting a copy to me. Academics are great about stuff like that. Wonderful people. I'll never forget asking for a copy of one wavelet paper from a researcher at an Italian University and three days later this enormous box full of copies of every paper the author had written turned up on my doorstep - and I don't even live on the same continent as Italy.

The Governator

[Scrameustache]

it will not be stopping the sale of transgenic Zebra danios in the USA. [...] Apart from California, where Arnie has banned them...

Apparently, Arnold want to be the only genetically modified organism in California...

Re:They could swim into the state.

[rmull]

Maybe the salmon will be distracted. "Ooh! Look at the little glowing fish! I've lost all interest in spawning!"

RE: eMachines. Depends -- like everything

[smchris]

What do you need? What will it cost you?

I set up an uncompressed Knoppix on a dual-boot for an eMachine dial-up user new to linux. Didn't go badly. 64 meg video was OK. Response was OK. There was a proprietary modem driver available with a crippled demo download that installed fine. If you just need a computer and can get a good price, I wouldn't knock it.

Re:They could swim into the state.

[Daniel_Staal]

"Ooh! Look at the little glowing fish! I've lost all interest in spawning!"

*Sigh*. No, this is closer: "I'm sorry, I just can't do this with it glowing at me!"

"Ok, I'll get him out of the stream." (Pause, splash) "Now, where were we..."

(Fishy noises)

"I just can't... I can't stop thinking about it glowing at me."

"It's gone. It can't be glowing at you now."

"But I can't get it out of my head!"

"What is it, really? Am I to fat? To thin? To red? Not red enough? What? Last night you had a headache, the night before that it was your 'time of the month', before that... Don't you love me anymore?"

"I... I don't know. I'm not sure I do."

"What happened? What went wrong?"

"I'm not sure. I think we just grew apart. Please, let's not talk about it now. I... I need to sleep."

"Fine."

"Um, could you sleep on the other side of the streambed..."

And it is all due to a glowing fish...

coding 64-bit apps on Unixes and Windows

[LinuxParanoid]

In general, most Unixes and Linux (as you say) have adopted the LP64 model where longs/pointers are 64-bits and ints are 32 bits (some gory details here. (Cray's Unix is an exception; it's ILP64).

Windows OSes however have adopted the LLP64 model where ints and longs are 32-bits still, but long longs and pointers are 64-bits (gory Windows details here and here.)

Both 32-bit Windows and Unix traditionally used ILP32, so the porting characteristics moving to 64-bit code are slightly different across the two platforms.

--LinuxParanoid

Author's responsibility

[Phragmen-Lindelof]

In mathematics, the accuracy of a proof is the responsibility of the author. A referee will attempt to determine the correctness of a proof but neither an editor nor a referee is ultimately responsible. Publishing an incorrect proof is not always bad; the "Yamabe conjecture" arose from a paper by Yamabe in 1960 (Osaka Math. Journal, Vol. 12, pp. 21-37) which was accepted as correct. (Rick Schoen provided a correct proof for the case of compact manifolds in 1984 and, for example, Zhiren Jin provided a counterexample for noncompact manifolds in 1986.) However, claiming that the publisher is responsible for errors is silly and unprofessional.

eMachines T6000 is now in my hands

[fo0bar]

I am now the first owner of an eMachines T6000 in Reno (which isn't too suprising considering this town...)

After reading the original story, I tracked down the bestbuy.com page for it, and it said that they had pickup service for this specific item at the local best buy. I called them up and spent about a half hour on the phone while they tracked them down. Turns out they didn't even have them on the floor yet.

I hopped in the car and drove down. Turns out they had 5 in, and I was buying the first one. Nifty. I literally just got back about 10 minutes ago and have just plugged it in, so I don't have much of a review yet, except for this: the 32-bit Windows XP Home that was preloaded took a little under 4 seconds to go from the end of the computer's POST to a start menu.

20:58 <@xi> that is pretty fast
20:59 <@xi> now imagine how fast a *real* OS will boot

I am currently downloading the gentoo amd64 livecd.

on Oxenhielm's paper

[varaani]

(disclaimer: my background in dynamical systems, much less this particular problem, is not that strong)

The second part of Hilbert's 16th problem deals with limit cycles, the way things will go on eventually in dynamical systems if they are not disturbed externally. The subproblem 2/3 of this problem (it's the indexing that makes math complicated..) asks if there exists an upper bound on the number of different limit cycles one can have in the system.

Oxenhielm attacks the problem by considering first a special case called the Lienard equation and approximating its solution by harmonic oscillation. The proof begins: "Noticing that the state variable x of the Lienard equation (1) behaves approximately like a sine function in simulations (see Fig.1),we assume -- in order to make a good approximation of x -- that both state variables are dominated by a harmonic term ...."
Now, to my engineer's eyes, the functions in Fig.1 seem more like triangular waves, with definitely more than one single frequency component. Yet the accuracy of the approximation has not been considered at all in the paper. Also, 'proof by looking at results of simulations' is not really valid if you don't have any other evidence.

Another bad part is on page 6, where it is claimed that "Note that the method of describing functions may be used in a similar manner as in the proof above,to find the upper bounds for the Hilbert number in any planar polynomial vectorfield. Thus, it is possible to completely solve the second part of Hilbert's 16th problem by using this approach."
Wait a minute, how did that happen? What if the harmonic approximation fails on other than Lienard equations? It might just work, I have no idea, but this assertment hardly proves the fact.

Note however that this is very different from Andrew Wiles' proof of the Fermat conjencture. While very few people in the world could understand the odd-hundred pages of Wiles' proof, Oxenhielm's paper is just eight pages of much more accessible mathematics.

But I have a paper in the review process myself, and sure as hell would hate to see nonqualified people discussing its validity publicly, so maybe I'll just shut up now :)

Re:on Oxenhielm's paper

[RevMike]

Oxenhielm attacks the problem by considering first a special case called the Lienard equation and approximating its solution by harmonic oscillation. The proof begins: "Noticing that the state variable x of the Lienard equation (1) behaves approximately like a sine function in simulations (see Fig.1),we assume -- in order to make a good approximation of x -- that both state variables are dominated by a harmonic term ...."

You'fe heard of the race horse trainer who hires a physicist to help prepare his horse for the Kentucky Derby? The physicist's ideas all begin "Assume a perfectly spherical horse..."

Re:Disappointed

[mrsev]

You were joking but you are not far off. We scientists do much research with public and charity money. We then submit a paper, must pay some of the costs of the printing, and then to read it must subscribe to the journal. (OK, some journals are free). There are several campains going on in the scientific community to get all journals for free, but this is still far off.
There are many great papers that I would like to read and must resort to ,
a) writing to the first author and asking for a copy,
b) get a copy for the British Library for around 20EUR,
c)buy a single copy from the publisher at around 30EUR each paper.
I host on my website some of my papers and am breaking copyright law by doing so. THe way I see it I have no choice. If some young student wants to work in my lab and they want to see what we do and to study before the interview how else can they read this work. ..my 0.02EUR anyway