Forget playing against a computer and losing all the time. At SICO we're on the opposite end of the spectrum -- you can play against thousands of idiots all around the world. Tired of the same old boring pieces? Well, we've got new pieces too. In fact, since you lead such a busy life, you don't even have to play a whole game! Just play a single move, and back to work!
Well, we just cook up some arbitrary utility function, assume that everyone acts rationally, and then argue that the utility function is maximized. Therefore, it's the perfect system!
I dunno, guys. I think linux users have a very strange aesthetic.
KDE (in KDEstep mode), to me, is one of the cleanest-looking window managers around. The icons are pixel-perfect, there's no distracting eye candy, and the window management doesn't get in the way of what actually matters -- the programs. (In this respect I think KDE learned some good things from Windows.)
There's no accounting for tastes, I guess, but we don't all feel this way. Keep it up, KDE!
If you just write the same program you would have written in C, the speed will be quite good, probably about 20% CPU-slower than C. (And if your program is IO-heavy, you might not notice this at all.)
If you have any sort of limited time or interest (as most projects do), you'll be able to write a much better program in O'Caml than you would in C, because:
- Because it's safe, you won't need to ever spend time tracking down or debugging core dumps or memory leaks. Because it's statically typed, a large percentage of bugs are caught at compile-time.
- If your program is interacting with the network, you won't need to worry about buffer overflows, format string bugs, or most of the common security problems.
- O'Caml has a much richer core language than C, with support for algebraic datatypes, pattern matching, higher-order functions, threads, modules, and objects. You can do a lot of great stuff with these.
- O'Caml has a nicer (though not as nice as, say, SML) module system, which keeps your program from getting unmanageable, and helps isolate faults to a particular module.
And by better, I also mean faster -- development wisdom says that algorithms and data structures are what matter most, not just the instruction-level efficiency of your code.
Of course, if you don't know the language, then it will have a higher startup cost for you. But I think it's worth it; you'll learn a different programming style that can help you think in new ways even when you're writing code in Old School languages. =)
Everything already looks crappy on a 256-color display, so why do we care if we use unsafe colors? Dithering your.GIFs to the web-safe palette makes them look bad. Don't do it!
Now, for this "unsafe palette"... well, color charts are fine, but the HSB color picker in photoshop is much nicer and is interactive. It also contains many colors that are impossible to reproduce in print. Not that I wouldn't like to see even more color models on the computer, but what's the point of this?
Actually, I'm pretty sure that the fact that nobody was buying their products did them in. Lots of companies are run by sleazeballs, and many of them are quite successful...
In fact, an uncompressed file will usually be transmitted faster, since some links (especially modem connections) do compression themselves. So this statement is backwards!
This is an excellent troll. So much so that I can't even resist responding!
KaZaa asks you about a *few* of the many spyware apps they want to install on your computer. But MANY of them are installed regardless of what you choose. Try running Ad-Aware on your machine, or check out the uninstallation instructions for their newest thing (they one that this article is about).
The hydrogen peroxide you get in the drug store is highly diluted (to something like 0.5%). Real hydrogen peroxide burns your skin, can explode if heated or shocked, and is used as rocket fuel.
Jam with M-x spook
on
Carnivore Update
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I like to use emacs M-x spook to insert "keywords" in my emails. This must really piss off the Carnivore folks...
You can get my comprehensive spook.lines file at http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/spook/. They're included below for your terrorist-finding pleasure.
$400 million 1 October 15 May 1600 Pennsylvania Ave 17 November 3rd October 747 757 767 ACLU ADF AES AIDS AIIB AK-47 ALIR ANO ARD ARN ASALA ASG Abu Dis Abu Nidal Abu Sayyaf Aceh Merdeka Aden-Abyan Afghanistan Ahl-e-Hadees Air Force One Al Qaeda Al Quaida Al-Fatah Al-`Asifa Alamo Albanian Alex Boncayao Brigade Alliance of Eritrean National Force Alliance pour la resistance democratique Allied Democratic Forces American American Airlines Amn Araissi Arab Revolutionary Brigades Arab Revolutionary Council Arafat Area 51 Aum Shinrikyo Aum Supreme Truth Avtomat Kalasnikov BATF Babbar Khalsa Baghdad Berlin Bhinderanwala Tiger Force Black September Brigate Rosse CERT CIA CIRA CNDD CNRM CNRT Catholic Reaction Force Cessna China Chukaku-Ha Clinton Cocaine Communist Conseil Cuba DCS1000 DDoS DES DFLP DNA DXM Dal Khalsa Dayak Delta Airlines Delta Force Dev Sol Devrimci Sol DoS EFF ELF-RC ESSA EZLN Eastern Shan State Army Eiffel Tower Ejercito Popular Boricua Ejercito Popular Revolucionario Ellalan Force Eritrean Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna FALINA FALINTIL FALN FBI FMLN FRETILIN FROLINA FSF Farabundo Marti Fatah Force 17 Free Aceh Ft. Bragg Ft. Meade GHB GIA GRAPO George Bush George W Bush Gerakin Aceh Merdeka Grey Wolves H2O2 HAMAS Hague Conference Harakat ul-Ansar Hawari Hitler Hizb-i Wahdat Hizb-i-Islami Hizb-ul-Mujahideen Hizballah Hizbullah Honduras ICBM IIS 5.0 IRA IRA Ikhwan-ul-Mussalmin Interahamwe Iparretarrak Islamic Israel JKLF Jamaat ul-Fuqra Jamat-e-Islami Jamiat-e-Ahl-e-Hadees John Dillinger KGB KKK Kach Kahane Chai Kashmir Kennedy Khaddafi Khalistan Khmer Rouge Komala Kosovo Kurdish Kurdistan Kuwait LSD LSD LTTE La Cosa Nostra Lakshar-e-Taiba Lautaro Legion of Doom Lenin Les mongoles MAPU/L MD5 MDMA MI6 MILF MNLF Macheteros Macheteros Mafia Maktab al-Khidamat Mantis Manuel Rodriguez Marxist Maubere Resistance Mayfly Mayi-Mayi Middle-Core Mohajir Qaumi Mong Tai Morazanist Mossad Mothaidda Quami Mujahedin-e Khalq Myanmar NORAD NSA Navy Nazi Nellis Range Noriega North Korea Oklahoma City Ortega Osama Bin Laden PALIPEHUTU PCP PETN PGP PLO Pakistan Panama Pearl Harbor Peking Provos Qaddafi RC5 RDX RENAMO RSA Reno Rijndael Romania Rule Psix SCUBA SDI SEAL Team 6 SHA SWAT Saddam Hussein Saheed Khalsa Scientology Semtex Serbian Shora-e-Jehad Sivi Vukovi South Africa Soviet Steyr Students of the Engineer TATP TEMPEST THC TNT Tal Al Za'atar Talaa' al-Fateh Tamil Eelam Teamsters Terra Lliure Treasury Tupac Amaru U-235 UN US Airways Usama Bin Laden Uzi WTO Waco White House World Trade Center World Trade Organization Zapatistas airframe airport al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya al-Jihad al-Qa'ida algorithm amatol ambush ambush ammo ammunition anonymous anti-tank archives armada armor armor-piercing arms arrangements assassinate assassination assassination assault atomic bomb bank account biological blowfish bomb bomb boobytrap border broken arrow c4 camera carnivore carnivore charcoal chemical child pornography chinese class struggle claymore cocaine cockpit codebook colonel commando composition b conspiracy constitution cordite corporate corrupt council counter-intelligence crack-cocaine cracking cray credit card cryptographic czar d-day data haven defcon defenses democratie detcord detonate detonators dictionary disruption dissent divers doctrine domestic doomsday double agent e-bola echelon ecstasy efnet embassy embassy embassy empire encrypt enigma espionage explosion explosive face recognition faction fertilizer fissionable flight 800 football freedom freemasons fuselage genetic gold bullion government grenades gun gunpowder guns h-bomb hack harbor heroin hijack hostage hostages hydrogen bomb hydrogen peroxide illuminati impulse incendiaries infiltration infosec infrastructure initiators insurgent intel international internet internet worm interpol ireland jihad kamikazi kampuchea ketamine kibo kill kill kill kill launch codes lead azide lead styphante liberate liberation limousine lockpick loyalist main charge man-in-the-middle marijuana martyr massive DDoS maverick mercury fulminate mescaline microfiche microfilm minefield mines motorcade motorola mouvement munitions napalm nationalist negotiation negotiatior nitric acid nitrocellulose nuclear nuclear nukes olympics oppressed orthodox outlook express password picric acid pipe-bomb plague platter charge plutonium plutonium policy political pornography pre-teen president president primers private key propaganda psyops public key pulse detonation engine radar rail gun rebel remailer resistance revolucionario rijndael robotic rocket fuel rockets root-servers.net rubella salt peter sanctions satelliate satellite satellite phone secret secret key secret service secure security sequence shaped charge shoe bomb shotgun smallpox smuggle sniper sniper socialist space station special k spy steganography strategic submarine subsonic suicide suicide bombing suitcase suitcase nuke sulfur supercomputer supersonic surveillance tear gas teflon bullets terminate terrorism terrorist theater missile defense thermite thermonuclear timers triacetone triperoxide tunneling undercover undernet underwater united nations uranium violence virus virus warfare wargames warrant weapons white house white noise generator windows XP wiretap zenith
Yeah, I know a place. It's called the fucking internet. There is free music *all over* the place (mp3.com is not a bad starting spot -- it'd take a long time to exhaust their offerings), and while amateur movies are not so easy to find, there are still tons of them. Just use google, or follow links from some content you already like.
Here's an important one that I bet will be overlooked: Hindley-Milner type inference. It's what makes programming in statically-typed languages require even less type annotations than languages like C!
Don't forget that Milner got a turing award, in part for his work on type systems.
Hey, I've got a much worse problem to report: Most people don't use encryption!!! Right now, we're all browsing slashdot, our credentials sent in plaintext, our sessions open for anybody to see! Almost everybody sends unencrypted e-mail!
Rather than freak out about the NSA being able to crack 1024-bit keys, maybe we should be doing more to actually get encryption used by people?
It's possible to write prolog programs with more efficient search procedures. But, I guess in those cases you're right, it might simply be easier to do procedurally. (Or at least would take a prolog expert..) Yet some of the problems that ACM has given *really do* call for backtracking search, and that is an awful pain to code in C in a short time.
But really, any problem that involves manipulating lists or other recursive data structures is *really* well suited to a functional programming language like SML. And type safety is a serious win when you need to crank out programs fast! The prolog thing was just so I didn't come off as a FPL nazi.;)
You're totally right for the desktop. I can plug in my 10,000 button mouse if I want. But there is no damn way I'm going to carry around a mouse to use on my laptop -- they really need to stop crippling them here!
To the original poster: If you want a laptop that will help you score, try the Sony Vaios.
Slashdot Mirror
Forget playing against a computer and losing all the time. At SICO we're on the opposite end of the spectrum -- you can play against thousands of idiots all around the world. Tired of the same old boring pieces? Well, we've got new pieces too. In fact, since you lead such a busy life, you don't even have to play a whole game! Just play a single move, and back to work!
"Focuses" and "foci" are both fine. So is "octopuses." We stopped speaking latin hundreds of years ago. ;)
What is an incorrect spelling, "focuses"? That's perfectly fine.
Well, we just cook up some arbitrary utility function, assume that everyone acts rationally, and then argue that the utility function is maximized. Therefore, it's the perfect system!
I dunno, guys. I think linux users have a very strange aesthetic.
KDE (in KDEstep mode), to me, is one of the cleanest-looking window managers around. The icons are pixel-perfect, there's no distracting eye candy, and the window management doesn't get in the way of what actually matters -- the programs. (In this respect I think KDE learned some good things from Windows.)
There's no accounting for tastes, I guess, but we don't all feel this way. Keep it up, KDE!
Or the non-smokers who inhale your smoke at a club or restaurant.
Yes, we are very happy with how fast our Quake 3 Arena games are...
Well, not all PCs are as costly as the Vaio. =)
Yes, I would really recommend O'Caml. Here's why:
If you just write the same program you would have written in C, the speed will be quite good, probably about 20% CPU-slower than C. (And if your program is IO-heavy, you might not notice this at all.)
If you have any sort of limited time or interest (as most projects do), you'll be able to write a much better program in O'Caml than you would in C, because:
- Because it's safe, you won't need to ever spend time tracking down or debugging core dumps or memory leaks. Because it's statically typed, a large percentage of bugs are caught at compile-time.
- If your program is interacting with the network, you won't need to worry about buffer overflows, format string bugs, or most of the common security problems.
- O'Caml has a much richer core language than C, with support for algebraic datatypes, pattern matching, higher-order functions, threads, modules, and objects. You can do a lot of great stuff with these.
- O'Caml has a nicer (though not as nice as, say, SML) module system, which keeps your program from getting unmanageable, and helps isolate faults to a particular module.
And by better, I also mean faster -- development wisdom says that algorithms and data structures are what matter most, not just the instruction-level efficiency of your code.
Of course, if you don't know the language, then it will have a higher startup cost for you. But I think it's worth it; you'll learn a different programming style that can help you think in new ways even when you're writing code in Old School languages. =)
Everything already looks crappy on a 256-color display, so why do we care if we use unsafe colors? Dithering your .GIFs to the web-safe palette makes them look bad. Don't do it!
Now, for this "unsafe palette"... well, color charts are fine, but the HSB color picker in photoshop is much nicer and is interactive. It also contains many colors that are impossible to reproduce in print. Not that I wouldn't like to see even more color models on the computer, but what's the point of this?
Actually, I'm pretty sure that the fact that nobody was buying their products did them in. Lots of companies are run by sleazeballs, and many of them are quite successful...
In fact, an uncompressed file will usually be transmitted faster, since some links (especially modem connections) do compression themselves. So this statement is backwards!
That's a good one. I'll have to give that to my students some time. =)
And if we hold a similar stance against patents, why is that bad?
This is an excellent troll. So much so that I can't even resist responding!
KaZaa asks you about a *few* of the many spyware apps they want to install on your computer. But MANY of them are installed regardless of what you choose. Try running Ad-Aware on your machine, or check out the uninstallation instructions for their newest thing (they one that this article is about).
The hydrogen peroxide you get in the drug store is highly diluted (to something like 0.5%). Real hydrogen peroxide burns your skin, can explode if heated or shocked, and is used as rocket fuel.
I like to use emacs M-x spook to insert "keywords" in my emails. This must really piss off the Carnivore folks...
You can get my comprehensive spook.lines file at http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/spook/. They're included below for your terrorist-finding pleasure.
$400 million 1 October 15 May 1600 Pennsylvania Ave 17 November 3rd October 747 757 767 ACLU ADF AES AIDS AIIB AK-47 ALIR ANO ARD ARN ASALA ASG Abu Dis Abu Nidal Abu Sayyaf Aceh Merdeka Aden-Abyan Afghanistan Ahl-e-Hadees Air Force One Al Qaeda Al Quaida Al-Fatah Al-`Asifa Alamo Albanian Alex Boncayao Brigade Alliance of Eritrean National Force Alliance pour la resistance democratique Allied Democratic Forces American American Airlines Amn Araissi Arab Revolutionary Brigades Arab Revolutionary Council Arafat Area 51 Aum Shinrikyo Aum Supreme Truth Avtomat Kalasnikov BATF Babbar Khalsa Baghdad Berlin Bhinderanwala Tiger Force Black September Brigate Rosse CERT CIA CIRA CNDD CNRM CNRT Catholic Reaction Force Cessna China Chukaku-Ha Clinton Cocaine Communist Conseil Cuba DCS1000 DDoS DES DFLP DNA DXM Dal Khalsa Dayak Delta Airlines Delta Force Dev Sol Devrimci Sol DoS EFF ELF-RC ESSA EZLN Eastern Shan State Army Eiffel Tower Ejercito Popular Boricua Ejercito Popular Revolucionario Ellalan Force Eritrean Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna FALINA FALINTIL FALN FBI FMLN FRETILIN FROLINA FSF Farabundo Marti Fatah Force 17 Free Aceh Ft. Bragg Ft. Meade GHB GIA GRAPO George Bush George W Bush Gerakin Aceh Merdeka Grey Wolves H2O2 HAMAS Hague Conference Harakat ul-Ansar Hawari Hitler Hizb-i Wahdat Hizb-i-Islami Hizb-ul-Mujahideen Hizballah Hizbullah Honduras ICBM IIS 5.0 IRA IRA Ikhwan-ul-Mussalmin Interahamwe Iparretarrak Islamic Israel JKLF Jamaat ul-Fuqra Jamat-e-Islami Jamiat-e-Ahl-e-Hadees John Dillinger KGB KKK Kach Kahane Chai Kashmir Kennedy Khaddafi Khalistan Khmer Rouge Komala Kosovo Kurdish Kurdistan Kuwait LSD LSD LTTE La Cosa Nostra Lakshar-e-Taiba Lautaro Legion of Doom Lenin Les mongoles MAPU/L MD5 MDMA MI6 MILF MNLF Macheteros Macheteros Mafia Maktab al-Khidamat Mantis Manuel Rodriguez Marxist Maubere Resistance Mayfly Mayi-Mayi Middle-Core Mohajir Qaumi Mong Tai Morazanist Mossad Mothaidda Quami Mujahedin-e Khalq Myanmar NORAD NSA Navy Nazi Nellis Range Noriega North Korea Oklahoma City Ortega Osama Bin Laden PALIPEHUTU PCP PETN PGP PLO Pakistan Panama Pearl Harbor Peking Provos Qaddafi RC5 RDX RENAMO RSA Reno Rijndael Romania Rule Psix SCUBA SDI SEAL Team 6 SHA SWAT Saddam Hussein Saheed Khalsa Scientology Semtex Serbian Shora-e-Jehad Sivi Vukovi South Africa Soviet Steyr Students of the Engineer TATP TEMPEST THC TNT Tal Al Za'atar Talaa' al-Fateh Tamil Eelam Teamsters Terra Lliure Treasury Tupac Amaru U-235 UN US Airways Usama Bin Laden Uzi WTO Waco White House World Trade Center World Trade Organization Zapatistas airframe airport al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya al-Jihad al-Qa'ida algorithm amatol ambush ambush ammo ammunition anonymous anti-tank archives armada armor armor-piercing arms arrangements assassinate assassination assassination assault atomic bomb bank account biological blowfish bomb bomb boobytrap border broken arrow c4 camera carnivore carnivore charcoal chemical child pornography chinese class struggle claymore cocaine cockpit codebook colonel commando composition b conspiracy constitution cordite corporate corrupt council counter-intelligence crack-cocaine cracking cray credit card cryptographic czar d-day data haven defcon defenses democratie detcord detonate detonators dictionary disruption dissent divers doctrine domestic doomsday double agent e-bola echelon ecstasy efnet embassy embassy embassy empire encrypt enigma espionage explosion explosive face recognition faction fertilizer fissionable flight 800 football freedom freemasons fuselage genetic gold bullion government grenades gun gunpowder guns h-bomb hack harbor heroin hijack hostage hostages hydrogen bomb hydrogen peroxide illuminati impulse incendiaries infiltration infosec infrastructure initiators insurgent intel international internet internet worm interpol ireland jihad kamikazi kampuchea ketamine kibo kill kill kill kill launch codes lead azide lead styphante liberate liberation limousine lockpick loyalist main charge man-in-the-middle marijuana martyr massive DDoS maverick mercury fulminate mescaline microfiche microfilm minefield mines motorcade motorola mouvement munitions napalm nationalist negotiation negotiatior nitric acid nitrocellulose nuclear nuclear nukes olympics oppressed orthodox outlook express password picric acid pipe-bomb plague platter charge plutonium plutonium policy political pornography pre-teen president president primers private key propaganda psyops public key pulse detonation engine radar rail gun rebel remailer resistance revolucionario rijndael robotic rocket fuel rockets root-servers.net rubella salt peter sanctions satelliate satellite satellite phone secret secret key secret service secure security sequence shaped charge shoe bomb shotgun smallpox smuggle sniper sniper socialist space station special k spy steganography strategic submarine subsonic suicide suicide bombing suitcase suitcase nuke sulfur supercomputer supersonic surveillance tear gas teflon bullets terminate terrorism terrorist theater missile defense thermite thermonuclear timers triacetone triperoxide tunneling undercover undernet underwater united nations uranium violence virus virus warfare wargames warrant weapons white house white noise generator windows XP wiretap zenith
All I know is that perl programmers tend to be greasy and undershowered.
I don't think that helps much in bed...
Yeah, I know a place. It's called the fucking internet. There is free music *all over* the place (mp3.com is not a bad starting spot -- it'd take a long time to exhaust their offerings), and while amateur movies are not so easy to find, there are still tons of them. Just use google, or follow links from some content you already like.
Here's an important one that I bet will be overlooked: Hindley-Milner type inference. It's what makes programming in statically-typed languages require even less type annotations than languages like C!
Don't forget that Milner got a turing award, in part for his work on type systems.
Hey, I've got a much worse problem to report: Most people don't use encryption!!! Right now, we're all browsing slashdot, our credentials sent in plaintext, our sessions open for anybody to see! Almost everybody sends unencrypted e-mail!
Rather than freak out about the NSA being able to crack 1024-bit keys, maybe we should be doing more to actually get encryption used by people?
Oops, Mr. Smarty Pants! I can factor 1024-bit primes for $0!
It's possible to write prolog programs with more efficient search procedures. But, I guess in those cases you're right, it might simply be easier to do procedurally. (Or at least would take a prolog expert..) Yet some of the problems that ACM has given *really do* call for backtracking search, and that is an awful pain to code in C in a short time.
;)
But really, any problem that involves manipulating lists or other recursive data structures is *really* well suited to a functional programming language like SML. And type safety is a serious win when you need to crank out programs fast! The prolog thing was just so I didn't come off as a FPL nazi.
You're totally right for the desktop. I can plug in my 10,000 button mouse if I want. But there is no damn way I'm going to carry around a mouse to use on my laptop -- they really need to stop crippling them here!
To the original poster: If you want a laptop that will help you score, try the Sony Vaios.
Uh, there is a solution to the travelling salesman problem, it's just slow. In fact, it's totally simple! Why isn't it fair?