which means that you have to be able to draw it out on a piece of paper without any of the lines crossing.
But, don't be discouraged--it was fun to solve the problem that you did, right?
I have worked on it for a while, keeping a list of "forbidden subgraphs", but I keep losing track of the work. Still, it's fun, and you can spend a lot of time (at least with my approach).
What I am doing with it is starting with the maximal circuit (I don't know the terminology--the biggest loop in it that isn't directly short circuited) and the maximal one connected to that.
Or something like that. LIke, draw a 4-sided figure with a triangle on top and see if you can stay planar, starting from there, and exceed 12 nodes. I think I might have proved (by tedious lists of drawings) that you can't, but I don't remember which ones i finished.
Somewhere in this process you may end up with some clever insight into the problem. I don't think I have yet, but I do seem to remember something...
Oh well, getting old.
later
solve the degree-diameter problem for small graphs
on
Boredom Chasers?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
there are (or at least there were, last time I checked) some unsolved problems in graph theory that can be attacked with pencil and paper.
Make a planar (in 2-d and no edges cross each other) graph where each node has no more than three connections. Each node also has to be no more than three hops from any other node. Can you get more than twelve nodes? Can you prove that nobody else can, either?
I have scribbled away many an intriguing hour playing with this.
I agree that there are always moneyed interests pulling strings, but there are also people in responsible positions from time to time who want to do the right thing.
As far as the whole question of protecting consumers, well, it was consumers who made microsoft what it is. Unthinkingly following the herd often causes this kind of problem. I'm more interested in finding some way to protect the minority that want to innovate, etc. It's nice to say (and true) that we are acting in the interest of consumers, but they're the ones that caused this problem and quite possibly, it is starting to appear now, the only ones who will be able to do anything about it. Don't hold your breath.
Re:I'd have a hard time taking this book seriously
on
God's Debris
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
that's an astute observation, but it's an observation about a problem that you have, not a problem with Adams writing philosophy.
Re:Philosophical differences, and the Unix Way
on
Apple releases iPod
·
· Score: 2
A UNIX guru can't take working with inferior tools. She can't stand sitting there doing a repetative task when she
should be scripting it. She understands that her job is to be the master, and the computer is the tool to do the
repetative job
This pretty much sums up the whole post, and I pretty much agree with the "facta", so to speak. But I am not sure what your point is. The idea for Apple is basically "make art that makes money". It's one thing to make art, but to make art that makes money to have to make art that appeals to either a few people willing to spend a lot of money or a lot of people willing to spend a little.
The Unix guru market segment is pretty small, and not prone to spending millions for art. So Apple targets the millions that are not Unix gurus but that appreciate (functional) art. Still not as big as the Windows market, but at least they still get to make art.
If your point was just that Unix is better for people who are willing to spend the time to learn it, I heartily agree. To the majority of people in the world, this is not relevant, they just want to get something done without having to spend time learning how to do it. There is a certain elegance in making this possible, despite the fact that many who do like to learn as much as possible all the time tend to look down on the people who don't, and the companies that sell to them.
I
only wish that the rest of the world would realize it. We are always blamed for everything and never even get a thank
you for the things we do.
Well, appreciation is nice and all, I agree. But what I wish is that we Americans would start opening our eyes to the bad things we do.
To use a ridiculously absurd analogy, consider what just happened to be a way-over-the-top tasteless flame. It is natural and perhaps justified to put the flamer in his place. But the truly noble person will also be able to look at that flame and see whether there was something true in the flamer's argument, and, if there is, take the true part to heart and do something to change it.
You don't have to agree with or even tolerate the flamer's methods--you can still work to get his account revoked because of his misbehavior. I'm all in favor of that. BUT, if you want to really be the best that you can, you will look for the faults in your own actions that contributed to the flamer's feelings.
As some people have observed, that might help you avoid being flamed like that in the future--but, completely aside from that, it's the right thing to do, and something that you should be doing anyway.
Re:there's an argument to be made....
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 2
we brought it on ourselves by indirectly supporting/turning a blind eye to the horrible oppresion of palestinians. That, probably more than anything else, is what fuels hatred for america.
you would hate america, too, if you lived there and saw what the palestinians suffered.
For an unbiased viewpoint on this, read "Blood Brothers" by Elias Chacour (available on amazon, I checked). Before you flame this veiwpoint or dismiss it as fringe, read that book and see what you think. It will change your entire view of the middle east.
A few points in addition to the comments already posted, whic are very good.
When you are on the plane and they say "we have a bomb", you have to think thinks like "if that is a bomb, and I decide to try to be a hero, I might end up killing everyone on this plane".
You can't see out the front or into the minds of the hijackers and know what the planned cost was. It's not that easy.
For those who don't seek vengeance, I can only say that you are likely not living in America.
I do not seek vengeance. I live in America. I wish America would wake up to the way it has ignored the horrible injustices that Palestinians have suffered at the hands of Israel and which we have supported or turned a blind eye to.
You want to look around for a culprit--look at the demand side of the equation, instead of the shallow analysis focusing on the supply (Bin Ladin and his ilk).
The demand comes from injustices that have gone unanswered, and left to fester and cause people to...
Seriously, i notice that all the time. And what's worse, you will see people arguing that such-and-such is the "smart" thing to do, and what they really mean is that it's what will make you the most money. It's one thing to say that money is what matters, but quite another to denote intelligence itself to the level of hoarding.
So, what you're saying is, when there are seismic tremors, Nessie gets uncomfortable and diplays the otherwise unusual behavior of coming to the surface?
Yes, this is tongue-in-cheek, but when A correlates with B, it is just as possible that A causes B as it is that B causes A. It seems that very few people account for this in their reasoning about phenomenological studies. --
What the HELL kind of first post is this?? NO misspelling of "first", NO reference to sex, and, worst of all YOU APPEAR TO HAVE ACTUALLY READ THE FRIGGIN ARTICLE!!!
You clearly HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE HECK YOU ARE DOING!
Now, if I were to rip off large sections of Mitchell's GWtW I would be liable for
copyright infringement. But I can put track listings and song listings all over the Internet
if I want and no one has any right to say "boo".
How on earth can you presume to be able to prevent me from saying "boo"? If you think that your posting of a couple of track listings can infringe on my founding-father, constitutional convention-given first-amendment rights, WELL, YOU'VE GOT ANOTHER THING COMING, BUCKO.
Why, I have half a mind to say "boo" right now... --
Y'know, let's look at some other statistics. What has MS killed?
Dr DOS--yeah, there was a settlement, so the real story will never surface. But we all know what happened. So you can cross off the DOS achaeivement--what they acheived was getting a technically inferior solution rammed down people's throats.
OS/2--i know, I know, IBM killed it themselves by not giving it what they could (or, insert other theory). But, by accounts from all over, it was better. In the free software world, while there are casualties due to popularity/ego/etc, it's not nearly as bad as in proprietary models, where it's "to hell with the user, this is our revenue".
In the same vein, Lotus or WordPerfect may very well have been technically superior, but were simply deep-sixed by MS' deft use of control of the OS.
Windows 2000 I don't have much experience about--I'll give them that one.
I think MS bought one heck of a lot more of their starting stuff than Linux did, but it's a tenuous point anyway.
I think you have to take what they add and then remove what they subtract. Free software doesn't kill. (Ok, it might kill free time and overpricing, but I'm talking about technology.) --
Slashdot Mirror
those blasted 'puters have been gettin on my nerves for ages! 'Bout time we got our nerves on them!
...the tricky part is that it has to be planar.
which means that you have to be able to draw it out on a piece of paper without any of the lines crossing.
But, don't be discouraged--it was fun to solve the problem that you did, right?
I have worked on it for a while, keeping a list of "forbidden subgraphs", but I keep losing track of the work. Still, it's fun, and you can spend a lot of time (at least with my approach).
What I am doing with it is starting with the maximal circuit (I don't know the terminology--the biggest loop in it that isn't directly short circuited) and the maximal one connected to that.
Or something like that. LIke, draw a 4-sided figure with a triangle on top and see if you can stay planar, starting from there, and exceed 12 nodes. I think I might have proved (by tedious lists of drawings) that you can't, but I don't remember which ones i finished.
Somewhere in this process you may end up with some clever insight into the problem. I don't think I have yet, but I do seem to remember something...
Oh well, getting old.
later
there are (or at least there were, last time I checked) some unsolved problems in graph theory that can be attacked with pencil and paper.
Make a planar (in 2-d and no edges cross each other) graph where each node has no more than three connections. Each node also has to be no more than three hops from any other node. Can you get more than twelve nodes? Can you prove that nobody else can, either?
I have scribbled away many an intriguing hour playing with this.
sap?
did I win?
Sorry, that one is good, too. This is the one I meant to point to.
f t. html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.11/microso
Read this.
o at .html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.03/deepthr
I agree that there are always moneyed interests pulling strings, but there are also people in responsible positions from time to time who want to do the right thing.
As far as the whole question of protecting consumers, well, it was consumers who made microsoft what it is. Unthinkingly following the herd often causes this kind of problem. I'm more interested in finding some way to protect the minority that want to innovate, etc. It's nice to say (and true) that we are acting in the interest of consumers, but they're the ones that caused this problem and quite possibly, it is starting to appear now, the only ones who will be able to do anything about it. Don't hold your breath.
that's an astute observation, but it's an observation about a problem that you have, not a problem with Adams writing philosophy.
no, no, no. the reason we exist is...
the earth needs plastic.
It seems to me that an "intelligently" designed spider would not have this defect...
So what is it? Is it "proof of a smart creator" that makes a cool wasp, or "proof of a dumb creator" that makes a susceptible spider?
(Personally, I think a smart creator sets the wheels in motion, turns on all the machines, activates the program, and runs behind the scenes.:)
I was reprogramming host spiders in z80 assembler through the altair's switch-based input before this upstart wasp thing had evolved wings!
jon katz
This pretty much sums up the whole post, and I pretty much agree with the "facta", so to speak. But I am not sure what your point is. The idea for Apple is basically "make art that makes money". It's one thing to make art, but to make art that makes money to have to make art that appeals to either a few people willing to spend a lot of money or a lot of people willing to spend a little.
The Unix guru market segment is pretty small, and not prone to spending millions for art. So Apple targets the millions that are not Unix gurus but that appreciate (functional) art. Still not as big as the Windows market, but at least they still get to make art.
If your point was just that Unix is better for people who are willing to spend the time to learn it, I heartily agree. To the majority of people in the world, this is not relevant, they just want to get something done without having to spend time learning how to do it. There is a certain elegance in making this possible, despite the fact that many who do like to learn as much as possible all the time tend to look down on the people who don't, and the companies that sell to them.
only wish that the rest of the world would realize it. We are always blamed for everything and never even get a thank
you for the things we do.
Well, appreciation is nice and all, I agree. But what I wish is that we Americans would start opening our eyes to the bad things we do.
To use a ridiculously absurd analogy, consider what just happened to be a way-over-the-top tasteless flame. It is natural and perhaps justified to put the flamer in his place. But the truly noble person will also be able to look at that flame and see whether there was something true in the flamer's argument, and, if there is, take the true part to heart and do something to change it.
You don't have to agree with or even tolerate the flamer's methods--you can still work to get his account revoked because of his misbehavior. I'm all in favor of that. BUT, if you want to really be the best that you can, you will look for the faults in your own actions that contributed to the flamer's feelings.
As some people have observed, that might help you avoid being flamed like that in the future--but, completely aside from that, it's the right thing to do, and something that you should be doing anyway.
we brought it on ourselves by indirectly supporting/turning a blind eye to the horrible oppresion of palestinians. That, probably more than anything else, is what fuels hatred for america.
you would hate america, too, if you lived there and saw what the palestinians suffered.
For an unbiased viewpoint on this, read "Blood Brothers" by Elias Chacour (available on amazon, I checked). Before you flame this veiwpoint or dismiss it as fringe, read that book and see what you think. It will change your entire view of the middle east.
A few points in addition to the comments already posted, whic are very good.
When you are on the plane and they say "we have a bomb", you have to think thinks like "if that is a bomb, and I decide to try to be a hero, I might end up killing everyone on this plane".
You can't see out the front or into the minds of the hijackers and know what the planned cost was. It's not that easy.
I do not seek vengeance. I live in America. I wish America would wake up to the way it has ignored the horrible injustices that Palestinians have suffered at the hands of Israel and which we have supported or turned a blind eye to.
You want to look around for a culprit--look at the demand side of the equation, instead of the shallow analysis focusing on the supply (Bin Ladin and his ilk).
The demand comes from injustices that have gone unanswered, and left to fester and cause people to...
Amen, brother. PREACH it!
:)
Seriously, i notice that all the time. And what's worse, you will see people arguing that such-and-such is the "smart" thing to do, and what they really mean is that it's what will make you the most money. It's one thing to say that money is what matters, but quite another to denote intelligence itself to the level of hoarding.
on why there are no comments on this story...
--
So, what you're saying is, when there are seismic tremors, Nessie gets uncomfortable and diplays the otherwise unusual behavior of coming to the surface?
Yes, this is tongue-in-cheek, but when A correlates with B, it is just as possible that A causes B as it is that B causes A. It seems that very few people account for this in their reasoning about phenomenological studies.
--
So _that's_ where they got off to. Thanks, NASA, I'll be out to collect them shortly.
--
What the HELL kind of first post is this?? NO misspelling of "first", NO reference to sex, and, worst of all YOU APPEAR TO HAVE ACTUALLY READ THE FRIGGIN ARTICLE!!!
You clearly HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE HECK YOU ARE DOING!
--
How on earth can you presume to be able to prevent me from saying "boo"? If you think that your posting of a couple of track listings can infringe on my founding-father, constitutional convention-given first-amendment rights, WELL, YOU'VE GOT ANOTHER THING COMING, BUCKO.
Why, I have half a mind to say "boo" right now...
--
Y'know, let's look at some other statistics. What has MS killed?
Dr DOS--yeah, there was a settlement, so the real story will never surface. But we all know what happened. So you can cross off the DOS achaeivement--what they acheived was getting a technically inferior solution rammed down people's throats.
OS/2--i know, I know, IBM killed it themselves by not giving it what they could (or, insert other theory). But, by accounts from all over, it was better. In the free software world, while there are casualties due to popularity/ego/etc, it's not nearly as bad as in proprietary models, where it's "to hell with the user, this is our revenue".
In the same vein, Lotus or WordPerfect may very well have been technically superior, but were simply deep-sixed by MS' deft use of control of the OS.
Windows 2000 I don't have much experience about--I'll give them that one.
I think MS bought one heck of a lot more of their starting stuff than Linux did, but it's a tenuous point anyway.
I think you have to take what they add and then remove what they subtract. Free software doesn't kill. (Ok, it might kill free time and overpricing, but I'm talking about technology.)
--
Assuming we remember the fuss. You're giving our collective attention spans way too much credit.
--
Heh, heh, you said "paper".
--