You're missing the point. It's not about programming, not even about language. It's about thinking. It doesn't matter how good at Ruby you are when you're making, essentially, a PHP+MySQL application in Rails. What matters is that you have engineered your site holistically as a Rails site. Maybe I oversimplified. The thing is, all that structure only works when you work with the paradigm. I don't doubt that the author of the article tried somewhat, having made a decision to move to Ruby. But the feeling from the article is that he didn't reorganise the site as a Ruby site- the designer, not the programmer, didn't think in terms of Rails.
You're right- Federal government transparency is quite good. The parties publish most policy on their websites, most government offices have a lot of information on how they work, etc. There are a few exceptions, often within specific departments. I just wanted to know about what initiatives the next government would be taking with regards to transparency. Actually, she did point out that government advertising will have to be approved by the AG under Labor, which is a win for transparency.
But it really surprised me that she hadn't heard all of the noise we have made over the years about copyright and patent reform. We aren't speaking loud enough.
I hope the Australian government realizes that fact. I had the opportunity to speak with Labor's second in command, Julia Gillard, a few weeks ago. Of course the main issues I bought up with her were government transparency and copyright reform. Somehow, it didn't surprise me that she had never heard any such issues discussed. Not one person had bought them up. People seem more bothered about that house they bought when interest rates were 2% [now floating around the 7-8% mark?]. I guess I can see where they are coming from, of course, but while they have been distracted, we've been losing the battle on other fronts.
So no, they don't realise this fact, because the Australian public don't seem to care, or those that do are scared of politics.
Do you think that companies are now going to avoid abusing Linux to avoid GPL litigation? There, fixed that for you. Hopefully, it will make them think twice!
He might be annoying, but he's clearly harmless. When -how many?- police officers have a single person pinned down and sooking like a baby, and still feel the need to abuse some power, how do you justify that?
That and n^2 cores are simpler to initialise. Otherwise, the question is the similar to "it is not possible for three people to work together!". And what about Intel's 80-core TeraScale? Last I checked, 80 is not a power of two either.
But is your position that Apple are leveraging some sort of monopoly position with the iTunes store to sell more iPods? I'll grant that the iPod has been shameless lock-in wise, but I think it's too early to start screaming monopoly.
No one is pointing a finger at you, nor the ignorant majority that exists in absolutely every country, not just the USA, because the majority of people just don't care as long as they have their big screens, fast food, and make it to the game on Saturday. It's the government we're looking at- the kind of people who have such amazing power for good, but use it in selfishness. No one is blaming you any more than they are blaming Richard Stallman. [No doubt there will be ONE person to point the finger in that direction;)]
As an economics major, then, you should realise that the problem is leveraging a monopoly in one market to create one in another market. I'm not sure exactly what monopoly you're suggesting Apply used to force their way into the pmp & digital music market. It's not like you can't use other stores to buy music for your iSnod. iTunes do not own the digital music distribution market either.
I also see what you mean now: that a self replicating system doesn't need to be very complex when one half of it is a simple solution that duplicates sequences. Exciting stuff!
Wow, that's pretty exciting. because for one, it means that the molecule that would need to be produced is much simpler. It's interesting to note this logic flaw in my argument: the act of setting up all of those molecules and letting them combine is probably not that different to having them be reproduced- so we've already got one half of our self reproducing system:)
This mathematical order analysis is mostly fluff [especially considering the actual numbers used], but that doesn't make order of complexity any less of a pressing question. We so often hear rhetoric such as, "Considering the size and age of the universe, how can it be possible that life could not start by chance?" [sure, most often by UFO watchers, but the rest of the time it's biologists]. Now THAT is an argument from personal incredulity. In reply, "because the size and age of the universe pales to even simple complexity, when that complexity must be ordered". Because the question really needed to be answered, with real maths, so, if there are discrepancies, we can adjust our understanding.
Thankyou for the references. As I said somewhere [?], my post was not meant to be a rigorous analysis, just a thought I'd carried around for a while.
My calculations neglect a lot of things. The bases do not combine with equal probability, there are not anywhere near 10^85 easily connectible yet protected DNA bases or equivalent in contact with each other, neither have there been or will be, and the probability should have been binomial. I even pulled the critical complexity out of my ass, on account of it was of the size required. However, the two points you bring up are not quite so serious. The time component, as you would imagine, multiplies the number of bases. It's still linear, so it has as small an effect on the probability as the huge 10^85 number of bases does. Ie, an increase of one base to the critical complexity takes four times as long, on average, in our base 4 example, to reach the minimal correct sequence. Secondly, incompletely self-synthesizing molecules actually are dealt with. What I wanted to look at was the order of complexity of a completely self-synthesizing system. The math is, thankfully, convenient, in that it deals with complexity of a whole. Try working out the probability of two molecules of base-4 with complexity 71 both existing:)
This is the last hole in my view of evolution, but it comes from a primarily mathematics background, rather than an evolutionary biologist's one. A good upper bound on the critical complexity via experiment could certainly fix that, and some accurate numbers in this formula to put bounds on Drake's equation would kick ass. But really, who knows where further statistical analysis can take us? Or would that be speculation too?
Oooh, I'll look into that. But, I'm pretty sure that even if density were low, if it did not drop off on second order on average, ie, if it does not tend to zero and quickly, we'd still have a closed universe. Which is to say, if the universe satisfies the requirements so as to be open, it must have finite mass and energy! Probably more than the visible universe, but even so, no more than an order of magnitude.
recalculate it for the N-1 case, of adding one "just one more base". Now for the N-2 case... Now for the N-141 case. See my point? What you're trying to say is that, given enough tries at adding just one more base, you will eventually arise at a molecule or set of molecules that have the complexity required to replicate. And yes, the probability of stumbling upon a sequence that works increases with the number of tries you get. Unfortunately, even given the age of the universe, and even with stupidly large numbers of building blocks to draw from, the probability of ever reaching something that works is just not that good.
If you have a set of chains which happens to contain some number of subsets of the minimally correct chain, adding one more base reduces the probability that any chain within is correct by a quotient of 4. In other words, adding one to the complexity multiplies the time or number of molecules required by a constant factor. Adding a more general number to the complexity means you've got exponential increase in time or base material required. Now I understand that is difficult to visualize, because really, adding one more base takes the same amount of time and bases as the last step did, doesn't it? But now, you have [FAR] fewer correct chains. Eventually you're going to run out and have to backtrack, or destroy chains. And for each position that you haven't got right, you're going to have to multiply the time required by 4.
A cryptographer, for example, can tell you that increasing the length of a strong cryptographic key by one bit means it takes twice as long to crack, on average. Similarly, finding a molecule which contains the minimal features required to replicate with errors by brute force [completely at random] takes some multiplier longer when only marginally more complexity is required.
Of course, this hinges on the critical order being 100+ bases- it could well be less, but I'm skeptical.
[By the way, my maths above should be scaled binomially, whoops! Still, the orders involved are what matters- even for moderate orders of complexity, the exponential quality trumps time and no. bases which are linear.]
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If you violate the contract, you don't have the right to distribute, and therefore, any distribution is copyright infringement.
"at every step, it seemed our needs clashed with Rails' preferences."
You're missing the point. It's not about programming, not even about language. It's about thinking. It doesn't matter how good at Ruby you are when you're making, essentially, a PHP+MySQL application in Rails. What matters is that you have engineered your site holistically as a Rails site. Maybe I oversimplified. The thing is, all that structure only works when you work with the paradigm. I don't doubt that the author of the article tried somewhat, having made a decision to move to Ruby. But the feeling from the article is that he didn't reorganise the site as a Ruby site- the designer, not the programmer, didn't think in terms of Rails.
Have you ever seen a C programmers' Python code? Or a LISP application ported to Java?
clearly, I am also slow.
- I still have to program it
- We already knew PHP
- Rails has features I didn't use
- Rails has too many features
- I didn't really want to change my thought process
- I like my way of doing things
- How I justified trying something new.
I'm not saying that these aren't valid- save 1 and 3, maybe. But they aren't new, and aren't interesting.You're right- Federal government transparency is quite good. The parties publish most policy on their websites, most government offices have a lot of information on how they work, etc. There are a few exceptions, often within specific departments. I just wanted to know about what initiatives the next government would be taking with regards to transparency. Actually, she did point out that government advertising will have to be approved by the AG under Labor, which is a win for transparency.
But it really surprised me that she hadn't heard all of the noise we have made over the years about copyright and patent reform. We aren't speaking loud enough.
So no, they don't realise this fact, because the Australian public don't seem to care, or those that do are scared of politics.
You're not buying a business, you're buying an operating system.
He might be annoying, but he's clearly harmless. When -how many?- police officers have a single person pinned down and sooking like a baby, and still feel the need to abuse some power, how do you justify that?
Since when is being the center of attention punishable by taser?
That and n^2 cores are simpler to initialise. Otherwise, the question is the similar to "it is not possible for three people to work together!". And what about Intel's 80-core TeraScale? Last I checked, 80 is not a power of two either.
But is your position that Apple are leveraging some sort of monopoly position with the iTunes store to sell more iPods? I'll grant that the iPod has been shameless lock-in wise, but I think it's too early to start screaming monopoly.
No one is pointing a finger at you, nor the ignorant majority that exists in absolutely every country, not just the USA, because the majority of people just don't care as long as they have their big screens, fast food, and make it to the game on Saturday. It's the government we're looking at- the kind of people who have such amazing power for good, but use it in selfishness. No one is blaming you any more than they are blaming Richard Stallman. [No doubt there will be ONE person to point the finger in that direction ;)]
As an economics major, then, you should realise that the problem is leveraging a monopoly in one market to create one in another market. I'm not sure exactly what monopoly you're suggesting Apply used to force their way into the pmp & digital music market. It's not like you can't use other stores to buy music for your iSnod. iTunes do not own the digital music distribution market either.
And if it doesn't have singing, it shouldn't actually count towards your total, since it's not a song! You sir, get 30,000 FLAC encoded Ring Cycles.
I also see what you mean now: that a self replicating system doesn't need to be very complex when one half of it is a simple solution that duplicates sequences. Exciting stuff!
Wow, that's pretty exciting. because for one, it means that the molecule that would need to be produced is much simpler. It's interesting to note this logic flaw in my argument: the act of setting up all of those molecules and letting them combine is probably not that different to having them be reproduced- so we've already got one half of our self reproducing system :)
Give me multiply indexed arrays and array slicing! that would be something.
PS: To see this, integrate curvature tensors with energy being zero, first and second order in the limit.
This mathematical order analysis is mostly fluff [especially considering the actual numbers used], but that doesn't make order of complexity any less of a pressing question. We so often hear rhetoric such as, "Considering the size and age of the universe, how can it be possible that life could not start by chance?" [sure, most often by UFO watchers, but the rest of the time it's biologists]. Now THAT is an argument from personal incredulity. In reply, "because the size and age of the universe pales to even simple complexity, when that complexity must be ordered". Because the question really needed to be answered, with real maths, so, if there are discrepancies, we can adjust our understanding.
Thankyou for the references. As I said somewhere [?], my post was not meant to be a rigorous analysis, just a thought I'd carried around for a while.
My calculations neglect a lot of things. The bases do not combine with equal probability, there are not anywhere near 10^85 easily connectible yet protected DNA bases or equivalent in contact with each other, neither have there been or will be, and the probability should have been binomial. I even pulled the critical complexity out of my ass, on account of it was of the size required. However, the two points you bring up are not quite so serious. The time component, as you would imagine, multiplies the number of bases. It's still linear, so it has as small an effect on the probability as the huge 10^85 number of bases does. Ie, an increase of one base to the critical complexity takes four times as long, on average, in our base 4 example, to reach the minimal correct sequence. Secondly, incompletely self-synthesizing molecules actually are dealt with. What I wanted to look at was the order of complexity of a completely self-synthesizing system. The math is, thankfully, convenient, in that it deals with complexity of a whole. Try working out the probability of two molecules of base-4 with complexity 71 both existing :)
This is the last hole in my view of evolution, but it comes from a primarily mathematics background, rather than an evolutionary biologist's one. A good upper bound on the critical complexity via experiment could certainly fix that, and some accurate numbers in this formula to put bounds on Drake's equation would kick ass. But really, who knows where further statistical analysis can take us? Or would that be speculation too?
Oooh, I'll look into that. But, I'm pretty sure that even if density were low, if it did not drop off on second order on average, ie, if it does not tend to zero and quickly, we'd still have a closed universe. Which is to say, if the universe satisfies the requirements so as to be open, it must have finite mass and energy! Probably more than the visible universe, but even so, no more than an order of magnitude.
If you have a set of chains which happens to contain some number of subsets of the minimally correct chain, adding one more base reduces the probability that any chain within is correct by a quotient of 4. In other words, adding one to the complexity multiplies the time or number of molecules required by a constant factor. Adding a more general number to the complexity means you've got exponential increase in time or base material required. Now I understand that is difficult to visualize, because really, adding one more base takes the same amount of time and bases as the last step did, doesn't it? But now, you have [FAR] fewer correct chains. Eventually you're going to run out and have to backtrack, or destroy chains. And for each position that you haven't got right, you're going to have to multiply the time required by 4.
A cryptographer, for example, can tell you that increasing the length of a strong cryptographic key by one bit means it takes twice as long to crack, on average. Similarly, finding a molecule which contains the minimal features required to replicate with errors by brute force [completely at random] takes some multiplier longer when only marginally more complexity is required.
Of course, this hinges on the critical order being 100+ bases- it could well be less, but I'm skeptical.
[By the way, my maths above should be scaled binomially, whoops! Still, the orders involved are what matters- even for moderate orders of complexity, the exponential quality trumps time and no. bases which are linear.]