iPod mini will be available next month
on
No WMA for HP iPod
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· Score: 1
In Thurrott's latest article (referenced above) he claims the iPod mini "won't be available for months". I just checked the Apple online store and the estimated shipping date is Feb. 16. Months? Not quite.
WMA support in iPod firmware?
on
No WMA for HP iPod
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· Score: 4, Interesting
In Thurrott's latest article(mentioned above) he claims that WMA is "a feature that's natively enabled in the iPod's firmware but that Apple disables before the units ship to customers". I've never heard of this before. Is there any truth to this claim?
This makes sense to me. This means that if a customer has been using a WMA service they can still switch to iTMS and not loose their investment in the older service. This stops the possibility of people being locked into WMA services.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates, The Road Ahead, Viking Penguin (1995)
The Story of Decipherment: From Egyptian Hieroglyphs to Maya Script by Maurice Pope covers the Egyptian Hieroglyphs along with other decipherments. The author goes into detail on earlier decipherment attempts and reasons why it took such a long time to decipher. The history of the attempt to decipher hieroglyphs goes back well before the discovery of the Rosetta stone.
Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts by Andrew Robinson also covers the Egyptian Hieroglyphs and some other decipherments. However, the focus of the book is on semi- or un- deciphered scripts. There are a number of scripts which will probably never be deciphered.
Automated ordering has been around for a long time, but it hasn't taken over. There are automated ordering systems around since the 60s. Some popped up again in the 80s and 90s. However, they haven't taken over. Perhaps with newer technology they might become popular at fast food chains with standard menus and volume to keep software development costs down. However, I don't think this will happen generally.
According to this article Microsoft is now claiming that the iLoo is not a hoax, but was a concept being developed and has since been cancelled. "We jumped the gun basically yesterday in confirming that it was a hoax, and in fact it was not," said Lisa Gurry, MSN group product manager....On Tuesday, though, Microsoft said it had relied on bad information from a Microsoft employee in the United Kingdom who said it was a hoax, Gurry said. After more talks with people in London, the company determined it was a real project, after all.
There is nothing new in this article that hasn't been said before and argued to death. This will never happen under Jobs' reign, as this is exactly what he reversed after he returned to Apple.
Some points:
There is still no sign that non-tech people using PCs will switch to an Apple-built OS, especially not in the numbers that would justify the port.* (Note that PC users currently aren't switching to other OSes in big numbers. Remember how Sun was considering cancelling Solaris for Intel?)
The jury is still out on Palm Source. It is far too early to consider it a success.
There is no sign that Apple shareholders are particularly discontented.
*Yes, we all know that the port exists. The problem is the cost of maintaing the port as a consumer product (esp. all those drivers).
Recent versions of MacOS added rendezvous support to web servers, so you can automatically detect those web servers using Safari. As a result I came across a co-worker's web site and saw some rather racy web sites that he was working on in his spare time.
So yes. Rendezvous just might be sharing more than you'd like!
For what it is worth, Gil Amelio did the same thing when he was Apple CEO and he also received a salary and a bonus for a quarter of profit that was really number manipulation.
Ah yes. The problem there is that the only wireless networking Windows 200 supports is carrier pigeon. You have to upgrade to a least Windows 1900 to get radio network going. To get 802.11g you have to move to Windows 2000, but I'm not sure if your 18 century old computer can handle that.
Although that style of helmet is well known for being used by Germans in WWII, a similar style was used by Germans in WWI. I noticed this when I was in Germany and saw statues dedicated to the fallen of WWI wearing those helmets.
Modern American infantry helmets now bear a resemblance to this helmet.
Games is one software area in which a lot of innovation is coming out of Asia (esp. Japan).
People innovate in areas they really enjoy. I wonder if the lack of innovation in productivity software is due to the difficulty of using the awkward asian language input mechanisms along with the dominance of American companies.
I'd be surprised if anyone can genuinely claim to have invented the subroutine. I bet it was independently invented by many different people, probably even before the invention of modern computers. Turing had subroutine-type ideas when he worked on the ACE. I'd guess Babbage and Lovelace also had related ideas. This page claims they were invented by Grace Hopper.
The Peano axioms admit models other than the standard model (interpretation) of number theory. When Gödel's theorem states that there are "true but unprovable" propositions what that means is that there are propositions that are true in the standard model, but unprovable from the axioms. So one interpretation of Gödel's incompleteness theorem is that any set of axioms will fail to include number theory while excluding other models. There will always be alternative models.
One conclusion that could be drawn here is to say that the structure of the integers is not uniquely captured by a finite set of axioms.
I don't think it is indisputable that all mathematics is based on axioms, because outside of geometry the use of axioms is a late 19th century development of mathematics. Are you saying that before that people weren't doing mathematics but something else? Euler and Riemann did their number theory without axioms.
[By axiom I'm talking about a proposition statable using first-order logic (+ symbols etc). The term "assumption" is to me a bit more vague.]
History is important. The way things are now are due to certain historical developments. In the future mathematics might be different.
I think your conclusions are problematic. If you believe everything that is done without axioms is "worthless speculation" and yet that we still don't know if we've chosen all the correct axioms, then all mathematics based on these axioms is potentially worthless (in your words).
However, I don't believe that. I believe you can have valuable mathematics without axioms. Think about what would happen if a contraction was found in these axioms, would mathematicians throw out all their work? No, they would develop a new set of axioms. The rest of mathematics stays much the same.
I'm not saying that axioms should be ignored. Again I'm just saying that they are tools, not the foundations of mathematics.
I'm very familiar with the work of Frege and Russell. It is only through studying them that I've come to my conclusions. I originally agreed with them that mathematics requires axioms, but the process of developing the axioms makes me conclude that axioms are not foundations. Instead I think axioms (+ definitions, etc.) serve as tools for clarification, clearing up the kind of confusion that lead to contradictions in 19th century calculus.
Back to my original point, the reason I don't think Gödel's result applies is that I don't think mathematicians are bound by finite and formal rules of deduction (that is, like a Turing machine). I don't think mathematicians just go around making stuff up either, just that I believe that mathematics is more than just a set of axioms and rules of deduction.
I think your mentioning of mathematics as an empirical science shows that we might not be disagreeing that much. When you do an experiment in physics we are using observation of the world as a guide to show we're right or wrong. What do we use as a guide for mathematics? I'm not suggesting here that there is some sort of mathematical reality, I'm just suggesting our guide is the existing mathematics and that the goal of axioms is to provide a clarification for what we already have, but might not be clear about.
As for number theory being the 'queen of mathematics' I think it would still be so with or without axioms - it would remain a field that is central and beautiful to the rest of mathematics.
I'd like to believe I have a good background in mathematics. I'm not a practising mathematician, but I have a degree in mathematics and I specialized in set theory, but I'll let you be the judge.
Gödel's theorem applies to formal axiomatic systems which contain the Peano axioms, but mathematicians in practice don't limit themselves to these axioms or the rules of derivation.
Note that while Peano's axioms might be used as the basis of some presentations of number theory, number theory existed long before Peano's axioms which are only about 100 years old.
While you can of course get valuable results from Peano's axioms those results were also available before Peano. All mathematics is not axiomatic. Geometry is the only branch of mathematics with a long history of axiomatization. The rest of mathematics has existed without axiomatization until the 19th century or so. It is only because contradictions were found in mathematics that mathematicians started developing axioms and working out more explicit rules of derivation.
My view is that although we have axioms, they are only mathematical tools, not the foundations of mathematics. Mathematicians developed the axioms in order to provide a foundation, but with Gödel's results it appears that axiom systems can not provide a complete foundation.
Slashdot Mirror
Xerox didn't invent the mouse. It was invented by "Douglas Engelbart and his colleagues at Stanford Research Institute in the 1960s."
In Thurrott's latest article (referenced above) he claims the iPod mini "won't be available for months". I just checked the Apple online store and the estimated shipping date is Feb. 16. Months? Not quite.
In Thurrott's latest article(mentioned above) he claims that WMA is "a feature that's natively enabled in the iPod's firmware but that Apple disables before the units ship to customers". I've never heard of this before. Is there any truth to this claim?
This makes sense to me. This means that if a customer has been using a WMA service they can still switch to iTMS and not loose their investment in the older service. This stops the possibility of people being locked into WMA services.
>We have forgotten to be humble.
>We have forgotten not to act like those who we dislike.
>We have forgotten to take the high road.
Wait...are you talking about what we've forgotten or what the Bush administration has forgotten?
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates, The Road Ahead, Viking Penguin (1995)
I'm curious. Why did you choose this as your sig?
The Story of Decipherment: From Egyptian Hieroglyphs to Maya Script by Maurice Pope covers the Egyptian Hieroglyphs along with other decipherments. The author goes into detail on earlier decipherment attempts and reasons why it took such a long time to decipher. The history of the attempt to decipher hieroglyphs goes back well before the discovery of the Rosetta stone.
Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts by Andrew Robinson also covers the Egyptian Hieroglyphs and some other decipherments. However, the focus of the book is on semi- or un- deciphered scripts. There are a number of scripts which will probably never be deciphered.
Andrew Robinson's other books are also worth checking out including The Man Who Deciphered Linear B: The Story of Michael Ventris.
Automated ordering has been around for a long time, but it hasn't taken over. There are automated ordering systems around since the 60s. Some popped up again in the 80s and 90s. However, they haven't taken over. Perhaps with newer technology they might become popular at fast food chains with standard menus and volume to keep software development costs down. However, I don't think this will happen generally.
According to this article Microsoft is now claiming that the iLoo is not a hoax, but was a concept being developed and has since been cancelled. "We jumped the gun basically yesterday in confirming that it was a hoax, and in fact it was not," said Lisa Gurry, MSN group product manager....On Tuesday, though, Microsoft said it had relied on bad information from a Microsoft employee in the United Kingdom who said it was a hoax, Gurry said. After more talks with people in London, the company determined it was a real project, after all.
There is nothing new in this article that hasn't been said before and argued to death. This will never happen under Jobs' reign, as this is exactly what he reversed after he returned to Apple.
Some points:
There is still no sign that non-tech people using PCs will switch to an Apple-built OS, especially not in the numbers that would justify the port.* (Note that PC users currently aren't switching to other OSes in big numbers. Remember how Sun was considering cancelling Solaris for Intel?)
The jury is still out on Palm Source. It is far too early to consider it a success.
There is no sign that Apple shareholders are particularly discontented.
*Yes, we all know that the port exists. The problem is the cost of maintaing the port as a consumer product (esp. all those drivers).
But 802.11g is compatible with 802.11b.
It looks like the new iBooks still use 802.11b instead of 802.11g.
Recent versions of MacOS added rendezvous support to web servers, so you can automatically detect those web servers using Safari. As a result I came across a co-worker's web site and saw some rather racy web sites that he was working on in his spare time.
So yes. Rendezvous just might be sharing more than you'd like!
For what it is worth, Gil Amelio did the same thing when he was Apple CEO and he also received a salary and a bonus for a quarter of profit that was really number manipulation.
Ah yes. The problem there is that the only wireless networking Windows 200 supports is carrier pigeon. You have to upgrade to a least Windows 1900 to get radio network going. To get 802.11g you have to move to Windows 2000, but I'm not sure if your 18 century old computer can handle that.
Although that style of helmet is well known for being used by Germans in WWII, a similar style was used by Germans in WWI. I noticed this when I was in Germany and saw statues dedicated to the fallen of WWI wearing those helmets.
Modern American infantry helmets now bear a resemblance to this helmet.
Games is one software area in which a lot of innovation is coming out of Asia (esp. Japan).
People innovate in areas they really enjoy. I wonder if the lack of innovation in productivity software is due to the difficulty of using the awkward asian language input mechanisms along with the dominance of American companies.
Sun Remarketing is in a similar line of business as Shreve, but their prices are higher.
Apple has a Knowledge Base Article about this update, but it don't have much information at this point.
I'd be surprised if anyone can genuinely claim to have invented the subroutine. I bet it was independently invented by many different people, probably even before the invention of modern computers. Turing had subroutine-type ideas when he worked on the ACE. I'd guess Babbage and Lovelace also had related ideas. This page claims they were invented by Grace Hopper.
The FAQ has moved to here.
Socrates was banished for his views. I expect no less from our 'modern' society.
Banished? As far as I know Socrates was put to death.
The Peano axioms admit models other than the standard model (interpretation) of number theory. When Gödel's theorem states that there are "true but unprovable" propositions what that means is that there are propositions that are true in the standard model, but unprovable from the axioms. So one interpretation of Gödel's incompleteness theorem is that any set of axioms will fail to include number theory while excluding other models. There will always be alternative models.
One conclusion that could be drawn here is to say that the structure of the integers is not uniquely captured by a finite set of axioms.
I don't think it is indisputable that all mathematics is based on axioms, because outside of geometry the use of axioms is a late 19th century development of mathematics. Are you saying that before that people weren't doing mathematics but something else? Euler and Riemann did their number theory without axioms.
[By axiom I'm talking about a proposition statable using first-order logic (+ symbols etc). The term "assumption" is to me a bit more vague.]
History is important. The way things are now are due to certain historical developments. In the future mathematics might be different.
I think your conclusions are problematic. If you believe everything that is done without axioms is "worthless speculation" and yet that we still don't know if we've chosen all the correct axioms, then all mathematics based on these axioms is potentially worthless (in your words).
However, I don't believe that. I believe you can have valuable mathematics without axioms. Think about what would happen if a contraction was found in these axioms, would mathematicians throw out all their work? No, they would develop a new set of axioms. The rest of mathematics stays much the same.
I'm not saying that axioms should be ignored. Again I'm just saying that they are tools, not the foundations of mathematics.
I'm very familiar with the work of Frege and Russell. It is only through studying them that I've come to my conclusions. I originally agreed with them that mathematics requires axioms, but the process of developing the axioms makes me conclude that axioms are not foundations. Instead I think axioms (+ definitions, etc.) serve as tools for clarification, clearing up the kind of confusion that lead to contradictions in 19th century calculus.
Back to my original point, the reason I don't think Gödel's result applies is that I don't think mathematicians are bound by finite and formal rules of deduction (that is, like a Turing machine). I don't think mathematicians just go around making stuff up either, just that I believe that mathematics is more than just a set of axioms and rules of deduction.
I think your mentioning of mathematics as an empirical science shows that we might not be disagreeing that much. When you do an experiment in physics we are using observation of the world as a guide to show we're right or wrong. What do we use as a guide for mathematics? I'm not suggesting here that there is some sort of mathematical reality, I'm just suggesting our guide is the existing mathematics and that the goal of axioms is to provide a clarification for what we already have, but might not be clear about.
As for number theory being the 'queen of mathematics' I think it would still be so with or without axioms - it would remain a field that is central and beautiful to the rest of mathematics.
I'd like to believe I have a good background in mathematics. I'm not a practising mathematician, but I have a degree in mathematics and I specialized in set theory, but I'll let you be the judge.
Gödel's theorem applies to formal axiomatic systems which contain the Peano axioms, but mathematicians in practice don't limit themselves to these axioms or the rules of derivation.
Note that while Peano's axioms might be used as the basis of some presentations of number theory, number theory existed long before Peano's axioms which are only about 100 years old.
While you can of course get valuable results from Peano's axioms those results were also available before Peano. All mathematics is not axiomatic. Geometry is the only branch of mathematics with a long history of axiomatization. The rest of mathematics has existed without axiomatization until the 19th century or so. It is only because contradictions were found in mathematics that mathematicians started developing axioms and working out more explicit rules of derivation.
My view is that although we have axioms, they are only mathematical tools, not the foundations of mathematics. Mathematicians developed the axioms in order to provide a foundation, but with Gödel's results it appears that axiom systems can not provide a complete foundation.