Come, let us hasten to a higher plane, Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn, Their indices bedecked from one to n, Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
Come, every frustum longs to be a cone, And every vector dreams of matrices. Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze: It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
In Riemann, Hilbert, or in Banach space Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways. Our asymptotes no longer out of phase, We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
I'll grant thee random access to my heart, Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love; And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove, And in our bound partition never part.
For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel, Or Fourier, or any Boole or Euler, Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers, Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell?
Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain? Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes, A root or two, a torus and a node: The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
Ellipse of bliss, converge, O lips divine! The product of our scalars is defined! Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind Cuts capers like a happy haversine.
I see the eigenvalue in thine eye, I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh. Bernoulli would have been content to die, Had he but known such a2 cos 2 phi
50% US 15% British/Australian 35% all other countries
And I get a lot of email from overseas.
I'm wondering how, exactly, the "separated into regions" would work. Is it the old.us,.uk, etc? Or are we talking real choke points? As if the European backbone only connected to the US backbone at one point? Or what?
Used to buy new paperbacks for the heck of it. Blind buys. Then stuck with authors I liked, then narrowed it further to series I liked. No longer. Latest attempt to get good stuff is go through the list of Nebulas and Hugos. Paperback prices have gone up faster than inflation. Seems quality has declined too.
When you were younger, you hadn't read every variation of hero - quest - captured - triumph.
As you get older, you start to see the flaws in the writing and how much of it is just the same, re-hashed, material. Different names for the characters, countries, etc, but the same characters travelling the same country and completing the same quest to defeat the same bad guy.
Tech books suffer the same limitations in the 80% statistic. 80% of the material is the same as the material in the previous version which will be the same as the material in the next version.
With fiction, there's really not much that can be done with that. It's all up to the author to re-write the same old material in a way that will appeal to you.
In tech books, why bother re-writing it at all? Write it once and then publish updates.
I also have cut back on my purchase of fiction books. Although I'm buying more total books now, they're almost completely non-fiction. The only fiction I buy is, like you, from series I like by authors I like. I've also given away most of my fiction collection. I believe that the average fiction book is written to the 15-25 year old market.
You are absolutely correct that the books on concepts and fundamentals are still useful after years. So there is no reason why those cannot be produced in hardback and sold for less than they are right now.
So why not make the books on the latest, unstable API into a 3-ring binder-type? Then, every year, you can purchase the updates to it.
Yeah, I know. There's nothing to stop someone from just photocopying the original book and the updates. On the other hand, the printing costs would be far less so it would be easier for the printing company to turn a profit.
80% (statistic I pulled out of my butt) of the material in a PHP4 intro book will be the same as the material in a PHP5 intro book which will be the same as the material in a PHP6 intro book. Yet you will pay the same price for the book each time.
I also believe that most books in school courses should be packaged this way.
Oh, I guess "tour" pictures, "demo clips" and "free porn search" sites are safe for children then?
You have a good point and the porn sites can be a bit more proactive on this.
The easiest way is to block all incoming connections from anything that resolves to a.edu domain.
There, instantly they've moved the "protect the children" from them and put it back on the parents.
Of course, they're not going to do this and I know it. Even if the major porn sites did, the lesser ones would not. Nor would non-US sites do it. But it would be the easiest solution with regards to "protecting the children". And it would clearly define any other attempts as a "free speech" issue.
Please cite for me the exact language I used to say that Intelligent Design is the middle ground.
...and...
Intelligent Design actually is a middle ground - the problem is that it's such a bad word because of how it has come up in the USA in the past few years, and that it is usually presented in a way that makes it just as closed-minded and ignorant as the sources of the problem it attempts to address.
When my statement was...
So, your "middle ground" is that a supernatural being did it.
Which leaves you arguing whether "your" is the same as "a" which is different from "the".
Meanwhile, you have still been unable to explain why your proposed "middle ground" contains a supernatural being who is exempt from evolution AND intelligent design/creationism.
No, your "middle ground" is nothing more (or less) than wrapping the scientific findings in your belief that "God wanted it done that way".
Science is not faith. Faith is not science. There is no "false dichotomy".
On one side, there are the people who believe that the Easter Bunny delivers eggs and candies on Easter.
On the other side, there are those who say that there is no Easter Bunny. The eggs and candies are delivered/hidden by other humans.
If you want closed-mindedness, it exists on both sides of this issue.
Damn those Easter Bunny deniers and their closed minds! Damn those secular "Human Deliverers".
You say that "Intelligent Delivery" is the "middle ground". The existance of the Holy Hopper is not questioned. But he delivers the eggs and candies through his influencing human minds.
The Written Rabbit tells us only that He does deliver the eggs. It does not say HOW he delivers them. Intelligent Delivery is the answer.
So, both sides are wrong, you claim. One side says that there was a supernatural being who did it all.
The other side says that no supernatural being did it.
So, your "middle ground" is that a supernatural being did it. But the way it did it was by a means that looks like it wasn't involved.
So, where did the supernatural being in the "middle ground" come from? Was it also "intelligently designed"? If so, by what? The cycle continues on to infinity.
If the supernatural being was not "intelligently designed", then why are there two processes (one for supernatural beings and one for every speck of life we can study)?
Actually, I care very much about what happens to him. He should be given a speedy trial (about five minutes should be sufficient), whatever useful information he has should be wrung out of him by any means necessary and then the scum bag should be killed in the most painful manner possible. Anything less than this would be a travesty.
So, from those statements, it seems that you've already decided that he is guilty.
And you've decided that strictly from the report the government released.
Why do you have so much faith in the government's honesty, veracity and accuracy?
If anything, the events of the past few years would seem to indicate that governments are not to be trusted as you seem to trust them.
A good book and it discusses how adding MORE programmers to a task means the project will take LONGER to complete.
So, adding more programmers to a late project, and not slipping the date even more to account for them, [b]probably[/b] means that the final result [b]will[/b] suck.
What about when 56k modems were fast enough for everyone.
56K? Son, most people won't read fast enough to keep up with 1,200 baud.
The capacity of applications will always grow to meet and exceed the available capacity to it.
I think you're onto something there.
But I don't think it applies to the single/dual core issue.
I don't think any of the bottlenecks right now are processor related. Most of the issues I see are bandwidth to the box and graphics.
Which would you prefer: #1. A second proc at the same speed as your current proc?
#2. A second pipe (LAN or Internet) at the same speed as your current pipe?
Assuming that the machine/OS/apps can fully utilize either option.
There are very few systems I've ever seen that ever hit a processor bottleneck... that are not BROKEN at the time. Endless loops don't count.
I'm all in favour of the development of inexpensive, multi-core procs. Even for the desktop. Even for them becoming the standard on the desktop. Because I don't know what cool new functionality will be available tomorrow.
But from what I see right now, the limitation is how fast I can get data to the single proc I'm running today.
But with TALC, according to Ahamad, folks browsing the Internet will be provided with a visual safety score (between one and 10) that rates Web sites they browse based on other users' experiences. The ratings system will be modeled after feedback systems used to gauge things like trustworthiness of eBay traders.
So, a new site goes online and, immediately, the owner has a bunch of 'bots rate it as "extremely safe A++++".
That's not going to be very effective without some means of identifying/limiting who gets to rate a site.
You're not paranoid if you know you have enemies. You're only paranoid if you know they've organized against you.
I have no problem believing that Microsoft would pursue legal actions against anyone releasing any code that they could trace back to any of their "Shared Source" releases.
With closed source it is more difficult for the Open Source coder/organization to show that you infringed because... they don't have the code. It's closed.
But there have been instances where the FSF has threatened legal action because some company has not complied with GPL'd code it used in a product.
So, no, not paranoid for not trusting Microsoft.
And not paranoid for believing that the FSF will insist you comply with the GPL if your closed source product uses GPL'd code.
I looked at the "Plenty of Fish" site and it did not look ugly to me.
It looked clean and functional. It certainly wasn't "pretty", but it was far from "ugly".
Sometimes simple design, even to the point of blocky quasi-socialist-realist functionality, works better even if it doesn't win awards for looks.
Form follows function. If there isn't any requirement for cute effects, then why add them?
I don't believe he knows ANYTHING about science.
on
On the Future of Science
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
From TFA:
While ordinary life continues for the subjects, massive amounts of constant data about their lifestyles are drawn and archived. Out of this huge database, specific controls, measurements and variables can be "isolated" afterwards. For instance, the vital signs and lifestyle metrics of a hundred thousand people might be recorded in dozens of different ways for 20-years, and then later analysis could find certain variables (smoking habits, heart conditions) and certain ways of measuring that would permit the entire 20 years to be viewed as an experiment - one that no one knew was even going on at the time.
Can you imagine the invasion of privacy that would be required to get that kind of data on that many people?
Sure, they can match the cigarettes you buy when you use your bank card... and they can match that to your hospital records... but how will they know anything about your illegal drug usage? Yes, that would be a factor.
They would have to monitor 100,000 people, 24/7 and record EVERYTHING from where you worked, live, travelled to what you ate and where you bought it (and where it was produced and what chemicals were used on it).
And that won't even allow you to try to isolate the variables. Once you get into multiple variables (dosage, exposure rate, etc), you don't have a valid experiment anymore.
Vista will still be a major target for spyware makers though because it will have a large install base. I doubt MS will be able to continuously keep up with the spywares creators.
In theory, they could just fix the core problem and the spyware would vanish as the old Microsoft OS's were replaced by newer ones.
But, from TFA:
Microsoft is taking a multipronged approach to fight spyware. Unlike XP, Vista will run by default with fewer user privileges. People will have to invoke full, "administrator," privileges to perform tasks such as installing an application.
Also, Internet Explorer 7, included with Vista, will prevent silent installs of malicious code by stopping the browser from writing data anywhere except in a temporary files folder without first seeking permission. Lastly, Windows Defender will clean up any infections that do make it through.
"It is three layers of protection," Wilson said.
Emphasis added. It's that line that tells me that they're not going to fix the core problem.
The "silent installs" in IE are a MAJOR source of spyware infections. But that's just because it is sooooooo easy. The "...without first seeking permission." bit tells me that the "silent installs" will be changed to "click here to continue" installs.
The browser should NEVER write anything, by default, to ANY directory other than TEMP and that should be set to non-execute.
But that would break all the ActiveX controls out there (many of which are used to distribute spyware).
They'd have done better just instituting a white list like NoScript does in FireFox.
Any "article" that quotes this guy is nothing but marketing:
Every new version of Windows offers some security improvements, but Vista more so, said Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group. "Vista, because it was pretty much conceived during the toughest times for Microsoft with regards to malicious software, has the most protection in it compared to any of their platforms," he said.
Every version of Windows has been "conceived during the toughest times for Microsoft with regards to malicious software".
I still remember booting Win3.1 boxes from a floppy to get rid of the boot sector viruses.
Enderle knows nothing of security. Just because someone wrote some code during a rash of exploits does not mean that their code is any more secure.
"The spyware threat will definitely shrink or shrivel" as Vista gets adopted, said John Pescatore, an analyst with Gartner. "We got a handle on spam. It still gets through, but it is such a small percentage now, we know how to deal with what gets through. That same thing will happen to spyware. It will be under control."
Yeah, great. So Microsoft will "fix" spyware as well as they've "fixed" spam.
I don't see SpamAssassin fading away any time soon. So I wouldn't put any bets on on spyware companies (anti- or pro-) dying out.
From an optimization/customization standpoint, rolling your own is better.
So, for the items that should be vanilla from company to company (DHCP / DNS / File serving / etc), I recommend using as vanilla a system as possible.
In theory, there should be something that differentiates your company from all of the others. If this is an app or database or other computer related item, then it should be fully customized and fully documented. You want to squeeze every last ounce of power and functionality out of this.
This way, the infrastructure will take up very little of your time so you can focus on the items that make the money for your company.
Microsoft has pushed the cost of tech support for their products off to the OEM's selling the hardware.
Novell will not be able to do that. So, in order for Novell to match Microsoft's profit margin on the OS, Novell will have to charge MORE to pay for the Novell support techs to answer the phone calls that, for Microsoft, would have gone to Dell.
And there will be MORE tech calls to Novell because Dell pre-approves all the hardware they ship for Windows, but not for SLED.
Novell's only hope is to release and support a bootable floppy or CD/DVD that will identify the hardware installed and provide some way for the end user/installer to validate the availability of drivers (100% supported, not supported, partial support with these problems, etc).
My guess is that there are more Windows oriented viruses/worms circulating the Internet.
"More" is correct. But the implication being that that is why the Linux boxes were not cracked is incorrect.
On the Internet, it is possible to scan whole ranges of addresses looking for vulnerabilities. Automatically. 24/7. And exploit them automatically, 24/7.
What matters is whether the box has open ports or not.
The take home message is "patch your system". We Slashdotters know better, but does the regular home user?
The system's security should be configured to account for the home user's non-patching.
Apple has. Their boxes, by default, have no open ports. Ubuntu has. Their default install has no open ports.
No matter how many worms and infected machines are out there, a default Ubuntu box will never be infected by them.
The first step in security is to reduce the avenues of attack.
I'd guess if things got too out of balance from their storyline, they could tweak the amount of zombie or human NPCs. More undead could always dig up out of the ground, or more humans could show up from outside the game's scope, to keep things even.
If the living are losing badly, that would add to the horror of the game.
If the zombies are losing badly, that would work also as the living would have to go searching for them. And you're most vulnerable when you're searching. Do you risk being killed for the chance to be the one who kills the last zombie?
Given that the zombies will not breed (except by converting the living), there would be a finite number of them.
Would it be possible to "win" this by killing 6 billion + zombies?
Before you start laughing, remember, we're talking an online game here. It is possible to kill thousands and thousands of "monsters" in other games. Five years into this, will the few remaining living be searching for the few remaining zombies?
Slashdot Mirror
In memory, the best poem he ever wrote:
Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
In Riemann, Hilbert, or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in our bound partition never part.
For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
Or Fourier, or any Boole or Euler,
Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers,
Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell?
Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
Ellipse of bliss, converge, O lips divine!
The product of our scalars is defined!
Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind
Cuts capers like a happy haversine.
I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die,
Had he but known such a2 cos 2 phi
50% US
.us, .uk, etc? Or are we talking real choke points? As if the European backbone only connected to the US backbone at one point? Or what?
15% British/Australian
35% all other countries
And I get a lot of email from overseas.
I'm wondering how, exactly, the "separated into regions" would work. Is it the old
As you get older, you start to see the flaws in the writing and how much of it is just the same, re-hashed, material. Different names for the characters, countries, etc, but the same characters travelling the same country and completing the same quest to defeat the same bad guy.
Tech books suffer the same limitations in the 80% statistic. 80% of the material is the same as the material in the previous version which will be the same as the material in the next version.
With fiction, there's really not much that can be done with that. It's all up to the author to re-write the same old material in a way that will appeal to you.
In tech books, why bother re-writing it at all? Write it once and then publish updates.
I also have cut back on my purchase of fiction books. Although I'm buying more total books now, they're almost completely non-fiction. The only fiction I buy is, like you, from series I like by authors I like. I've also given away most of my fiction collection. I believe that the average fiction book is written to the 15-25 year old market.
You are absolutely correct that the books on concepts and fundamentals are still useful after years. So there is no reason why those cannot be produced in hardback and sold for less than they are right now.
So why not make the books on the latest, unstable API into a 3-ring binder-type? Then, every year, you can purchase the updates to it.
Yeah, I know. There's nothing to stop someone from just photocopying the original book and the updates. On the other hand, the printing costs would be far less so it would be easier for the printing company to turn a profit.
80% (statistic I pulled out of my butt) of the material in a PHP4 intro book will be the same as the material in a PHP5 intro book which will be the same as the material in a PHP6 intro book. Yet you will pay the same price for the book each time.
I also believe that most books in school courses should be packaged this way.
The easiest way is to block all incoming connections from anything that resolves to a
There, instantly they've moved the "protect the children" from them and put it back on the parents.
Of course, they're not going to do this and I know it. Even if the major porn sites did, the lesser ones would not. Nor would non-US sites do it. But it would be the easiest solution with regards to "protecting the children". And it would clearly define any other attempts as a "free speech" issue.
I'd add .internal and .private and .home to your .here concept.
You wouldn't have to assign them to anything, either. Just define them as being private and that they'll never be issued.
Of course, you'd want appropriate translations of those into each language.
Meanwhile, you have still been unable to explain why your proposed "middle ground" contains a supernatural being who is exempt from evolution AND intelligent design/creationism.
No, your "middle ground" is nothing more (or less) than wrapping the scientific findings in your belief that "God wanted it done that way".
Science is not faith.
Faith is not science.
There is no "false dichotomy".
On the other side, there are those who say that there is no Easter Bunny. The eggs and candies are delivered/hidden by other humans.Damn those Easter Bunny deniers and their closed minds! Damn those secular "Human Deliverers".
You say that "Intelligent Delivery" is the "middle ground". The existance of the Holy Hopper is not questioned. But he delivers the eggs and candies through his influencing human minds.
The Written Rabbit tells us only that He does deliver the eggs. It does not say HOW he delivers them. Intelligent Delivery is the answer.
Again, your comment was mod'ed up?
So, both sides are wrong, you claim.
One side says that there was a supernatural being who did it all.
The other side says that no supernatural being did it.
So, your "middle ground" is that a supernatural being did it. But the way it did it was by a means that looks like it wasn't involved.
So, where did the supernatural being in the "middle ground" come from? Was it also "intelligently designed"? If so, by what? The cycle continues on to infinity.
If the supernatural being was not "intelligently designed", then why are there two processes (one for supernatural beings and one for every speck of life we can study)?
And you've decided that strictly from the report the government released.
Why do you have so much faith in the government's honesty, veracity and accuracy?
If anything, the events of the past few years would seem to indicate that governments are not to be trusted as you seem to trust them.
A good book and it discusses how adding MORE programmers to a task means the project will take LONGER to complete.
So, adding more programmers to a late project, and not slipping the date even more to account for them, [b]probably[/b] means that the final result [b]will[/b] suck.
But I don't think it applies to the single/dual core issue.
I don't think any of the bottlenecks right now are processor related. Most of the issues I see are bandwidth to the box and graphics.
Which would you prefer:
#1. A second proc at the same speed as your current proc?
#2. A second pipe (LAN or Internet) at the same speed as your current pipe?
Assuming that the machine/OS/apps can fully utilize either option.
There are very few systems I've ever seen that ever hit a processor bottleneck
I'm all in favour of the development of inexpensive, multi-core procs. Even for the desktop. Even for them becoming the standard on the desktop. Because I don't know what cool new functionality will be available tomorrow.
But from what I see right now, the limitation is how fast I can get data to the single proc I'm running today.
2x the processor power
or
2x the pipe?
That's not going to be very effective without some means of identifying/limiting who gets to rate a site.
You're not paranoid if you know you have enemies.
... they don't have the code. It's closed.
You're only paranoid if you know they've organized against you.
I have no problem believing that Microsoft would pursue legal actions against anyone releasing any code that they could trace back to any of their "Shared Source" releases.
With closed source it is more difficult for the Open Source coder/organization to show that you infringed because
But there have been instances where the FSF has threatened legal action because some company has not complied with GPL'd code it used in a product.
So, no, not paranoid for not trusting Microsoft.
And not paranoid for believing that the FSF will insist you comply with the GPL if your closed source product uses GPL'd code.
It looked clean and functional. It certainly wasn't "pretty", but it was far from "ugly".
Form follows function. If there isn't any requirement for cute effects, then why add them?
Can you imagine the invasion of privacy that would be required to get that kind of data on that many people?
Sure, they can match the cigarettes you buy when you use your bank card
They would have to monitor 100,000 people, 24/7 and record EVERYTHING from where you worked, live, travelled to what you ate and where you bought it (and where it was produced and what chemicals were used on it).
And that won't even allow you to try to isolate the variables. Once you get into multiple variables (dosage, exposure rate, etc), you don't have a valid experiment anymore.
He's confused "science" with "demographics".
But, from TFA:
Emphasis added. It's that line that tells me that they're not going to fix the core problem.
The "silent installs" in IE are a MAJOR source of spyware infections. But that's just because it is sooooooo easy. The "...without first seeking permission." bit tells me that the "silent installs" will be changed to "click here to continue" installs.
The browser should NEVER write anything, by default, to ANY directory other than TEMP and that should be set to non-execute.
But that would break all the ActiveX controls out there (many of which are used to distribute spyware).
They'd have done better just instituting a white list like NoScript does in FireFox.
Every version of Windows has been "conceived during the toughest times for Microsoft with regards to malicious software".
I still remember booting Win3.1 boxes from a floppy to get rid of the boot sector viruses.
Enderle knows nothing of security. Just because someone wrote some code during a rash of exploits does not mean that their code is any more secure.
I don't see SpamAssassin fading away any time soon. So I wouldn't put any bets on on spyware companies (anti- or pro-) dying out.
From a maintenance standpoint, vanilla is better.
From an optimization/customization standpoint, rolling your own is better.
So, for the items that should be vanilla from company to company (DHCP / DNS / File serving / etc), I recommend using as vanilla a system as possible.
In theory, there should be something that differentiates your company from all of the others. If this is an app or database or other computer related item, then it should be fully customized and fully documented. You want to squeeze every last ounce of power and functionality out of this.
This way, the infrastructure will take up very little of your time so you can focus on the items that make the money for your company.
Microsoft has achieved the impossible.
Microsoft has pushed the cost of tech support for their products off to the OEM's selling the hardware.
Novell will not be able to do that. So, in order for Novell to match Microsoft's profit margin on the OS, Novell will have to charge MORE to pay for the Novell support techs to answer the phone calls that, for Microsoft, would have gone to Dell.
And there will be MORE tech calls to Novell because Dell pre-approves all the hardware they ship for Windows, but not for SLED.
Novell's only hope is to release and support a bootable floppy or CD/DVD that will identify the hardware installed and provide some way for the end user/installer to validate the availability of drivers (100% supported, not supported, partial support with these problems, etc).
On the Internet, it is possible to scan whole ranges of addresses looking for vulnerabilities. Automatically. 24/7. And exploit them automatically, 24/7.
What matters is whether the box has open ports or not.The system's security should be configured to account for the home user's non-patching.
Apple has. Their boxes, by default, have no open ports.
Ubuntu has. Their default install has no open ports.
No matter how many worms and infected machines are out there, a default Ubuntu box will never be infected by them.
The first step in security is to reduce the avenues of attack.
For engineering, I can see that.
But wouldn't the boots for medical be the same as the boots for Conn?
And why is security wearing a girdle?
If the zombies are losing badly, that would work also as the living would have to go searching for them. And you're most vulnerable when you're searching. Do you risk being killed for the chance to be the one who kills the last zombie?
Given that the zombies will not breed (except by converting the living), there would be a finite number of them.
Would it be possible to "win" this by killing 6 billion + zombies?
Before you start laughing, remember, we're talking an online game here. It is possible to kill thousands and thousands of "monsters" in other games. Five years into this, will the few remaining living be searching for the few remaining zombies?