Well, of course — any finite language is a regular language. Also, regexp-opt is really letting us down here: how about [0-9]\|[1-9][0-9]\|[1-6][0-9][0-9]\|700 (without the doubled backslashes)?
I wonder, Europium being quite heavy and with radioactive isotopes, what pressure till you reach critical mass?
What makes you think that europium has a critical mass in the first place? It's actually considered a detriment to (controlled) nuclear reactions. Everything has radioactive isotopes, but very few have fissionable isotopes. And europium is lighter than, say, gold anyway.
This is my post. I wrote it. Is is a creative and inventive work which benefits society at large. Moreover, it is a concrete example of intellectual property. This post, that you are reading right now, belongs to me. It is mine.
This post is mine in the same way that my house, or car or clothes are mine. These words that I have written are given as much protection as freedom of speech or to vote. They need it. If just anyone is allowed to come along and copy them, or alter them, or include them in another work without my permission, then it will be as though my right to speak freely has been taken away, or I have been disenfranchised.
If someone else reads these words without paying me, or worse sells them to others to read, I will have been robbed. It will be as if my home was burned down, or my family sold into slavery. An injustice of the highest order.
These words need protections. Strong protections. This post needs to be defended, even as it is copied endless and effortlessly across millions of computers, each recopying it hundreds of times, at negligible expense. The worth of these words is worth more than all the bits it occupies in cyberspace. Indeed, their worth is worth more than the worth of cyberspace, and even society itself.
For if these words, if this post cannot be afforded the most stringent, uncompromising and sacred protection that our society has to offer, then our society will not be worth the bits it is represented on. The reality of digital worldwide transmission must not be allowed to compromise the most fundamental rights we have. The protection of this post is a challenge which our civilization must meet, or else our civilization must fall.
None of the materials provided in this post site may be used, reproduced or transmitted, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or the use of any information storage and retrieval system, without express permission in writing from the author, along with suitable monetary compensation.
Unauthorized use of the materials in this post are subject to prosecution to the fullest exent allowable by law.
The alias is equivalent, so there is a default key that runs `join-line', which was my point. If you want to pass it an argument, you can type C-u (`universal-argument') before it. There are actually lots of ways of passing arguments, to make it convenient; since the value doesn't matter, here you might try M-6 M-^ so you just have to add Shift in the middle.
Of course, C-n M-^ would have already gotten you that with about the same amount of effort; if you want it to be shorter, what you did is about the best way to do it.
I'm not sure if it will be released in Emacs 23, but there is a branch of CVS Emacs that supports lexical binding. And my `cl-macs.el' in Emacs 22 has `loop'...
;; hidden backup files - i hate seeing them in listings... ;; prefix with a dot as well as postfix with a tilde (defun custom-make-backup-file-name ( file ) (let ((d (file-name-directory file)) (f (file-name-nondirectory file))) (expand-file-name (concat "." f "~") d))) (setq make-backup-file-name-function 'custom-make-backup-file-name)
This sequence acts as a backspace key and has no effect on emacs itself other than to delete the random sentences it seems to have filled its default buffer with. Neat trick!
C-h and Backspace are sometimes the same, and sometimes different, based your terminal. (Similarly for Backspace and Delete.) Emacs tries to guess which one is which; if it guesses wrong, typing M-x normal-erase-is-backspace-mode will probably fix it. (You can type that as ESC x normal-e TAB RET.)
What if you, after considering the policies and ideas and likely choices for cabinet members and so forth, finally based your decision (in part) on the idea that the image of the US with a black (approx.) president was better for its foreign relations and better for its people as a symbol and a reminder of improvements (over past racism)? What if you think his race, in that position, can actually improve things?
Certainly many people did not follow this path, but it's disingenuous to say it doesn't exist.
Each character is a hex digit, not any alphanumeric, so it's 16^32=2^128 possibilities instead of 36^32. That's 186 billion times smaller, but it's still a lot.
I myself would love an up-to-date version of Brief. I was even more productive in Brief that I've ever been in my second love, emacs.
I have no idea how good it is, having never used it or Brief, but there is a brief-mode in Emacs for "CRiSP/Brief". It does say in the comments that it's meant as a transition away from it, but maybe it works in reverse too.
If you could put a portal on a fast falling object, when it lands on you while you are standing still would you have momentum at the other of the portal or would you just poke through since the portal has the initial momentum?
It would only make sense for the falling crate to launch you; when it has fallen enough to put your head through the portal, obviously just your head sticks up out of the other end (on the floor, say). Then, a moment later, all of you exists on the other side, so your head must have been rocketing up at the same rate as the crate was falling (to make room). Your head could not then suddenly stop just because your feet happened to make it through. (So it would suck if you were standing in a foxhole and the crate were stopped by hitting the edges of it!)
If it could: suppose that you were standing on a narrow tower which would also fit through the portal as the crate fell. Then, if you stopped moving when you finished the traverse, you would immediately be skewered by the tower coming up after you. (We could say that you would keep going because you were standing on something that was coming through, but then the slightest of hops as the portal passed your feet would suddenly change everything.)
What's interesting about this is that the air that the crate is falling through (around?) does the same thing, and erupts from the other portal as a jet. No fluid could exert a pressure on the (part of the) bottom of the crate covered by the portal, so the crate should get sucked down even faster than gravity and create quite an updraft. A styrofoam block could be sunk into the ocean by attaching a portal to its base, creating a rush of hundreds of thousands of gallons of seawater from the other end. Putting one end of a portal on top of something and the other end on one of its sides would create an airplane as the pressure was applied only to its bottom and the other sides.
There's a way around these bizarre results: say that at each portal, the momentum that each object carries into or out of it (in the portal's reference) frame is assigned to or derived from the object backing the portal. That is to say, a heavy object entering a portal would bend the wall the portal was on in the same fashion it would if the portal weren't there and the object were simply hitting the wall. Then the falling crate would still have air pressure on it; the downdraft it should be creating (but isn't because the air isn't being forced aside) would simply be felt wherever the other end was. And when the crate engulfed you, it would slow down drastically (unless it were much heavier than you) and the result would be rather like it was launching you off the other end of a normal springboard, except that it would pull you up by your head — the part of you that encountered it when it was moving fastest.
All it has to do is wait for you to run sudo, or wait for a root shell to be open in an xterm and send it fake keystrokes. All that without needing to even read your keystrokes.
Or it can just phone home and use a 0-day local privilege escalation attack before whatever update manager can do its thing. Or just pose as the update manager.
The thing in limited supply, and in high demand, is the musician's creativity - [...]. That's what I'm paying for when I buy music. The fact that copies of this creativity cost $0 to duplicate and distribute does not mean that the creativity itself is worthless.
Of course that's what's limited; no one objects to paying for that. But there does not exist any more creativity (nor any more results of it) after you buy a CD than before, so you can't literally be paying for it. Moreover, you're specifically interested in some song that's already on that CD — what you want isn't creativity, so how can that be your intent in the purchase? Or do you really buy CDs that you know you will never use in an attempt to fund the later creation of something that you do like? (Of course not; mailing a check to the artist would be much more useful to them and less wasteful.)
Paying for creativity is called "commissioning", and I'm not aware of significant money being spent on that rather than on copies of what already exists. Maybe the idea of encouraging artists that you like raises the price you're willing to pay for copies of their music, but that amount differs between people and the sticker price doesn't, so there's no true relationship.
If you, say, get a song from iTunes, the only difference in the world before and after your purchase is the significant benefit of access to the data and the trivial expense of transferring and storing it. You send $0.99 to Apple/RIAA/etc., and they do nothing whatsoever but the favor of "duplicating and distributing" the data to you; one distribution is $1, two is $2. (The artist does nothing at all.) Logically, the price fetched for creating the music is $0, since that's the amount paid in for a song that is created and not distributed.
The obvious counterargument is that the sales from one album are the payment for the next, and so the current system is just. But there are a variety of problems there: how many copies of album #N does it take before #N+1 is released for free since #N+2 is already paid for? Every sale made after the last album is released is causally incapable of creating or inspiring more good work; is that refunded once it becomes clear that nothing more is forthcoming? Suppose I like a group's style, but then it changes and I'm no longer interested: why should I be paying for the creation of what I don't want?
Saying that the sales retroactively (and somewhat probabilistically) finance the same album's creation is also problematic: even aside from being acausal, why does the price keep going up the more people like it? There must have been some level of return that made the venture worthwhile for the artists and producers; they shouldn't have the option of raising their selling price during the sale just because it looks like a higher bar could be met. When an artist dies, are their albums discounted to account for the impossibility of retroactively improving or increasing their output?
Imagine, though, that an escrow account was set up per band, and they were awarded its contents and simultaneously released their next song into the public domain whenever it (via arbitrary and voluntary payments from the masses) hit $N. Then what you paid would be (part of) a commission and would correspond to the difficult part of creating that first released copy. Solar power and existing silicon can handle creating all the others.
I'm more concerned about the fact that copyright law doesn't permit their argument in the first place: Title 17,117 specifically exempts copying for the sole purpose of utilization of the program from being copyright infringement in the first place.
(Of course, Blizzard's restrictions might be considered a contract too, but no one should be liable for copyright infringement here! IANAL, etc.)
Slashdot Mirror
Well, of course — any finite language is a regular language. Also, regexp-opt is really letting us down here: how about [0-9]\|[1-9][0-9]\|[1-6][0-9][0-9]\|700 (without the doubled backslashes)?
It's 53rd, apparently, in the list of elements found to be superconductive. Its atomic number is not being discussed.
I wonder, Europium being quite heavy and with radioactive isotopes, what pressure till you reach critical mass?
What makes you think that europium has a critical mass in the first place? It's actually considered a detriment to (controlled) nuclear reactions. Everything has radioactive isotopes, but very few have fissionable isotopes. And europium is lighter than, say, gold anyway.
This is my post. I wrote it. Is is a creative and inventive work which benefits society at large. Moreover, it is a concrete example of intellectual property. This post, that you are reading right now, belongs to me. It is mine.
This post is mine in the same way that my house, or car or clothes are mine. These words that I have written are given as much protection as freedom of speech or to vote. They need it. If just anyone is allowed to come along and copy them, or alter them, or include them in another work without my permission, then it will be as though my right to speak freely has been taken away, or I have been disenfranchised.
If someone else reads these words without paying me, or worse sells them to others to read, I will have been robbed. It will be as if my home was burned down, or my family sold into slavery. An injustice of the highest order.
These words need protections. Strong protections. This post needs to be defended, even as it is copied endless and effortlessly across millions of computers, each recopying it hundreds of times, at negligible expense. The worth of these words is worth more than all the bits it occupies in cyberspace. Indeed, their worth is worth more than the worth of cyberspace, and even society itself.
For if these words, if this post cannot be afforded the most stringent, uncompromising and sacred protection that our society has to offer, then our society will not be worth the bits it is represented on. The reality of digital worldwide transmission must not be allowed to compromise the most fundamental rights we have. The protection of this post is a challenge which our civilization must meet, or else our civilization must fall.
This post and all related materials, Copyright © ObsessiveMathsFreak 2009.
All rights reserved, worldwide.
None of the materials provided in this post site may be used, reproduced or transmitted, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or the use of any information storage and retrieval system, without express permission in writing from the author, along with suitable monetary compensation.
Unauthorized use of the materials in this post are subject to prosecution to the fullest exent allowable by law.
Oops -- sorry!
Surely it must be possible to create a system that acts as a proxy for phonecalls? [...]
Does this kinda thing exist already?
My AT&T prepaid phone card works this way. Calls through it show up at the other end as one of its servers.
Is there a Python clone that uses C style formating?
See http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/PyIndent
I don't know what field you're in, but LANL pays students pretty well to do lots of things.
The alias is equivalent, so there is a default key that runs `join-line', which was my point. If you want to pass it an argument, you can type C-u (`universal-argument') before it. There are actually lots of ways of passing arguments, to make it convenient; since the value doesn't matter, here you might try M-6 M-^ so you just have to add Shift in the middle.
Of course, C-n M-^ would have already gotten you that with about the same amount of effort; if you want it to be shorter, what you did is about the best way to do it.
I'm not sure if it will be released in Emacs 23, but there is a branch of CVS Emacs that supports lexical binding. And my `cl-macs.el' in Emacs 22 has `loop'...
;; hidden backup files - i hate seeing them in listings...
;; prefix with a dot as well as postfix with a tilde
(defun custom-make-backup-file-name ( file )
(let ((d (file-name-directory file))
(f (file-name-nondirectory file)))
(expand-file-name (concat "." f "~") d)))
(setq make-backup-file-name-function 'custom-make-backup-file-name)
(defun backup-file-name-p ( file )
(string-match "\\`\\..+~\\'" (file-name-nondirectory file)))
(defun file-name-sans-versions ( file &optional keep-backups )
(if (or keep-backups (not (backup-file-name-p file)))
file
(let ((d (file-name-directory file))
(f (file-name-nondirectory file)))
(expand-file-name (substring f 1 -1) d))))
This sequence acts as a backspace key and has no effect on emacs itself other than to delete the random sentences it seems to have filled its default buffer with. Neat trick!
C-h and Backspace are sometimes the same, and sometimes different, based your terminal. (Similarly for Backspace and Delete.) Emacs tries to guess which one is which; if it guesses wrong, typing M-x normal-erase-is-backspace-mode will probably fix it. (You can type that as ESC x normal-e TAB RET.)
Tramp will also let you use sudo or su to edit your files without SSH: C-x C-f /su::/etc/motd, for example.
C-h w join-line RET
join-line is not on any key;
its alias delete-indentation is on M-^
What if you, after considering the policies and ideas and likely choices for cabinet members and so forth, finally based your decision (in part) on the idea that the image of the US with a black (approx.) president was better for its foreign relations and better for its people as a symbol and a reminder of improvements (over past racism)? What if you think his race, in that position, can actually improve things?
Certainly many people did not follow this path, but it's disingenuous to say it doesn't exist.
It's easier to just write:
(defun kill-emacs-did-you-really-mean-that ()
(yes-or-no-p "Really really really quit Emacs?"))
(setq kill-emacs-query-functions '(kill-emacs-did-you-really-mean-that))
Each character is a hex digit, not any alphanumeric, so it's 16^32=2^128 possibilities instead of 36^32. That's 186 billion times smaller, but it's still a lot.
You go from 1 x 10^-999999m/s to 0m/s in ~10^-999999s, not instantly, though at some scale things become quantized, apparently.
Fixed that for you. -10^900000 gs sounds unpleasant!
I myself would love an up-to-date version of Brief. I was even more productive in Brief that I've ever been in my second love, emacs.
I have no idea how good it is, having never used it or Brief, but there is a brief-mode in Emacs for "CRiSP/Brief". It does say in the comments that it's meant as a transition away from it, but maybe it works in reverse too.
If you could put a portal on a fast falling object, when it lands on you while you are standing still would you have momentum at the other of the portal or would you just poke through since the portal has the initial momentum?
It would only make sense for the falling crate to launch you; when it has fallen enough to put your head through the portal, obviously just your head sticks up out of the other end (on the floor, say). Then, a moment later, all of you exists on the other side, so your head must have been rocketing up at the same rate as the crate was falling (to make room). Your head could not then suddenly stop just because your feet happened to make it through. (So it would suck if you were standing in a foxhole and the crate were stopped by hitting the edges of it!)
If it could: suppose that you were standing on a narrow tower which would also fit through the portal as the crate fell. Then, if you stopped moving when you finished the traverse, you would immediately be skewered by the tower coming up after you. (We could say that you would keep going because you were standing on something that was coming through, but then the slightest of hops as the portal passed your feet would suddenly change everything.)
What's interesting about this is that the air that the crate is falling through (around?) does the same thing, and erupts from the other portal as a jet. No fluid could exert a pressure on the (part of the) bottom of the crate covered by the portal, so the crate should get sucked down even faster than gravity and create quite an updraft. A styrofoam block could be sunk into the ocean by attaching a portal to its base, creating a rush of hundreds of thousands of gallons of seawater from the other end. Putting one end of a portal on top of something and the other end on one of its sides would create an airplane as the pressure was applied only to its bottom and the other sides.
There's a way around these bizarre results: say that at each portal, the momentum that each object carries into or out of it (in the portal's reference) frame is assigned to or derived from the object backing the portal. That is to say, a heavy object entering a portal would bend the wall the portal was on in the same fashion it would if the portal weren't there and the object were simply hitting the wall. Then the falling crate would still have air pressure on it; the downdraft it should be creating (but isn't because the air isn't being forced aside) would simply be felt wherever the other end was. And when the crate engulfed you, it would slow down drastically (unless it were much heavier than you) and the result would be rather like it was launching you off the other end of a normal springboard, except that it would pull you up by your head — the part of you that encountered it when it was moving fastest.
Or it can just phone home and use a 0-day local privilege escalation attack before whatever update manager can do its thing. Or just pose as the update manager.
The thing in limited supply, and in high demand, is the musician's creativity - [...]. That's what I'm paying for when I buy music. The fact that copies of this creativity cost $0 to duplicate and distribute does not mean that the creativity itself is worthless.
Of course that's what's limited; no one objects to paying for that. But there does not exist any more creativity (nor any more results of it) after you buy a CD than before, so you can't literally be paying for it. Moreover, you're specifically interested in some song that's already on that CD — what you want isn't creativity, so how can that be your intent in the purchase? Or do you really buy CDs that you know you will never use in an attempt to fund the later creation of something that you do like? (Of course not; mailing a check to the artist would be much more useful to them and less wasteful.)
Paying for creativity is called "commissioning", and I'm not aware of significant money being spent on that rather than on copies of what already exists. Maybe the idea of encouraging artists that you like raises the price you're willing to pay for copies of their music, but that amount differs between people and the sticker price doesn't, so there's no true relationship.
If you, say, get a song from iTunes, the only difference in the world before and after your purchase is the significant benefit of access to the data and the trivial expense of transferring and storing it. You send $0.99 to Apple/RIAA/etc., and they do nothing whatsoever but the favor of "duplicating and distributing" the data to you; one distribution is $1, two is $2. (The artist does nothing at all.) Logically, the price fetched for creating the music is $0, since that's the amount paid in for a song that is created and not distributed.
The obvious counterargument is that the sales from one album are the payment for the next, and so the current system is just. But there are a variety of problems there: how many copies of album #N does it take before #N+1 is released for free since #N+2 is already paid for? Every sale made after the last album is released is causally incapable of creating or inspiring more good work; is that refunded once it becomes clear that nothing more is forthcoming? Suppose I like a group's style, but then it changes and I'm no longer interested: why should I be paying for the creation of what I don't want?
Saying that the sales retroactively (and somewhat probabilistically) finance the same album's creation is also problematic: even aside from being acausal, why does the price keep going up the more people like it? There must have been some level of return that made the venture worthwhile for the artists and producers; they shouldn't have the option of raising their selling price during the sale just because it looks like a higher bar could be met. When an artist dies, are their albums discounted to account for the impossibility of retroactively improving or increasing their output?
Imagine, though, that an escrow account was set up per band, and they were awarded its contents and simultaneously released their next song into the public domain whenever it (via arbitrary and voluntary payments from the masses) hit $N. Then what you paid would be (part of) a commission and would correspond to the difficult part of creating that first released copy. Solar power and existing silicon can handle creating all the others.
I'm more concerned about the fact that copyright law doesn't permit their argument in the first place: Title 17,117 specifically exempts copying for the sole purpose of utilization of the program from being copyright infringement in the first place.
(Of course, Blizzard's restrictions might be considered a contract too, but no one should be liable for copyright infringement here! IANAL, etc.)