Acting in such a way as to instill terror is terrorism.
World governments and big corps are very sophisticated users of terrorism, manipulating the populace through a combination of fear and reward to get exactly the outcome they want.
The jihadis are amateurs in comparison.
Nothing about the notation 0.999... invokes a bounded set.
Hyperreal numbers is a whole 'nother topic, and there's no need to invoke them here except to be difficult. My statement that such constructs are completely meaningless is still true with very few exceptions.
There is no such hair's breadth. The symbols 0.999... and 1 are exactly equal in every way.
And writing 1.000...001 is a gross misuse of the notation. You can't have something after an infinite list. When would you write that 1 in? The zeroes continue *forever*.
That's just misuse of the notation and a lack of understanding of what infinity means.
How can you have a number following an infinite list? When would you write that number in? The nines continue forever. The zero would never get a chance to be added to the end.
Constructs such as 0.000...1 and 0.99(9)0 are completely meaningless.
Your confusion stems from misusing the concepts/notation.
0.99(9) represents an infinite concatenation of nine's, makes sense, and exactly equals 1.
0.00(0)1 doesn't make sense. How can you have an infinite series of something (zeroes), which is then followed by something else (one)? When do you add the one at the end? You never get a chance, the zeroes just keep going on forever... No such construct can exist.
This statement from TFA was particularly interesting:
There were two reasons for not going ahead with patents: one was the view that it should stay classified, because it was for our own use. The other was the advice we got that this is mathematics and couldn’t be patented even if we wanted to. The rules in the US are different, which is why it was possible for it to be patented eventually in the US.
I thought even US law said that purely mathematical algorithms couldn't be patented? Can anyone shed light on why this was patentable (or is this another example of the USPTO letting through something they shouldn't?)
This incident has a lot of visibility, and the government can not afford to let it go with a slap.
Beyond that, lawsuits arising from this will fill the courts for YEARS. The lawsuits will cost BP much more money and bad publicity that any government action.
BP *WILL NOT* come out of this unscathed, if they come out at all.
What an idealistic viewpoint. I mean, who ever heard of Exxon again after Exxon-Valdez?
BP makes tens of billions of dollars PROFIT every year. They could pay off the entire national debt of the US with a few years' revenue. You think any government in the world is gonna tangle with them?
Kinda sorta. Unless they team up with Exxon, Shell, and the numerous other giant oil companies, it'll be difficult for them to charge anything beyond a market price for gasoline. The fact BP needs to charge more will have a slight impact on consumer prices, but it's unlikely to have a significant effect.
(And even if they made an illegal cartel agreement with the other oil companies, the other oil companies would make huge amounts of money on the higher prices, while BP would break even - they'd be given an enormous advantage over BP in the longer term.)
The more likely result of this is BP losing an enormous amount of business and possibly entering a death spiral. Dying or not, the shareholders will collectively lose tens of billions of dollars. Once dead, the other oil companies will fill the gap, taking over the existing production business.
And good riddance.
Why does anyone who has heard of "supply/demand" think anything in the real world works that way? BP has enough cash to power America's cars simply by burning notes, but anyway what gives you the idea that BP makes money from tiny street-corner gas stations? BP sells in bulk, they run refineries, they trade billions of dollars a day on the commodities markets. The only people affected by small changes in gas station prices are the individual gas station owners.
And anyway do you have any idea how much money BP makes? $45 million dollars profit A DAY last I checked. They could pay everyone in the Gulf enough money to retire and still make a profit on the year. The amount they have had to spend, and will eventually have to spend paying off all those affected, is literally nothing to them.
BP dying, hah. It has a larger turnover than most countries. If things got REALLY bad, they would just shut down one of their refineries for "maintenance" till the oil price rose enough to sustain them anyway.
Bullshit. BP is already pricing its oil to whatever brings it most profits. It can't pass anything to consumer since rising prices would send consumers to competitors instead, leading to less profits for BP.
Bullshit.
The gasoline retail industry is notorious for having a pricing strategy of "the maximum the consumer can withstand". As soon as BP raises prices (which they won't have to, that's not where they make their money anyway) the neighbouring stations would raise their prices too.
In any case BP, Exxon, Chevron etc. don't make their profits at the pump. They run refineries, they supply fuel direct to major consumers like airlines, they sell raw crude on the commodities market. What average Joe pays at the station is not their cash cow - any small fluctuations in price benefit the individual station owners, not the big mega-corp.
Yes, a buoyancy control device (BCD) - usually an inflatable vest connected to your air cylinder - is standard diving equipment.
Scuba divers will know that to stay neutrally buoyant, as you dive deeper, you must add extra air to your buoyancy control vest, and vent air when rising.
Being neutrally buoyant is an unstable equilibrium, so if you are changing depth and do nothing or if you get your correction wrong, you end up rising/sinking even faster.
If you do maintain your buoyancy well, your energy usage (for example for divers, as measured by your air usage) is hugely reduced - it makes sense to get it right if you plan to spend significant time at a roughly constant depth.
The only difference in this case, is that the argonaut has no easy push-button to change buoyancy mid-dive, and instead has to return to the surface every time.
While obviously the cost of making this film is nothing compared to a movie studio budget, and the output is pretty much on the same level...
How does the effort these guys put in compare to how much effort a studio would have had to put in? Cause that's the metric that will really tell us if Blender is as good as the pro tools. Volunteers will always be 100% cheaper than professionals, the question is how much time they took to create this.
Regardless, I applaud the effort, it looks wonderful.
Hmmm... was the "much touted unbreakable copy protection" the fact that the discs were a different size?
Cause once that hardware became the Wii, it was shockingly easy to get stuff running on it.
Hello MPEG-LA, Mozilla calling.
We'd like a license, for... ummm... somewhere around 350million users. Plus or minus 50million.
Hmph. Maybe we should just buy 6billion licenses. That should cover us.
Comparing the results of the Pwn 2 Own contest, having similar attack surfaces and only lasting 2 minutes doesn't engender visions of "secure". In fact, it was Windows that people thought would last only that long.
Unfortunately the times in Pwn2Own mean nothing; the researchers work for months beforehand perfecting their attack and then simply implement it on the day.
Often, the reason the macs get hacked first is that the researcher wants a new mac.
No operating system is objectively secure; even relative comparisons are pretty meaningless.
Slashdot Mirror
Acting in such a way as to instill terror is terrorism.
World governments and big corps are very sophisticated users of terrorism, manipulating the populace through a combination of fear and reward to get exactly the outcome they want.
The jihadis are amateurs in comparison.
Sad news. I'll miss seeing him around the CL. Odd that the University hasn't said anything yet. #RIP mvw1
So in Capitalist America, you vote for voting machine? Sounds about right ...
who knows maybe if things change they'll be more important.
I, for one, welcome our new ear-wiggling overlords.
Nothing about the notation 0.999... invokes a bounded set.
Hyperreal numbers is a whole 'nother topic, and there's no need to invoke them here except to be difficult. My statement that such constructs are completely meaningless is still true with very few exceptions.
You're missing the point entirely. How about I make the statement that 1.000(0) != 1 since there is an infinitely small rounding error.
If the rounding error is as you say "infinitely far down the line", it doesn't exist.
There is no such hair's breadth. The symbols 0.999... and 1 are exactly equal in every way.
And writing 1.000...001 is a gross misuse of the notation. You can't have something after an infinite list. When would you write that 1 in? The zeroes continue *forever*.
Of course 0.999 != 1. However 0.999... == 1. Notice the dots.
I can get you 0.999... of an apple ... its just a whole apple.
x=0.999...9 10x=9.99...0
That's just misuse of the notation and a lack of understanding of what infinity means.
How can you have a number following an infinite list? When would you write that number in? The nines continue forever. The zero would never get a chance to be added to the end.
Constructs such as 0.000...1 and 0.99(9)0 are completely meaningless.
Your confusion stems from misusing the concepts/notation. ... No such construct can exist.
0.99(9) represents an infinite concatenation of nine's, makes sense, and exactly equals 1.
0.00(0)1 doesn't make sense. How can you have an infinite series of something (zeroes), which is then followed by something else (one)? When do you add the one at the end? You never get a chance, the zeroes just keep going on forever
There were two reasons for not going ahead with patents: one was the view that it should stay classified, because it was for our own use. The other was the advice we got that this is mathematics and couldn’t be patented even if we wanted to. The rules in the US are different, which is why it was possible for it to be patented eventually in the US.
I thought even US law said that purely mathematical algorithms couldn't be patented? Can anyone shed light on why this was patentable (or is this another example of the USPTO letting through something they shouldn't?)
This is clearly astroturfing on behalf of the truth
Mine would fit on a 16G flash drive.
What? 640k is enough for anyone's sexual history!
Good thing /. editors don't have to actually read the news they post, otherwise they'd be leaving too.
Do the needful
A lot of archaic British phrases survive only in South Asia.
This incident has a lot of visibility, and the government can not afford to let it go with a slap. Beyond that, lawsuits arising from this will fill the courts for YEARS. The lawsuits will cost BP much more money and bad publicity that any government action. BP *WILL NOT* come out of this unscathed, if they come out at all.
What an idealistic viewpoint. I mean, who ever heard of Exxon again after Exxon-Valdez?
BP makes tens of billions of dollars PROFIT every year. They could pay off the entire national debt of the US with a few years' revenue. You think any government in the world is gonna tangle with them?
Kinda sorta. Unless they team up with Exxon, Shell, and the numerous other giant oil companies, it'll be difficult for them to charge anything beyond a market price for gasoline. The fact BP needs to charge more will have a slight impact on consumer prices, but it's unlikely to have a significant effect.
(And even if they made an illegal cartel agreement with the other oil companies, the other oil companies would make huge amounts of money on the higher prices, while BP would break even - they'd be given an enormous advantage over BP in the longer term.)
The more likely result of this is BP losing an enormous amount of business and possibly entering a death spiral. Dying or not, the shareholders will collectively lose tens of billions of dollars. Once dead, the other oil companies will fill the gap, taking over the existing production business.
And good riddance.
Why does anyone who has heard of "supply/demand" think anything in the real world works that way? BP has enough cash to power America's cars simply by burning notes, but anyway what gives you the idea that BP makes money from tiny street-corner gas stations? BP sells in bulk, they run refineries, they trade billions of dollars a day on the commodities markets. The only people affected by small changes in gas station prices are the individual gas station owners.
And anyway do you have any idea how much money BP makes? $45 million dollars profit A DAY last I checked. They could pay everyone in the Gulf enough money to retire and still make a profit on the year. The amount they have had to spend, and will eventually have to spend paying off all those affected, is literally nothing to them.
BP dying, hah. It has a larger turnover than most countries. If things got REALLY bad, they would just shut down one of their refineries for "maintenance" till the oil price rose enough to sustain them anyway.
Bullshit. BP is already pricing its oil to whatever brings it most profits. It can't pass anything to consumer since rising prices would send consumers to competitors instead, leading to less profits for BP.
Bullshit.
The gasoline retail industry is notorious for having a pricing strategy of "the maximum the consumer can withstand". As soon as BP raises prices (which they won't have to, that's not where they make their money anyway) the neighbouring stations would raise their prices too.
In any case BP, Exxon, Chevron etc. don't make their profits at the pump. They run refineries, they supply fuel direct to major consumers like airlines, they sell raw crude on the commodities market. What average Joe pays at the station is not their cash cow - any small fluctuations in price benefit the individual station owners, not the big mega-corp.
Yes, a buoyancy control device (BCD) - usually an inflatable vest connected to your air cylinder - is standard diving equipment.
Scuba divers will know that to stay neutrally buoyant, as you dive deeper, you must add extra air to your buoyancy control vest, and vent air when rising.
Being neutrally buoyant is an unstable equilibrium, so if you are changing depth and do nothing or if you get your correction wrong, you end up rising/sinking even faster.
If you do maintain your buoyancy well, your energy usage (for example for divers, as measured by your air usage) is hugely reduced - it makes sense to get it right if you plan to spend significant time at a roughly constant depth.
The only difference in this case, is that the argonaut has no easy push-button to change buoyancy mid-dive, and instead has to return to the surface every time.
While obviously the cost of making this film is nothing compared to a movie studio budget, and the output is pretty much on the same level ...
How does the effort these guys put in compare to how much effort a studio would have had to put in? Cause that's the metric that will really tell us if Blender is as good as the pro tools. Volunteers will always be 100% cheaper than professionals, the question is how much time they took to create this.
Regardless, I applaud the effort, it looks wonderful.
You are aware that "Shakespeare" was just a pseudonym of the Dear Leader, I hope? The Dear Leader wrote all literature ever.
Hmmm ... was the "much touted unbreakable copy protection" the fact that the discs were a different size?
Cause once that hardware became the Wii, it was shockingly easy to get stuff running on it.
Please please don't go all Apple on us Nintendo
Hello MPEG-LA, Mozilla calling. We'd like a license, for ... ummm... somewhere around 350million users. Plus or minus 50million.
Hmph. Maybe we should just buy 6billion licenses. That should cover us.
I seriously doubt the validity your remarks about "secure".
Comparing the results of the Pwn 2 Own contest, having similar attack surfaces and only lasting 2 minutes doesn't engender visions of "secure". In fact, it was Windows that people thought would last only that long.
Unfortunately the times in Pwn2Own mean nothing; the researchers work for months beforehand perfecting their attack and then simply implement it on the day. Often, the reason the macs get hacked first is that the researcher wants a new mac. No operating system is objectively secure; even relative comparisons are pretty meaningless.