Back in uni we had an ad-hoc competition, throwing paper airplanes out of a 15th storey window, in calm weather. All sorts of designs were tried, flying time measured. Towards the end it occured to me to compare the times against an etalon: an unfolded A4 sheet. Dropped the sheet from the window, and it started the typical erratic descent of a falling leaf, swinging back-and-forth, pulling straight up at the end of the swings. It took twice as long to touch down than the next best airplane, so it pretty much instantly killed the competition.
Don't know about the rest of the 'Dive Into...' sites, but the world may be actually better off without the Python site, if we are to believe this blog:
"Beginners see this and think that Python is complex and hard when it's actually one of the few languages designed to be easy to use. It's a damn shame they run into this book first. (...) This is for a first program? When beginners are told "go read Dive Into Python" they run into examples like this and get discouraged. I could see if Mr. Pilgrim had a giant disclaimer or something warning people that this isn't a beginner's book, but he doesn't. In fact, he has a whole damn chapter on installing Python 3 as if it's for a beginner.
This book is so full of bad initial examples and difficult to follow instructions that it actually hurts Python to have it exist. When beginners stumble onto it they end up getting discouraged and go on to another language. I personally have had too many friends who are eager to learn programming find this festering dung pile before I could warn them and get turned off from programming.
According to this article the North Pole has already been without ice a few years ago:
"In 2001, Russia made the first move, staking out virtually half of the Arctic Ocean, including the North Pole. Moscow sought to bolster its claim by sending a research ship north to gather geographical data. On Aug. 29, it reached the pole without the help of an icebreaker - the first surface ship ever to do so."
"Reason" (1941)--Powell and Donovan are assigned to an energy station--it gathers solar energy, and then sends that energy, via a focused beam, to Earth. (...) QT-1 banishes the humans from the beam control room. This worries Powell and Donovan, because a storm is approaching, and it could deflect the energy beam, destroying a good portion of the Earth."
Participants then worked on a "learning task" in which one complex sequence of keypresses was followed by an angry face on the screen, another sequence was followed by a neutral face, and a third sequence was followed by no face.
Since the angry face was the only face showing any expression, how can you know that it was that particular expression which was rewarding? Maybe a smiling or surprised-looking face would have provided the same reward or even more. Perhaps those people with high testosterone levels just want some sort of feedback, as opposed to a neutral (i.e. 'bored') face or no face at all.
It is like doing experiments on rats and rewarding them with salty snack, tastless snack or nothing -- and concluding that their favourite is the salty snack, although they might actually prefer sweets.
Wikipedia has an article on tectonic plates, with a map clearly showing that Siberia and Alaska are on the same plate, so the crust movement wont crush or tear the tunnel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Plates_tect2_en .svg
If you read just a few lines more into the Wikipedia article you'll see:
"Initial research on the MWP and the following Little Ice Age (LIA) was largely done in Europe, where the phenomenon was most obvious and clearly documented."
So it is only documenting which was exclusive to Europe not the phenomena. Indeed, further down in the article there is a list of findings about the warmer climate of other continents in the same period.
"The Arctic is undergoing nothing less than a great rush for virgin territory and natural resources worth hundreds of billions of dollars..."
"...In 2001, Russia made the first move, staking out virtually half of the Arctic Ocean, including the North Pole. Moscow sought to bolster its claim by sending a research ship north to gather geographical data. On Aug. 29, it reached the pole without the help of an icebreaker - the first surface ship ever to do so."
Anyone wondered that the loudspeakers are on the side of the ship, so they can't really make shockwaves lengthwise? A torpedo coming from the front or rear can not be destroyed by this system.
Re:transmission in a network between third parties
on
LokiTorrent Shut Down
·
· Score: 1
You are cutting away the first part of the article... This exception does not include p2p networks. It only applies to a temporary reproduction part of a global technological process. p2p is a mean by itself and not part of another mean of transmission.
When using BitTorrent (the article was about the fate of LokiTorrent) to download a file, the sharing is essential for the process, but it is not the main purpose of it, at least not on the client's side. The client shares fragments of the file in order to obtain further fragments. The user's purpose is download not distribution, shares only as much as necessary. Once the entire file is received the client quits (more or less).
So the BT client's sharing is integral and essential part of a technological process. A BitTorrent client is about downloading, not sharing. To share a file using BitTorrent one has to do completely different actions than to download.
transmission in a network between third parties...
on
LokiTorrent Shut Down
·
· Score: 1
For the interested readers I would like to point at the EU Copyright Directive. Should have done it in the parent comment.
I based my conclusions on the Article 5, 2.(b) (fair use, for fair compensation consider the "copyright tax" built into the price of blank CDs) and Article 5, 1.(a) (word-for-word: "a transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary").
I may agree with the latter one (1.(a)) being somewhat fuzzy about the implementation. Indeed, you can interpret the description as cache or proxy, but p2p as well. Bittorent leeching matches this description perfectly.
The "private use" exception allows me to use a copyrighted content at home or within my family. I can show a DVD I bought to my family or a group of my friends. (...) In short, both exceptions fail in the case of p2p networks. There are others, but they don't apply to p2p networks either (for instance copying items for educational purposes).
I checked the law specifically looking for its p2p aspects, as the plain download is clearly legal, the copyright issues must be handled by the distributor (i.e. paying royalties, etc. I think it is a fair thing, since the user has now way to make sure whether the content on the particular site is legal or not.) There was a section dedicated to p2p, although not with these specific words, but it described the process of creating a temporary copy of the material in the system and making it avaliable for others.
I even asked professional help from a lawyer to make sure I don't misinterpret something in the text.
From the site:"Illegally downloading movies from sites such as these without proper authorization violates the law, is theft, and is not anonymous. Stealing movies leaves a trail. The only way not to get caught is to stop."
I'm tired reading this sort of stuff again and again. They always forget to mention that it is illegal only in the USA. For example it is perfectly legal to download music or video for personal use in the EU, even with file sharing application where you make it avaliable for 3rd party temporarily. I found even those living in the EU are not aware of this situation, probably due to the continuous MPAA/RIAA threathenings.
Distributing copyrighted content is a different issue even in the EU, but I'm not familiar with the legal side of that. All I know my movie downloads fall in the "fair use" category according to the current EU copyright law.
And no information about the tidal wave, in case ground zero is in water. Also the long term effect of the impact is missing, e.g. the dust in the atmosphere would cause a little ice age.
"You can sterilize a robot. But you cannot do the same to an astronaut. Inevitably a human will introduce microbes to the planet... and contaminate it."
By the time anybody gets there the Mars may be contaminated by this broken Mars probe, which wasn't meant to land on Mars (therefore wasn't sterilized) but chances are high that it will hit Mars nonetheless.
I'd assume the beeps are a single tone. Run a fourier xform on the signal and look for any dominant tones (peaks) in the spectrum. Once the frequency is known, run the signal through a narrow band filter at that frequency to eliminate the noise.
The frequency of the signal may change during transmission, due to Doppler effect. In this sample it constantly increases. So running a Fourier transform on the signal won't show you any distinct peaks.
...but how about the opposite application: writing?
Xerox has been there, done that:
"Through a chemical process that Xerox is holding as a trade secret, "each ball is given an electric charge, with more on one side than on the other," Sheridon explains. So when an electric field is applied to the surface of the sheet, the balls are lifted in their oil-filled cells, rotated like the needles of tiny compasses to point either their black or their white hemispheres eyeward, and then slammed against the far wall of the cell. There they stick, holding the image, until they are dislodged by another field. At high voltages, the balls stick before completing their rotation, thus producing various shades of gray. Sheridon's group has also produced red-and-white displays and is working on combining balls of various hues to produce full-color ones. (...) But the real goal, Sheridon says, is also the most distant: an electronic surrogate for paper. Engineer Matt Howard hands me a wooden pencil that is plugged into a weak power supply. As I write on the sheet, the tiny electric field conducted through the pencil's graphite core darkens the screen wherever the tip touches. Howard is working on a handheld wand that will receive text and images from a computer and scan them onto a Gyricon page, which would then be annotated, photocopied, erased--but not discarded."
Copy of the Scientific American article is here , but you may find other references.
Slashdot Mirror
Back in uni we had an ad-hoc competition, throwing paper airplanes out of a 15th storey window, in calm weather. All sorts of designs were tried, flying time measured. Towards the end it occured to me to compare the times against an etalon: an unfolded A4 sheet. Dropped the sheet from the window, and it started the typical erratic descent of a falling leaf, swinging back-and-forth, pulling straight up at the end of the swings. It took twice as long to touch down than the next best airplane, so it pretty much instantly killed the competition.
Don't know about the rest of the 'Dive Into...' sites, but the world may be actually better off without the Python site, if we are to believe this blog:
"Beginners see this and think that Python is complex and hard when it's actually one of the few languages designed to be easy to use. It's a damn shame they run into this book first.
(...)
This is for a first program? When beginners are told "go read Dive Into Python" they run into examples like this and get discouraged. I could see if Mr. Pilgrim had a giant disclaimer or something warning people that this isn't a beginner's book, but he doesn't. In fact, he has a whole damn chapter on installing Python 3 as if it's for a beginner.
This book is so full of bad initial examples and difficult to follow instructions that it actually hurts Python to have it exist. When beginners stumble onto it they end up getting discouraged and go on to another language. I personally have had too many friends who are eager to learn programming find this festering dung pile before I could warn them and get turned off from programming.
Just for comparison, check out this guy doing stunts with a model helicopter. Not only incredible moves, but great choreography as well.
According to this article the North Pole has already been without ice a few years ago:
"In 2001, Russia made the first move, staking out virtually half of
the Arctic Ocean, including the North Pole. Moscow sought to bolster
its claim by sending a research ship north to gather geographical
data. On Aug. 29, it reached the pole without the help of an
icebreaker - the first surface ship ever to do so."
Obligatory Asimov reference: http://scifipedia.scifi.com/index.php/I,_Robot_(Book)
"Reason" (1941)--Powell and Donovan are assigned to an energy station--it gathers solar energy, and then sends that energy, via a focused beam, to Earth. (...) QT-1 banishes the humans from the beam control room. This worries Powell and Donovan, because a storm is approaching, and it could deflect the energy beam, destroying a good portion of the Earth."
Participants then worked on a "learning task" in which one complex sequence of keypresses was followed by an angry face on the screen, another sequence was followed by a neutral face, and a third sequence was followed by no face.
Since the angry face was the only face showing any expression, how can you know that it was that particular expression which was rewarding? Maybe a smiling or surprised-looking face would have provided the same reward or even more. Perhaps those people with high testosterone levels just want some sort of feedback, as opposed to a neutral (i.e. 'bored') face or no face at all.
It is like doing experiments on rats and rewarding them with salty snack, tastless snack or nothing -- and concluding that their favourite is the salty snack, although they might actually prefer sweets.
Wikipedia has an article on tectonic plates, with a map clearly showing that Siberia and Alaska are on the same plate, so the crust movement wont crush or tear the tunnel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Plates_tect2_en .svg
If you read just a few lines more into the Wikipedia article you'll see:
"Initial research on the MWP and the following Little Ice Age (LIA) was largely done in Europe, where the phenomenon was most obvious and clearly documented."
So it is only documenting which was exclusive to Europe not the phenomena. Indeed, further down in the article there is a list of findings about the warmer climate of other continents in the same period.
According to this article:
"The Arctic is undergoing nothing less than a great rush for virgin territory and natural resources worth hundreds of billions of dollars..."
"...In 2001, Russia made the first move, staking out virtually half of the Arctic Ocean, including the North Pole. Moscow sought to bolster its claim by sending a research ship north to gather geographical data. On Aug. 29, it reached the pole without the help of an icebreaker - the first surface ship ever to do so."
They cost a quarter and the higher the frequency the more they attenuate it, so speech (low-mid frequencies) intelligibility is not affected.
Anyone wondered that the loudspeakers are on the side of the ship, so they can't really make shockwaves lengthwise? A torpedo coming from the front or rear can not be destroyed by this system.
You are cutting away the first part of the article... This exception does not include p2p networks. It only applies to a temporary reproduction part of a global technological process. p2p is a mean by itself and not part of another mean of transmission.
When using BitTorrent (the article was about the fate of LokiTorrent) to download a file, the sharing is essential for the process, but it is not the main purpose of it, at least not on the client's side. The client shares fragments of the file in order to obtain further fragments. The user's purpose is download not distribution, shares only as much as necessary. Once the entire file is received the client quits (more or less).
So the BT client's sharing is integral and essential part of a technological process. A BitTorrent client is about downloading, not sharing. To share a file using BitTorrent one has to do completely different actions than to download.
For the interested readers I would like to point at the EU Copyright Directive. Should have done it in the parent comment.
I based my conclusions on the Article 5, 2.(b) (fair use, for fair compensation consider the "copyright tax" built into the price of blank CDs) and Article 5, 1.(a) (word-for-word: "a transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary").
I may agree with the latter one (1.(a)) being somewhat fuzzy about the implementation. Indeed, you can interpret the description as cache or proxy, but p2p as well. Bittorent leeching matches this description perfectly.
The "private use" exception allows me to use a copyrighted content at home or within my family. I can show a DVD I bought to my family or a group of my friends. (...) In short, both exceptions fail in the case of p2p networks. There are others, but they don't apply to p2p networks either (for instance copying items for educational purposes).
I checked the law specifically looking for its p2p aspects, as the plain download is clearly legal, the copyright issues must be handled by the distributor (i.e. paying royalties, etc. I think it is a fair thing, since the user has now way to make sure whether the content on the particular site is legal or not.) There was a section dedicated to p2p, although not with these specific words, but it described the process of creating a temporary copy of the material in the system and making it avaliable for others.
I even asked professional help from a lawyer to make sure I don't misinterpret something in the text.
From the site:"Illegally downloading movies from sites such as these without proper authorization violates the law, is theft, and is not anonymous. Stealing movies leaves a trail. The only way not to get caught is to stop."
I'm tired reading this sort of stuff again and again. They always forget to mention that it is illegal only in the USA. For example it is perfectly legal to download music or video for personal use in the EU, even with file sharing application where you make it avaliable for 3rd party temporarily. I found even those living in the EU are not aware of this situation, probably due to the continuous MPAA/RIAA threathenings.
Distributing copyrighted content is a different issue even in the EU, but I'm not familiar with the legal side of that. All I know my movie downloads fall in the "fair use" category according to the current EU copyright law.
1. Attach remote control shutter release to camera
2. Mount camera on a kite or model airplane
3. Enjoy pictures delivered to your laptop
But only if you are not worried of dropping your 8000 dollar apparatus...
And no information about the tidal wave, in case ground zero is in water. Also the long term effect of the impact is missing, e.g. the dust in the atmosphere would cause a little ice age.
"You can sterilize a robot. But you cannot do the same to an astronaut. Inevitably a human will introduce microbes to the planet ... and contaminate it."
By the time anybody gets there the Mars may be contaminated by this broken Mars probe, which wasn't meant to land on Mars (therefore wasn't sterilized) but chances are high that it will hit Mars nonetheless.
I think all claims of Mr. Nemitz will become pointless when the Chinese probes land on Eros and start digging.
...plus Wi-Fi enabled and and it has ARM processor in it: perfect on-board controller for model air-planes.
Jeez, this article was on Slashdot exactly a year
ago!!!
I'd assume the beeps are a single tone. Run a fourier xform on the signal and look for any dominant tones (peaks) in the spectrum. Once the frequency is known, run the signal through a narrow band filter at that frequency to eliminate the noise.
The frequency of the signal may change during transmission, due to Doppler effect. In this sample it constantly increases. So running a Fourier transform on the signal won't show you any distinct peaks.
It's easy: subtract white noise and there you go :-)
...but how about the opposite application: writing?
Xerox has been there, done that:
"Through a chemical process that Xerox is holding as a trade secret, "each ball is given an electric charge, with more on one side than on the other," Sheridon explains. So when an electric field is applied to the surface of the sheet, the balls are lifted in their oil-filled cells, rotated like the needles of tiny compasses to point either their black or their white hemispheres eyeward, and then slammed against the far wall of the cell. There they stick, holding the image, until they are dislodged by another field. At high voltages, the balls stick before completing their rotation, thus producing various shades of gray. Sheridon's group has also produced red-and-white displays and is working on combining balls of various hues to produce full-color ones.
(...)
But the real goal, Sheridon says, is also the most distant: an electronic surrogate for paper. Engineer Matt Howard hands me a wooden pencil that is plugged into a weak power supply. As I write on the sheet, the tiny electric field conducted through the pencil's graphite core darkens the screen wherever the tip touches. Howard is working on a handheld wand that will receive text and images from a computer and scan them onto a Gyricon page, which would then be annotated, photocopied, erased--but not discarded."
Copy of the Scientific American article is here , but you may find other references.
If two numbers are not equal, then you can pick a number between them.
Now try to do that with 0.99999... and 1.