You seem to think that it would be more likely to crack Go than chess. Chess, which develops from a fixed position, is much easier to solve (at least via brute force) than Go, which allows any starting position. Also, the chess board is 10x10, the Go board is 19x19. While both are incredibly hard games computationally, Go, to a programmer or theorist, is even harder than chess.
Re:3500 year old technology
on
Awari Solved
·
· Score: 2
I would find it quite unlikely that people 3500 years ago would have been able to work out game theory. Although people have displayed amazing ingenuity (see the pyramids of Egypt: built completely with manual labor, and we still aren't completely sure how they did it), an advancement such as game theory even before things as simple as decimals and fractions were even formalized would be pretty much impossible. More likely, people went by what felt fair and "right".
He said he's getting 300-900 Kbps average, so I think he answered his own question. If I purchased a T1, that shit better never drop below 1.2 or 1.3 Mbps, and even that would piss me off.
Remember that speed on the 'net is influenced by many other factors: you could have an OC-192 like the big telecoms, but if you're downloading from someone's FTP site connected with a 2400 bps modem, then you will only ever get the bandwidth of the slowest link in the chain (in this case, 2400 bits per second). What the guaranteed bandwidth on a T1 specifies is that you'll always have a line that is capable of 1.544 MBPS transfer from one end to the other.
In most states, the mere posession of "burglary tools" does not constitute a crime. The "burglary tools" crime consists of using those tools while commiting a burglary. Essentially, the parent poster's idea is correct.
Note that I am not a lawyer; this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice, look under "Lawyers" or "Attorneys" in your phone book to find a lawyer in your jurisdiction.
Red Hat probably isn't the best distro, nor is it the worst. Still, there are a couple reasons why it is the largest:
They offer a version of Linux that works right out of the box. Remember that while much of the Slashdot crowd likes to customize everything to the limit, most people are happy with most defaults. Redhat isn't the most secure, or the most powerful. However, it can set things up without asking too many questions; which is often a feature for someone new to Linux. In fact, I point Linux beginners to Red Hat or Mandrake for this reason: They are probably best off learning by poking around on a system with reasonable defaults, not having to make random choices when they're asked a question over their head.
They're a fairly large company. They certainly don't have the cash of someone like Microsoft or even Apple, but they do have enough money to appear large and "stable". To many, especially in the business world, it's a big selling point to say that you'll be around in five or ten years.
The nForce makes a quite decent value system. It has a decent quality chipset that can be paired up with some DDR and an older Athlon, to make a nice cheap system that actually has decent video performance (especially for an onboard video chipset!).
It was never really meant as a performance board, but instead as a value board that had decent performance. As long as you don't expect it to run like the newest Geforce4s, it does a great job as an economy market board.
But the Geforce4 MX/Go is basically a GF2 pumped up to higher clock and RAM speeds. It doesn't even implement a full DX8 feature set. The GF4 Titanium models are the ones with a new chipset. That said, the Nvidia mobile line finally is bringing decent graphics to the mobile market. If you can get past the blurriness of an LCD (which isn't that bad), you can finally play games on your laptop. Still, don't fool yourself into thinking it's better than your desktop system. Certain sacrifices must be made to keep power consumption and heat output to a minimum; these are not conducive to a super-high-performance GPU.
But if it's a beginning calculus student, then they shouldn't have to do anything like factor a fifth-order polynomial. Once you understand how to do something, it is useless to grind it out again and again. If you need to do it by hand, you can, but the calculator or computer can do it faster and easier.
The problem with calculators comes in when students don't understand the material being taught. However, the idea behind the calculator is that "if you don't need it, you can have it". I would rather spend my time learning new concepts than doing easy but tedious basic algebra.
While the eclipse is over, this might be something to keep in mind for when the next one rolls around:
My method for safely observing the eclipse was to use a monocular (you could easily use binoculars as well, just use one half of 'em) to project the image onto a piece of stiff white tagboard. It allows a larger and clearer picture (I was able to actually see what I believe were sunspots, as they didn't change when I moved the image around!). Simply line up the monocular with the sun by making the shadow end-on, with the main lens towards the sun. Then, move the eyepiece close to the tagboard. Find the white dot, then move the monocular out and focus it by trial and error. It took me about a minute to set up, and I got a nice clear image of the sun that would have been about an inch in diameter, assuming it didn't have a big bite taken out of it;-).
One saftey note: never look directly at the sun, whether it's through the monocular or with the naked eye. While it seems like you might never do it, I almost did several times, as it seemed so much easier than trying to get the little projected image in focus on the paper. Please, be careful with your eyes. Cyborg-vision is still a long way off.
Note that the Scientific American article is very cautious: they state the implications if it's true. While, if true, this is a breakthrough on the level of relativity or quantum mechanics, one should take this with a large grain of salt. Plenty of other "revolutionary" theories haven't managed to pan out.
They may already have the cards installed and running the ATI official drivers. What they're probably doing here is a future insurance thing: once the Radeon 8500 hits end-of-life, drivers for the latest Linux kernel/XFree combo won't come out. However, if they have an in-house driver, they can make it current again without too much work. This is more an internal program to ensure that they don't get stuck with a bunch of useless legacy hardware.
The bonus for the Open Source community is cool: open source Radeon drivers! Still, though, that isn't the only reason TWC is putting out Open Source drivers. In fact, it probably was a minor consideration: they may have just thought they could increase their reputation among computer geek-types at essentially no cost. From what I see, it seems to have worked!
Since when has Cisco intentionally made bad hardware? I have found that while their prices are high, it is hard to make the hardware on a Cisco box fail short of running mains voltage through an Ethernet line.
Scriptkiddies just run programs, and typically poorly coded ones at that. Their concept of "hacking" is double-clicking on "Shortcut to WinNuke.exe". Thus, if they were using a program that had the directory c:\winnt hardcoded in (like some simple, hacked together in an hour exploit demonstration code), they probably wouldn't be able to make even that simple change.
The eMac has a flat-tube CRT: a CRT with a flat, rather than curved, face. It is a CRT, not an LCD, and has a flat face. The term "flat-tube" is not at all ambigious to anyone familiar with modern CRT technology.
Did you remember, when comparing prices, to include the fact that the eMac comes with a bundled 17" flat-tube monitor? I paid about $1300 for a similar system 2 years ago, but the monitor cost another $200. It really isn't fair to Apple to compare a PC sans monitor to the price of an i/eMac with a builtin CRT/LCD.
Not only that, you get what is arguably the best GUI ever designed and excellent native UNIX video-editing software, which you just can't get on a PC. Plus, iPods are schweet and the Windows/Linux sync software for them are still in the dark ages (one thing I don't like is Apple's insistence on proprietary hardware). While I'm no Mac fanatic, I do believe that they have definite advantages in some areas.
Edison, however, discovered that a heated filament emmited electrons. In fact, this phenomenon (at the heart of all vaccum tube technology) is called the "Edison effect". AFAIK, it was his only discovery in pure science.
No, because since the limits from the left and right are different (from left, it approaches negative infinity, from right, it approaches positive infinity), the limit does not exist.
Doesn't the DMCA have some provisions covering this sort of thing? It was my understanding that one of the (ahem) positive aspects of the act is that it exempts service providers from liability for content that they host but do not otherwise control.
How would it cut off a lot of people? My understanding of the technology is that it can dynamically set up a filter that denies a specific group of source IP addresses. The only real problem is the possibility of an outside attacker to set up a filter that applied to all IPs, effectively walling off a computer from the Internet.
Any sysadmin with sense would of course allow the machine to be blocked only by request from the downstream link, rather than a request coming off the backbone. However, with the ineptitude of a few sysadmins screwing things up for everyone (think open relays), this does seem like it could cause harm in the wrong hands.
They're desperately trying to come up with a way of making money that isn't going to completely alienate their users.
They're clutching at all sorts of straws - google answers for example.
Google seems to me to be one of the most successful advertisers on the net. While they may not use evil pop-under ads, they have the AdWords system. Just because the ads aren't obtrusive, doesn't mean they're not there. I regularly use their ads to find online retailers for special-interest items, and like their search results, their ads tend to be very well-targeted to potential customers. I would not be at all surprised to find that Google makes a significant profit.
A MB tray isn't uncommon these days. I have a $45 (US) generic case that lets you loosen one screw, then pull out the MB and the card cage. With some thumbscrews, it works well as a computer that I can open up and play with with no screwdriver. The Apple cases are nicer, but for $45 with power supply, it seems like a pretty good deal.
But I manipulate the hard disk, one bit at a time, with a little toy magnet!
Seriously, how do you think they programmed early computers? They did it with a bunch of toggle switches. Up 1, down 0. Flip the switches to the desired instruction and data, then push a button to input. Repeat fifty thousand times.
Personally, I think it's ethically wrong because if MS lifts a major part of the OS out of somebody else's project, they should acknowledge the work done by others. While the license may permit MS to use the code freely, they should still give credit where it's due.
I think it's a bit fiddly to have a computer attempt to do such a thing in the first place (like a spell checker, it certainly won't catch all of the errors).
The "Grammatik" grammar checker in WordPerfect 6 for DOS blew me away. That was one hell of a piece of code! The thing was nearly a mind-reader. It didn't catch everything, but Word still hasn't come close. If you can get a copy of WP6, I encourage you to check it out.
Slashdot Mirror
You seem to think that it would be more likely to crack Go than chess. Chess, which develops from a fixed position, is much easier to solve (at least via brute force) than Go, which allows any starting position. Also, the chess board is 10x10, the Go board is 19x19. While both are incredibly hard games computationally, Go, to a programmer or theorist, is even harder than chess.
I would find it quite unlikely that people 3500 years ago would have been able to work out game theory. Although people have displayed amazing ingenuity (see the pyramids of Egypt: built completely with manual labor, and we still aren't completely sure how they did it), an advancement such as game theory even before things as simple as decimals and fractions were even formalized would be pretty much impossible. More likely, people went by what felt fair and "right".
Note that I am not a lawyer; this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice, look under "Lawyers" or "Attorneys" in your phone book to find a lawyer in your jurisdiction.
They offer a version of Linux that works right out of the box. Remember that while much of the Slashdot crowd likes to customize everything to the limit, most people are happy with most defaults. Redhat isn't the most secure, or the most powerful. However, it can set things up without asking too many questions; which is often a feature for someone new to Linux. In fact, I point Linux beginners to Red Hat or Mandrake for this reason: They are probably best off learning by poking around on a system with reasonable defaults, not having to make random choices when they're asked a question over their head.
They're a fairly large company. They certainly don't have the cash of someone like Microsoft or even Apple, but they do have enough money to appear large and "stable". To many, especially in the business world, it's a big selling point to say that you'll be around in five or ten years.
It was never really meant as a performance board, but instead as a value board that had decent performance. As long as you don't expect it to run like the newest Geforce4s, it does a great job as an economy market board.
But the Geforce4 MX/Go is basically a GF2 pumped up to higher clock and RAM speeds. It doesn't even implement a full DX8 feature set. The GF4 Titanium models are the ones with a new chipset. That said, the Nvidia mobile line finally is bringing decent graphics to the mobile market. If you can get past the blurriness of an LCD (which isn't that bad), you can finally play games on your laptop. Still, don't fool yourself into thinking it's better than your desktop system. Certain sacrifices must be made to keep power consumption and heat output to a minimum; these are not conducive to a super-high-performance GPU.
The problem with calculators comes in when students don't understand the material being taught. However, the idea behind the calculator is that "if you don't need it, you can have it". I would rather spend my time learning new concepts than doing easy but tedious basic algebra.
My method for safely observing the eclipse was to use a monocular (you could easily use binoculars as well, just use one half of 'em) to project the image onto a piece of stiff white tagboard. It allows a larger and clearer picture (I was able to actually see what I believe were sunspots, as they didn't change when I moved the image around!). Simply line up the monocular with the sun by making the shadow end-on, with the main lens towards the sun. Then, move the eyepiece close to the tagboard. Find the white dot, then move the monocular out and focus it by trial and error. It took me about a minute to set up, and I got a nice clear image of the sun that would have been about an inch in diameter, assuming it didn't have a big bite taken out of it ;-).
One saftey note: never look directly at the sun, whether it's through the monocular or with the naked eye. While it seems like you might never do it, I almost did several times, as it seemed so much easier than trying to get the little projected image in focus on the paper. Please, be careful with your eyes. Cyborg-vision is still a long way off.
Note that the Scientific American article is very cautious: they state the implications if it's true. While, if true, this is a breakthrough on the level of relativity or quantum mechanics, one should take this with a large grain of salt. Plenty of other "revolutionary" theories haven't managed to pan out.
The bonus for the Open Source community is cool: open source Radeon drivers! Still, though, that isn't the only reason TWC is putting out Open Source drivers. In fact, it probably was a minor consideration: they may have just thought they could increase their reputation among computer geek-types at essentially no cost. From what I see, it seems to have worked!
Since when has Cisco intentionally made bad hardware? I have found that while their prices are high, it is hard to make the hardware on a Cisco box fail short of running mains voltage through an Ethernet line.
Scriptkiddies just run programs, and typically poorly coded ones at that. Their concept of "hacking" is double-clicking on "Shortcut to WinNuke.exe". Thus, if they were using a program that had the directory c:\winnt hardcoded in (like some simple, hacked together in an hour exploit demonstration code), they probably wouldn't be able to make even that simple change.
The eMac has a flat-tube CRT: a CRT with a flat, rather than curved, face. It is a CRT, not an LCD, and has a flat face. The term "flat-tube" is not at all ambigious to anyone familiar with modern CRT technology.
Not only that, you get what is arguably the best GUI ever designed and excellent native UNIX video-editing software, which you just can't get on a PC. Plus, iPods are schweet and the Windows/Linux sync software for them are still in the dark ages (one thing I don't like is Apple's insistence on proprietary hardware). While I'm no Mac fanatic, I do believe that they have definite advantages in some areas.
Edison, however, discovered that a heated filament emmited electrons. In fact, this phenomenon (at the heart of all vaccum tube technology) is called the "Edison effect". AFAIK, it was his only discovery in pure science.
No, because since the limits from the left and right are different (from left, it approaches negative infinity, from right, it approaches positive infinity), the limit does not exist.
Doesn't the DMCA have some provisions covering this sort of thing? It was my understanding that one of the (ahem) positive aspects of the act is that it exempts service providers from liability for content that they host but do not otherwise control.
How would it cut off a lot of people? My understanding of the technology is that it can dynamically set up a filter that denies a specific group of source IP addresses. The only real problem is the possibility of an outside attacker to set up a filter that applied to all IPs, effectively walling off a computer from the Internet.
Any sysadmin with sense would of course allow the machine to be blocked only by request from the downstream link, rather than a request coming off the backbone. However, with the ineptitude of a few sysadmins screwing things up for everyone (think open relays), this does seem like it could cause harm in the wrong hands.
A MB tray isn't uncommon these days. I have a $45 (US) generic case that lets you loosen one screw, then pull out the MB and the card cage. With some thumbscrews, it works well as a computer that I can open up and play with with no screwdriver. The Apple cases are nicer, but for $45 with power supply, it seems like a pretty good deal.
Seriously, how do you think they programmed early computers? They did it with a bunch of toggle switches. Up 1, down 0. Flip the switches to the desired instruction and data, then push a button to input. Repeat fifty thousand times.
Personally, I think it's ethically wrong because if MS lifts a major part of the OS out of somebody else's project, they should acknowledge the work done by others. While the license may permit MS to use the code freely, they should still give credit where it's due.