You raise a good point, and I agree completely, but I would like to expand a bit on the math. Hooking up 2 units, with a total of 8 drives will make it more likely to fail, but not quite 8 times. The argument below assumes two things: that a failure of a single drive disrupts the system, and that the drives fail independently.
Let p = probability of failure of a given drive (I suppose this should be probability of failure within a given period of time.)
Then (1-p) = probability that a given drive does not fail
Then (1-p)^8 = probability that none of the 8 fail.
Then 1-(1-p)^8 = probability that at least one drive fails.
A limit will show that for values of p near 0, the probability of system disruption is approximately 8p. For larger values of p, the probability of system disruption is considerably less than 8p. (Of course, this is no consolation: the acutal probability of failure (not the ratio with p) is still higher.)
You should look for the Creator series. They are sold in the plastic stackable buckets, and contain mostly standard bricks and plates. In my opinion, the blue bucket number 4028 is the best deal. It's normally $20 or less at Toys R Us, and contains a ton of the 2x4 bricks that are the staple of most large lego creations.
I know someone who used this strategy to get rid of an old nonfunctional fridge. The fridge was in his workshop, which is in a really bad part of the city. When it died, he put it on the side of the road, expecting the garbage pickup to get it. After it sat there for a few weeks, the sanitation dept told him that he'd have to pay to have it hauled away. He put a for-sale sign on it one night, and it was gone the next morning.
You make a good point, but your numbers aren't quite right. The numbers that you calculated assume that the order of the five numbers (not including the mega ball) are important. The actual number of possible tickets is
(52 C 5) * 52 = (52*51*50*49*48)/(1*2*3*4*5)*52 = 135,145,920
iTMS doesn't carry the type of artists that I like to listen to. Do a search on iTMS for "Dirt Bomb" "Z-Ro" or "Devin the Dude" then search for them on Kazaa
It's not just the obscure artists that are absent from iTMS. There are plenty of commercially successful, popluar artists that are absent or mostly absent from iTMS. Two examples are Radiohead and Shakira. iTMS has nothing by Radiohead and only the latest stuff from Shakira.
Re:$299 is financed at 21.7% APR
on
AOL's $299 PC
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
That's a good idea, but I'd bet that there is in the contract saying that the buyer will pay a certain fee if the loan is payed off before a certain time. This is a common practice for auto loans -- if the finance company isn't guaranteed that they will make a certain amount, the loan isn't worth their time.
I remember seeing a similar thing back in the early 90s. The local cable company ran a guide channel on an Amiga, which would occasionally crash, showing the guru screen.
I'm not claiming anything about the inherent redundancy of that sentence, but rather the redundancy of the English language. The redundancy arises from the fact that words get reused and we tend to look for (1) words that we know and (2) patterns of words that make sense. Context comes into play in (2) but not in (1). In my example (which I borrowed from Woody Allen), both (1) and (2) are used.
A better example where only (1) is used would be this: If you received a message that simply says "Cafilornia", there is no context, but you can probably discern the message since it's pretty similar to a word that gets used often.
I believe that it's not actually redundancy built into language that allows us to pick out someone talking over static, but rather the sophisticated pattern-recognition mechanisms in the brain that compensate for this.
I agree completely with your point, but I'll add that redundancy plays a large part in being able to understand garbled or partially lost messages. The pattern-matching mechanism can decipher these damaged messages because it knows roughly what to expect. If it hears the phrase "give me all your cash, I have a gub", then it will correct it to "gun". This is caused by the redundancy of language -- "gun" is a common word, "gub" is not. This is closely related to Maximum Likelyhood Decoding, which is used in error correcting codes.
Cost to former military pilot for training: Almost $0.00.
It's not like they just get free pilot training. The cost has more than just a monetary component. Pilots who receive training in the US military can't leave as soon as they are finished with training. They have to spend a certain amount of time using those specialized skills in the military before they can leave for the private sector. During this time, they don't make as much as they could make in the private sector, cannot decide where to live, and could possibly be sent to war.
It's tough, but if everyone cleaned up their driving habits, everyone would be home 5 or 10 minutes earlier rather than just the poor drivers getting home 2 to 3 minutes earlier.
\begin{game theoretic rambling} This is a classic example of prisoner's dilemma, where individual welfare is pitted against the common good. Either way, a driver is better off if he acts greedily: If most drivers cooperate with each other, then the greedy driver takes advantage and gets home before the cooperating drivers. If almost nobody cooperates, then one must be a greedy driver, or be taken advantage of.
The big question here is what should a driver do to make commuting the least painful, and there's no simple answer. There are many possible strategies:
1. Always be greedy -- that way you're never the sucker.
2. Never be greedy (Golden Rule) -- that way you're looking out for the common good, and if most other people do the same, then the relatively few greedy jerks out there won't cause too much trouble.
3. Only be greedy in retaliation to another's greed (tit for tat) -- can work well, but can lead to feuds of reciprocal retaliation between two parties.
What will work best? Who knows? Many studies have been done on this with two-player games, with tit-for-tat being the clear winner. Traffic, of course is a multiplayer game, so who knows? My guess is that it would depend on the current traffic conditions -- if you're driving with a bunch of jerks, you have to be a bit greedy, otherwise, go with strategy (2). \end{game theoretic rambling}
upwards 60km/hr, downwards at 48km/hr. (any idea why down has a lower limit? safety?)
I'm guessing that it has to do with braking. Going up, gravity will work with the brakes to stop the car. Going down, the brakes will have to fight inertia and gravity to stop the car.
I have one of these too, although I believe that mine only has 32KB of RAM. I think they were first made in 1983, but I bought mine in a pawn shop around 1991 or so. I use it occasionally -- mostly to perform simple calculations that can be programmed easily in BASIC.
I ran macs for years, then jumped ship to linux on intel aroun 98. When I bought my powerbook last year, I didn't miss the other two mouse buttons nearly as much as I had expected to. However, since apple is picking up more and more of the geek market, maybe they should consider 3 buttons as an option.
My idea is to have 3 switches below the trackpad that could function together as one or separately as 3 (selected by software). Apple could give you two button modules - a single plastic button that goes over all three switches and a 3-button module that lets you to press one switch at a time. Then the user could swap out the buttons and select between a 1 and 3 button mouse.
This could be shipped with the single button installed as the default, and users who care could put in the 3-button module. Wouldn't this make both camps happy?
It may cut down on spam, but taxing email is a horrible idea. Aside from the basic point that the government just shouldn't be able to do it, it would be nigh impossible to enforce and would introduce a terrible amount of accounting to anyone who runs a mail server. On top of that, the government would have to spend great amounts of money to handle all the accounting involved.
Also, 7300 emails at one cent each would total $73.00.
I've heard of babies developing conditioned responses. My neighbor would heat up his kid's baby formula in the microwave, which of course would beep when the formula was done. After many beep-food iterations, whenever the kid heard a beep, he expected to be fed.
I remember seeing the same type of thing back in the early 90s in Montgomery, Alabama. The local cable system ran a preview guide channel on an Amiga. I learned this one day when I flipped to that channel and saw a Guru meditation number instead of the day's listings.
Ever heard of the term Propaganda ? Besides, I read an article that claims Guantanamo prisoners get their fingernails pulled out.
I agree with your point that we should be wary of propoganda, but I don't think that spreading propoganda from the opposing viewpoint is the way to fight it. I seriously doubt that anyone is happy to be in Guantanamo, and I also seriously doubt that anyone is having their fingernails pulled out.
My advice: Go with a flat tube. IMO they give the best picture for the money. They give a nicer picture than both the curved tubes and the projection TVs. Sure, they don't look as nice as the LCDs and plasma screens, but they are a whole lot cheaper. I'd avoid flat panels in the sub $1000 range. They are too small, and I've heard anecdotally that they have a shorter lifespan than tube TVs. I haven't used a video projector in several years, so I can't give much opinion on them.
I bought a 27" flat tube Sony about 6 months ago for about $500. If I had $1000 to blow on a TV, I'd either go with a slightly larger Sony, or maybe a widescreen flat tube if I could find one in that price range.
Thanks for the explanation. Just in case it wasn't clear, my comment wasn't supposed to be serious. I just meant it as a joke playing on the liberal==left and conservative==right convention of US politics.
Physics in particular rarely draws hypotheses from observation. In fact, observation is often used to confirm or deny previously held conjecture.
You missed my point completely. I was merely saying that science and pure mathematics (including calculus) are different because science is empirical and math is not. Science tries to explain the world - math (pure math anyway) doesn't explain anything except itself.
You obviously agree that physics and all other sciences rely on observation to determine the validity of theories. Absolute proof is not usually (if ever) obtained. Mathematics is different - when a theorem is proved, so long as the logic is correct, it is an absolute truth.
The real difference comes in here: Physics attempts to model the external world. Pure (not applied) mathematics makes no such attempt. For a mathematical theorem to be correct, it must be consistent with the axioms of the system and the logic must be correct. For a scientific theory to be valid, it must be have correct logic AND be consistent with observations.
Just because the remedial science you did at school...
This is a paragraph of flamebait. I'll give it no further response.
Evolution has its basis in statistical mathematics. You could call it "The probability and direction of macro-change via random micro-change in highly-populated, competing systems."
This doesn't change the fact that evolution is based on observation, and is thus not a branch of pure mathematics.
Slashdot Mirror
You raise a good point, and I agree completely, but I would like to expand a bit on the math. Hooking up 2 units, with a total of 8 drives will make it more likely to fail, but not quite 8 times. The argument below assumes two things: that a failure of a single drive disrupts the system, and that the drives fail independently.
Let p = probability of failure of a given drive (I suppose this should be probability of failure within a given period of time.)
Then (1-p) = probability that a given drive does not fail
Then (1-p)^8 = probability that none of the 8 fail.
Then 1-(1-p)^8 = probability that at least one drive fails.
A limit will show that for values of p near 0, the probability of system disruption is approximately 8p. For larger values of p, the probability of system disruption is considerably less than 8p. (Of course, this is no consolation: the acutal probability of failure (not the ratio with p) is still higher.)
You should look for the Creator series. They are sold in the plastic stackable buckets, and contain mostly standard bricks and plates. In my opinion, the blue bucket number 4028 is the best deal. It's normally $20 or less at Toys R Us, and contains a ton of the 2x4 bricks that are the staple of most large lego creations.
I know someone who used this strategy to get rid of an old nonfunctional fridge. The fridge was in his workshop, which is in a really bad part of the city. When it died, he put it on the side of the road, expecting the garbage pickup to get it. After it sat there for a few weeks, the sanitation dept told him that he'd have to pay to have it hauled away. He put a for-sale sign on it one night, and it was gone the next morning.
You make a good point, but your numbers aren't quite right. The numbers that you calculated assume that the order of the five numbers (not including the mega ball) are important. The actual number of possible tickets is
(52 C 5) * 52 = (52*51*50*49*48)/(1*2*3*4*5)*52 = 135,145,920
iTMS doesn't carry the type of artists that I like to listen to. Do a search on iTMS for "Dirt Bomb" "Z-Ro" or "Devin the Dude" then search for them on Kazaa
It's not just the obscure artists that are absent from iTMS. There are plenty of commercially successful, popluar artists that are absent or mostly absent from iTMS. Two examples are Radiohead and Shakira. iTMS has nothing by Radiohead and only the latest stuff from Shakira.
That's a good idea, but I'd bet that there is in the contract saying that the buyer will pay a certain fee if the loan is payed off before a certain time. This is a common practice for auto loans -- if the finance company isn't guaranteed that they will make a certain amount, the loan isn't worth their time.
I remember seeing a similar thing back in the early 90s. The local cable company ran a guide channel on an Amiga, which would occasionally crash, showing the guru screen.
I'm not claiming anything about the inherent redundancy of that sentence, but rather the redundancy of the English language. The redundancy arises from the fact that words get reused and we tend to look for (1) words that we know and (2) patterns of words that make sense. Context comes into play in (2) but not in (1). In my example (which I borrowed from Woody Allen), both (1) and (2) are used.
A better example where only (1) is used would be this: If you received a message that simply says "Cafilornia", there is no context, but you can probably discern the message since it's pretty similar to a word that gets used often.
I believe that it's not actually redundancy built into language that allows us to pick out someone talking over static, but rather the sophisticated pattern-recognition mechanisms in the brain that compensate for this.
I agree completely with your point, but I'll add that redundancy plays a large part in being able to understand garbled or partially lost messages. The pattern-matching mechanism can decipher these damaged messages because it knows roughly what to expect. If it hears the phrase "give me all your cash, I have a gub", then it will correct it to "gun". This is caused by the redundancy of language -- "gun" is a common word, "gub" is not. This is closely related to Maximum Likelyhood Decoding, which is used in error correcting codes.
Cost to former military pilot for training: Almost $0.00.
It's not like they just get free pilot training. The cost has more than just a monetary component. Pilots who receive training in the US military can't leave as soon as they are finished with training. They have to spend a certain amount of time using those specialized skills in the military before they can leave for the private sector. During this time, they don't make as much as they could make in the private sector, cannot decide where to live, and could possibly be sent to war.
It's tough, but if everyone cleaned up their driving habits, everyone would be home 5 or 10 minutes earlier rather than just the poor drivers getting home 2 to 3 minutes earlier.
\begin{game theoretic rambling}
This is a classic example of prisoner's dilemma, where individual welfare is pitted against the common good. Either way, a driver is better off if he acts greedily: If most drivers cooperate with each other, then the greedy driver takes advantage and gets home before the cooperating drivers. If almost nobody cooperates, then one must be a greedy driver, or be taken advantage of.
The big question here is what should a driver do to make commuting the least painful, and there's no simple answer. There are many possible strategies:
1. Always be greedy -- that way you're never the sucker.
2. Never be greedy (Golden Rule) -- that way you're looking out for the common good, and if most other people do the same, then the relatively few greedy jerks out there won't cause too much trouble.
3. Only be greedy in retaliation to another's greed (tit for tat) -- can work well, but can lead to feuds of reciprocal retaliation between two parties.
What will work best? Who knows? Many studies have been done on this with two-player games, with tit-for-tat being the clear winner. Traffic, of course is a multiplayer game, so who knows? My guess is that it would depend on the current traffic conditions -- if you're driving with a bunch of jerks, you have to be a bit greedy, otherwise, go with strategy (2).
\end{game theoretic rambling}
upwards 60km/hr, downwards at 48km/hr. (any idea why down has a lower limit? safety?)
I'm guessing that it has to do with braking. Going up, gravity will work with the brakes to stop the car. Going down, the brakes will have to fight inertia and gravity to stop the car.
I have one of these too, although I believe that mine only has 32KB of RAM. I think they were first made in 1983, but I bought mine in a pawn shop around 1991 or so. I use it occasionally -- mostly to perform simple calculations that can be programmed easily in BASIC.
The parent poster isn't talking about deducting 20 points from the 100 point assignment. He's saying that the prof assigned a grade of negative 20.
PHB == Pointy Haired Boss. It's a Dilbert reference.
I ran macs for years, then jumped ship to linux on intel aroun 98. When I bought my powerbook last year, I didn't miss the other two mouse buttons nearly as much as I had expected to. However, since apple is picking up more and more of the geek market, maybe they should consider 3 buttons as an option.
My idea is to have 3 switches below the trackpad that could function together as one or separately as 3 (selected by software). Apple could give you two button modules - a single plastic button that goes over all three switches and a 3-button module that lets you to press one switch at a time. Then the user could swap out the buttons and select between a 1 and 3 button mouse.
This could be shipped with the single button installed as the default, and users who care could put in the 3-button module. Wouldn't this make both camps happy?
It may cut down on spam, but taxing email is a horrible idea. Aside from the basic point that the government just shouldn't be able to do it, it would be nigh impossible to enforce and would introduce a terrible amount of accounting to anyone who runs a mail server. On top of that, the government would have to spend great amounts of money to handle all the accounting involved.
Also, 7300 emails at one cent each would total $73.00.
I've heard of babies developing conditioned responses. My neighbor would heat up his kid's baby formula in the microwave, which of course would beep when the formula was done. After many beep-food iterations, whenever the kid heard a beep, he expected to be fed.
I remember seeing the same type of thing back in the early 90s in Montgomery, Alabama. The local cable system ran a preview guide channel on an Amiga. I learned this one day when I flipped to that channel and saw a Guru meditation number instead of the day's listings.
Ever heard of the term Propaganda ? Besides, I read an article that claims Guantanamo prisoners get their fingernails pulled out.
I agree with your point that we should be wary of propoganda, but I don't think that spreading propoganda from the opposing viewpoint is the way to fight it. I seriously doubt that anyone is happy to be in Guantanamo, and I also seriously doubt that anyone is having their fingernails pulled out.
My advice: Go with a flat tube. IMO they give the best picture for the money. They give a nicer picture than both the curved tubes and the projection TVs. Sure, they don't look as nice as the LCDs and plasma screens, but they are a whole lot cheaper. I'd avoid flat panels in the sub $1000 range. They are too small, and I've heard anecdotally that they have a shorter lifespan than tube TVs. I haven't used a video projector in several years, so I can't give much opinion on them.
I bought a 27" flat tube Sony about 6 months ago for about $500. If I had $1000 to blow on a TV, I'd either go with a slightly larger Sony, or maybe a widescreen flat tube if I could find one in that price range.
Thanks for the explanation. Just in case it wasn't clear, my comment wasn't supposed to be serious. I just meant it as a joke playing on the liberal==left and conservative==right convention of US politics.
Wow. Yet another thing that reverses in the southern hemisphere!
What's next on ask Slashdot?
Ask Slashdot: Do you ever get that not-so-fresh-feeling?
Hmm. Maybe that would make a better poll.
Physics in particular rarely draws hypotheses from observation. In fact, observation is often used to confirm or deny previously held conjecture.
You missed my point completely. I was merely saying that science and pure mathematics (including calculus) are different because science is empirical and math is not. Science tries to explain the world - math (pure math anyway) doesn't explain anything except itself.
You obviously agree that physics and all other sciences rely on observation to determine the validity of theories. Absolute proof is not usually (if ever) obtained. Mathematics is different - when a theorem is proved, so long as the logic is correct, it is an absolute truth.
The real difference comes in here: Physics attempts to model the external world. Pure (not applied) mathematics makes no such attempt. For a mathematical theorem to be correct, it must be consistent with the axioms of the system and the logic must be correct. For a scientific theory to be valid, it must be have correct logic AND be consistent with observations.
Just because the remedial science you did at school...
This is a paragraph of flamebait. I'll give it no further response.
Evolution has its basis in statistical mathematics. You could call it "The probability and direction of macro-change via random micro-change in highly-populated, competing systems."
This doesn't change the fact that evolution is based on observation, and is thus not a branch of pure mathematics.