My question is simple: what's the difference between illegal gambling and state-sanctioned lotteries?
The difference is simple: "illegal" gambling allows an individual to become wealthy through the stupidity of others, whereas state-sanctioned lotteries ensure that money lost by idiots goes to the state. --
Last week we selected [famous name] as an authority in [field] to answer some of your best and brightest questions. We've included [his/her] responses below:
[the I-think-you-are-cool-and-would-like-to-be-like-you question] 1. How did you choose [field] and how can I get more involved in [field].
[famous name] Well, I really started by [...at this point, [famous name] begins to launch into a short autobiography. The reply to this first question will take up about as much space as the other 9 combined.]
[the multi-part question] 2. I think you are really cool. What are you feelings on [topic]?
and how it relates to telescopes
and how it relates to earth
with regard to North America
with regard to Asia
specifically, India and Pakistan
and how it relates to groundhogs
[famous name] Phew! That sure is a lot to answer. Well I guess you could sum it up neatly by saying that, yes, I do like it all.
[the I-also-like-[other-topic]-do-you-think-it's-relate d-to-your-[field] question] 3. I really like your work and am also interested in the whole Napster-Metallica-MP3 debate. How do you think it relates to your scientific [field]?
[famous name] Well, I, well, uh... [at this point, [famous name] is thinking, "Where in the world did that question come from? Oh well, I'll try to be polite and answer it] I really think that, uh, music should be, uh, heard--yeah, heard!--and I think that, uh, well, Napster provides a service of hearing.
[the really-in-depth question] 4. Dear [famous name], I have tracked your research into biogenetical ESP CIO medicare research with great interested and wondered if you could clarify a minor point for me: in your estimation, are the EIO levels in a controlled AF/BF reaction substantially higher than the CF/DF state because of genetic-electro-magnetic lunar levels or is it mostly from O2 radiation WRT our helial position?
[famous name] [Recognizes a quality question from a member of [field] and tries to formulate a scientific answer] Well, I believe my research has conclusively show that CD/DF states can be generated from the O2 +7/~3KE100 states of the T1000 with ISA/PCI/FBI catalysts [...launches into such arcane detail that no one outside of his research area has any clue what he's talking about.]
[the Score:5, Funny question] 5. What do you think of Natalie Portman eating hot grits in a Boewulf cluster?
[famous name] Uh, well, I'm not really sure what you mean. Wasn't Natilie Portman that actress in Star Wars or something? [[famous name] is now wondering what he's got himself into, and who exactly are these Slashdot people...]
[the your-work-sucks-I-scoff-at-you question] 6. Hey [famous name's first name], I seen you on CNBC and I gotta tell ya, I don't think it's gonna work. I mean, whose to say that you even gradated from MIT in the 1st place? Are we supose to believe that stuff? If ur so smart, how come you haven't figured it out yet?????!!!!!
[famous name] Well I believe we can make this work. I realize we've spent $80 million in research already, but if you look at the data I think you'll see that our work has some definite promise here. The possibilities for science are almost endless! . . . [more questions. [famous name]'s answers are getting shorter and more heated with each question. In one question, he calls the questioneer a bad name. In another question, he limits his answer to a simple "no."] . . . [the I'd-like-to-know-about-this-area-of-your-personal- life question] 9. I noticed in the picture of you in the NYTimes that there's a bottle of Pert Plus behind you in that picture. Do you usually use Pert Plus for the dual-action, shampoo + conditioner in one? Or is it more because you like the curve and bounce of your hair after using it?
[famous name] That wasn't my bottle of Pert Plus in the picture.
[the I-can-generalize-your-entire-life's-work-in-a-sing le-statement question] 10. I see you and other researches working on things like this and I wonder if this isn't all part of something bigger, like the Grand Unified Theory. Do you think your work is just a small piece of a larger puzzle?
[famous name] [Realizes he now has to defend his work and is torn between trying to write a compelling argument for doing what he does or just trashing the 10th question altogether. Decides to write something, but keep it as short as possible.] Our work is extremely important. Without our research, that $80 million might have gone to another, less-deserving [field] of science. We can continue to produce more quality data the more funding we have.
[famous name] realizes that the questions were mostly a flop but partially good and tries to wrap everything up politely: "I realize that a lot of you are very interested in what we do and I think you for your interest. You can learn more about our projects [web site] and I encourage you to visit. Thank you all again for this wonderful opportunity to answer your questions."
It's not just that our problems are big, they are big and obvious. It's not just that the solutions are simple, they are simple and right under our noses.
Sounds just like that last Al Gore speech I heard! --
MP3: On Artist Protection And Copy Protection Music | Posted by timothy on Friday July 07, @11:00AM Every once in a while, it's good to have someone slap you with a reminder [...]
8 articles in June alone regarding MP3's, 17 about Napster in the last two months and 7 YRO articles in the first 7 days of July. Everyone is turning the MP3 topic into their own personal martyr for whatever cause they think is worthy. It's not a revolution of freedom of speech, it's not a culture revolution of the record label owners vs. the bourgeoisie everyman artist, it's not even about the UCITA and whether or not my license to my music gives me various rights, or doesn't. Let's not forget what MP3's are about: portable music. Nothing more, nothing less. --
...for a country with 7,000 islands, 80 million people and a tiny fraction of that number of telephones. I grew up in the Philippines for 5 years (my parents are missionaries there) and the spotty telephone service, coupled with the outgoing demeanor of Filipinos among friends but extreme shyness in public makes it no wonder that something like this took off.
It took us 3 years and a big bribe--affectionately referred to as "grease money"--to just get a second phone line installed in our house. And that's not bad from PilTel, whose customer service antics include severing our telephone wires while performing "routine maintenance checks."
There are still many areas where the only way to get messages in and out is via Ham radio operators to a telegraph office. I'm not kidding! So in an area that's beset by typhoons, earthquakes, seasonal floodings and volcanoes, building and maintaining land lines is extremely difficult compared to simply putting up a few wireless towers.
(BTW, the 1 peso fee for texting is about $0.02 at today's exchange rate.) --
Thing is, it's very much incompatible with a file-oriented paradigm (and therefore with the Unix philosophy, amongst others).
I'm fairly familiar with the PalmOS, and I have to say that it isn't as incompatible as you might think. Palm implements "files" as databases, and file handles as individual database records. What the PalmOS doesn't handle is a FAT, and only recently did the OS address things like memory fragmentation issues and unique record ID's.
The positive side of this is that once a user taps the "OK" or "Done" buttons on a screen, data is written to memory. This is why crashes are so rare on Palms, and why if a crash occurs, data isn't lost. If only "file" handling on other OSes (Win32, mostly) were as seamless.
One of the best things IMO about the Palm paradigm ("zen of Palm" for those who want to be catchy) is that the degree of orthogonal persistance is left up to the applications, and isn't dictated by the OS. So an application remembers where a user last left off, but doesn't have to transport them back to the same screen the next time the program was run. However, the illusion of running apps simultaneously is complete when an application resumes exactly where it was exited. (The preferences panels do this, merging N panels into what appears to be a single app.)
This is why it really didn't catch up in most environments.
After using the PalmOS to write notes, etc. one wonders why data has to be lost at all when a program crashes. However, I'll admit that this way of doing things becomes much, much more complex as the file size and application size increase. It's one thing to persistantly track a 4K memo, but another thing entirely to try it on a 20MB 3DMax model or a 60MB Director movie. --
What really makes me mad at advertisers is an issue of PC Connection (insert X computer mag here) that shows a picture of a beautiful black IBM computer with a flat screen monitor and $999 price tag boldly emblazened across the front. Then, in tiny print next to the picture it reads: "Monitor not included. System not priced as shown."
Good grief! Is it not simple enough to make a law that says, "The price you advertise next to a product must match the product advertised?" --
I thought I had it bad trying to look in the rear view mirror when I had someone in the back seat. Try seeing anything with a 19" monitor in the way! --
That can't possibly be true, if you believe the article:
And speaking of bounty hunters, Boba Fett fans will be happy to learn that the ruthless bounty hunter and Han Solo nemesis will be making an appearance in Episode II. --
Some of her finds include: Xena: Warrior Princess vet Jay Laga'aia, who's playing a loyal security officer, and Aussie Leeanna Walsman, who'll take on the physically-demanding role of a new highly-killed bounty hunter. --
Should my parents get credit for everything I make? Why not, they created me, right?
Not really. Not in the sense that an inventor would create something. Your parents used a process of creation that people have used for thousands of years, but they didn't create the process.
How about self-replicating programs that mutate every now and then? There was one that went from 80 commands down to 22 all by its little ole self. Can you say the original programmer 'wrote' it?
No, I wouldn't say he "wrote" the final piece of source. But he did create it.
And how is it human-centric to admit to ourselves that the earth does not exist simply for our presence?
I'm not sure how you inferred that out of our previous comments. We weren't talking about what we do with the earth. --
I'm not saying there's no God, or Allah, or Yehova, or anything else of that nature. I just prefer not to limit that guiding force to any single moment of creation, saying that It(the correct pronoun doesn't exist) needed to have all time and all thought forged at once.
Please don't take this out of context; I wasn't really talking about deities. I'm only coming at this from the perspective of a programmer (or creator, if you will). It's illogical to my mind that we can understand simple things which we ourselves create, yet believe that complex things which we have yet to understand could have created themselves.
What could be more interesting to a Creator than a universe he did not Create? Think about that. Think about how cool self-optimizing code is to us hackers. Look at the talk of genetic algorithms. Are you saying we can pull off stuff our own creator can't?
Well, if I build a robot that builds a smaller robot, who is credited with the invention of the smaller bot? Me?--or my robot. Following the same line of logic anything that a created object builds (nanotech, for example) is credited to the original creator.
I'm not trying to write flamebait posts (as my original was moderated). I'm only saying that your original comment--that no "source" exists for humans--is rather human-centric itself. To solve really big problems we must see outside of the boudaries that we've grown up inside: like the way you see my name, McCarty, and your brain tells your fingers to type McCarthy. I think the HGP is a giant step towards an eye-opening experience, and I hope we keep our eyes open to new ideas it might bring.
Open Source analysis of a system within which Source has never existed. That should be interesting.
To believe that no one has ever held the "source" for humans and other living things is akin to believing that you could find an intricate piece of machinery (a watch, for example) lying on the ground that had somehow assembled itself and was designed by no one.
I believe that our source exists, we just haven't met the programmer yet.
You hit the nail on the head with the second guess. I used the frequency of English trigrams in the decoded text. Text that had frequent amounts of "THE" and "AND" (the most common English trigrams) scored higher than text filed with QQX's and CKZ's.
I had originally used a table of the 15 most common English trigrams (available here), which was not giving me precise enough scores. Then a friend I had met through our mutual struggles to solve the stage sent me his trigraph table. In his words, this is how he described it:
I used Project Gutenberg and downloaded the complete textversions of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" (800KB) and "Wuthering heights" (600KB). I created a huge string out of the text (eliminating everything which is not a - z or A - Z) and ran a window of 3 chars over it, each time noting how many times a particular trigram appreared. I mapped that in an array. Doing like that I created a textfile of 26^3 trigrams and their respective scores (log2(N+1) where N=number a particular TriGram appeared in my sample text. (e.g. The score for 'THE' is about 14.0.) --
I gave up moderator privelages to post this comment, so I hope what I have to say has some value.
I've recently learned about Genetic Algorithms (GA) in my quest to win $15,000 from The Code Book and Simon Singh's Cipher Challenge (eGroup here). One of the stages is a deft Playfair Cipher, which have historically proven difficult to solve by hand. Using a genetic algorithm, I was able to solve the cipher in just 28 generations.
What's amazing to me is that here I have just 500 lines of code that know nothing about ciphers, Playfairs and codebreaking, yet using a simple mutation and scoring function was able to break a relatively difficult cipher.
For those that don't know, a Playfair cipher puts the English alphabet into a 5x5 grid (minus 'j') and uses pairs of letters to select other letters from the grid. Instead of a 26-letter substitution cipher, codebreakers are now faced with a daunting 676 letter-pair challenge.
My code created 1,000 random keysquares and mutated them, randomly selecting squares and swapping them with one another, or swapping entire rows and columns. The new generation was scored, and those that scored high had a better chance of making it to the next generation than those that scored low (survival of the fittest, if you will). And in just 28 generations, what was once a mass of jumbled letters slowly transformed before my eyes into perfect English. Once the solution had been found I actually felt bad about killing the process, as if I had creatd life and killed it. It was truly amazing. --
What a farce of a web site. Not only is there no evidence to suggest Jesus was a vegetarian, the scriptures they present seem to be taken completely out of context and dropped into their paragraphs of spun propoganda.
It seems that PETA wants to appeal to the religious sector of Americans and thinks that if they can convince them that Jesus was a vegetarian, they'll convert. (Sorry, no pun intended.) --
What's great about these little things is that they'll fit in my TRGPro. Imagine 1GB of data on a Palm device! That's probably enough for an annotated version of Encyclopedia Britannica, if only the diminuitive 16MHz Dragonball processor could keep up.
And that brings me to my point: it's wonderful that IBM has a microdrive like this, and it speaks volumes for miniaturization and where technology is headed. But what is the expected use for most people today? Not much. At $500, this is way out of range of all but a few consumers. (Heck, it would cost more than the TRGPro itself!) At present perhaps the best feature of the 1GB microdrive is to drive down the price of the 340MB microdrive so people can buy them instead. --
Here come the script kiddies, furiously trying to hack into the cleanup droid so they can upload a rogue program that will latch on to TELSTAR7 instead and send it plunging to earth.;-) --
FWIW, the Palm DOC file format (which has nothing in common with the MS Word.doc file format except its name) was invented by Richard Bram, and has been open source since day 1. --
They're not called "Pilots" anymore
on
Pilot Synthesis
·
· Score: 1
augurist writes: "Own a Pilot? [...]
I hope this doesn't come off sounding pedantic, but no, I don't own a Pilot. I own a Palm. And before that I owned a PalmPilot Professional. In fact, Pilots haven't been produced for about two years now, not since Palm lost their lawsuit to Pilot Pen Company. For anyone interested, here's a little Palm History. --
Also being inducted are Alfred and Helen Free, who produced an easy self-test for use by diabetics in the late 1950s. Helen Free and Wozniak are the only two living honorees.
I guess I'm just rambling here, but isn't it better to honor people while they're still living? I think that we should lavish honor on people while they're still alive, instead waiting for them to die and then holding elaborate ceremonies.
I'm not saying that's what happened here, and of course there was a delay while these peoples' inventions became commonplace in the marketplace, but how much more "honorable" would it have been to have inducted these people into the hall of fame while they were still alive to appreciate it. --
Better ways to use hyperlinks in HTML
on
Microsoft Quickies
·
· Score: 2
Wow, is this a contest to see how many "here" links can you put in a single paragraph? Consider the following example, which IMO is a lot better than a here link:
ZDNet has a big thing on it, as well as new words from Judge Jackson. The Financial Times site, FT.com, has news and a Ballmer interview. And here's something from the Washington Post, talking about the possibility of an out-of-court settlement. Enjoy.
And while I'm in Slashdot-critique mode, is it really necessary to provide a link to a common company name? For example:
Slashdot Mirror
Get your eyes checked. ;-)
--
The difference is simple: "illegal" gambling allows an individual to become wealthy through the stupidity of others, whereas state-sanctioned lotteries ensure that money lost by idiots goes to the state.
--
Last week we selected [famous name] as an authority in [field] to answer some of your best and brightest questions. We've included [his/her] responses below:
[the I-think-you-are-cool-and-would-like-to-be-like-you question]
1. How did you choose [field] and how can I get more involved in [field].
[famous name] Well, I really started by [...at this point, [famous name] begins to launch into a short autobiography. The reply to this first question will take up about as much space as the other 9 combined.]
[the multi-part question]
2. I think you are really cool. What are you feelings on [topic]?
and how it relates to groundhogs
[famous name] Phew! That sure is a lot to answer. Well I guess you could sum it up neatly by saying that, yes, I do like it all.
[the I-also-like-[other-topic]-do-you-think-it's-relate d-to-your-[field] question]
3. I really like your work and am also interested in the whole Napster-Metallica-MP3 debate. How do you think it relates to your scientific [field]?
[famous name] Well, I, well, uh... [at this point, [famous name] is thinking, "Where in the world did that question come from? Oh well, I'll try to be polite and answer it] I really think that, uh, music should be, uh, heard--yeah, heard!--and I think that, uh, well, Napster provides a service of hearing.
[the really-in-depth question]
4. Dear [famous name],
I have tracked your research into biogenetical ESP CIO medicare research with great interested and wondered if you could clarify a minor point for me: in your estimation, are the EIO levels in a controlled AF/BF reaction substantially higher than the CF/DF state because of genetic-electro-magnetic lunar levels or is it mostly from O2 radiation WRT our helial position?
[famous name] [Recognizes a quality question from a member of [field] and tries to formulate a scientific answer] Well, I believe my research has conclusively show that CD/DF states can be generated from the O2 +7/~3KE100 states of the T1000 with ISA/PCI/FBI catalysts [...launches into such arcane detail that no one outside of his research area has any clue what he's talking about.]
[the Score:5, Funny question]
5. What do you think of Natalie Portman eating hot grits in a Boewulf cluster?
[famous name] Uh, well, I'm not really sure what you mean. Wasn't Natilie Portman that actress in Star Wars or something? [[famous name] is now wondering what he's got himself into, and who exactly are these Slashdot people...]
[the your-work-sucks-I-scoff-at-you question]
6. Hey [famous name's first name], I seen you on CNBC and I gotta tell ya, I don't think it's gonna work. I mean, whose to say that you even gradated from MIT in the 1st place? Are we supose to believe that stuff? If ur so smart, how come you haven't figured it out yet?????!!!!!
[famous name] Well I believe we can make this work. I realize we've spent $80 million in research already, but if you look at the data I think you'll see that our work has some definite promise here. The possibilities for science are almost endless!- life question]
.
.
.
[more questions. [famous name]'s answers are getting shorter and more heated with each question. In one question, he calls the questioneer a bad name. In another question, he limits his answer to a simple "no."]
.
.
.
[the I'd-like-to-know-about-this-area-of-your-personal
9. I noticed in the picture of you in the NYTimes that there's a bottle of Pert Plus behind you in that picture. Do you usually use Pert Plus for the dual-action, shampoo + conditioner in one? Or is it more because you like the curve and bounce of your hair after using it?
[famous name] That wasn't my bottle of Pert Plus in the picture.
[the I-can-generalize-your-entire-life's-work-in-a-sing le-statement question]
10. I see you and other researches working on things like this and I wonder if this isn't all part of something bigger, like the Grand Unified Theory. Do you think your work is just a small piece of a larger puzzle?
[famous name] [Realizes he now has to defend his work and is torn between trying to write a compelling argument for doing what he does or just trashing the 10th question altogether. Decides to write something, but keep it as short as possible.] Our work is extremely important. Without our research, that $80 million might have gone to another, less-deserving [field] of science. We can continue to produce more quality data the more funding we have.
[famous name] realizes that the questions were mostly a flop but partially good and tries to wrap everything up politely: "I realize that a lot of you are very interested in what we do and I think you for your interest. You can learn more about our projects [web site] and I encourage you to visit. Thank you all again for this wonderful opportunity to answer your questions."
--
--
Sounds just like that last Al Gore speech I heard!
--
Music | Posted by timothy on Friday July 07, @11:00AM
Every once in a while, it's good to have someone slap you with a reminder [...]
Yeah! Every once in a while is good! Like last week. And the week before that. And a few days before that And the day before. And the same day.
8 articles in June alone regarding MP3's, 17 about Napster in the last two months and 7 YRO articles in the first 7 days of July. Everyone is turning the MP3 topic into their own personal martyr for whatever cause they think is worthy. It's not a revolution of freedom of speech, it's not a culture revolution of the record label owners vs. the bourgeoisie everyman artist, it's not even about the UCITA and whether or not my license to my music gives me various rights, or doesn't. Let's not forget what MP3's are about: portable music. Nothing more, nothing less.
--
It took us 3 years and a big bribe--affectionately referred to as "grease money"--to just get a second phone line installed in our house. And that's not bad from PilTel, whose customer service antics include severing our telephone wires while performing "routine maintenance checks."
There are still many areas where the only way to get messages in and out is via Ham radio operators to a telegraph office. I'm not kidding! So in an area that's beset by typhoons, earthquakes, seasonal floodings and volcanoes, building and maintaining land lines is extremely difficult compared to simply putting up a few wireless towers.
(BTW, the 1 peso fee for texting is about $0.02 at today's exchange rate.)
--
I'm fairly familiar with the PalmOS, and I have to say that it isn't as incompatible as you might think. Palm implements "files" as databases, and file handles as individual database records. What the PalmOS doesn't handle is a FAT, and only recently did the OS address things like memory fragmentation issues and unique record ID's.
The positive side of this is that once a user taps the "OK" or "Done" buttons on a screen, data is written to memory. This is why crashes are so rare on Palms, and why if a crash occurs, data isn't lost. If only "file" handling on other OSes (Win32, mostly) were as seamless.
One of the best things IMO about the Palm paradigm ("zen of Palm" for those who want to be catchy) is that the degree of orthogonal persistance is left up to the applications, and isn't dictated by the OS. So an application remembers where a user last left off, but doesn't have to transport them back to the same screen the next time the program was run. However, the illusion of running apps simultaneously is complete when an application resumes exactly where it was exited. (The preferences panels do this, merging N panels into what appears to be a single app.)
This is why it really didn't catch up in most environments.
After using the PalmOS to write notes, etc. one wonders why data has to be lost at all when a program crashes. However, I'll admit that this way of doing things becomes much, much more complex as the file size and application size increase. It's one thing to persistantly track a 4K memo, but another thing entirely to try it on a 20MB 3DMax model or a 60MB Director movie.
--
Good grief! Is it not simple enough to make a law that says, "The price you advertise next to a product must match the product advertised?"
--
...for Slashdot to post it twice. In the same day. In a row.
--
I thought I had it bad trying to look in the rear view mirror when I had someone in the back seat. Try seeing anything with a 19" monitor in the way!
--
That can't possibly be true, if you believe the article:
And speaking of bounty hunters, Boba Fett fans will be happy to learn that the ruthless bounty hunter and Han Solo nemesis will be making an appearance in Episode II.
--
Some of her finds include: Xena: Warrior Princess vet Jay Laga'aia, who's playing a loyal security officer, and Aussie Leeanna Walsman, who'll take on the physically-demanding role of a new highly-killed bounty hunter.
--
Not really. Not in the sense that an inventor would create something. Your parents used a process of creation that people have used for thousands of years, but they didn't create the process.
How about self-replicating programs that mutate every now and then? There was one that went from 80 commands down to 22 all by its little ole self. Can you say the original programmer 'wrote' it?
No, I wouldn't say he "wrote" the final piece of source. But he did create it.
And how is it human-centric to admit to ourselves that the earth does not exist simply for our presence?
I'm not sure how you inferred that out of our previous comments. We weren't talking about what we do with the earth.
--
Please don't take this out of context; I wasn't really talking about deities. I'm only coming at this from the perspective of a programmer (or creator, if you will). It's illogical to my mind that we can understand simple things which we ourselves create, yet believe that complex things which we have yet to understand could have created themselves.
What could be more interesting to a Creator than a universe he did not Create? Think about that. Think about how cool self-optimizing code is to us hackers. Look at the talk of genetic algorithms. Are you saying we can pull off stuff our own creator can't?
Well, if I build a robot that builds a smaller robot, who is credited with the invention of the smaller bot? Me?--or my robot. Following the same line of logic anything that a created object builds (nanotech, for example) is credited to the original creator.
I'm not trying to write flamebait posts (as my original was moderated). I'm only saying that your original comment--that no "source" exists for humans--is rather human-centric itself. To solve really big problems we must see outside of the boudaries that we've grown up inside: like the way you see my name, McCarty, and your brain tells your fingers to type McCarthy. I think the HGP is a giant step towards an eye-opening experience, and I hope we keep our eyes open to new ideas it might bring.
Best regards, ;-)
Daniel McCarty
--
To believe that no one has ever held the "source" for humans and other living things is akin to believing that you could find an intricate piece of machinery (a watch, for example) lying on the ground that had somehow assembled itself and was designed by no one.
I believe that our source exists, we just haven't met the programmer yet.
Best regards,
Daniel McCarty
--
I had originally used a table of the 15 most common English trigrams (available here), which was not giving me precise enough scores. Then a friend I had met through our mutual struggles to solve the stage sent me his trigraph table. In his words, this is how he described it:
I used Project Gutenberg and downloaded the complete textversions of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" (800KB) and "Wuthering heights" (600KB). I created a huge string out of the text (eliminating everything which is not a - z or A - Z) and ran a window of 3 chars over it, each time noting how many times a particular trigram appreared. I mapped that in an array. Doing like that I created a textfile of 26^3 trigrams and their respective scores (log2(N+1) where N=number a particular TriGram appeared in my sample text. (e.g. The score for 'THE' is about 14.0.)
--
I've recently learned about Genetic Algorithms (GA) in my quest to win $15,000 from The Code Book and Simon Singh's Cipher Challenge (eGroup here). One of the stages is a deft Playfair Cipher, which have historically proven difficult to solve by hand. Using a genetic algorithm, I was able to solve the cipher in just 28 generations.
What's amazing to me is that here I have just 500 lines of code that know nothing about ciphers, Playfairs and codebreaking, yet using a simple mutation and scoring function was able to break a relatively difficult cipher.
For those that don't know, a Playfair cipher puts the English alphabet into a 5x5 grid (minus 'j') and uses pairs of letters to select other letters from the grid. Instead of a 26-letter substitution cipher, codebreakers are now faced with a daunting 676 letter-pair challenge.
My code created 1,000 random keysquares and mutated them, randomly selecting squares and swapping them with one another, or swapping entire rows and columns. The new generation was scored, and those that scored high had a better chance of making it to the next generation than those that scored low (survival of the fittest, if you will). And in just 28 generations, what was once a mass of jumbled letters slowly transformed before my eyes into perfect English. Once the solution had been found I actually felt bad about killing the process, as if I had creatd life and killed it. It was truly amazing.
--
It seems that PETA wants to appeal to the religious sector of Americans and thinks that if they can convince them that Jesus was a vegetarian, they'll convert. (Sorry, no pun intended.)
--
And that brings me to my point: it's wonderful that IBM has a microdrive like this, and it speaks volumes for miniaturization and where technology is headed. But what is the expected use for most people today? Not much. At $500, this is way out of range of all but a few consumers. (Heck, it would cost more than the TRGPro itself!) At present perhaps the best feature of the 1GB microdrive is to drive down the price of the 340MB microdrive so people can buy them instead.
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Here come the script kiddies, furiously trying to hack into the cleanup droid so they can upload a rogue program that will latch on to TELSTAR7 instead and send it plunging to earth. ;-)
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FWIW, the Palm DOC file format (which has nothing in common with the MS Word .doc file format except its name) was invented by Richard Bram, and has been open source since day 1.
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I hope this doesn't come off sounding pedantic, but no, I don't own a Pilot. I own a Palm. And before that I owned a PalmPilot Professional. In fact, Pilots haven't been produced for about two years now, not since Palm lost their lawsuit to Pilot Pen Company. For anyone interested, here's a little Palm History.
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I guess I'm just rambling here, but isn't it better to honor people while they're still living? I think that we should lavish honor on people while they're still alive, instead waiting for them to die and then holding elaborate ceremonies.
I'm not saying that's what happened here, and of course there was a delay while these peoples' inventions became commonplace in the marketplace, but how much more "honorable" would it have been to have inducted these people into the hall of fame while they were still alive to appreciate it.
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ZDNet has a big thing on it, as well as new words from Judge Jackson. The Financial Times site, FT.com, has news and a Ballmer interview. And here's something from the Washington Post, talking about the possibility of an out-of-court settlement. Enjoy.
And while I'm in Slashdot-critique mode, is it really necessary to provide a link to a common company name? For example:
Rob Roy, CEO of Adobe, wrote an article about the Internet.
C'mon, like none of us know how to point to adobe.com.
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p.s. Do you have any information where I can get a free counter for my website?
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