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  1. The Book == The Phenomenology of Time? on Anathem · · Score: 1

    I'm pretty sure this is the first SF book I've read that in the largest part is based on the philosophies of Edmund Husserl (he's regarded as the founder of phenomenology).

    And I'm dammed sure that Husserl's "The Phenomenology of Time" is Stephenson's inspiration for "The Book"! FWIW, I have never ever come across a book that even remotely challenges TPOT for the title of most densest, most opaque, most unreadable book ever. (The wikipedia link, as turgid as it is, is barely a 'Family Circus' synopsis of Husserl's prose).

    Kudo's to Stephenson for even attempting to incorporate Husserl into SF!

  2. Re:There's are problems upgrading? on Upgrading Your Current System To Kernel 2.6 · · Score: 1

    Wish I could say the same.

    2.6 doesn't recognize my software RAID mirrors. I'm missing some configuration quirk and need a clue :0

    Anyone else seen this problem? Is it /sys related?

    Thanks.

  3. Works for horses too on Pentagon Lets You Bid on Terrorism? · · Score: 1


    The principle is also demonstrated in pari-mutuel betting at the race track too.


    The crowd bets on favorite jockeys, rumours, lucky numbers, advance info, Racing Form, etc. All this gets throw into the pari-mutuel wash and in _every_ racetrack in NorthAm the crowd picks winners at a 30% rate.


    This is better performance that any individual handicapper can achieve, no matter how expert...

  4. Re:Which DVD drives work under linux on DVD Burner Round-up · · Score: 1

    The maximum write time is a problem with random-access disks because every time you READ a file the Linux fs updates the filesystem to indicate the access time! Do that 1000 times and your +RW disk is wasted. RAM disks on the other hand are designed to be rewirtten pretty much forever


    Not so, if you can use the noatime option when mounting a disk, that is. This disables access time updating.

    man mount

  5. Forth? on Handheld Programming? · · Score: 2, Informative


    For something a bit different different you could try Forth, which excels in small footprint devices.
    I've seen a full IDE in 16k (k as in kilo) bytes

    For palm, there's Quartus Forth

  6. Re:Shogi and Go on A Shogi Champion Turns to Chess · · Score: 1

    There are two examples here (Go and Shogi) of such games from the East, can you name similar game rules from the West that appear in games played for money?

    Backgammon used to have the problem of interminably long drawn-out games. Players in clearly lost positions would play on hoping for some miracle sequence of dice rolls.


    Then, in the 40's some genius at the Cavandish Club in NY invented the doubling cube, which revolutionized the game. Now if, for instance, your only chance of winning a $20 game is rolling three consecutive sets of boxcars, your gonna have to resign if your opponent doubles the stakes to $40 on you. (Do you _really_ want to bet $20 you can roll 6-6, 6-6, 6-6?)


    I've often thought that introducing a doubling cube to the world of chess would end those boring end-games...

    -- There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that count in binary, and those that don't.

  7. Double Take on Is Realism Destroying Video Games? · · Score: 5, Interesting
  8. Re:Oh god no!, NOT the earth... on Stealth Asteroid Misses Earth · · Score: 1

    ...I can't stress highly enough the importance of off-site backups in any responsible contigency plan

  9. Heavy Weather on How to Film a Tornado · · Score: 1


    Great novel by Bruce Sterling about hacking and tornados!

  10. Re:hmm on Editing Complex Equations For Conversion Into HTML? · · Score: 1
    When properly layed out, there is a _lot_ of information conveyed, which are the constants, parameters, the variables. The function 'family' can be recognized at a glance. This is a good thing.


    being able to translate it into a better notation forces you to memorize it; this is a good thing

    Oh. We tend to prefer comprehension not memorization at our .edu

    P.

  11. Re:hmm on Editing Complex Equations For Conversion Into HTML? · · Score: 1

    lessse,

    w(x2|x1) = (1/(sqrt(2pi)(1-rho^2)sigma2))e(-1/2[x2-{mu2+rho(s igma2/sigma1)(x1-mu1)}/(sigma2 sqrt(1-rho^2))]^2)

    hmmm, yes, this _is_ the conditional bivariate normal probability function (right?)

    P.
    (who should be doing stats assgt right now)

  12. AOL CDs!!! on Tombstones That Last? · · Score: 1

    'nuff said!

  13. Re:Does there yet exist... on William Hewlett Dead · · Score: 1

    look for an app called RPN Calc,
    it has a really well thought out interface

  14. Win a few, lose a bunch, on Death Spiral First Evidence Of Black Hole · · Score: 1


    So much for the Yilmaz variant of General Relativity,
    which predicts that black holes do not exist
    more...

  15. Re:real-men-use-tarballs dept. on RPM - What's New in Version 4.0? · · Score: 1


    Actually, I think rpm uses cpio rather than tar.


    Think of cpio as the bastard mutated spawn of dd and cp :-)

  16. 'Blocks' looks interesting, too on Napster Aftermath: Fan Vs. Corporate Rights · · Score: 2
    Blocks was introduced on fresh the other day, unfortunately I don't meet the minimum system requirements -- 33.6 dialup :-(

    Blocks is an anonymous distributed file transfer system designed for people with permanent ?always on? Internet connections like DSL lines or cable modems. It allows you to anonymously upload files from, and download files to the Blocks server ?network?.


    Blocks uses a large disk bound cache (1-64Gb) that is protected by a 128bit block cipher using a random key based on a strong Pseudo Random Number Generator (entropy provided by user), and the cache is deleted and recreated each time the Blocks server is stopped or started. Therefore, even after a crash or abnormal termination, the disk cache cannot be used to ascertain what data has been downloaded or was being served.


    When you run a Blocks server it finds and connects to a number of other Blocks servers, creating an interconnected ?network? of servers. All Blocks servers have a disk bound cache of data that is used to store data in the form of fixed size binary blocks of 64Kb.
  17. the SAC -- instantaneous sorting on Gears, Computers And Number Theory · · Score: 1
    AK Dewdney had a column in SciAm where he invented the SAC, an analog computer that sorts any finite array instantaneously...
    1. trim the spagetti pieces proportionally to the values you want sorted
    2. grasp all the spagetti loosely in your hand and drop lightly against a tabletop so the pieces are flush with the flat surface.
    3. your array is now sorted!


    The preprocessing can be a bitch, but the actual sort itself is near instantaneous :-)
  18. Linux ht OS of choice for Aqua? I don`t think so on Crusoe WebPads By FIC · · Score: 1

    Look at the pics: Its diplaying Microsoft.com Look at the leaflets they handed out about the Genesis2000: Running BeIA and Linux (your choice) so what will Aqua run: I guess you can choose between BeIA, WinCE (AKA MiniME) and embeddedLinux BTW: do I get this right? is this a linux only newssite now? just wondering...

  19. Re:Post your own comments on Entertaining Bits From The Ancient Kernel Tree · · Score: 1
    Somehow this got inserted into some vba code i was writing late at work last night...

    'YES I want to delete 12,372 records, quit bugging me...
    DoCmd.ShowWarnings False

  20. FORTH is dead?!? on C Faces Java In Performance Tests · · Score: 2
    maybe you should better tell these guys... :~) (current projects I found at SourceForge)

    • bigFORTH+MINOS
      bigFORTH is a native code Forth for x86 processors. MINOS is a portable GUI library for X11 and Win32, written in object oriented Forth, and includes the form editor Theseus

    • Portable Forth Environment
      the Portable Forth Environment implements the ANSI Forth Standard, it is fully written in C, the newer version has a module concept, and it is fully multithreaded. Autoconf used. Tested in embedded environments.

    • LYFO embedded forth
    • lsFORTH

      Native X86 Linux Forth compiler. Will be ported to other processors eventually

    • PPCFORTH for Embedded PowerPC
      FORTH for embedded PPC (IBM40x supported). Currently written in assembler (ASL dialect). Used for monitor or loading other programs via S-Records



  21. amiga ng on AtheOS · · Score: 1

    tell me again in three years. Maybe by then it will no longer look like sad little Amiga clone. Or even more likely it will be dead and forgotten by then. I mean what is this? GUI: Amiga. Apps: GNU tools. Anything new? Well, the site is heavily slashdotted, but so far I haven`t seen anything excitingly new. Why is it that everyone has to split resources? there are quite some flavors of different operating systems ranging from Windows, OS2, BeOS, BSD, Unix in genral to Linux. All of them developed for some time now. So why this new one? Shouldn`t we concentrate on whats already there? Shall we again take the pain of going back to basics or even below with an undeveloped OS? Or should we rather stick with the ones we have now and work together to make them succeed in the upcoming years? Maybe those analysts are right and there won`t even be that many PCs around in some years and it will be mostly about IAs. Where would AtheOS fit in by then? Compared to Linux Windows and BeOS?

  22. Hey JonKatz got some chewing gum? on Shut Down Metallica, Not Napster · · Score: 1

    Hooray! Stealing is OK! Atleast Slashdot told me so. To get this down to real life: Robbing a bank is bad, but 300.000 people going out to steal some chewing gum is OK? JonKatz, think of yourself as the owner of the chewing gum factory and tell me again its OK...

  23. limiting the GPL? on Compaq's PJB-100 MP3 Player Open-Sourced · · Score: 1
    All the code and documentation is available for linux and for windows.

    A bit of windows and linux zealotrry here I presume? Why limiting it to those two in your article Hemos? Arent there other operating systems out there that might be going to support this device as the specifications etc have been GPLed? After all thats the point of the GPL, isn`t it?

  24. Re:Data havens on New Russian Site Carries Unlicensed Song Lyrics · · Score: 1

    Crytonomicon by Neal Stephenson: Data Havens and Cryptography all the way.

  25. GPLing copyrighted material? on The Playstation Documentation Project · · Score: 2

    I dont get it: all the stuff thats inside the PS is proprietary, copyrighted and presumably covered by patents. So how can someone hack that stuff and GPL it? I honestly dont understand how this should legally work. Come on, enlighten me.