I know that The Big Bang Theory is filmed in front of a live studio audience. But however they manipulate the laughter from that live studio audience -- be it audience manipulation, audio manipulation, or whatever -- gives a result that, to my ears, is indistinguishable from a laugh track. A difference that makes no difference is no difference.
(Yes, I do hear a difference between the laughter in The Big Bang Theory and the laughter in, for example, The Cosby Show, also filmed in front of a live studio audience, but apparently less manipulated.)
A similar situation exists in the card game bridge. There are three major classes of events: open (men and women), women's (only), and senior (old men and old women). There are some mixed events as well (each partnership must have one man and one woman). Teams including a woman win open events from time to time, including at the highest levels. However, by sheer numbers, most of the top players are male -- notwithstanding the era in which Dorothy Hayden Truscott may have been the best player of either sex in the world.
Other than the obvious Cormen, Leiserson, and Rivest (plus Stein these days, apparently): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
I found H. J. Tichy's _Effective Writing for Engineers, Managers, and Scientists_ very useful.
I haven't finished _Hacker's Delight_ by Henry S. Warren, Jr., but there's some good stuff in there.
Nine Men's Morris is a draw with perfect play.
Pentago itself is a draw with perfect play if the first player's first move is constrained to be in the corner (before rotating one of the quadrants).
Some variants of Nim are first-player-loses, as are some small-board variants of other games (I seem to recall that Go is a loss for the first player on a handful of the very small boards, like 2x4 or something, but I'd have to go look that up.)
From the title, I thought the article was going to discuss why the real World Chess Champion these days is always a computer, and how they should add a qualifier to the sobriquet for the winner of the Carlsen-Anand match: the Human World Chess Champion.
"Pell's motivation was actually not game generation, but general game playing: by the early 1990s, there was a worry that chess-playing AI had delved too deeply into special-case code that was very specific to chess."
Whereas nowadays, there's a worry that brute force solves all AI game-playing problems. If the search space is small enough, you run alpha-beta with iterative deepening and a few other tweaks. If the search space is too large for that, you run Monte-Carlo Tree Search.
I last chatted with Barney Pell at a AAAI conference in the mid-1990s. Unfortunately, by that point, he had given up the METAGAME research, primarily because he couldn't get people interested in it.
When you're dealing with people like [...] this [..], there's no use in trying to apply logic.
I'm certainly not going to defend all American stupidity, but look closely at that image in particular. That's a power strip with Type E electrical receptacles, not Type A/B. The likely countries in which that picture may have been taken are Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Monaco, Poland, and Slovakia; definitely not the USA.
There really isn't a way to have men and women compete together in most sports.
One of my pet peeves about feminists is that they want to claim that this is possible, but it simply isn't. Men are much more adapted to hunting, fighting, and running than women, women have evolved in a more sedentary role and as such are built for that role.
Certain sports that involve much more raw intellect women could compete on, but if it significantly involves a physical challenge, forget about it.
Beyond that because men get more out of adrenaline plus get a boatload more testosterone and muscle mass we shoot straighter, faster, and more often than female counterparts.
Zhang Shan would like to show you her Olympic gold medal in Skeet Shooting! Oh yeah, she won it in 1992, back when men and women competed together. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Shan
In modern parlance in at least some branches of academia, "gender" refers to the male/female identity that a person has, whereas "sex" refers to the male/female biology that a person has. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction
We have "energy choice" in Maryland; each customer can choose a different electricity supplier. So no, no one can tell you what percentage of Takoma Park's electricity comes from nuclear power. Certainly, I imagine they have a high percentage of customers (at least relative to other Maryland locales) choosing suppliers with 0% nuclear.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice: Standard Offer Service from Pepco is from seven different suppliers. You are welcome to chase down the nuclear percentages if you like.
I saw Enterprise when it was still at Udvar-Hazy. I have also seen Discovery at its new home in Udvar-Hazy. I'm no rocket scientist, but Discovery was much more impressive. It... felt... like a spacecraft. Okay, now waiting for more knowledgeable people to tell me about the real differences in external appearance between Discovery and Enterprise, or alternatively, use me as an example of how external knowledge (Discovery was a real shuttle, Enterprise just a testbed) can affect perception.
You know you're a geek when you get the joke immediately because you recognize the number.
For a couple of days after we change the clocks in the spring and fall, the usual minute-long recorded message at the USNO Master Clock is shortened to thirty seconds, presumably because they are essentially getting slashdotted at those times.
Ugh, I think this is actually off by a factor of 2. Roughly ONE-HALF of every 3.938 * 10^16 potassium-40 atoms decays every second. So figure 5600 potassium-40 atoms are undergoing beta decay inside the average adult body every second. Sorry. I'm clearly not a radiochemist.
I prefer option three: not starting people out in life with massive, difficult to escape debts. I think I will vote for the candidate who wants to change that system, rather than the politicians who want us to believe that the problem is keep the interest rates low.
A perfectly rational response: you prefer neither pay-for method mentioned, and so neither proposal affects your November vote.
It should also be noted that when the Republican House passed a measure last week to extend that interest rate, the President immmediately threatened a veto.
The Republican measure in the House would have paid for the low interest rate on student loans by cutting funding for preventive health care.
The Democratic measure in the Senate would have paid for the low interest rate on student loans by closing a tax loophole for individuals with income exceeding $250,000.
Choose the pay-for method that you prefer, and factor it into your November vote accordingly.
There's not been actual scientific evidence for radiation hormesis in humans, despite it being your pet theory.
It's not hormesis, per se, but it's clear that humans (and other lifeforms) can endure at least the low levels of radiation coming from their own bodies. Humans are about 0.35% potassium by mass; 0.0117% of potassium is potassium-40; potassium-40, which undergoes beta decay, has a half-life of 1.248 * 10^9 years. Each 1 kg of body mass has about 410 micrograms of potassium-40; that's 6.2 * 10^18 potassium-40 atoms. 1.248 * 10^9 years is 3.938 * 10^16 seconds, so roughly 1 out of every 3.938 * 10^16 potassium-40 atoms decays every second. Out of the 6.2 * 10^18 potassium-40 atoms in each kg of body mass, that's about 160 atoms. Average adult weight is something like 70 kg, so figure 11200 potassium-40 atoms are undergoing beta decay inside the average adult body every second.
Quick back-of-the-envelope calculations: Blackle saves roughly 18W over Google; my electricity costs about $0.12/kWh; so Blackle would save me roughly a penny for every five hours that I'm on the Google website!
Slashdot Mirror
I know that The Big Bang Theory is filmed in front of a live studio audience. But however they manipulate the laughter from that live studio audience -- be it audience manipulation, audio manipulation, or whatever -- gives a result that, to my ears, is indistinguishable from a laugh track. A difference that makes no difference is no difference.
(Yes, I do hear a difference between the laughter in The Big Bang Theory and the laughter in, for example, The Cosby Show, also filmed in front of a live studio audience, but apparently less manipulated.)
Appreciate your comment. Can you provide some examples of how you would word questions to get a useful answer?
A similar situation exists in the card game bridge. There are three major classes of events: open (men and women), women's (only), and senior (old men and old women). There are some mixed events as well (each partnership must have one man and one woman). Teams including a woman win open events from time to time, including at the highest levels. However, by sheer numbers, most of the top players are male -- notwithstanding the era in which Dorothy Hayden Truscott may have been the best player of either sex in the world.
Other than the obvious Cormen, Leiserson, and Rivest (plus Stein these days, apparently): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... I found H. J. Tichy's _Effective Writing for Engineers, Managers, and Scientists_ very useful. I haven't finished _Hacker's Delight_ by Henry S. Warren, Jr., but there's some good stuff in there.
The bombs in the Bojinka Plot were primarily nitroglycerin, with some other ingredients. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
Nine Men's Morris is a draw with perfect play. Pentago itself is a draw with perfect play if the first player's first move is constrained to be in the corner (before rotating one of the quadrants). Some variants of Nim are first-player-loses, as are some small-board variants of other games (I seem to recall that Go is a loss for the first player on a handful of the very small boards, like 2x4 or something, but I'd have to go look that up.)
From the title, I thought the article was going to discuss why the real World Chess Champion these days is always a computer, and how they should add a qualifier to the sobriquet for the winner of the Carlsen-Anand match: the Human World Chess Champion.
"Pell's motivation was actually not game generation, but general game playing: by the early 1990s, there was a worry that chess-playing AI had delved too deeply into special-case code that was very specific to chess."
Whereas nowadays, there's a worry that brute force solves all AI game-playing problems. If the search space is small enough, you run alpha-beta with iterative deepening and a few other tweaks. If the search space is too large for that, you run Monte-Carlo Tree Search.
I last chatted with Barney Pell at a AAAI conference in the mid-1990s. Unfortunately, by that point, he had given up the METAGAME research, primarily because he couldn't get people interested in it.
Oops, ironically, here I am, a stupid American failing to see the other replies because I'm browsing at +2. Sorry.
When you're dealing with people like [...] this [..], there's no use in trying to apply logic.
I'm certainly not going to defend all American stupidity, but look closely at that image in particular. That's a power strip with Type E electrical receptacles, not Type A/B. The likely countries in which that picture may have been taken are Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Monaco, Poland, and Slovakia; definitely not the USA.
There really isn't a way to have men and women compete together in most sports.
One of my pet peeves about feminists is that they want to claim that this is possible, but it simply isn't. Men are much more adapted to hunting, fighting, and running than women, women have evolved in a more sedentary role and as such are built for that role.
Certain sports that involve much more raw intellect women could compete on, but if it significantly involves a physical challenge, forget about it.
Beyond that because men get more out of adrenaline plus get a boatload more testosterone and muscle mass we shoot straighter, faster, and more often than female counterparts.
Zhang Shan would like to show you her Olympic gold medal in Skeet Shooting! Oh yeah, she won it in 1992, back when men and women competed together. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Shan
In modern parlance in at least some branches of academia, "gender" refers to the male/female identity that a person has, whereas "sex" refers to the male/female biology that a person has. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction
Of course the Supreme Court found it Constitutional. When was the last time they told the government "no" to having any power that matters?
2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission
(Dr.) Gamera: when you care enough to send the very best.
We have "energy choice" in Maryland; each customer can choose a different electricity supplier. So no, no one can tell you what percentage of Takoma Park's electricity comes from nuclear power. Certainly, I imagine they have a high percentage of customers (at least relative to other Maryland locales) choosing suppliers with 0% nuclear.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice: Standard Offer Service from Pepco is from seven different suppliers. You are welcome to chase down the nuclear percentages if you like.
http://www.pepco.com/business/choice/md/afterjune0607sos/default.aspx
In other towns, cops carry radar guns. In nuclear-free Takoma Park, they carry Geiger counters!
(Alas, not really.)
I saw Enterprise when it was still at Udvar-Hazy. I have also seen Discovery at its new home in Udvar-Hazy. I'm no rocket scientist, but Discovery was much more impressive. It... felt... like a spacecraft. Okay, now waiting for more knowledgeable people to tell me about the real differences in external appearance between Discovery and Enterprise, or alternatively, use me as an example of how external knowledge (Discovery was a real shuttle, Enterprise just a testbed) can affect perception.
Google is even more anti-Australian than anti-European! You can't even find the Gulf of Carpentaria on a Google Maps search!
It actually turns out that there is a whole naming dispute over the Persian Gulf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Gulf_naming_dispute
Google is anti-European! There's no label on the largest lake in Europe, Lake Ladoga!
Or, you know, it could be just a cartographic layout decision, just as the lack of a label on the Persian Gulf is.
You know you're a geek when you get the joke immediately because you recognize the number.
For a couple of days after we change the clocks in the spring and fall, the usual minute-long recorded message at the USNO Master Clock is shortened to thirty seconds, presumably because they are essentially getting slashdotted at those times.
Ugh, I think this is actually off by a factor of 2. Roughly ONE-HALF of every 3.938 * 10^16 potassium-40 atoms decays every second. So figure 5600 potassium-40 atoms are undergoing beta decay inside the average adult body every second. Sorry. I'm clearly not a radiochemist.
I prefer option three: not starting people out in life with massive, difficult to escape debts. I think I will vote for the candidate who wants to change that system, rather than the politicians who want us to believe that the problem is keep the interest rates low.
A perfectly rational response: you prefer neither pay-for method mentioned, and so neither proposal affects your November vote.
It should also be noted that when the Republican House passed a measure last week to extend that interest rate, the President immmediately threatened a veto.
The Republican measure in the House would have paid for the low interest rate on student loans by cutting funding for preventive health care.
The Democratic measure in the Senate would have paid for the low interest rate on student loans by closing a tax loophole for individuals with income exceeding $250,000.
Choose the pay-for method that you prefer, and factor it into your November vote accordingly.
There's not been actual scientific evidence for radiation hormesis in humans, despite it being your pet theory.
It's not hormesis, per se, but it's clear that humans (and other lifeforms) can endure at least the low levels of radiation coming from their own bodies. Humans are about 0.35% potassium by mass; 0.0117% of potassium is potassium-40; potassium-40, which undergoes beta decay, has a half-life of 1.248 * 10^9 years. Each 1 kg of body mass has about 410 micrograms of potassium-40; that's 6.2 * 10^18 potassium-40 atoms. 1.248 * 10^9 years is 3.938 * 10^16 seconds, so roughly 1 out of every 3.938 * 10^16 potassium-40 atoms decays every second. Out of the 6.2 * 10^18 potassium-40 atoms in each kg of body mass, that's about 160 atoms. Average adult weight is something like 70 kg, so figure 11200 potassium-40 atoms are undergoing beta decay inside the average adult body every second.
Quick back-of-the-envelope calculations: Blackle saves roughly 18W over Google; my electricity costs about $0.12/kWh; so Blackle would save me roughly a penny for every five hours that I'm on the Google website!