He's in Canada and flies both civilian and military. He makes about what I make as a software developer. Certainly not those huge wages. I mean, Canadian airlines are practically bankrupt, they couldn't pay that kind of money.
You can already rip DVDs to a 250MB DivX that will fit on a 256MB flash card and play fine on a Pocket PC 2002 device. I like to watch Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon when I am bored.
Case: Ed Norton Molly: like Trinity? Armitage: like Arnie or Dolph Lundgren? Flatline Voice: M. Emmett Walsh (see Blood Simple) Finn: like Burgess Meredith
That's how they work in practice for solving practical problems.
But for research, many researchers run GAs that do indeed try to simulate nature. They even simulate a little world with little creatures with those genes, living their little lives with food and predators and mating. You can make such a simulation as detailed as you care to.
In that case, it is the creatures' ability to survive (and mate) in that world that dictates their fitness. This is an extrinsic fitness criterion, just like the natural world.
By definition, fitness is breeding. Because nature rewards breeding, and activities that lead to breeding (even if they also lead to dying).
In software, fitness also is breeding, and whatever else we choose to reward. We define the world. In our world, perhaps ability to compress images determines breeding power.
Just because we define our fitness function to be image compression, and nature defines it to be strong, able to find shelter, procure food, and obtain a mate, doesn't mean they aren't both doing the same thing. Both systems have a fitness function that results in breeding.
First of all, selection (inheritance, reproduction) is one of the three operators of GAs. If you are not selected for reproduction, you do not reproduce.
Secondly, that answers your fitness question. In a GA, the fitness function is used to determine who reproduces. This is the same as in nature, where some complex fitness criterion determines who gets to reproduce and who does not. That fitness criterion is unknown, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
I've done work (including professional) with genetic algorithms. I wouldn't say I'm an expert, but I do have a number of books on the subject.
They really are very keen, GAs. Amazing to see work.
It's funny, because typically crossover (and inheritance) are the big operators, not mutation. But it is helpful to study each operator individually, even though they work best together.
In Java, you can override clone(). You might do this in all derived classes in a part of your class hierarchy.
In the implementations, you might call super.clone() and cast it to that base class. But, when you call super.clone(), you must catch CloneNotSupportedException.
But clone() must be supported, you implemented it yourself! You know what class you are (at least, you're in that part of the class hierarchy). In this case, you know the clone() you are calling is supported, but the compiler does not.
So that catch block should never happen! (Barring compiler problems etc.) But it must be there. So I just had it print "this should never happen."
If you suspect something that appears to work, and you can't demonstrate completely whether it is correct or incorrect, by all means flag it.
I once reviewed a function just before release and had a bad feeling about the code. I was quite tired due to overwork, but I've learned to trust my gut. Everything appeared to work correctly, but that doesn't mean there isn't a coding error. But I couldn't satisfy myself that there was no error, and had other things to attack so couldn't really see if there was an error. So I put a warning saying there might be a bug here, check back later.
Eventually I went back and removed the warning, after ensuring the code was indeed OK. But the warning was appropriate, and served its purpose.
I started with a Palm Professional. The screen was horrible, so a year or two later I got a Palm V. I liked the screen, but a few months ago I was yearning for something more. Better screen, more RAM, more processing power, and also more expandability.
The iPAQ 3900 series came out, so I bought one with Bluetooth. It's expensive, but I'm a programmer and I love the toys. I played around with some Palm programming, and someday I'd like to tackle Pocket PC.
But what I've found, is that the better the PDA I've had, the more uses I've found for it.
The main use is just to always have a notepad around. I keep lists of everything (shopping list, important numbers, etc.) in my PDA. Contact information is also useful.
Another thing I like is having material to read. Instead of having to pick up a magazine at the dentists, I can catch up on content *I* want to read. This is much better with the iPAQ and its near-eBook capability.
I've started using the calendar functions more and more, linearly, with time. I don't really have that many meetings, but I put in things like to remind me when to renew driver's license, etc. The things that you really forget if you don't think about them.
With the iPAQ's multimedia capabilities, I can store some photos of the wife and baby, and also sound clips. That's the old photos in wallet trick.
Video takes too much memory still. But MP3s are a nice option, if it were more convenient to play them (UI-wise).
Games are OK but I prefer to play at home and instead do reading on the run.
So I've found that the better the PDA, the more I use it, and the more uses I find for it. Slowly it is becoming like a mini laptop.
I find that it takes discipline to force yourself to carry it with you, and to use it. It's too easy to just grab a piece of paper to note something down. If you always use the PDA, and always have it with you, that's the first step.
Another important thing is to use a decent input system. Graffiti is nice, but the Pocket PC lets you choose your own input system. Find one that works for you. If it's too hard to input, you won't use the PDA, so it is crucial that you can input your stuff fast enough.
My biggest complaint about the iPAQ is just the bleeding-edge of it all. It can play movies, but I can't script an MP3 playlist playback, or a slide show of my photos. I want a big button on the Today Screen that goes to my shopping list, another for baby pictures, and another for my favourite playlist.
I tried Bluetooth, but it is one hell of a hassle. Even after setup and configuration, things just take too long. Why does it take ten seconds to find my transceiver? There's nothing else here!
I really want text to speech (for listening to books) and speech recognition (for navigation and input), that is convenient and free. I know you can solve a lot of these issues I have by buying more stuff, but really I paid a fortune for the device, I shouldn't have to pay more for things it should have. I tried IBM's voice software but it isn't really usable.
As a developer, I have to put error messages in the code. I've made a few sweet ones, but usually they don't appear.
One is an exception "This should never happen." It would only happen if the JVM it was running on were screwed, because the class implemented Cloneable and shouldn't itself throw CloneNotSupportedException. But then JVM errors do occur...
A place I worked at before had a similar message actually appear, in a dialog, during a customer demo. But that wasn't me.
The biggest argument people seem to have for theft of software is that they're only hurting the companies. So why go to jail?
That's not true.
If I'm a software developer, and I work extra nights to finish a product, and our sales are deflated from organized piracy, and I don't get a cost of living raise that year, then I have been harmed.
Me. Not just my company, but me.
Those organizers are costing me money. Just as if they came and vandalized my house and I had to repair it.
I want those responsible put in jail, just like vandals and other theft and crime.
It's easy to support stealing software or movies when you don't actually make them, but instead sit on your fat ass playing games and watching movies.
Slashdot Mirror
Some other movies that seem more or less Dickian:
Man Facing Southeast (Argentinian, ripped off as K-PAX).
Red, and The Double Life of Veronique, both by Kieslowski.
Matador by Almodovar.
He's in Canada and flies both civilian and military. He makes about what I make as a software developer. Certainly not those huge wages. I mean, Canadian airlines are practically bankrupt, they couldn't pay that kind of money.
Or maybe I've been sick for 3 days.
Thanks a lot asshole.
I've mostly read this and Tufte's two other books, which a colleague kindly brought into work. They are all three a joy to read or just look at.
I think they mean "ONE of the FOUR" buttons around the letter. Or another way of saying it: "four numbers surround each letter."
He also encoded it into some of his hidden puzzles. It's all through Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
You can already rip DVDs to a 250MB DivX that will fit on a 256MB flash card and play fine on a Pocket PC 2002 device. I like to watch Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon when I am bored.
Without seeing your post. He'd be a perfect Case.
Case: Ed Norton
Molly: like Trinity?
Armitage: like Arnie or Dolph Lundgren?
Flatline Voice: M. Emmett Walsh (see Blood Simple)
Finn: like Burgess Meredith
Kinda blows your theory out of the water, doesn't it?
That's how they work in practice for solving practical problems.
But for research, many researchers run GAs that do indeed try to simulate nature. They even simulate a little world with little creatures with those genes, living their little lives with food and predators and mating. You can make such a simulation as detailed as you care to.
In that case, it is the creatures' ability to survive (and mate) in that world that dictates their fitness. This is an extrinsic fitness criterion, just like the natural world.
You are missing the point.
By definition, fitness is breeding. Because nature rewards breeding, and activities that lead to breeding (even if they also lead to dying).
In software, fitness also is breeding, and whatever else we choose to reward. We define the world. In our world, perhaps ability to compress images determines breeding power.
Just because we define our fitness function to be image compression, and nature defines it to be strong, able to find shelter, procure food, and obtain a mate, doesn't mean they aren't both doing the same thing. Both systems have a fitness function that results in breeding.
Surely you can see that?
First of all, selection (inheritance, reproduction) is one of the three operators of GAs. If you are not selected for reproduction, you do not reproduce.
Secondly, that answers your fitness question. In a GA, the fitness function is used to determine who reproduces. This is the same as in nature, where some complex fitness criterion determines who gets to reproduce and who does not. That fitness criterion is unknown, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
I've done work (including professional) with genetic algorithms. I wouldn't say I'm an expert, but I do have a number of books on the subject.
They really are very keen, GAs. Amazing to see work.
It's funny, because typically crossover (and inheritance) are the big operators, not mutation. But it is helpful to study each operator individually, even though they work best together.
It hasn't been working since I reinstalled my Linux OS a year ago. Every once in a while I try to reconfigure it and test it, but no go.
It will burn a CD but I can't read it anywhere, and I've tried a dozen or two CD drives. I've tried half a dozen CDRW discs, some good brands.
Or, I get errors. It will do a test burn but fail a real burn.
I suppose it could be SCSI or other problems but it was working fine with the previous OS install and I configured it similarly.
The fan in the CDRW had been squealing and whining, maybe something heated up too much.
I had to do this once.
In Java, you can override clone(). You might do this in all derived classes in a part of your class hierarchy.
In the implementations, you might call super.clone() and cast it to that base class. But, when you call super.clone(), you must catch CloneNotSupportedException.
But clone() must be supported, you implemented it yourself! You know what class you are (at least, you're in that part of the class hierarchy). In this case, you know the clone() you are calling is supported, but the compiler does not.
So that catch block should never happen! (Barring compiler problems etc.) But it must be there. So I just had it print "this should never happen."
If you suspect something that appears to work, and you can't demonstrate completely whether it is correct or incorrect, by all means flag it.
I once reviewed a function just before release and had a bad feeling about the code. I was quite tired due to overwork, but I've learned to trust my gut. Everything appeared to work correctly, but that doesn't mean there isn't a coding error. But I couldn't satisfy myself that there was no error, and had other things to attack so couldn't really see if there was an error. So I put a warning saying there might be a bug here, check back later.
Eventually I went back and removed the warning, after ensuring the code was indeed OK. But the warning was appropriate, and served its purpose.
I'm reading Introduction to AI Robotics right now.
Seems good so far, although too many copy editing errors to make me really comfortable with it.
Might as well make it useful.
I started with a Palm Professional. The screen was horrible, so a year or two later I got a Palm V. I liked the screen, but a few months ago I was yearning for something more. Better screen, more RAM, more processing power, and also more expandability.
The iPAQ 3900 series came out, so I bought one with Bluetooth. It's expensive, but I'm a programmer and I love the toys. I played around with some Palm programming, and someday I'd like to tackle Pocket PC.
But what I've found, is that the better the PDA I've had, the more uses I've found for it.
The main use is just to always have a notepad around. I keep lists of everything (shopping list, important numbers, etc.) in my PDA. Contact information is also useful.
Another thing I like is having material to read. Instead of having to pick up a magazine at the dentists, I can catch up on content *I* want to read. This is much better with the iPAQ and its near-eBook capability.
I've started using the calendar functions more and more, linearly, with time. I don't really have that many meetings, but I put in things like to remind me when to renew driver's license, etc. The things that you really forget if you don't think about them.
With the iPAQ's multimedia capabilities, I can store some photos of the wife and baby, and also sound clips. That's the old photos in wallet trick.
Video takes too much memory still. But MP3s are a nice option, if it were more convenient to play them (UI-wise).
Games are OK but I prefer to play at home and instead do reading on the run.
So I've found that the better the PDA, the more I use it, and the more uses I find for it. Slowly it is becoming like a mini laptop.
I find that it takes discipline to force yourself to carry it with you, and to use it. It's too easy to just grab a piece of paper to note something down. If you always use the PDA, and always have it with you, that's the first step.
Another important thing is to use a decent input system. Graffiti is nice, but the Pocket PC lets you choose your own input system. Find one that works for you. If it's too hard to input, you won't use the PDA, so it is crucial that you can input your stuff fast enough.
My biggest complaint about the iPAQ is just the bleeding-edge of it all. It can play movies, but I can't script an MP3 playlist playback, or a slide show of my photos. I want a big button on the Today Screen that goes to my shopping list, another for baby pictures, and another for my favourite playlist.
I tried Bluetooth, but it is one hell of a hassle. Even after setup and configuration, things just take too long. Why does it take ten seconds to find my transceiver? There's nothing else here!
I really want text to speech (for listening to books) and speech recognition (for navigation and input), that is convenient and free. I know you can solve a lot of these issues I have by buying more stuff, but really I paid a fortune for the device, I shouldn't have to pay more for things it should have. I tried IBM's voice software but it isn't really usable.
As a developer, I have to put error messages in the code. I've made a few sweet ones, but usually they don't appear.
One is an exception "This should never happen." It would only happen if the JVM it was running on were screwed, because the class implemented Cloneable and shouldn't itself throw CloneNotSupportedException. But then JVM errors do occur...
A place I worked at before had a similar message actually appear, in a dialog, during a customer demo. But that wasn't me.
The biggest argument people seem to have for theft of software is that they're only hurting the companies. So why go to jail?
That's not true.
If I'm a software developer, and I work extra nights to finish a product, and our sales are deflated from organized piracy, and I don't get a cost of living raise that year, then I have been harmed.
Me. Not just my company, but me.
Those organizers are costing me money. Just as if they came and vandalized my house and I had to repair it.
I want those responsible put in jail, just like vandals and other theft and crime.
It's easy to support stealing software or movies when you don't actually make them, but instead sit on your fat ass playing games and watching movies.
DeNiro already did Awakenings, based on real-life medical researcher/writer Oliver Sacks. He even had amnesia similar to Leonard in Memento.
And what wonderful accounting scheme do you have that can tell when 10KLOC can be more profitable 10 years later than another 20KLOC?
Management can't even evaluate people, let alone code.