The real power-saving web pages are simple and clean
ones that that use the
least CPU time to load, without bloated
Web 2.0 javascript mashups of dozens of irrelevant sites
and web bugs that keep track of you.
TFA doesn't seem to mention that.
When it has to use general-purpose computing (like when you
try to do floating-point math), you'll find most computers a great deal
faster and more efficient.
True, there are "sweet spots" such as this where computers have an
advantage over humans. However, as the math gets more advanced, computers
rapidly start losing steam. Humans can prove advanced theorems such
as Fermat's Last Theorem that computers can't even begin to touch,
even with state of the art automated theorem provers.
It matters because if it was released open source and free of patents,
then it can't be patented. This is perhaps one of the greatest
contributions of OSS in the current software patent environment.
Re:Such systems have been proposed before
on
The Zuckerberg Tax
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
So what is fundamentally wrong with a wealth tax?
Actually, only the rich avoid a "wealth tax". For most people, their house represents
the bulk of their wealth, and it is taxed annually at a percentage
of its value. So effectively, ordinary people already pay a hefty
"wealth tax". In some ways it is doubly unfair, because it also taxes
the mortgaged part of that wealth that really belongs to the bank, not the
person paying the tax.
Why do we accept this wealth tax but not one on
other assets? It is just another unfair loophole that benefits mainly the rich.
If people were taxed on their net worth rather than just real estate value,
people stressed out by their mortgage would see their taxes go down while
rich people who can afford it would pay more.
In
Argentina, people are
taxed a certain
percentage of
their net worth above a certain amount, so a "wealth tax" on
all assets, not just real estate, is
not unheard of.
The reason they don't use port 80 is likely very simple:
this "news site" is probably run
from someone's home. Cable providers (at
least in the U.S.) - Verizon and RCN I know for sure - block port
80 to prevent home users from (easily) putting up their own
web sites.
Historically,
this practice probably traces back to the early days of the
internet when they wanted to prevent home users from using
excessive bandwidth that a web server might consume. However,
these days a typical home hobbyist site probably uses miniscule
bandwidth compared to a typical user's video streaming,
P2P, etc. usage. So basically
it's just a ploy to extract another $50 or so per
month to get port 80 access with a "business account". The business
account also provides a fixed IP address, although in my experience
my dynamic address lasts for a year or more as long as I keep my router
powered up.
The Debian webserver at my house uses port 88 for this reason.
Some users, particularly in Europe, can't access port 88.
Curiously, my ISP doesn't block port 443
(the normal https port), so I also alias 443 as an
http port to allow these people access. (There is no
confusion with https because they have to use the
":443" domain name suffix with http.)
I also have a port 80 mirror off-site, but
my home site is more up to date until the rsync cron kicks in,
and some people don't want to wait.
the uncertainty limit isn't a limit on measurements. It's a limit on what the universe is capable of representing.
Only partially true. What many people don't know is that Heisenberg's
derivation was slightly wrong because while it modeled the
thing being measured with quantum mechanics, it incorrectly
modeled the measuring device classically.
A rigorous analysis using qm for both was done
Ozawa in 2003 (see
http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.1833 which shows the
correct uncertainty equations on p. 2).
From
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120116095529.htm
"In order to describe the fundamental uncertainty and the additional
disturbance due to the measuring process, both particle and measurement
device have to be treated in the framework of quantum theory,...But the product of error and disturbance can be made arbitrarily
small -- even smaller than Heisenberg's original formulation"
Yet if you give her a choice between a pink shirt and a blue shirt she will pick pink.
That is due to stereotypes she was exposed to, not to something
inherent in girls.
A century ago, pink was a "boys'" color. From 1918 (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink#In_gender ): "The generally accepted
rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that
pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the
boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the
girl."
If every work ever created by any organization that
received government grants was public domain, nobody would ever take a
government grant.
Yes,
I'm sure the primary motivation of researchers in abstract
mathematics, theoretical
physics, astronomy, etc.
is the hope of someday getting rich by selling their discoveries.
Yes, and a Windows developer has absolutely no use for the Windows
source code as long as they have access to the APIs. So why would
anyone care about Linux?
While you in particular may not necessarily have a use for the
source code, the point is that
it is unavailable to those who do wish to use it.
The "use" might be understanding what it is doing (what information is
it sending to the parent company), modifying it (so that it does not do
this), and having the ability in principal to continue to run the API
(modified to run on your own or an alternate social network) if the site owner
goes out of business, does things you don't like with the information
you give them, or decides to ban your application.
Ironically, it looks like we might see this day, since distribution of physical printed material can't be limited and controlled . . .
Around 1980, I visited MIT's Dewey Library, which used some draconian
measures to control certain financial publications, such as
S&P stock evaluations. The material was handed to you from
behind a special counter, and you weren't allowed to make copies.
I think some books were chained to the counter.
I haven't gone back, so I don't know if this is still
the case.
And is is valued correctly?
It seems to me that coins generated early should have far
less value than ones generated recently, simply because they took a a
lot less work to generate. Among other things, not recognizing this
seems to give early adopters an unfair advantage.
It seems to me that the value of a bitcoin should be proportional to
the number of CPU computations needed to generate it. So, a recent
bitcoin might be worth 10 times an earlier bitcoin generated with 10X
less CPU operations.
I assume (although I relly don't know the algorithm or protocol) that a table
could give the number of CPU operations needed to generate a particular
bitcoin.
The early adopters would never go for this,
of course. But all that would be needed to adopt it over time would be
an increasing number of users preferring
higher serial numbers and eventually valuing them more
in transactions.
In the meantime, current holders might want to consider trying to get
the highest serial numbers they can, just in case someone starts to
value them more in the future.
In retail areas, street numbers tend not to be too prominent.
I have found that to be true and don't understand it. While businesses
loudly proclaim their names and logos, their street numbers are often barely
visible if present at all. When dealing with heavy traffic, you often
can't just leisurely slow down and rubberneck to search for some street
number clue in an unfamiliar area. (Well, pre-GPS anyway.) More than
once I've just given up trying to find a business while driving and gone
to a competitor I was already familiar with. Is there some marketing
reason that makes a street number detrimental to business?
The likely reality is universities will simply end up sponsoring book production, whether it be fiction or non-fiction (years down the track) and then take in donations and use volunteers for proof reading, editing and critiquing work. Many universities will share this effort by forming associations for the various scholastic styles involved.
I think the likely reality is that university professors will
continue to rearrange the chapters in
next year's version of the Calculus 1 textbook,
making it incompatible with this year's so there's no resale value,
and sell it for $150.
Yes, but I don't have the right to make a "backup" of a friend's CD and take it home with me.
If a library owns a book, they have a right to scan it (or even to make a photocopy of a rare book for archival purposes). They have a right to use that scan within their building, or campus, to transmit to one other computer terminal at a time.
Yes, but (as I understand it) Google took the entirety of the scans off campus, not just snippets of them at at time.
Google made a deal with the libraries. That's how they scanned the books. The libraries agreed to let Google distribute snippits. You can go into a library and photocopy several pages from a book.
The library has no right to make a "deal" with Google, since they do not own the copyright to their books.
Google did not photocopy several pages, they photocopied entire books. The library thus "distributed"
entire copies of books to Google, for profit-making purposes. The fact that Google re-distributes only
snippets to a 3rd party (the public) seems irrelevant. I cannot legally make a copy of a library book
even if I promise to distribute only snippets to a 3rd party.
If Google wins, will I then be able to copy entire library books also, like they do? Somehow I don't
think so.
Libraries are allowed to copy the entire content of books. Why should Google be prohibited from doing the same? There seems to be a double standard here.
Because the library owns the books and Google does not. I can make a backup copy of a CD that I own.
I cannot (legally) make a copy of a friend's CD and take it home with me.
Fair use. The same way a person can reproduce short snippets of a copyrighted work without violating the copyright, Google Books allows you to search scanned books and view short sections of text at a time.
However, they reproduced (for profit-making purposes) and are storing
the entire
content of books from which the snippets are displayed.
I've been called out by a librarian when she felt I was
copying "too much" from a book. Why does Google
get carte blanche to copy millions of books in their entirety? At a minimum, shouldn't
Google at least have to purchase each book that they copied?
I'm not one to defend the current state of copyright laws, but
there seems to be a double standard here.
Indeed, sperm cells from the rhesus macaque have been
clocked at over
200 um/sec, or 12000 microns/minute,
which is 2300 times faster than the 5.2 microns/minute
winner in this race.
My viewpoint is that I have been and continue to be royally ripped off as I my savings
interest rates have plummeted from around 5% (that barely kept up with
inflation) to 0.1% or less. And why would the banks pay any more since
they can get money from the Fed essentially for free? Multiply this by the
number of people trying to build up a nest egg safely in
their savings accounts and retirees trying to hang on to their
life savings. The U.S. public, who can't compete with the Fed, was ripped off
far, far more than $13 billion.
I don't have access to the full version. Maybe I overlooked something, but I couldn't find anything
in the abstract or article that gave more than a fuzzy picture about the
"relationship" they are discussing.
The set of equations normally used are the
Lotka-Volterra equations.
An example of the behavior of this equation is shown
here
on that page.
Is this what they found matches their data?
I would guess that from a callous, purely economical point
of view, smoking has a net benefit to society.
Smokers
typically die around retirement age, after their productive
life is over. Nonsmokers, on the other hand, may linger on
unproductively for decades in nursing homes with
around-the-clock care, or requiring family members to leave
the work force to care for them. Sure lung cancer is
costly, but it is a one-time expense.
The "cost of smoking" numbers you see are not offset with
the cost of not smoking due to longer unproductive lives
that burden society. It would be interesting to see some unbiased
calculations.
If they know it's a truecrypt drive, they probably would
suspect that there's another partition so will try and charge you anyway
for withholding.
Then (under protest and with the appearance of great stress)
give them the password to the hidden partition, where
they'll find some kinky and embarrassing (but not illegal)
stuff to keep them busy. At worst they'll think you're a secret crossdressing BDSM fetishist or
whatever. What they don't know is
inside of that, there is yet another hidden partition.
I second the Livescribe recommendation.
It's been extremely useful when my notes no longer make sense later because the
professor was talking too fast or whatever - I can just click
on the note and instantly listen to what the professor actually said. This was
especially true in an advanced math course I took recently, where the prof gave only verbal hints
as to how one step followed another, while I was barely keeping up with what he was furiously
writing on the blackboard. Plus
there's nothing to lug around except the notebook and the pen in my
pocket.
Slashdot Mirror
The real power-saving web pages are simple and clean ones that that use the least CPU time to load, without bloated Web 2.0 javascript mashups of dozens of irrelevant sites and web bugs that keep track of you. TFA doesn't seem to mention that.
True, there are "sweet spots" such as this where computers have an advantage over humans. However, as the math gets more advanced, computers rapidly start losing steam. Humans can prove advanced theorems such as Fermat's Last Theorem that computers can't even begin to touch, even with state of the art automated theorem provers.
Isn't weight proportional to cube of height?
It matters because if it was released open source and free of patents, then it can't be patented. This is perhaps one of the greatest contributions of OSS in the current software patent environment.
Actually, only the rich avoid a "wealth tax". For most people, their house represents the bulk of their wealth, and it is taxed annually at a percentage of its value. So effectively, ordinary people already pay a hefty "wealth tax". In some ways it is doubly unfair, because it also taxes the mortgaged part of that wealth that really belongs to the bank, not the person paying the tax.
Why do we accept this wealth tax but not one on other assets? It is just another unfair loophole that benefits mainly the rich. If people were taxed on their net worth rather than just real estate value, people stressed out by their mortgage would see their taxes go down while rich people who can afford it would pay more.
In Argentina, people are taxed a certain percentage of their net worth above a certain amount, so a "wealth tax" on all assets, not just real estate, is not unheard of.
Historically, this practice probably traces back to the early days of the internet when they wanted to prevent home users from using excessive bandwidth that a web server might consume. However, these days a typical home hobbyist site probably uses miniscule bandwidth compared to a typical user's video streaming, P2P, etc. usage. So basically it's just a ploy to extract another $50 or so per month to get port 80 access with a "business account". The business account also provides a fixed IP address, although in my experience my dynamic address lasts for a year or more as long as I keep my router powered up.
The Debian webserver at my house uses port 88 for this reason. Some users, particularly in Europe, can't access port 88. Curiously, my ISP doesn't block port 443 (the normal https port), so I also alias 443 as an http port to allow these people access. (There is no confusion with https because they have to use the ":443" domain name suffix with http.)
I also have a port 80 mirror off-site, but my home site is more up to date until the rsync cron kicks in, and some people don't want to wait.
Only partially true. What many people don't know is that Heisenberg's derivation was slightly wrong because while it modeled the thing being measured with quantum mechanics, it incorrectly modeled the measuring device classically.
A rigorous analysis using qm for both was done Ozawa in 2003 (see http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.1833 which shows the correct uncertainty equations on p. 2).
From http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120116095529.htm "In order to describe the fundamental uncertainty and the additional disturbance due to the measuring process, both particle and measurement device have to be treated in the framework of quantum theory,...But the product of error and disturbance can be made arbitrarily small -- even smaller than Heisenberg's original formulation"
That is due to stereotypes she was exposed to, not to something inherent in girls.
A century ago, pink was a "boys'" color. From 1918 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink#In_gender ): "The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl."
In 2010, an overlay keyboard was one of the first obvious needs that occurred to me when the iPad came out. I'm surprised it took this long.
Oops, it looks like you forgot to add $319.99 for Windows 7 Ultimate, bringing it to $479.99.
Yes, I'm sure the primary motivation of researchers in abstract mathematics, theoretical physics, astronomy, etc. is the hope of someday getting rich by selling their discoveries.
While you in particular may not necessarily have a use for the source code, the point is that it is unavailable to those who do wish to use it. The "use" might be understanding what it is doing (what information is it sending to the parent company), modifying it (so that it does not do this), and having the ability in principal to continue to run the API (modified to run on your own or an alternate social network) if the site owner goes out of business, does things you don't like with the information you give them, or decides to ban your application.
Around 1980, I visited MIT's Dewey Library, which used some draconian measures to control certain financial publications, such as S&P stock evaluations. The material was handed to you from behind a special counter, and you weren't allowed to make copies. I think some books were chained to the counter.
I haven't gone back, so I don't know if this is still the case.
And is is valued correctly? It seems to me that coins generated early should have far less value than ones generated recently, simply because they took a a lot less work to generate. Among other things, not recognizing this seems to give early adopters an unfair advantage.
It seems to me that the value of a bitcoin should be proportional to the number of CPU computations needed to generate it. So, a recent bitcoin might be worth 10 times an earlier bitcoin generated with 10X less CPU operations.
I assume (although I relly don't know the algorithm or protocol) that a table could give the number of CPU operations needed to generate a particular bitcoin.
The early adopters would never go for this, of course. But all that would be needed to adopt it over time would be an increasing number of users preferring higher serial numbers and eventually valuing them more in transactions.
In the meantime, current holders might want to consider trying to get the highest serial numbers they can, just in case someone starts to value them more in the future.
I have found that to be true and don't understand it. While businesses loudly proclaim their names and logos, their street numbers are often barely visible if present at all. When dealing with heavy traffic, you often can't just leisurely slow down and rubberneck to search for some street number clue in an unfamiliar area. (Well, pre-GPS anyway.) More than once I've just given up trying to find a business while driving and gone to a competitor I was already familiar with. Is there some marketing reason that makes a street number detrimental to business?
I think the likely reality is that university professors will continue to rearrange the chapters in next year's version of the Calculus 1 textbook, making it incompatible with this year's so there's no resale value, and sell it for $150.
Yes, but I don't have the right to make a "backup" of a friend's CD and take it home with me.
Yes, but (as I understand it) Google took the entirety of the scans off campus, not just snippets of them at at time.
The library has no right to make a "deal" with Google, since they do not own the copyright to their books. Google did not photocopy several pages, they photocopied entire books. The library thus "distributed" entire copies of books to Google, for profit-making purposes. The fact that Google re-distributes only snippets to a 3rd party (the public) seems irrelevant. I cannot legally make a copy of a library book even if I promise to distribute only snippets to a 3rd party.
If Google wins, will I then be able to copy entire library books also, like they do? Somehow I don't think so.
Because the library owns the books and Google does not. I can make a backup copy of a CD that I own. I cannot (legally) make a copy of a friend's CD and take it home with me.
However, they reproduced (for profit-making purposes) and are storing the entire content of books from which the snippets are displayed.
I've been called out by a librarian when she felt I was copying "too much" from a book. Why does Google get carte blanche to copy millions of books in their entirety? At a minimum, shouldn't Google at least have to purchase each book that they copied?
I'm not one to defend the current state of copyright laws, but there seems to be a double standard here.
Indeed, sperm cells from the rhesus macaque have been clocked at over 200 um/sec, or 12000 microns/minute, which is 2300 times faster than the 5.2 microns/minute winner in this race.
My viewpoint is that I have been and continue to be royally ripped off as I my savings interest rates have plummeted from around 5% (that barely kept up with inflation) to 0.1% or less. And why would the banks pay any more since they can get money from the Fed essentially for free? Multiply this by the number of people trying to build up a nest egg safely in their savings accounts and retirees trying to hang on to their life savings. The U.S. public, who can't compete with the Fed, was ripped off far, far more than $13 billion.
I don't have access to the full version. Maybe I overlooked something, but I couldn't find anything in the abstract or article that gave more than a fuzzy picture about the "relationship" they are discussing. The set of equations normally used are the Lotka-Volterra equations. An example of the behavior of this equation is shown here on that page. Is this what they found matches their data?
Smokers typically die around retirement age, after their productive life is over. Nonsmokers, on the other hand, may linger on unproductively for decades in nursing homes with around-the-clock care, or requiring family members to leave the work force to care for them. Sure lung cancer is costly, but it is a one-time expense.
The "cost of smoking" numbers you see are not offset with the cost of not smoking due to longer unproductive lives that burden society. It would be interesting to see some unbiased calculations.
Then (under protest and with the appearance of great stress) give them the password to the hidden partition, where they'll find some kinky and embarrassing (but not illegal) stuff to keep them busy. At worst they'll think you're a secret crossdressing BDSM fetishist or whatever. What they don't know is inside of that, there is yet another hidden partition.
I second the Livescribe recommendation. It's been extremely useful when my notes no longer make sense later because the professor was talking too fast or whatever - I can just click on the note and instantly listen to what the professor actually said. This was especially true in an advanced math course I took recently, where the prof gave only verbal hints as to how one step followed another, while I was barely keeping up with what he was furiously writing on the blackboard. Plus there's nothing to lug around except the notebook and the pen in my pocket.