You could extend the analogy by saying that the tools like 'sed' and 'cc' are like proteins. To bootstrap the process you need an assembler, and the source code to these tools, and a makefile.
The analogy begins to break down, but it was fun to look at.
You obviously have no understanding of what "interaction" is. This is not simple set theory you know. (And I know what a power set is, and its size, I've done a bit of mathematics in my time)
How many ways can a bowl and a banana "interact"?
1) Bowl upright, banana inside it
2) Bowl upside down covering bowl
3) Bowl upside down, banana sitting on top
4) Bowl nearly right way up, leaning on banana.
These are all different situations, but are not _combinatorial_.
I'm not saying genes are like bananas, but the "interactions" are certainly more "spacial" than "combinatorial".
Evolution doesn't really have "poor workings".
It just happens, without cause or direction.
For a random example, think of trout in some reagions of the Ukraine over the last 4 decades and industrial acidic discharges in to the rivers of the region -
Are while species of trout dying "evolution working perfectly", as the non-fit have been eliminated.
Or are trout dying "evolution failing totally", as it wasn't quick enough to let the trout survive?
For everyone who shouts "failure" there will be one who shouts "success" and vica versa.
I'm glad that I've evolved enough to turn on a lightbuld when I want to read in the dark. To me that's a good evolutive step! The problem is solved, it doesn't matter how. In this way inventing lightbulbs is as efficient evolutionary step as night-vision.
These "comparisons" are in someways useful, but in otherways useless.
For argument's sake let's say that 50% of the silicon in my Psion 5 is the same as the silicon in my Mobile phone (very similar ARM processor core). Is this a useful statement?
Similarly, there's probably a vast amount of the PPC in a Mac that's the same as the PentiumIII in a PC, as they both use well known methods for implementing register files, caches, multipliers etc. The Mac and the PC also both share a PCI bus as well?
Similarly, a linux PC can have 99% of the same hardware as a Windows PC (can easily be 100%).
See the measurements can be made, but they paint such an incomplete picture that they really don't say that much.
You should probably not have dropped science - a good science teacher should teach you a) how to judge and b) how and where to use these "facts".
Even if you don't like what it says, learn it, so that you can argue against it from a more informed view.
You're pulling your maths from thin air. Put that factorial away, it's doesn't belong here.
Side note - I believe there are some frogs with more than twice the number of genes as humans - can anyone verify that for the list?
The "complexity" of what can be achieved with a certain number of genes is more closely related to some kind of busy beaver function.
The inverse function is far more interesting:
Q - What is the "complexity" of our genes' "behaviour"? (I'm thinking of Kolmogorov complexity, or equivalent)
A - It is less than or equal to the number of genes we have. (Oooh, a bit like the Chaitin length?)
So a practical challenge is for people to come up with a model for the behaviour with the smallest complexity, not the other way round.
(I'm not suggesting that anyone will do it for anything apart from simple bacteria and suchlike for quite a while. Having said that, if they've done it for E.Coli, then they're on the way already...)
I know that Helsinki Institute of Technology has several old machines which they may not _by law_ get rid of. For example they have a couple of large Pr1mes (the head of the department 15 years ago's previous job was Pr1me's Finish sales representative...), and a couple of ancient analog things the size of a small fridge.
As time goes on, these things will become rarer, so I think that forcing peope to keep them is quite a good idea. You can't get them back after they've gone.
FP. --
Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
Justice was almost done - his +5 has now become a +2.
If you post interesting stuff to Kuro5hin, why not post more to/. to help keep the SNR high? Your posting history indicates you only lurk now.
FP. --
Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
Helsinki University have acheived macroscopic temperatures measured in pK (pico-Kelvin). I believe that the most recent record was circa 18 months ago.
I feel obliged to plug this result as I had dinner with the daughter of one of the professors only 2 weeks ago.
There are pathological non-macroscopic situations where lower _even negative_ "temperatures" are involved. However, there require setting up bizarrely improbable situations with only small numbers of atoms (hence this is not a macroscopic situation). The laws relatiing entropy to temperature prove that in order to be that improbable, the temperature must be negative!
(Method - line up polar atoms in a strong field, reverse the field as quickly as you can - voila you now have almost every atom pointing in the wrong direction - now _that_'s improbable.)
Phil --
Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
My favourite games are still the Doom family.
Those are 7 years old now. I don't have (spare) PCs powerful enough for the more modern games anyway, so old games suit me just fine.
Anyway, heading off topic - can anyone recommend _cheap_ video cards with OpenGL support in Linux?
I've borrowed some cards in the past of mates, and the Linux support has been flakey or non-existant.
FatPhil --
Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
You're a cheating git, Synpax.
Any time I am permitted to moderate I'll mod you down for the points that belong to outlyer who wrote that comment on the kuro5hin pages.
Screw meta-moderation, I have 28 Karma to spare.
(This will be modded down by -3 to -1 off-topic, but I don't care. Of course - the nice moderators who are just about to mod me down could verify my story by going to http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2001/ 1/31/18749/1930
and searching for 'outlyer', and then they could mod you down instead:-) please:-) )
FatPhil --
Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
If the testing is done a priori, then there is equal shared knowledge for both parties, and so the risks can be assessed using more accurate statistics.
However, if the testing is not a priori, then the insurance company cannot say "actually it appears you were high risk", as the agreement was made in the equal _lesser_ shared knowledge.
I believe that insurance should be available on whatever terms both parties agree to. Personally I have _none_, as all I see is Insurance companies making money, and as a mathematician I conclude that the odds are stacked _against_ me. That's all insurance is now, it's a bet that you have problems. The insurers would like you to view it as "If you do have the problems you win the bet and you're happy, if you don't win the bet, then you have no problems so you're happy", but the flip side is just as valid (moreso, for the net-gain reason I mention 2 sentences back).
FatPhil --
Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
Indeed you're right.
I find it odd that commercial companies, like our F-Secure, have been to tight to buy a copy of ProLint and run it, or have willfully ignored the warning messages that it would produce.
The 10 commandments of C programming still hold true...
FatPhil
--
Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
"
Novelty(Claim3)=
Novelty(Element3A) OR
Novelty(Element3B) OR
Novelty(Element3A + Element3B)
"
Yes, I realised that my simplification was not a good one (I was going to change it to be more like yours), but as I was trying to _highlight the dangers_ in trying to apply propositional calculus to Patent Law, my 'mistake' reinforced my point! (or that's what I claim now:-) )
You have the correct formulation, thank you for clarifying it.
FatPhil
--
Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
Oh, OK, meta-classes?
Erm, I know comparisons are odious, but how does this now compare to Smalltalk? Or CLOS?
I'd love to see something new, but (being a mathematician) I've seen two dozen mathematical/logical/whatever-as-long-as-it's-not- straight-boring-imperative-code languages come and
go. The thing that they all lack is intuitiveness, the aspect which makes them obvious, and 2nd nature to program.
FatPhil --
Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
"
Is there still room for the small-time ISP in today's market or has dial-up internet become solely the realm of big-time providers?
"
My ISP (Kotiverkko Yhdestys, or Domenstic Network Association)in Espoonlahti, Finland, has no more than about 80 members. In order to avoid tax issues, it's an 'association' and is not allowed to make a profit. I pay the telco twice as much as the ISP despite the fact the ISP provides the IP infrastructure, yet the telco only provides 4 copper-copper conections, which took 5 minutes to set up, and no maintainance. I have to provide my own modems and router, but they're quite cheap ($500 for 2Mb/s modems)
FatPhil --
Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
You haven't thought about what AND-ing and OR-ing really mean. _This is a linguistic issue_.
If X1 and X2 are claims in one patent and Y1 and Y2 are claims in another patent, then a patent application consisting of X1 and Y2 and Z is a perfectly valid. Novelty to the whole patent can be by the introduction of one novel claim (i.e. a logical OR). However, a violation would need to be a violation of all three things.
Violation(Patent)
= Violation(Claim1) AND Violation(Claim2)
Novelty(Patent)
= Novelty(Claim1) OR Novelty(Claim2)
This is why to get over Ericsson's vibrating phone patent, Nokia patented the vibrating battery, only one thing was changed, and it was suddenly a new thing.
So I'd avoid trying to use these simple AND and OR terms to blithely summarise everything about how patents work, the brush is too broad.
FatPhil --
Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
Slashdot Mirror
You could extend the analogy by saying that the tools like 'sed' and 'cc' are like proteins. To bootstrap the process you need an assembler, and the source code to these tools, and a makefile.
The analogy begins to break down, but it was fun to look at.
FP.
--
You obviously have no understanding of what "interaction" is. This is not simple set theory you know. (And I know what a power set is, and its size, I've done a bit of mathematics in my time)
How many ways can a bowl and a banana "interact"?
1) Bowl upright, banana inside it
2) Bowl upside down covering bowl
3) Bowl upside down, banana sitting on top
4) Bowl nearly right way up, leaning on banana.
These are all different situations, but are not _combinatorial_.
I'm not saying genes are like bananas, but the "interactions" are certainly more "spacial" than "combinatorial".
"FatPhil"
--
Thank you for going to the effort of finding that information.
Drop your AC mask and get the up-moderation you deserve!
FatPhil
--
Evolution doesn't really have "poor workings".
It just happens, without cause or direction.
For a random example, think of trout in some reagions of the Ukraine over the last 4 decades and industrial acidic discharges in to the rivers of the region -
Are while species of trout dying "evolution working perfectly", as the non-fit have been eliminated.
Or are trout dying "evolution failing totally", as it wasn't quick enough to let the trout survive?
For everyone who shouts "failure" there will be one who shouts "success" and vica versa.
I'm glad that I've evolved enough to turn on a lightbuld when I want to read in the dark. To me that's a good evolutive step! The problem is solved, it doesn't matter how. In this way inventing lightbulbs is as efficient evolutionary step as night-vision.
FatPhil
--
You are right in some ways, but really the comparison should not have been made - one's not comparing like with like.
Genes describe how you should build systems that you then run.
Programs/scripts describe how you should run.
Erk, that makes genes sound like CASE tools, ergh, horrible, it didn't mean to come out that way!
FatPhil
--
These "comparisons" are in someways useful, but in otherways useless.
For argument's sake let's say that 50% of the silicon in my Psion 5 is the same as the silicon in my Mobile phone (very similar ARM processor core). Is this a useful statement?
Similarly, there's probably a vast amount of the PPC in a Mac that's the same as the PentiumIII in a PC, as they both use well known methods for implementing register files, caches, multipliers etc. The Mac and the PC also both share a PCI bus as well?
Similarly, a linux PC can have 99% of the same hardware as a Windows PC (can easily be 100%).
See the measurements can be made, but they paint such an incomplete picture that they really don't say that much.
You should probably not have dropped science - a good science teacher should teach you a) how to judge and b) how and where to use these "facts".
Even if you don't like what it says, learn it, so that you can argue against it from a more informed view.
FatPhil
--
You're pulling your maths from thin air. Put that factorial away, it's doesn't belong here.
Side note - I believe there are some frogs with more than twice the number of genes as humans - can anyone verify that for the list?
The "complexity" of what can be achieved with a certain number of genes is more closely related to some kind of busy beaver function.
The inverse function is far more interesting:
Q - What is the "complexity" of our genes' "behaviour"? (I'm thinking of Kolmogorov complexity, or equivalent)
A - It is less than or equal to the number of genes we have. (Oooh, a bit like the Chaitin length?)
So a practical challenge is for people to come up with a model for the behaviour with the smallest complexity, not the other way round.
(I'm not suggesting that anyone will do it for anything apart from simple bacteria and suchlike for quite a while. Having said that, if they've done it for E.Coli, then they're on the way already...)
FatPhil
--
Worst/best thing about it is that it's true!
Gotta write a Java applet for that game.
FP.
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
Yes, it's a cheesy anthropomorphisation.
I know that Helsinki Institute of Technology has several old machines which they may not _by law_ get rid of. For example they have a couple of large Pr1mes (the head of the department 15 years ago's previous job was Pr1me's Finish sales representative...), and a couple of ancient analog things the size of a small fridge.
As time goes on, these things will become rarer, so I think that forcing peope to keep them is quite a good idea. You can't get them back after they've gone.
FP.
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
Hahhah!
Nope, it's probably not a bad site, it's just "false advertising".
The "goat" will live forever, won't it?
FatPhil
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
Moderator go home...d dr ess/
The second link is a
http://www.bignamesite.com&temptinghook@my.ip.a
i.e.
http://user&password@my.ip.address/
You're logging into the (AC) guy's site with username "www.cnn.com"
Whoever moderated that up should retire.
FatPhil
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
I always direct people to the Usenet Physics FAQ:
r at ure.html
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/neg_tempe
They say it better than I could, and what's more they understand it, I just parrot it.
FatPhil
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
Sorry - should have held back a minute or two before posting the last thing - here's the figures:
. jp g
http://liisteri.hut.fi/Archive/Spin_temperature
FatPhil
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
Justice was almost done - his +5 has now become a +2. /. to help keep the SNR high? Your posting history indicates you only lurk now.
If you post interesting stuff to Kuro5hin, why not post more to
FP.
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
Helsinki University have acheived macroscopic temperatures measured in pK (pico-Kelvin). I believe that the most recent record was circa 18 months ago.
I feel obliged to plug this result as I had dinner with the daughter of one of the professors only 2 weeks ago.
There are pathological non-macroscopic situations where lower _even negative_ "temperatures" are involved. However, there require setting up bizarrely improbable situations with only small numbers of atoms (hence this is not a macroscopic situation). The laws relatiing entropy to temperature prove that in order to be that improbable, the temperature must be negative!
(Method - line up polar atoms in a strong field, reverse the field as quickly as you can - voila you now have almost every atom pointing in the wrong direction - now _that_'s improbable.)
Phil
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
My favourite games are still the Doom family.
Those are 7 years old now. I don't have (spare) PCs powerful enough for the more modern games anyway, so old games suit me just fine.
Anyway, heading off topic - can anyone recommend _cheap_ video cards with OpenGL support in Linux?
I've borrowed some cards in the past of mates, and the Linux support has been flakey or non-existant.
FatPhil
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
You're a cheating git, Synpax./ 1/31/18749/1930
:-) please :-) )
Any time I am permitted to moderate I'll mod you down for the points that belong to outlyer who wrote that comment on the kuro5hin pages.
Screw meta-moderation, I have 28 Karma to spare.
(This will be modded down by -3 to -1 off-topic, but I don't care. Of course - the nice moderators who are just about to mod me down could verify my story by going to http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2001
and searching for 'outlyer', and then they could mod you down instead
FatPhil
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
Hey, you're both right!
If the testing is done a priori, then there is equal shared knowledge for both parties, and so the risks can be assessed using more accurate statistics.
However, if the testing is not a priori, then the insurance company cannot say "actually it appears you were high risk", as the agreement was made in the equal _lesser_ shared knowledge.
I believe that insurance should be available on whatever terms both parties agree to. Personally I have _none_, as all I see is Insurance companies making money, and as a mathematician I conclude that the odds are stacked _against_ me. That's all insurance is now, it's a bet that you have problems. The insurers would like you to view it as "If you do have the problems you win the bet and you're happy, if you don't win the bet, then you have no problems so you're happy", but the flip side is just as valid (moreso, for the net-gain reason I mention 2 sentences back).
FatPhil
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
What do I win?
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
Less than 1/3 the population of England. Easily less than 1/4 the population of the whole UK.
Just over 4 times the population of Nebraska, I think.
FatPhil
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
Indeed you're right.
I find it odd that commercial companies, like our F-Secure, have been to tight to buy a copy of ProLint and run it, or have willfully ignored the warning messages that it would produce.
The 10 commandments of C programming still hold true...
FatPhil
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
"
:-) )
Novelty(Claim3)=
Novelty(Element3A) OR
Novelty(Element3B) OR
Novelty(Element3A + Element3B)
"
Yes, I realised that my simplification was not a good one (I was going to change it to be more like yours), but as I was trying to _highlight the dangers_ in trying to apply propositional calculus to Patent Law, my 'mistake' reinforced my point! (or that's what I claim now
You have the correct formulation, thank you for clarifying it.
FatPhil
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
Oh, OK, meta-classes?- straight-boring-imperative-code languages come and
Erm, I know comparisons are odious, but how does this now compare to Smalltalk? Or CLOS?
I'd love to see something new, but (being a mathematician) I've seen two dozen mathematical/logical/whatever-as-long-as-it's-not
go. The thing that they all lack is intuitiveness, the aspect which makes them obvious, and 2nd nature to program.
FatPhil
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
"
Is there still room for the small-time ISP in today's market or has dial-up internet become solely the realm of big-time providers?
"
My ISP (Kotiverkko Yhdestys, or Domenstic Network Association)in Espoonlahti, Finland, has no more than about 80 members. In order to avoid tax issues, it's an 'association' and is not allowed to make a profit. I pay the telco twice as much as the ISP despite the fact the ISP provides the IP infrastructure, yet the telco only provides 4 copper-copper conections, which took 5 minutes to set up, and no maintainance. I have to provide my own modems and router, but they're quite cheap ($500 for 2Mb/s modems)
FatPhil
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
You haven't thought about what AND-ing and OR-ing really mean. _This is a linguistic issue_.
If X1 and X2 are claims in one patent and Y1 and Y2 are claims in another patent, then a patent application consisting of X1 and Y2 and Z is a perfectly valid. Novelty to the whole patent can be by the introduction of one novel claim (i.e. a logical OR). However, a violation would need to be a violation of all three things.
Violation(Patent)
= Violation(Claim1) AND Violation(Claim2)
Novelty(Patent)
= Novelty(Claim1) OR Novelty(Claim2)
This is why to get over Ericsson's vibrating phone patent, Nokia patented the vibrating battery, only one thing was changed, and it was suddenly a new thing.
So I'd avoid trying to use these simple AND and OR terms to blithely summarise everything about how patents work, the brush is too broad.
FatPhil
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards