If a computer could recognize the difference between human and computer generated speech, then it would know how to generate human sounding speech. Bullocks. Why is this modded informative? You don't provide any backup for your claim.
It is imaginable to create a model that describes speech characteristics in general and computer speech characteristics in particular. Any sound sample could compared with the two models. If it fits the wider speech model but not the computer speech model, then you would call it human speech. QED.
The ability to distinquish between two things does not imply that you'll be able to generate them effectively (unless the search space is very narrow). Imagine it this way: you can probably distinguish Chinese from Spanish. That does not imply you speak either language.
download the evaluation for resharper. the last version even includes a panel that'll show you all your compile errors in the complete solution. it does much more than that, but you'll notice that out as soon as you start using it;)
So I'd have to steal your card from the wallet instead of all the little papers with the passwords? Much more secure. That is why the card reader requires you to input your PIN when you login (it then produces a magic number). If you want to make a payment, the card reader requires PIN + the total amount you wish to pay, making man-in-the-middle attacks a bit less effective.
If the amount you're transferring is larger than a certain figure, the card reader requires yet another number from the bank website. Supposedly that number encodes the account numbers that the payment is made to, further protecting against man-in-the-middle attacks.
it is a lot more tricky than that. Test your method against the following string:
12345678901234567890
See? The distribution of digits doesn't tell you a whole lot about the randomness of a stream.
A nice way to define randomness is using Kolmogorov Complexity. A random number then is a number that cannot be represented by a program (in some code language) that is shorter than the random number itself. In other words: if the smallest program that outputs number X is the program "print X" then X is considered a random number.
no need to write code, the big vendors are already doing this. Mio offers a community maintained database of speed traps in Europe, I assume they (can) provide this in the US too. It is very convenient, they even know the difference between a traffic light cam, a regular speed cam and a trajectory control cam (average speed over a section of the highway).
TomTom is working on a way to use cellphone data for traffic calculations. What they are aiming for is a system that predicts traffic conditions, so the system will not only route you around current traffic jams but also around expected delays. The reason for using cellphone data by the way is that secondary roads are not monitored electronically. The primary roads in western europe are all monitored electronically already so there's no need to use cellphone data there.
Another thing TomTom has announced is a way to edit the road map on your GPS device and upload those changes to a community database. If a new roundabout is built, and several people independently add it to their map, then the system will distribute the change to all users.
All this info is from articles in the newspaper btw, I don't have any inside knowledge.
we are looking into using groove to keep a group of always-on-the-road consultants synchronized. From looking at the whitepapers I'd say security is well taken care of. All data is encrypted during transfer (i believe AES but I'm not quite sure). At least they spent ample time explaining the security features in their documentation so it seems they've at least taken it seriously. I don't have any practical experience with Groove though...
is there anyone here with Groove experience? I'd love to hear whether it works well, what not etc.
[blatant selfpromotion] if you're looking for something similar (but with much less functionality) written as a dos batch script, try this http://www.jijenik.com/projects/mysqlbackup/. It will even email you an compressed and encrypted copy of the backup file. [/blatant selfpromotion]
I wouldn't be so sure: the mysql administrator is not always able to restore a backup correctly. you are well advised to restore backups through the command line. it is also impossible (at least last time I checked) to automatically include all databases in a scheduled backup. You can only select the databases that are present at the time you schedule the backup.
furthermore, the mysql query browser screws up when you paste a query containing tabs. this particular bug was reported to mysql over a year ago. it was somewhat fixed, but not really.
I really like mysql but claiming that the admin is better than sql server is well, pushing it.
Interesting indeed. One objection though is that this example involves an optional tax credit. In effect, saving for retirement becomes more expensive. You could simply choose to save less for retirement. That wouldn't help you in the long run, but it would ensure that your disposable income didn't decrease due to a pay rise.
Personally, I think it is more about how fucked up taxes are. I agree on taxing cash prices but taxing these kind of prices is stupid. It is similar to what happens in countries like the Netherlands (or other nordic countries) where people *avoid* pay rises because sometimes having a rise of 10% they have to pay more taxes and end earning less than what they earned before the "raise".
Care to point to a specific example?
You do know that the Dutch income tax works with income brackets right? you only pay the higher tariff over the income above a certain threshold. So if the pay rise bumps your income into a higher tariff group, then the higher tariff will only apply to the excess income. Since the highest tariff is 52%, there is no way that you can end up earning less.
A quick example: You earn 49,000 euros. You get a pay rise that bumps your income to 51,000. the 52% tax bracket starts at 50,000, while you pay 42% up to the 50,000 limit. You'll pay 42% over the first 1,000 and then 52% over the next 1,000. So the 2,000 pay rise will cost you 420+520 euros in tax (47% of the pay rise). After taxes you have 1060 euros more to spend.
I think there is a very good reason to tax these kind of prices. Quite simply if you would not tax prize money, then people would set up fake lotteries and awards to cheat the income tax.
...are you including the graphics in the email, thus making the email messages very large?
Who cares whether the email messages become large. If your emails are focused on a market where most people have broadband, then the readers won't really care.
in the Netherlands everyone I know has broadband access. On the low end of the market pay-by-minute ADSL has completely replaced dialup. With everyone downloading at least 50K / second, you can easily send an email 200 KB to 500 KB in size. And who would ever need more than 500 KB?
The reason you attack the hard problems first is that you have less money invested if the hard problems turn out to be unsolvable (within your time/money/skill scope).
The big difference between a school test and a software project is that you only need to answer as many questions correctly as necessary to get a passing grade (you can thus skip the hardest questions), whereas in a software project you must solve the hard problems if you want to complete the project.
Copyright law was not designed with oral traditions in mind. Therefore, a lot of previously unwritten languages face strange legal problems. For example, a person records elders telling a traditional story and publishes them as recordings or a transcribed text. The person who did the publishing has the copyright for those recordings, not the original storyteller. Thus, if the storyteller performs that same story in public, he is violating the law. Central texts of a society's religion are now the intellectual property of an outsider. There has been some work to fix this issue, but things are not perfect yet.
That doesn't make sense at all. The publisher has copyright to the recordings, of course. But why would the story teller be prohibited from retelling the story? The story teller is clearly not infringing on the copyright on the recording, since the story teller is not reproducing the recording.
If what you are saying is true, then if I take a picture of your face you wouldn't be allowed to show yourself in public anymore, since you'd be infringing on my copyright. That strikes me as, well, odd.
Chances are your motherboard will have a built-in raid chip. You'd be well advised to skip that chip and use a PCI raid card or some other solution. Since the onboard raid chips are tied to a specific CPU family, you won't be able to move your hdd's to a new motherboard in a couple of years time. I just found out this week that the raid i'm running from an intel ICH6R chipset on an ASUS motherboard cannot be migrated to an Intel Core 2 Duo because the ICH6R chip doesn't support that CPU...
It's not necessarily political suicide. There was an article in the NYT a couple weeks back from a campaign manager (or something similar) from the Clinton campaign (male version) that reported that based on their latest research, more than half of the US public a foreign policy that will make the US less dependent on foreign oil.
The thing is raising energy taxes does not imply that you raise the overall tax level. You can easily hand the money back by lowering the income tax or even the VAT. On average this should only create an incentive for people to conserve energy without costing them any money. It is easier said than done but it may just be feasible and sellable if accompagnied by proper middle east oriented FUD.
I'm not so sure about Hydrogen, but I fully agree with the use of nuclear fission. In today's terrorism fearing climate I think the explosive part about Hydrogen is not a selling point. Bio ethanol seems to be a good candidate. Easily produced and easily consumed in modern engines. It's already in use as car fuel in Brazil (I've been told they switch their sugar cane output from raw sugar to bio ethanol and vice versa depending on world market prices for sugar). The US has a big sugar industry I believe, and so does Europe. Both industries are under pressure to lower subsidies and are in need for new markets, so why not?
But let's not depress ourselves. I firmly believe the free market will eventually find an efficient solution to the energy problem. And if not then natural selection will eventually have found a way to filter out humans and bacteria will once again command the world Yeah!
Of course it is interfering with the free market. That's the whole point of the taxation! The problem is that use of gasoline is a sort of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_common stragedy of the commons. The damage to the environment caused by gasoline is not factored into the price a free market will yield because the individuals don't incur any direct cost as a consequence of that damage. The purpose of the taxes is to add the communal damage to the price of the product!
In the Netherlands it is fashionable to complain about people that drive gasguzzling SUVs. The ironic fact is that, as I'm sure you'll agree, the more people that drive inefficient cars, the higher the price of gasoline, and thus the sooner alternative energy sources will be profitable. So in a sense we should be grateful for the gasguzzle drivers ( as long as you drive a fuel efficient car yourself obviously;) )
I empathize with you. I can remember gasoline costing $1 a gallon when I lived in the US. But on the other hand we would have to drive 30 minutes to get some groceries. Over here it's a five minute bike ride or a five minute drive to get to a shopping mall. So I really doubt you're paying that much less for your transportation if you look at your montly bills.
High energy prices in Europe are simply a way to encourage people to use energy efficiently. I don't see what's wrong with that, and as long as the tax money is well spent by the government I don't see the problem with it either.
I don't think you paint a very true picture of the situation. First of all, the amount of tax you pay increases progressively. You don't pay 50% income tax over the first x amount of income (around 50,000 euro's in the Netherlands). On top of that, there's all sorts of tax reduction rules which mean you don't pay 50% of your income to the taxman. Most people I know that have incomes in the 50% income bracket calculate with 35 - 40% as the effective income tax percentage.
Gasoline does not really matter because for some weird reason European cars are more efficient than American cars. If you want to compare transportation costs you should be looking at the amount you pay per month. In a country such as the Netherlands you don't travel nearly as much as you would in the US. In the end I doubt you really pay that much less for your car + gasoline in the US compared to Europe. Personally I pay about 400 euros a month for my car, gasoline, maintainance etc driving about 1600 miles per month.
Interestingly, around the time that gasoline prices went up the dollar vs euro rate went down. Consequently our gasoline prices did not really increase that much. Currently you'd pay a bit less than 5 euros for a gallon of gasoline in the Netherlands, which is about $6.
Then you realize that the social services suck. Want a painkiller for your broken leg? Tough. Want an annual dental checkup? Tough. Want a cop to investigate repeated break-ins? Tough.
In truth, they don't suck at all. Need a painkiller? go to the pharmacy and get some (normally you'll have to pay for it unless you get a recipe, then the insurance covers it). Did you know that Europeans spend less per person on health care but get more actual care compared to the US (there was an article about this in the NYT last week).
Annual dental checkups are covered by the national insurance in the Netherlands, and all dental care is free under 18. However, dental care in general is very expensive so the national insurance covers very little except the yearly checkup and stuff like fake teeth. As for the police, they're doing ok as far as I can tell. I've never heard stories about the police refusing to investigate cases, other than bike thefts in Amsterdam which are considered a fact of life. The differences in crime rates between the US and Europe are well documented I believe. It may have something to do with the prevalence of guns in US society.
yes but they researched it and it turns out to be bonk. There is no safety risk involved with calling from the airplane. That's why both in the EU and US the flight authorities are debating whether to allow GSM calls from the airplane. This was reported in the NY times a while ago.
I can really recommend you the book "Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art" by Steve McConnell (the same guy from Code Complete).
He recommends that you create two or three estimates: the best case, the worst case and the expected case. Using three estimates will give you several advantages: - you express the uncertainty in your estimate to your managers - Using some simple statistics you can calculate a much more reliable overall estimate (the errors in individual estimates average out if you combine them into a larger estimate).
But most importantly, he claims that the single point estimate you and I have been giving is in fact the best-case estimate. If you read the book you'll see that it is guaranteed to be impossible to hit the targets we set based on those single-point best-case estimates.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes we are. Have you been living under a rock or did you communicate using RFC1149 exclusively? :P
It is imaginable to create a model that describes speech characteristics in general and computer speech characteristics in particular. Any sound sample could compared with the two models. If it fits the wider speech model but not the computer speech model, then you would call it human speech. QED.
The ability to distinquish between two things does not imply that you'll be able to generate them effectively (unless the search space is very narrow). Imagine it this way: you can probably distinguish Chinese from Spanish. That does not imply you speak either language.
thank you that was wildly informative
download the evaluation for resharper. the last version even includes a panel that'll show you all your compile errors in the complete solution. it does much more than that, but you'll notice that out as soon as you start using it ;)
If the amount you're transferring is larger than a certain figure, the card reader requires yet another number from the bank website. Supposedly that number encodes the account numbers that the payment is made to, further protecting against man-in-the-middle attacks.
So yes, much more secure
fwiw, the need to leave your enemy an escape route was already described by Sun Tzu in the art of war.
it is a lot more tricky than that. Test your method against the following string:
12345678901234567890
See? The distribution of digits doesn't tell you a whole lot about the randomness of a stream.
A nice way to define randomness is using Kolmogorov Complexity. A random number then is a number that cannot be represented by a program (in some code language) that is shorter than the random number itself. In other words: if the smallest program that outputs number X is the program "print X" then X is considered a random number.
no need to write code, the big vendors are already doing this. Mio offers a community maintained database of speed traps in Europe, I assume they (can) provide this in the US too. It is very convenient, they even know the difference between a traffic light cam, a regular speed cam and a trajectory control cam (average speed over a section of the highway).
TomTom is working on a way to use cellphone data for traffic calculations. What they are aiming for is a system that predicts traffic conditions, so the system will not only route you around current traffic jams but also around expected delays. The reason for using cellphone data by the way is that secondary roads are not monitored electronically. The primary roads in western europe are all monitored electronically already so there's no need to use cellphone data there.
Another thing TomTom has announced is a way to edit the road map on your GPS device and upload those changes to a community database. If a new roundabout is built, and several people independently add it to their map, then the system will distribute the change to all users.
All this info is from articles in the newspaper btw, I don't have any inside knowledge.
Hey 511pf,
Thanks a lot for your input. Sounds like it is a good choice for us!
cheers,
matje
we are looking into using groove to keep a group of always-on-the-road consultants synchronized. From looking at the whitepapers I'd say security is well taken care of. All data is encrypted during transfer (i believe AES but I'm not quite sure). At least they spent ample time explaining the security features in their documentation so it seems they've at least taken it seriously. I don't have any practical experience with Groove though...
is there anyone here with Groove experience? I'd love to hear whether it works well, what not etc.
[blatant selfpromotion] if you're looking for something similar (but with much less functionality) written as a dos batch script, try this http://www.jijenik.com/projects/mysqlbackup/. It will even email you an compressed and encrypted copy of the backup file. [/blatant selfpromotion]
I wouldn't be so sure: the mysql administrator is not always able to restore a backup correctly. you are well advised to restore backups through the command line. it is also impossible (at least last time I checked) to automatically include all databases in a scheduled backup. You can only select the databases that are present at the time you schedule the backup.
furthermore, the mysql query browser screws up when you paste a query containing tabs. this particular bug was reported to mysql over a year ago. it was somewhat fixed, but not really.
I really like mysql but claiming that the admin is better than sql server is well, pushing it.
Interesting indeed. One objection though is that this example involves an optional tax credit. In effect, saving for retirement becomes more expensive. You could simply choose to save less for retirement. That wouldn't help you in the long run, but it would ensure that your disposable income didn't decrease due to a pay rise.
Personally, I think it is more about how fucked up taxes are. I agree on taxing cash prices but taxing these kind of prices is stupid. It is similar to what happens in countries like the Netherlands (or other nordic countries) where people *avoid* pay rises because sometimes having a rise of 10% they have to pay more taxes and end earning less than what they earned before the "raise".
Care to point to a specific example?
You do know that the Dutch income tax works with income brackets right? you only pay the higher tariff over the income above a certain threshold. So if the pay rise bumps your income into a higher tariff group, then the higher tariff will only apply to the excess income. Since the highest tariff is 52%, there is no way that you can end up earning less.
A quick example: You earn 49,000 euros. You get a pay rise that bumps your income to 51,000. the 52% tax bracket starts at 50,000, while you pay 42% up to the 50,000 limit. You'll pay 42% over the first 1,000 and then 52% over the next 1,000. So the 2,000 pay rise will cost you 420+520 euros in tax (47% of the pay rise). After taxes you have 1060 euros more to spend.
I think there is a very good reason to tax these kind of prices. Quite simply if you would not tax prize money, then people would set up fake lotteries and awards to cheat the income tax.
Who cares whether the email messages become large. If your emails are focused on a market where most people have broadband, then the readers won't really care.
in the Netherlands everyone I know has broadband access. On the low end of the market pay-by-minute ADSL has completely replaced dialup. With everyone downloading at least 50K / second, you can easily send an email 200 KB to 500 KB in size. And who would ever need more than 500 KB?
The reason you attack the hard problems first is that you have less money invested if the hard problems turn out to be unsolvable (within your time/money/skill scope).
The big difference between a school test and a software project is that you only need to answer as many questions correctly as necessary to get a passing grade (you can thus skip the hardest questions), whereas in a software project you must solve the hard problems if you want to complete the project.
Copyright law was not designed with oral traditions in mind. Therefore, a lot of previously unwritten languages face strange legal problems. For example, a person records elders telling a traditional story and publishes them as recordings or a transcribed text. The person who did the publishing has the copyright for those recordings, not the original storyteller. Thus, if the storyteller performs that same story in public, he is violating the law. Central texts of a society's religion are now the intellectual property of an outsider. There has been some work to fix this issue, but things are not perfect yet.
That doesn't make sense at all. The publisher has copyright to the recordings, of course. But why would the story teller be prohibited from retelling the story? The story teller is clearly not infringing on the copyright on the recording, since the story teller is not reproducing the recording.
If what you are saying is true, then if I take a picture of your face you wouldn't be allowed to show yourself in public anymore, since you'd be infringing on my copyright. That strikes me as, well, odd.
Chances are your motherboard will have a built-in raid chip. You'd be well advised to skip that chip and use a PCI raid card or some other solution.
Since the onboard raid chips are tied to a specific CPU family, you won't be able to move your hdd's to a new motherboard in a couple of years time. I just found out this week that the raid i'm running from an intel ICH6R chipset on an ASUS motherboard cannot be migrated to an Intel Core 2 Duo because the ICH6R chip doesn't support that CPU...
if you enjoy reading about user interface design than (Tufte) probably should be included in your list.
cheers,
mat
It's not necessarily political suicide. There was an article in the NYT a couple weeks back from a campaign manager (or something similar) from the Clinton campaign (male version) that reported that based on their latest research, more than half of the US public a foreign policy that will make the US less dependent on foreign oil.
The thing is raising energy taxes does not imply that you raise the overall tax level. You can easily hand the money back by lowering the income tax or even the VAT. On average this should only create an incentive for people to conserve energy without costing them any money. It is easier said than done but it may just be feasible and sellable if accompagnied by proper middle east oriented FUD.
I'm not so sure about Hydrogen, but I fully agree with the use of nuclear fission. In today's terrorism fearing climate I think the explosive part about Hydrogen is not a selling point. Bio ethanol seems to be a good candidate. Easily produced and easily consumed in modern engines. It's already in use as car fuel in Brazil (I've been told they switch their sugar cane output from raw sugar to bio ethanol and vice versa depending on world market prices for sugar). The US has a big sugar industry I believe, and so does Europe. Both industries are under pressure to lower subsidies and are in need for new markets, so why not?
But let's not depress ourselves. I firmly believe the free market will eventually find an efficient solution to the energy problem. And if not then natural selection will eventually have found a way to filter out humans and bacteria will once again command the world Yeah!
Cheers
Of course it is interfering with the free market. That's the whole point of the taxation! The problem is that use of gasoline is a sort of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_common stragedy of the commons. The damage to the environment caused by gasoline is not factored into the price a free market will yield because the individuals don't incur any direct cost as a consequence of that damage. The purpose of the taxes is to add the communal damage to the price of the product!
;) )
In the Netherlands it is fashionable to complain about people that drive gasguzzling SUVs. The ironic fact is that, as I'm sure you'll agree, the more people that drive inefficient cars, the higher the price of gasoline, and thus the sooner alternative energy sources will be profitable. So in a sense we should be grateful for the gasguzzle drivers ( as long as you drive a fuel efficient car yourself obviously
I empathize with you. I can remember gasoline costing $1 a gallon when I lived in the US. But on the other hand we would have to drive 30 minutes to get some groceries. Over here it's a five minute bike ride or a five minute drive to get to a shopping mall. So I really doubt you're paying that much less for your transportation if you look at your montly bills.
High energy prices in Europe are simply a way to encourage people to use energy efficiently. I don't see what's wrong with that, and as long as the tax money is well spent by the government I don't see the problem with it either.
I don't think you paint a very true picture of the situation. First of all, the amount of tax you pay increases progressively. You don't pay 50% income tax over the first x amount of income (around 50,000 euro's in the Netherlands). On top of that, there's all sorts of tax reduction rules which mean you don't pay 50% of your income to the taxman. Most people I know that have incomes in the 50% income bracket calculate with 35 - 40% as the effective income tax percentage.
Gasoline does not really matter because for some weird reason European cars are more efficient than American cars. If you want to compare transportation costs you should be looking at the amount you pay per month. In a country such as the Netherlands you don't travel nearly as much as you would in the US. In the end I doubt you really pay that much less for your car + gasoline in the US compared to Europe. Personally I pay about 400 euros a month for my car, gasoline, maintainance etc driving about 1600 miles per month.
Interestingly, around the time that gasoline prices went up the dollar vs euro rate went down. Consequently our gasoline prices did not really increase that much. Currently you'd pay a bit less than 5 euros for a gallon of gasoline in the Netherlands, which is about $6.
Then you realize that the social services suck. Want a painkiller for your broken leg? Tough. Want an annual dental checkup? Tough. Want a cop to investigate repeated break-ins? Tough.
In truth, they don't suck at all. Need a painkiller? go to the pharmacy and get some (normally you'll have to pay for it unless you get a recipe, then the insurance covers it). Did you know that Europeans spend less per person on health care but get more actual care compared to the US (there was an article about this in the NYT last week).
Annual dental checkups are covered by the national insurance in the Netherlands, and all dental care is free under 18. However, dental care in general is very expensive so the national insurance covers very little except the yearly checkup and stuff like fake teeth. As for the police, they're doing ok as far as I can tell. I've never heard stories about the police refusing to investigate cases, other than bike thefts in Amsterdam which are considered a fact of life. The differences in crime rates between the US and Europe are well documented I believe. It may have something to do with the prevalence of guns in US society.
yes but they researched it and it turns out to be bonk. There is no safety risk involved with calling from the airplane. That's why both in the EU and US the flight authorities are debating whether to allow GSM calls from the airplane. This was reported in the NY times a while ago.
I can really recommend you the book "Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art" by Steve McConnell (the same guy from Code Complete).
He recommends that you create two or three estimates: the best case, the worst case and the expected case. Using three estimates will give you several advantages:
- you express the uncertainty in your estimate to your managers
- Using some simple statistics you can calculate a much more reliable overall estimate (the errors in individual estimates average out if you combine them into a larger estimate).
But most importantly, he claims that the single point estimate you and I have been giving is in fact the best-case estimate. If you read the book you'll see that it is guaranteed to be impossible to hit the targets we set based on those single-point best-case estimates.