Whole classes (indeed, whole doctorates) in CS departments center around the creation of algorithms, making O(n^2) level problems into O(logN) problems and so forth. there's a real ar to making your formulae efficient, and the pressure for that art is processor time.
When you only have one processor, the difference between a 20 minute calculation and a 2 day calculation matters.
My worry here is that if whole university clusters were opened up, so even an inefficient O(n^3) problem ran in reasonable time, it sucks up an inordinately large amount of processing power, slowing down the entire organization, while the student running that problem has no idea that with some better written mathematicode they could solve the problem in O(n) time, and even if they did realize, they have little reason to care, when the problem gets solved reasonably fast anyhow, regardless of the cumulative effect on all the other processes...
I'd be fascinated to know if there's any kind of accountability, or better yet, optimizations in Mathematica that can spot common inefficiencies and suggest either a more efficient way to handle a problem, or at least postulate a theorhetical O() level compared to a function's actual level.
A lot of computing power is a good thing in principle, yet I wonder how much faster Word on my G4 would be if it was designed to work on my old 68000.
In summary: extra cycles are a currency that is far too often traded in for lazy programming instead of increased performance.
Gotta love a business high tech enough to rely on two-way satellite communications for realtime position tracking, but asks you to pay via Paypal because they don't take credit cards.
"Low-cost, passive chips like this have a range of only about 10 ft, however, so don't go too 1984."
Actually, they just have a range of 10 feet with the power supplied by, and with a receiver the sensitivity of, the default reader.
It's all about inverse-square. If you quadruple the power of the 'reading field' (solonoid induced fluxuating magnetic field, creating a sympathetic current in the RFID tag's own solonoit?) then you double the range. Crank up the sensitivity fourfold and you've doubled the range again.
This was the scientific rationale behind the Great Seal Bug in the American Embassy in Moscow 56 years ago, so while perhaps we shouldn't go '1984' we can safely go 1946.
"The world's most popular DNS package is once again vulnerable."
This is the scariest part of the security mentality. Whenever a flaw is discovered everyone freaks and says 'oh, now I'm vulnerable!' until a patch is distributed and 'Phew! Now I'm safe again."
This is not the right way to look at it. The flaw was there for years, and you were vulnerable to everyone who found it before a whitehat did. What's more, you're *still* vulnerable to every flaw that hasn't yet made it to slashdot's pages, but will in coming months and years.
Choosing a platform that reacts quickly to patch discovered flaws means only that you're safer from attacks from those people who read the same sources you do, and quickly move to exploit the published vulnerabilities before you can patch them.
The fact is that it's rarely known how many people discovered a vulnerability before it was made public, and so if you rely on a system that requires frequent hotfixes, however quickly the vendor may react, you are still succeptable to the countless holes that have already been discovered, but not by the good guys.
The morals of this argument are that it's better to use a system that doesn't have as many holes, to one that patches them 'instantly,' and that unless another vulnerability is never discovered in your platform, you're vulnerable to attack today, and always have been.
They 'qualify' in so far as they change the structure of how many candidates and shich candidates appear on the official ballot.
Whether they're an official part of the governemental system or not is irrelevant to my point, which is that changing the official mecanism in the 'final' election, could have cascading effects down to how and whether primaries are held at all.
Wouldn't this encourage parties to run as many candidates as possible, on the theory that the more candidates you have on the ballot, the more chances there are that one of them would be elected?
I don't think so. There are diminishing returns, where the voters wouldn't be able to learn the plethora of candidates issues and positions.
I'd assume it would be handled the same way that it is now: Have a required number of citizen signatories to get on the ballot. Make it sufficiently high that there are between 10 ad 30 names on the ballot and you're good to go. I suppose one party could use all their resources to get signatories for a hundred candidates, but then the groups that fund their campaigns would have to split their money between so many candidates that each would get very little recognition.
I for one wouldn't put a check by 30 names just because they all have 'Democrat' listed after them. Ihave to know something about them.
It would be very interesting to see what the variables are, and where the point of equalization is though.
"Completely impossible. The primaries are not actually part of the US's political system. For example: me and a friend of mine are free to start the "Cowist" political party, we agree on all major points of policy, but I'm better looking so we agree that I will run (hence we had a "primary"); do you want the government to mandate that my friend must run against me? What if by some horrible injustice he is forced to run, is he required to campaign?"
That's not what I'm saying at all. The parties have primaries because, under the current electorla methods, they have a much better chance of winning the final election if they only put up one candidate.
If the election methodology was changed so that people could vote for more than one candidate, the stigma and penalty of dividing your vote would be gone.
In short, if the other party could field three candidates on the ballot, and people can vote for as many as they want, you'd be stupid to limit yourself to one candidate. Hence the parties would abolish primaries.
I don't know where you got the idea that the government would mandate and require people to run, because that wasn't in anything I said.
What wasn't mentioned at all in the article is that the US Presidential election is a two turn election. First we have primaries, narrowing each parties multiple candidates down to one party representative, who then goes on to campaign for and run in the presidential election.
The most interesting aspect of election reform in my eyes would be the elimination of primaries. Why not have a presidential election with multiple candidates from each party, if we could vote for more than one? Certainly there are some republican candidates I would vote for above some democratic candidates, though this isn't usually the case. This kind of voting system would help me vote by valuesparties.
Most importantly, with several candidates from each party, none would get a windfall of PAC contributions funding media blitzes. As a result the free press, word of mouth, and (dare I say it) the internet, would have a much greater relative impact on voter education and commentary.
This would be a very good thing, far outweighing the additional benefit of a more accurate election day.
Except that the sample shown in the comparison has a resolution at least 5x greater in each direction than the palm screen shown, so at a full palm size, that would be an 800x800 screen. Of course, they might have just used their prototype to show just a smidge of the Palm screen, but the whole thing (wrapped in a palm v skin, etc) smacks of concept image, not actual comparison.
If it was an actual comparison, they wouldn't be so stingy about saying so, or mentioning what the dpi is.
You know, the more I hear those words, the more they lose their meaning.
I'm at the point where I picture an anti-trust suit as being the last thing you'd want to wear on a blind date. Basically, the opposite of a technicolor dreamcoat.
So does that mean I can put the IBM remote client on my idle machines and sell them back my own spare cycles? If this is truly a mirroring of the power industry, then I should be able to, as I can add solar cells and wind turbines on my property to offset what I take from the grid, and even sell my energy to the power company if I have a surplus.
Now I just need to get a solar array to power my array of older computers so I can sell back their CPU cycles to IBM and maybe, just maybe, earn enough to pay for the solar cells.
"A kilowatt is 3,600,000 joules, 10 kilowatts in respect is 36,000,000."
What are you talking about? A kilowatt is a measure of power, and a joule is a measure of energy. The two are not directly comparable without a time factor thrown in. Do you mean a kilowatt hour is 3,600,000 joules?
By your calculation, lightning is 280-2,800 kilowatts (0.3-2.8 megawatts). As we all know, lighting is more in the range of 1.21 gigawatts (humor intended, but general priniciple remains the same). It's not like lightning strikes last for an hour.
------ "To put this in prespective, the adverage person uses 64,800,000 joules a month, or 18 kilowatts... So for every time they fire this baby, they are blowing 50-100 bucks....
They essentially are what cause the blackouts in California."
What the fuck are you talking about? This causes the blackouts in California, not some sergeant flipping the switch on $100 of electricity.
Considering how online-centric we are now, how valid is it to ask about dirtworld CD sales without finding out what kind of behavior consumers would have, if it were easy to buy the music they like online, for digital download, with price-parity with CDs, adjusted for savings in fabrication and delivery costs.
They're asking us to pay for a distribution system we don't need, and that's what offends me as I'm struggling to tear off the stupid sticker holding my new CD's jewelcase together before I put the disc into the reader to be encoded to the only format I use anyhow.
The title "Encrypt information in images without distortion" is really misleading. It suggests (err, states) that the sego process doesn't change the image. It certainly does. The only interesting bit is that it's reversable.
So while it's not lossy in the final analysis, and the original version can be reclaimed, it does actually distort the image, while the hidden message is contained within.
Okay, so 10 years was quite a bit ago. My point is that if the company choses CRT over LCD because of a few hundred dollars, when they're clearly willing to pay the price of an LCD in the absence of a cheaper alternative, then they should investigate how an LCD might help their bottom line in terms of productivity as is related to eyestrain, desk space, employee satisfaction and even employee retention.
For an employee who would prefer an LCD, having one will probably pay for itself.
Re:Why Bother
on
LCD Round-up
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It's funny how a 1280x1024 LCD at $799 is considered opulent. It wasn't so long ago that an 800x600 15" CRT cost more than that.
Most places I've worked have sprung for Trinitron tubes back when they cost a premium. Why is it unreasonable to think they'll go LCD? Do you have any idea how much these things save in desk space? and frankly, they make users happy, which also helps the bottom line. The up-front cost is a small price to pay for the continuing dividends.
"Everyone who has a machine that can run Jaguar already has a version of the Mac OS, so what's the difference between calling it an upgrade or not?"
No. Plenty of G3 based iMacs and towers were sold before OS X did anything resembling ship. And given enough memory, they run it quite nicely, thank you.
I said all Macs that can run Jaguar already have a version of the Mac OS. I didn't say they had a version of OS X.
I consider myself liberty-oriented, but the people who consider themselves really liberty oriented scare me.
It might just be my perception, but it seems like people on the small ends of the bellcurve always think having guns is the final answer to their problem.
When you go enough standard deviations away from the normal curve, all you'll find are unusual deviants. sadly, they're so different, and yet so firm in their convictions, that their solution usually involves owning a lot of guns and canned goods.
Me, I'm happy moving to a state that just shifts enough over that I feel like people are more like me, and I don't get looked at askance for voting Democrat or thinking a war with Iraq doesn't make sense and might be unjust. that's why San Francisco's the place for me.
The people there are just deviant enough.
Whatever their grievance, the more standard deviations you go
Slashdot Mirror
Whole classes (indeed, whole doctorates) in CS departments center around the creation of algorithms, making O(n^2) level problems into O(logN) problems and so forth. there's a real ar to making your formulae efficient, and the pressure for that art is processor time.
When you only have one processor, the difference between a 20 minute calculation and a 2 day calculation matters.
My worry here is that if whole university clusters were opened up, so even an inefficient O(n^3) problem ran in reasonable time, it sucks up an inordinately large amount of processing power, slowing down the entire organization, while the student running that problem has no idea that with some better written mathematicode they could solve the problem in O(n) time, and even if they did realize, they have little reason to care, when the problem gets solved reasonably fast anyhow, regardless of the cumulative effect on all the other processes...
I'd be fascinated to know if there's any kind of accountability, or better yet, optimizations in Mathematica that can spot common inefficiencies and suggest either a more efficient way to handle a problem, or at least postulate a theorhetical O() level compared to a function's actual level.
A lot of computing power is a good thing in principle, yet I wonder how much faster Word on my G4 would be if it was designed to work on my old 68000.
In summary: extra cycles are a currency that is far too often traded in for lazy programming instead of increased performance.
Gotta love a business high tech enough to rely on two-way satellite communications for realtime position tracking, but asks you to pay via Paypal because they don't take credit cards.
They'll just plaster butterfly (artickerfly?) stickers all over their virtual worlds, instead.
"You put your loot in the cart. You walk up to the scanner. You swipe your credit card. You leave."
Why on earth would you have to swipe your card? Wouldn't it just have its own RFID tag?
"Low-cost, passive chips like this have a range of only about 10 ft, however, so don't go too 1984."
Actually, they just have a range of 10 feet with the power supplied by, and with a receiver the sensitivity of, the default reader.
It's all about inverse-square. If you quadruple the power of the 'reading field' (solonoid induced fluxuating magnetic field, creating a sympathetic current in the RFID tag's own solonoit?) then you double the range. Crank up the sensitivity fourfold and you've doubled the range again.
This was the scientific rationale behind the Great Seal Bug in the American Embassy in Moscow 56 years ago, so while perhaps we shouldn't go '1984' we can safely go 1946.
Err, that would be 'Software Update,' not 'suftware update.' The stuff about moms was right, though.
On the mac, I just set 'Suftware Update; to run daily, and I click 'install' when it says there's a security fix.
By default, users only have to click one button (the default button) to keep their Mac-flavored BSD secure.
And they don't have to subscribe to mailing lists or be security geeks. They could be your mom and still get it right.
Not trying to rip on your mom.
I don't even know her!
No, seriously. That wasn't me, that time at the Quaker Steak n Lube!
"The world's most popular DNS package is once again vulnerable."
This is the scariest part of the security mentality. Whenever a flaw is discovered everyone freaks and says 'oh, now I'm vulnerable!' until a patch is distributed and 'Phew! Now I'm safe again."
This is not the right way to look at it. The flaw was there for years, and you were vulnerable to everyone who found it before a whitehat did. What's more, you're *still* vulnerable to every flaw that hasn't yet made it to slashdot's pages, but will in coming months and years.
Choosing a platform that reacts quickly to patch discovered flaws means only that you're safer from attacks from those people who read the same sources you do, and quickly move to exploit the published vulnerabilities before you can patch them.
The fact is that it's rarely known how many people discovered a vulnerability before it was made public, and so if you rely on a system that requires frequent hotfixes, however quickly the vendor may react, you are still succeptable to the countless holes that have already been discovered, but not by the good guys.
The morals of this argument are that it's better to use a system that doesn't have as many holes, to one that patches them 'instantly,' and that unless another vulnerability is never discovered in your platform, you're vulnerable to attack today, and always have been.
value sparties?
Typo. Should have been "values instead of parties."
They 'qualify' in so far as they change the structure of how many candidates and shich candidates appear on the official ballot.
Whether they're an official part of the governemental system or not is irrelevant to my point, which is that changing the official mecanism in the 'final' election, could have cascading effects down to how and whether primaries are held at all.
Wouldn't this encourage parties to run as many candidates as possible, on the theory that the more candidates you have on the ballot, the more chances there are that one of them would be elected?
I don't think so. There are diminishing returns, where the voters wouldn't be able to learn the plethora of candidates issues and positions.
I'd assume it would be handled the same way that it is now: Have a required number of citizen signatories to get on the ballot. Make it sufficiently high that there are between 10 ad 30 names on the ballot and you're good to go. I suppose one party could use all their resources to get signatories for a hundred candidates, but then the groups that fund their campaigns would have to split their money between so many candidates that each would get very little recognition.
I for one wouldn't put a check by 30 names just because they all have 'Democrat' listed after them. Ihave to know something about them.
It would be very interesting to see what the variables are, and where the point of equalization is though.
"Completely impossible. The primaries are not actually part of the US's political system. For example: me and a friend of mine are free to start the "Cowist" political party, we agree on all major points of policy, but I'm better looking so we agree that I will run (hence we had a "primary"); do you want the government to mandate that my friend must run against me? What if by some horrible injustice he is forced to run, is he required to campaign?"
That's not what I'm saying at all. The parties have primaries because, under the current electorla methods, they have a much better chance of winning the final election if they only put up one candidate.
If the election methodology was changed so that people could vote for more than one candidate, the stigma and penalty of dividing your vote would be gone.
In short, if the other party could field three candidates on the ballot, and people can vote for as many as they want, you'd be stupid to limit yourself to one candidate. Hence the parties would abolish primaries.
I don't know where you got the idea that the government would mandate and require people to run, because that wasn't in anything I said.
What wasn't mentioned at all in the article is that the US Presidential election is a two turn election. First we have primaries, narrowing each parties multiple candidates down to one party representative, who then goes on to campaign for and run in the presidential election.
The most interesting aspect of election reform in my eyes would be the elimination of primaries. Why not have a presidential election with multiple candidates from each party, if we could vote for more than one? Certainly there are some republican candidates I would vote for above some democratic candidates, though this isn't usually the case. This kind of voting system would help me vote by valuesparties.
Most importantly, with several candidates from each party, none would get a windfall of PAC contributions funding media blitzes. As a result the free press, word of mouth, and (dare I say it) the internet, would have a much greater relative impact on voter education and commentary.
This would be a very good thing, far outweighing the additional benefit of a more accurate election day.
Except that the sample shown in the comparison has a resolution at least 5x greater in each direction than the palm screen shown, so at a full palm size, that would be an 800x800 screen. Of course, they might have just used their prototype to show just a smidge of the Palm screen, but the whole thing (wrapped in a palm v skin, etc) smacks of concept image, not actual comparison.
If it was an actual comparison, they wouldn't be so stingy about saying so, or mentioning what the dpi is.
You know, the more I hear those words, the more they lose their meaning.
I'm at the point where I picture an anti-trust suit as being the last thing you'd want to wear on a blind date. Basically, the opposite of a technicolor dreamcoat.
Now I just need to get a solar array to power my array of older computers so I can sell back their CPU cycles to IBM and maybe, just maybe, earn enough to pay for the solar cells.
"A kilowatt is 3,600,000 joules, 10 kilowatts in respect is 36,000,000."
What are you talking about? A kilowatt is a measure of power, and a joule is a measure of energy. The two are not directly comparable without a time factor thrown in. Do you mean a kilowatt hour is 3,600,000 joules?
By your calculation, lightning is 280-2,800 kilowatts (0.3-2.8 megawatts). As we all know, lighting is more in the range of 1.21 gigawatts (humor intended, but general priniciple remains the same). It's not like lightning strikes last for an hour.
------
"To put this in prespective, the adverage person uses 64,800,000 joules a month, or 18 kilowatts... So for every time they fire this baby, they are blowing 50-100 bucks....
They essentially are what cause the blackouts in California."
What the fuck are you talking about? This causes the blackouts in California, not some sergeant flipping the switch on $100 of electricity.
Considering how online-centric we are now, how valid is it to ask about dirtworld CD sales without finding out what kind of behavior consumers would have, if it were easy to buy the music they like online, for digital download, with price-parity with CDs, adjusted for savings in fabrication and delivery costs.
They're asking us to pay for a distribution system we don't need, and that's what offends me as I'm struggling to tear off the stupid sticker holding my new CD's jewelcase together before I put the disc into the reader to be encoded to the only format I use anyhow.
The title "Encrypt information in images without distortion" is really misleading. It suggests (err, states) that the sego process doesn't change the image. It certainly does. The only interesting bit is that it's reversable.
So while it's not lossy in the final analysis, and the original version can be reclaimed, it does actually distort the image, while the hidden message is contained within.
Okay, so 10 years was quite a bit ago. My point is that if the company choses CRT over LCD because of a few hundred dollars, when they're clearly willing to pay the price of an LCD in the absence of a cheaper alternative, then they should investigate how an LCD might help their bottom line in terms of productivity as is related to eyestrain, desk space, employee satisfaction and even employee retention.
For an employee who would prefer an LCD, having one will probably pay for itself.
"I'm a Protein Folder and I VOTE!"
It's funny how a 1280x1024 LCD at $799 is considered opulent. It wasn't so long ago that an 800x600 15" CRT cost more than that.
Most places I've worked have sprung for Trinitron tubes back when they cost a premium. Why is it unreasonable to think they'll go LCD? Do you have any idea how much these things save in desk space? and frankly, they make users happy, which also helps the bottom line. The up-front cost is a small price to pay for the continuing dividends.
Fair 'nuff!
I said all Macs that can run Jaguar already have a version of the Mac OS. I didn't say they had a version of OS X.
I consider myself liberty-oriented, but the people who consider themselves really liberty oriented scare me.
It might just be my perception, but it seems like people on the small ends of the bellcurve always think having guns is the final answer to their problem.
When you go enough standard deviations away from the normal curve, all you'll find are unusual deviants. sadly, they're so different, and yet so firm in their convictions, that their solution usually involves owning a lot of guns and canned goods.
Me, I'm happy moving to a state that just shifts enough over that I feel like people are more like me, and I don't get looked at askance for voting Democrat or thinking a war with Iraq doesn't make sense and might be unjust. that's why San Francisco's the place for me.
The people there are just deviant enough.
Whatever their grievance, the more standard deviations you go