> Why is simply posting it illegal? From the article...
If you think back a bit, you'll remember that there have been various groups that have posted abortion doctor's personl information to pro-life websites. This information was then used to harass and/or harm the doctors in question.
It is certainly a grey area legally, but I think a reasonable argumant can be made that the only reason for posting lists like this is to incite illegal acts, and this the very posting should be illegal. It's a fine line though to be sure, and there are no easy answers.
Re:Solutions to 5hat (and guess about N^2 hat)
on
The Three Hat Problem
·
· Score: 1
Interesting. I'm not convinced that this is completely true though. Well, it is in the "real" world, but not in the "math" world that this problem lives in.
In the real world it would be trivial to ignore player 4, and have 1-3 operate just like in the 3hat game.
In the math world this can't really be done. There is no way to decide which player to ignore.
Basically the way I'm looking at the problem (and the way I think the problem is supposed to be looked at) the only information you have to base a decision on is the number of red/blue on everyone else's head. You can't differentiate between them. Am I making sense? I hope so.
Guestimate how long it will take me to do a task, based on past performance and how much was budgeted. Arithmetic (Multiplication, Division, Simple Estimation)
Made an estimate of what sprinkler I needed for my lawn and type of grass, taking into account water coverage and projected rainfall. Arithmetic (Subtraction, Division)
Determined what operations to make to get a bit structure in the format I desired, over a system with endian differences (using Fortran - yuck!) Boolean Algebra
For fun, calculated how many managers it would take to run a company, based on each manager having a maximum of 4 people under them (still working on those formulas - I leave it as an excerise for the reader to determine why I decided on 4, or you could go join the Discordians and find out for yourself). Sumnation Math (1st sem. calculus)
Calculated my wife's reading rate, to determine when she would be done with the Harry Potter book Arithmetic (Multiplication, Division)
Cut down a recipe for 10 to a recipe for 2 1/2. Arithmetic (simple division).
Determined whether it would be a better idea to make an extra car payment, house payment, get a CD, or invest in a mutual fund Arithmetic (Simple Comparisons)
Tried to figure out your age, based on how little math you have had (19? 20?) No math just a flame.
It's been a slow math week, too. In my job (systems programmer), I've used logic, binary arithmetic, calculus, trig, geometry, statistics, and other flavors of math. I see no trig. No geometry. No statistics. All most all is just arithmetic. And all but your just for fun problem was high school math.
I'm gonna have to agree for the first guy dude. For 90% of the people out there (prolly more really) a solid understanding of High School level math is all it really takes.
I beleive the optimal solution to the 5hat problem yields a win 22/32 times (or rather 11/16).
Devide the 32 possible combinations into 3 groups:
1) All hats same (2 possible)
2) 4/1 split (10 possible)
3) 3/2 split (20 possible)
Now, to get group 3 right look at the other 4. If same number of red/blue then pass. If there is a majority guess the oposite.
This will make you get all the situations in group 2 wrong. It is possible to salvage the last two in group one though. If all you see is the same, guess what you see.
Are there any better solutions?
-Harry
PS. I beleive that for any group where there are are a power of 2 members (1,2,4,8,etc) it is impossible to get above 50%. Can anyone confirm?
Uh, Hi. I went to a Montessori school from Kindergarten through 5th grade before switching to a traditional public middle school. Quite contrary to your post, I was FAR ahead of my peers in terms of both my ability to learn, and in knowledge of discrete facts.
Since I had the opportunity to move at my own pace (instead of being held back by 30 other students in my class) I was exposed to far more material than your average 5th grader. I've found that this is a typical experience for a Montessori student.
It seems pretty clear to me that ESR is no longer a force for good in the OSS community. He constantly makes outrageous claims that prove to be completely false in hindsight. He turned a technical discussion on Kernel-Dev into a pissing match between himself and Linus (Linus wisely ignored him).
So can/. help silence this windbag? Maybe CmdrTaco could arrance a/. Interview in which we confront him with his problems and try to get things to change. He's just going to continue spouting off at the mouth (and damaging the reputation of the OSS community in the process) unless *we* do something?
Brin has made the (all to common) assumtion that in order to benefit the poor/middle-class we must take from the rich.
In the real world this is clearly not the case. It is much more productive to increase the total amount of wealth in the system and make everyone richer. This is accomplished by the discovery of new resources or using the ones we have more efficiently. In most cases, the best way to do this is to promote innovation as much as possible by letting people keep whatever rewards they reap for their ideas and hard work.
Inheretance Taxes go directly against this idea. Think about it. "Hey, I've already made 100 million with 1 idea, why bother to try to think of another one when the government is just gonna take all of my profits when I die?"
Mid way through his piece Brin compared two "types" of rich people. Those who merely wanted to be rich, and those who wanted to be richER. He was very clear in which type he prefered. The same idea exist for the poor/middle-class though. Let's not get caught up in the relative wealth, it's much more important to look at absolutes.
When you click on the "Pay Artist" button, a message is sent to a central (trusted) server that says "User with credit card xxxx pay author of song with MD5 checksum of xxxx."
Whenever an artist wants a new song in the system (s)he registers it with the central database. That way no one can "steal" it.
You think that the solution to having poor UI is to make it easier for people to become programmer-users?
This is completely insane. 99% of computer users don't care AT ALL about programming, or scripting, or anything at all like that. They just want to get their work done as EASILY as possible.
Writing good UI is *HARD*. MUCH more difficult than writing an OS kernel, or a web server. Don't take the lazy approach and pawn in off the work on to the users...that simply won't work, becuase *someone* is willing to do the work of writing good UI. They just expect to get paid for it. Real Estate in Seattle is getting more expensive every day after all.
My mom shouldn't have to learn to use BASIC as a basic step to becomming proficient with her PC.
> To proceed from a menu to a submenu, it is > necessary to manuever the mouse rightward with > surgical precision While I can't comment on any of the Linux apps mentioned, this is not the case for Windows. While I had never really thought about it before, I just checked and windows submenus appear to have some sort of forgiveness programmed in so that you don't have to be super-precise.
I just don't understand all the Hype Slashdoters are giving RedHat. I just don't see how the company is going to make money. What is their product? I've seen several possible answers to this question, none of which I particularly like:
1) They will sell linux How can you sell a product that is avaliable for free? At least how can you sell it for much more than minimal cost (ala CheapBytes.com). I mean how many people out there are actually gonna go out and spend $50 on RedHat x.x compared to the number who will dl of the net, or get a cheap CD?
2) They will sell advertising on a Portal Site RedHat.com can't get *that* many hits, and even if RedHat Linux becomes hugely popuoar, that doesn't mean it'll get any more than it does now.
3) Service/Support This is the most popular answer, but I'm still not sure what it means. Is RedHat goning to try to be like LinuxCare? Maybe, but I just don't see that much of a business in answering phone calls all day to help people get the latest version of Mozilla working.
I think Linux is a great OS, but a bad financial investment.
Lase year (1998) was the first year in the history of the recording industry that music sales we down in the 17-35 (might have been 17-25 not sure) age group. I think it's pretty obvious that MP3s are to blame here.
How many people do you know with 1+ gigs of MP3s who haven't bought a CD in 6 months?
This article (and a good % of the comments) are really indicative of the typical "Linux is perfect/Microsoft is Evil" bias. And let's face it...this bias seems to be getting worse daily...
A couple of points against the article:
1) MSOffice Document specifications are ALREADY open. Anyone who wants to can implement an viewer/editor and many already have. I can think of at least half a dozen non-microsoft products that can at least Read.doc files.
2) The author fails to acknowledge that MANY other (non-Microsoft) products use proprietary formats. He doesn't seem to have a problem with them...why is that? Probobly becuase they aren't as succesful/defact standard formats. If this is the case than we must concluse that the author only has a problem with successful file formats....this semes rather rediculous doesn't it?
3) The author proposes no alternate document format. Let's face it. Comming up with a format to save all the information in a modern Word Processing document (which might even included embedded graphics, or other documents) is a HARD thing to do. Microsoft came up with one that works pretty well (for the millions of people who use it everyday anyways). If there was a public open solution to this problem, Microsoft might have used it, but since no such solution was avaliable, what choice did they have?
4) As soon as a possibly viable alternate solution arrived (XML), Microsoft began releasing a product the conformed to this spec. True, their are problems now but most of them are due to the fact that XML is VERY new, and there are almost no (possible 0?) products that implement it fully.
I really wish the Slashdot audience would be a little more open/thoughtful before the MicrosoftBashing that is common practice around here.
>If anything, the document compatibility problem > is worse, because you have perfectly reasonable > unix solutions (I used framemaker at one > company), trying to mesh with the windows > machines that management is using. What makes the (propritary) framemaker format any more reasonable thatn the (proprietary) MSWord format?
Microsoft isn't different becuase they use proprietary formats, their only different becuase they've been more successful than others! Why do people want to penalize them for this?
> Also, 64MB is pitiful. Give me a little HD any > day, like those ones IBM had...:) Even a ZIP- > disk would be better. But by using FlashRAM (like the rio) you get the advantage of having a device with no moving parts. Personally I'd be a little hesitant to go jogging with a HD hanging on my side.
> 1. GUI - Assuming one is using fully supported > card (say Voodoo 3)is BeOS GUI faster, more > responsive than X on Linux ? Yes, it most certainly is. Becuase of it's *extreme* multithreaded nature BeOS probobly has the "quickest" feel of any OS currently avaliable.
> 2. What are choices for someone who would like > to develop for BeOS ? Free compilers ? > Documentation ? Is this available off the net? BeOS 4.5 comes with a copy of egcs (gcc). Complete documentation of the Be API is avaliable on the Be www site (www.be.com).
> no slots of any kind whatsoever This is a GoodThing(tm). Think about it for a second? Do you actually think that the way we do things now (open up the case and plug one circuit board into another) is the right way of doing things?!?!? Do you actually think "normal" people are comfortable with this paradigm.
> integrated monitors and computers were a bad Again, I think you are wrong here. The future of computers insn't power or flexibility. It's simplicity. And let's face it, the simplest solution is an all in one box.
Slashdot Mirror
> Why is simply posting it illegal? From the article ...
If you think back a bit, you'll remember that there have been various groups that have posted abortion doctor's personl information to pro-life websites. This information was then used to harass and/or harm the doctors in question.
It is certainly a grey area legally, but I think a reasonable argumant can be made that the only reason for posting lists like this is to incite illegal acts, and this the very posting should be illegal. It's a fine line though to be sure, and there are no easy answers.
Pre 100,000. Ha!
I laugh at you.
-Harry
Interesting. I'm not convinced that this is completely true though. Well, it is in the "real" world, but not in the "math" world that this problem lives in.
In the real world it would be trivial to ignore player 4, and have 1-3 operate just like in the 3hat game.
In the math world this can't really be done. There is no way to decide which player to ignore.
Basically the way I'm looking at the problem (and the way I think the problem is supposed to be looked at) the only information you have to base a decision on is the number of red/blue on everyone else's head. You can't differentiate between them. Am I making sense? I hope so.
-Harry
Guestimate how long it will take me to do a task, based on past performance and how much was budgeted.
Arithmetic (Multiplication, Division, Simple Estimation)
Made an estimate of what sprinkler I needed for my lawn and type of grass, taking into account water coverage and projected rainfall.
Arithmetic (Subtraction, Division)
Determined what operations to make to get a bit structure in the format I desired, over a system with endian differences (using Fortran - yuck!)
Boolean Algebra
For fun, calculated how many managers it would take to run a company, based on each manager having a maximum of 4 people under them (still working on those formulas - I leave it as an excerise for the reader to determine why I decided on 4, or you could go join the Discordians and find out for yourself).
Sumnation Math (1st sem. calculus)
Calculated my wife's reading rate, to determine when she would be done with the Harry Potter book
Arithmetic (Multiplication, Division)
Cut down a recipe for 10 to a recipe for 2 1/2.
Arithmetic (simple division).
Determined whether it would be a better idea to make an extra car payment, house payment, get a CD, or invest in a mutual fund
Arithmetic (Simple Comparisons)
Tried to figure out your age, based on how little math you have had (19? 20?)
No math just a flame.
It's been a slow math week, too. In my job (systems programmer), I've used logic, binary arithmetic, calculus, trig, geometry, statistics, and other flavors of math.
I see no trig. No geometry. No statistics. All most all is just arithmetic. And all but your just for fun problem was high school math.
I'm gonna have to agree for the first guy dude. For 90% of the people out there (prolly more really) a solid understanding of High School level math is all it really takes.
-Harry
I beleive the optimal solution to the 5hat problem yields a win 22/32 times (or rather 11/16).
Devide the 32 possible combinations into 3 groups:
1) All hats same (2 possible)
2) 4/1 split (10 possible)
3) 3/2 split (20 possible)
Now, to get group 3 right look at the other 4. If same number of red/blue then pass. If there is a majority guess the oposite.
This will make you get all the situations in group 2 wrong. It is possible to salvage the last two in group one though. If all you see is the same, guess what you see.
Are there any better solutions?
-Harry
PS. I beleive that for any group where there are are a power of 2 members (1,2,4,8,etc) it is impossible to get above 50%. Can anyone confirm?
Uh, Hi. I went to a Montessori school from Kindergarten through 5th grade before switching to a traditional public middle school. Quite contrary to your post, I was FAR ahead of my peers in terms of both my ability to learn, and in knowledge of discrete facts.
Since I had the opportunity to move at my own pace (instead of being held back by 30 other students in my class) I was exposed to far more material than your average 5th grader. I've found that this is a typical experience for a Montessori student.
-Harry
It seems pretty clear to me that ESR is no longer a force for good in the OSS community. He constantly makes outrageous claims that prove to be completely false in hindsight. He turned a technical discussion on Kernel-Dev into a pissing match between himself and Linus (Linus wisely ignored him).
/. help silence this windbag? Maybe CmdrTaco could arrance a /. Interview in which we confront him with his problems and try to get things to change. He's just going to continue spouting off at the mouth (and damaging the reputation of the OSS community in the process) unless *we* do something?
So can
So what do y'all think?
-Harry
I wonder. Are there any other "great puzzles" that famous dead people left for us to ponder?
We had Fermat's Last Theorm, and Poe's Cypher....is there anything else for us to bang our heads against?
-Harry
Brin has made the (all to common) assumtion that in order to benefit the poor/middle-class we must take from the rich.
In the real world this is clearly not the case. It is much more productive to increase the total amount of wealth in the system and make everyone richer. This is accomplished by the discovery of new resources or using the ones we have more efficiently. In most cases, the best way to do this is to promote innovation as much as possible by letting people keep whatever rewards they reap for their ideas and hard work.
Inheretance Taxes go directly against this idea. Think about it. "Hey, I've already made 100 million with 1 idea, why bother to try to think of another one when the government is just gonna take all of my profits when I die?"
Mid way through his piece Brin compared two "types" of rich people. Those who merely wanted to be rich, and those who wanted to be richER. He was very clear in which type he prefered. The same idea exist for the poor/middle-class though. Let's not get caught up in the relative wealth, it's much more important to look at absolutes.
-Harry
So 1 mojo is worth X CPU cycles (as the market will bear).
Eventually this might be related to dollars:
Y dollars = 1 mojo = X CPU cycles.
But avaliable CPU cycles are getting cheaper very rapidly (Moore's Law). So the value of 1 mojo should be decreasing very rapidly right?
A digial currecny that is constantly deflating in value (compared to dollars) seems like it's headed for problems.
-Harry
What if it worked this way:
When you click on the "Pay Artist" button, a message is sent to a central (trusted) server that says "User with credit card xxxx pay author of song with MD5 checksum of xxxx."
Whenever an artist wants a new song in the system (s)he registers it with the central database. That way no one can "steal" it.
-Harry
Do you actually beleive what you just said!?!?
You think that the solution to having poor UI is to make it easier for people to become programmer-users?
This is completely insane. 99% of computer users don't care AT ALL about programming, or scripting, or anything at all like that. They just want to get their work done as EASILY as possible.
Writing good UI is *HARD*. MUCH more difficult than writing an OS kernel, or a web server. Don't take the lazy approach and pawn in off the work on to the users...that simply won't work, becuase *someone* is willing to do the work of writing good UI. They just expect to get paid for it. Real Estate in Seattle is getting more expensive every day after all.
My mom shouldn't have to learn to use BASIC as a basic step to becomming proficient with her PC.
-harry
> To proceed from a menu to a submenu, it is
> necessary to manuever the mouse rightward with
> surgical precision
While I can't comment on any of the Linux apps mentioned, this is not the case for Windows. While I had never really thought about it before, I just checked and windows submenus appear to have some sort of forgiveness programmed in so that you don't have to be super-precise.
-harry
Check out the black bishop dude.
Nice try though....
-harry
Ya, cyrus works wonderfully @ CMU...now if someone would only get sieve working .
-Harry
I just don't understand all the Hype Slashdoters are giving RedHat. I just don't see how the company is going to make money. What is their product? I've seen several possible answers to this question, none of which I particularly like:
1) They will sell linux
How can you sell a product that is avaliable for free? At least how can you sell it for much more than minimal cost (ala CheapBytes.com). I mean how many people out there are actually gonna go out and spend $50 on RedHat x.x compared to the number who will dl of the net, or get a cheap CD?
2) They will sell advertising on a Portal Site
RedHat.com can't get *that* many hits, and even if RedHat Linux becomes hugely popuoar, that doesn't mean it'll get any more than it does now.
3) Service/Support
This is the most popular answer, but I'm still not sure what it means. Is RedHat goning to try to be like LinuxCare? Maybe, but I just don't see that much of a business in answering phone calls all day to help people get the latest version of Mozilla working.
I think Linux is a great OS, but a bad financial investment.
-Harry
Sorry man.
> whois infosys.com
Reports that it was registered on 17-Jul-92.
Yer about 7 years to late...
infosys.org appears to be taken as well...
-harry
Lase year (1998) was the first year in the history of the recording industry that music sales we down in the 17-35 (might have been 17-25 not sure) age group. I think it's pretty obvious that MP3s are to blame here.
How many people do you know with 1+ gigs of MP3s who haven't bought a CD in 6 months?
-harry
This is only vaguely related, but I'm *reasonably* sure that most (if not all) "life" sentences are really just for 20 years...
-harry
This article (and a good % of the comments) are really indicative of the typical "Linux is perfect/Microsoft is Evil" bias. And let's face it...this bias seems to be getting worse daily...
.doc files.
A couple of points against the article:
1) MSOffice Document specifications are ALREADY open. Anyone who wants to can implement an viewer/editor and many already have. I can think of at least half a dozen non-microsoft products that can at least Read
2) The author fails to acknowledge that MANY other (non-Microsoft) products use proprietary formats. He doesn't seem to have a problem with them...why is that? Probobly becuase they aren't as succesful/defact standard formats. If this is the case than we must concluse that the author only has a problem with successful file formats....this semes rather rediculous doesn't it?
3) The author proposes no alternate document format. Let's face it. Comming up with a format to save all the information in a modern Word Processing document (which might even included embedded graphics, or other documents) is a HARD thing to do. Microsoft came up with one that works pretty well (for the millions of people who use it everyday anyways). If there was a public open solution to this problem, Microsoft might have used it, but since no such solution was avaliable, what choice did they have?
4) As soon as a possibly viable alternate solution arrived (XML), Microsoft began releasing a product the conformed to this spec. True, their are problems now but most of them are due to the fact that XML is VERY new, and there are almost no (possible 0?) products that implement it fully.
I really wish the Slashdot audience would be a little more open/thoughtful before the MicrosoftBashing that is common practice around here.
-Harry
>If anything, the document compatibility problem
> is worse, because you have perfectly reasonable
> unix solutions (I used framemaker at one
> company), trying to mesh with the windows
> machines that management is using.
What makes the (propritary) framemaker format any more reasonable thatn the (proprietary) MSWord format?
Microsoft isn't different becuase they use proprietary formats, their only different becuase they've been more successful than others! Why do people want to penalize them for this?
-harry
> Also, 64MB is pitiful. Give me a little HD any :) Even a ZIP-
> day, like those ones IBM had...
> disk would be better.
But by using FlashRAM (like the rio) you get the advantage of having a device with no moving parts. Personally I'd be a little hesitant to go jogging with a HD hanging on my side.
-harry
> 1. GUI - Assuming one is using fully supported
> card (say Voodoo 3)is BeOS GUI faster, more
> responsive than X on Linux ?
Yes, it most certainly is. Becuase of it's *extreme* multithreaded nature BeOS probobly has the "quickest" feel of any OS currently avaliable.
> 2. What are choices for someone who would like
> to develop for BeOS ? Free compilers ?
> Documentation ? Is this available off the net?
BeOS 4.5 comes with a copy of egcs (gcc).
Complete documentation of the Be API is avaliable on the Be www site (www.be.com).
-harry
> no slots of any kind whatsoever
This is a GoodThing(tm). Think about it for a second? Do you actually think that the way we do things now (open up the case and plug one circuit board into another) is the right way of doing things?!?!? Do you actually think "normal" people are comfortable with this paradigm.
> integrated monitors and computers were a bad
Again, I think you are wrong here. The future of computers insn't power or flexibility. It's simplicity. And let's face it, the simplest solution is an all in one box.
-Harry