>Do you want them burned in nice epa-mandated catalytic converter equiped cars....
EPA mandated? Don't make be laugh. The emission standards for US cars are among the lowest in the world. The US can't even sell cars in China because Chinese standards are too high - and they're known to be pretty low.
I don't usually make a habit of digging into the contact info for sites I visit to discover what country they're in. For all I know 90% of the sites I visit might be outside the US. Very few companies still use country TLD. The bulk of the world's sites end in.com/.org/.net and most of them aren't in the US.
>[...] Sony probably won't want anyone to run Linux on the PS3 [...]
Why? Given that shortly after the PS2 launch Sony was distributing their own Linux distro for it, that seems unlikely. Just unfortunate they discontinued it (though there are alternatives still).
> Wow, Second Life sounds like a really well-designed game.
yes and no. I think its code-base has a lot of hacks because it was implemented quickly to get first-mover advantage in the market. However, now they're dragging their feet. The problem in question with physics is Havok's fault I guess. Their physics code is buggy. If you'd ever played Unreal Tournament you'd probably have seen crashes that result from Havok code (if you'd looked in the crash logs)
>I wonder why paying customers don't focus their complaints on the fact that this exploit exists instead of on the people who use it?
Firstly, the vast majority of SL players aren't paying customers as SL if free. As for me as a paying customer (pay for land rights) I don't want our flexability limited in a technological war against greefers. That's the wrong approach. (e.g. look at the stupid approach taken by the US fighting terrorism! Instead of working on ways to lessen the terrorists desire to want to wreak havok, they've learned nothing and probably increased the likelyhood of violence - but that's another argument for elsewhere).
There are many legitimate uses for self-replicating objects with physics simulation in SL. For example I wrote an automated rollercoaster track builder in which the track segments self-recplicate and position/orient themselves during construction.
Perhaps there are complicated ways to try to limit these attacks by limiting replication rates or something, but that would complicate the code and it going down the wrong track. It would waste LLs resources that could be used to try to avoid people wanting to do it in the first place. It is a human problem not a technological one.
Of course, perstering Havok to fix their code would certainly help (though I think SL is using the previous iteration of the Havok engine as they haven't had the resources to adapt to the new API in the newest version)
Isn't he a member of w-hat? I though they took it out twice (3 times?). I think the problem is that LL can't always spot the same person if they keep signing up for new accounts with different credits cards from different IP addresses. If I'm wrong perhaps I'm confusing him with the guy that was trying to extort Esmay after getting his hands on a JEVN vendor 'emulator' that was created by reverse engineering the comms protocol between vendor and item store, and going around 'stealing' items from peoples JEVN stores.
He repeatedly took down the entire second life grid, disrupting thousands of players and disrupting the many real businesses and other activities (classes etc.) that go on in SL. SL allows scripts to be written and attached to objects. He created physics objects that self-replicated and spread over the entire geographic area of SL (which is huge). The replicating objects themselves usually had nasty images or racist taunts attached to them. The load of simulating so many physical objects (Newtonian mechanics, collisions etc.) slowed everything to a crawl on each simulator. Due to a bug in the SL Havok code many simulators would crash. In addition, the thousands of objects created would use up the object quota of most private land and cause devices that need to dynamically create objects to malfunction (e.g. holographic vendors, games, etc.) In the last instance of his attack the SL Grid was taken off-line by Linden Labs for most of a day. (it was apparent that they'd implemented some 'fire-lane' like automatic system to take out strips of simulators to try to isolate the objects, but it didn't appear to work)
>Why? Recently, a lot of studies have demonstrated that accupunture has a measureable effect on pain management.
a) Remember, most 'studies' are PR, not science. b) Lookup 'Placebo effect' to see why the fact that something results in improved health doesn't mean it has any direct physiological effect. (i.e. just because Accupuncture may improve the health of those who try it doesn't mean that sticking needles into ones skin has any direct physiological effect that is resonsible for said improvements. Ditto for herbs.)
>I'm not saying one should trade in a doctor for a shaman, but western medicine is finally figuring out that some of the cures that have been in use for hundreds (if not thousands) of years might actually do something.
Agreed. Not to be confused with Homeopathy though (which involves administering only water, so any effect must be Placebo)
I can't remember where I read it off-hand (release notes?). I imagine the doc is out-of-date as it was a recent development. I haven't used it as a remote-filesystem with non-svn-client on a day-to-day basis as the poster needs, I just tried it out was all. One of my friends also tried it using some Windows WebDAV client and informed me it seems to work OK.
Here Here. While older versions of subversion didn't support full WebDAV (just a subset needed by the svn client), the lastest versions do. Subversion will also give you the option of using regular files or a SQL DB for storage and you'll have versioning for 'free'.
* Low speed PC server (Linux)
- File sharing (NFS,Samba shared)
- home automation server (Apache web server)
- TiVo app server (JavaHMO) * Two desktop PCs (Wife: WinXP, Me: Linux) * Spare PC running WinXP (headless, used via VNC) * Two TiVos networked * WiFi AP * Two router/hubs incl. DSL wirewall/model * Two Wifi enabled notebook PCs (WinXP & Linux)
[...]
Godel proved that a consistent formal reasoning system cannot be both correct and complete at the same time.
Correct.
The human mind can be, therefore it isn't a formal reasoning system.
Perhaps. So what. The brain is comprised of multiple interacting systems on many levels - why would you expect it to be globally consistient like an axiomatic system? People hold beliefs in mutually exclusive facts all the time. It occurs at many levels and there is typically no good reason to reconcile them unless a specific task calls for it. Our minds simply wouldn't be possibly without that.
That is what went wrong with classical AI-it essentially advocated constructing formal reasoning systems, which hence suffered from the frame problem and result in horribly brittle systems. Systems that would break at the slightest inconsistiency due to imperfect perception and simplification of reality.
Ordinary algorithms are equivalent to formal reasoning systems therefore the human mind can't be an algorithm, [..]
Yep.
it must use quantum effects instead.
Huh? Don't get the connection. There is nothing magical about a reasoning system that doesn't happen to adhere to the simplistic rules of formal logics. Hardly justifies the jump to quantum explanations. It may be true and perhaps Penrose makes a good argument that it is - but if so why isn't it accepted by the science community?
Don't forget that axiomatic systems have no intrinsic meaning. Meaning only comes about through interpretation by an intelligence. The problem is that people try to construct reasoning systems based on axiomatic systems that look meaningful, but they forget that the system is only meaningful to them (the designer) via their interpretation, whereas it needs to be meaningful to the agent itself through its own interpretation.
>You shouldn't judge programmers of CS curricula based on these competitions. The problems are all very academic in nature rather than practical...
practical? Which part of the S in CS don't you understand? I would never hire anyone from a university who's CS course wasn't academic. How can you possibly train great scientists without any academic content?
>Furthermore, the results of a single competition is hardly any reason to pass judgement on CS students nationwide True.
[...] >"It's unbelievable that something so mind-bogglingly useful evolved all by itself." Useful? - by what standard and to whom? Useful for reproduction perhaps?
>... No, and I think that's how it was meant to be... Meant by whom? Meaning is the by-product of interpretation of the world by us - hence we each have our own meanings (many shared), but there is no meaning outside the relm of our minds. That is, meaning is not a characteristic of the physical world! Category error.
>... I think we're supposed to be responsible for living our own lives... Supposed by who?
>adamant total disbelief seems...unbelievable. Each to their own I guess.
Re:All in it together
on
Java 1.5 vs C#
·
· Score: 4, Informative
ikvm.net ( http://www.ikvm.net ) is a java VM for.NET/Mono that uses classpath for the JDK API. It can also statically cross-compile java bytescodes into IL code. For example, you can compile a.jar into a.dll (even the resources are preserved).
So, are you telling the poster to abandon JVM's and use the.NET CLR which may or may not break third party tools just to simplify a seemingly small part of their entire development process?
a) most Java apps have little direct contact with java bytecodes (i.e. only those apps that dynamically generate them for whatever reason)
b) the application environment is identical - you can use you usual java compiler to produce bytescodes and them translate them into MSIL codes. The usual Java library API is still available, including class loading & jar file resources, reflection etc. The added bonus is that you can use the enture.NET library API too (by prefixing cli. to the namespaces/packages). Not to mention the many other CLS languages that will seamlessly interoperate with your java code.
I'm using this route and it works fine. I've cross compiled many large java libraries and components and am using them from C#. For example, many of the apache libs - Xalan, Xerces, Ant, JUnit, commons stuff; IBM's eclipse.org rich-client framework - including SWT which uses JNI (x-compiles to P/invoke calls); the entire biojava.org suite; jython; swingwt; and others.
Some are even faster! (under Linux anyway - haven't tested under Windows)
If you REALLY must use.NET based libraries, why not just write a JNI wrapper for the sub-system using operator overloading? Seem rediculous? I do, but its better than changing the entire environment.
Maybe. JNI is for calling native apps though - not sure how you'd easiy arrange calling.NET code (you'd have to embed an IL code VM)
On Windows, you can use either MS Visual J# to compile Java for.NET and then use the numeric libraries, or on Linux (and Windows) you can use ikvm ( http://www.ivm.net ) to statically compile java bytes-codes into MSIL code and run it (with.NET on windows, or mono ( http://www.mono-project.com ) on Linux & Windows).
[...] but can't conceive of an evolutionary pressure to produce EM radiation visible inside of a solar system [...]
Just because you can imagine the forces needed doesn't mean there aren't any.
Perhaps some kind of life on some low gravity planet around a dim star has large organisms that use active radar for communication between organisms. Due to the low gravity and thin atmosphere they can readily survive in space, and life has spread among some neighbouring planets in the system. Perhaps every mating season, huge numbers of such organisms (intelligent, but not technological) gather together and combine all their EM output and project it toward one of the other planets during its closest approach in the hope of attracting mates from across the planetary divide. Perhaps sexual attractiveness is directly proportional to EM output strength of synchronised sub-groups.
Perhaps not.
Point is, fact is stranger than fiction. Just because you didn't imagine a scenario that does indeed give rise to evolutionary pressures for high EM output from 'organic' life that can span inter-planetary or even inter-stellar distances, doesn't mean it is impossible.
If life is indeed as prevelent as we think it probably is, then it *may* even be likely.
Of course you could say that an organic tech could evolve that, [...]
Actually, I was thinking more of natural-selection style evolution rather than artificial-selection/technology.
Light-bugs/fire-flies 'transmit' EM radiation (although it is in the visible range, rather weak, for primitive 'communication' and would take an awful lot of bugs to sync together to reach another star:)
Please provide an argument for why numbers are 'universal' (I assume you mean among intelligent life).
There are contemporary human cultures that have no concept of numbers greater than 2 - and I doubt you'd argue that those humans are not intelligent.
Granted, New Guinnea highlanders don't build radio-telescopes, but that doesn't mean that evolution in other parts of the universe hasn't managed to come up with intelligent beings that emit EM radiation for communication but cannot count!
Cuttle fish generate and receive complex EM radiation patterns for communication (light!) right here in our own oceans and are also pretty smart - not so far from us (in evolutionary terms, compared to bacteria for example).
Numbers are just an artifact or our perception. Specifically, of the need to make and signal distinctions; upon which further 'higher-level' distinctions can be made.
Take colour as an analogy. If we didn't have three seperate colour detection mechanisms in our retinas, we wouldn't be able to make the distinction between 3 divisions of the EM spectrum of visible light (red, green & blue if you like). In such a case we wouldn't have 'colour' either. It is also an artifact of our perception (while not suggesting that frequency of EM radiation is).
I can just hear it now - some other intelligent species out there with billions of finely discriminating EM frequency detectors all over their alien bodies proclaiming on their equivelent of slashdot, that colour is universal and any aliens out there must intuitively understand the concept of communicating via 100,000,000 dimensional colour spaces. (OK, so the analogy doesn't work exactly, but hey - I don't known any aliens - and I'm tired).
Just because we can't imagine advanced intelligence without numbers is just a testament to our primitive imaginations.
Riiiiight. So Math is not a natural language then? Not invented by humans for humans? Of course it is. It is an artifact of minds through our perception, not a characteristic of the universe. To think so is a category error.
would this be modded up if it read "He seems really nice, it's a shame that he's gay"?
I agree, I don't know why it was modded up. However, your analogy is bad. Nobody can choose if they're gay - hence it can't be a 'bad' thing by definition, but anyone can choose enlightenment over the irresponsible and unethical ignorance of religion. That is simply laziness.
Why it is certainly their right to hold religious beliefs and advertise it on their own web-site, I think what upsets people is that it acts to promote further ignorance and bad behaviour.
Slashdot Mirror
>Do you want them burned in nice epa-mandated catalytic converter equiped cars....
EPA mandated? Don't make be laugh. The emission standards for US cars are among the lowest in the world. The US can't even sell cars in China because Chinese standards are too high - and they're known to be pretty low.
I don't usually make a habit of digging into the contact info for sites I visit to discover what country they're in. For all I know 90% of the sites I visit might be outside the US. Very few companies still use country TLD. The bulk of the world's sites end in .com/.org/.net and most of them aren't in the US.
>[...] Sony probably won't want anyone to run Linux on the PS3 [...]
Why? Given that shortly after the PS2 launch Sony was distributing their own Linux distro for it, that seems unlikely. Just unfortunate they discontinued it (though there are alternatives still).
> Wow, Second Life sounds like a really well-designed game.
yes and no. I think its code-base has a lot of hacks because it was implemented quickly to get first-mover advantage in the market. However, now they're dragging their feet.
The problem in question with physics is Havok's fault I guess. Their physics code is buggy. If you'd ever played Unreal Tournament you'd probably have seen crashes that result from Havok code (if you'd looked in the crash logs)
>I wonder why paying customers don't focus their complaints on the fact that this exploit exists instead of on the people who use it?
Firstly, the vast majority of SL players aren't paying customers as SL if free.
As for me as a paying customer (pay for land rights) I don't want our flexability limited in a technological war against greefers. That's the wrong approach. (e.g. look at the stupid approach taken by the US fighting terrorism! Instead of working on ways to lessen the terrorists desire to want to wreak havok, they've learned nothing and probably increased the likelyhood of violence - but that's another argument for elsewhere).
There are many legitimate uses for self-replicating objects with physics simulation in SL. For example I wrote an automated rollercoaster track builder in which the track segments self-recplicate and position/orient themselves during construction.
Perhaps there are complicated ways to try to limit these attacks by limiting replication rates or something, but that would complicate the code and it going down the wrong track. It would waste LLs resources that could be used to try to avoid people wanting to do it in the first place.
It is a human problem not a technological one.
Of course, perstering Havok to fix their code would certainly help (though I think SL is using the previous iteration of the Havok engine as they haven't had the resources to adapt to the new API in the newest version)
> No one repeatedly takes down the SL grid.
Isn't he a member of w-hat? I though they took it out twice (3 times?). I think the problem is that LL can't always spot the same person if they keep signing up for new accounts with different credits cards from different IP addresses.
If I'm wrong perhaps I'm confusing him with the guy that was trying to extort Esmay after getting his hands on a JEVN vendor 'emulator' that was created by reverse engineering the comms protocol between vendor and item store, and going around 'stealing' items from peoples JEVN stores.
>Secondly, you don't even know what he did.
He repeatedly took down the entire second life grid, disrupting thousands of players and disrupting the many real businesses and other activities (classes etc.) that go on in SL.
SL allows scripts to be written and attached to objects. He created physics objects that self-replicated and spread over the entire geographic area of SL (which is huge). The replicating objects themselves usually had nasty images or racist taunts attached to them.
The load of simulating so many physical objects (Newtonian mechanics, collisions etc.) slowed everything to a crawl on each simulator. Due to a bug in the SL Havok code many simulators would crash.
In addition, the thousands of objects created would use up the object quota of most private land and cause devices that need to dynamically create objects to malfunction (e.g. holographic vendors, games, etc.)
In the last instance of his attack the SL Grid was taken off-line by Linden Labs for most of a day.
(it was apparent that they'd implemented some 'fire-lane' like automatic system to take out strips of simulators to try to isolate the objects, but it didn't appear to work)
http://www.opencascade.org/
It is a big package far more capable that most commercial apps and is open source.
Very simple. Java is not an open standard, it is controlled by Sun. C#/.NET etc. is an ECMA standard.
>Why? Recently, a lot of studies have demonstrated that accupunture has a measureable effect on pain management.
a) Remember, most 'studies' are PR, not science.
b) Lookup 'Placebo effect' to see why the fact that something results in improved health doesn't mean it has any direct physiological effect.
(i.e. just because Accupuncture may improve the health of those who try it doesn't mean that sticking needles into ones skin has any direct physiological effect that is resonsible for said improvements. Ditto for herbs.)
>I'm not saying one should trade in a doctor for a shaman, but western medicine is finally figuring out that some of the cures that have been in use for hundreds (if not thousands) of years might actually do something.
Agreed. Not to be confused with Homeopathy though (which involves administering only water, so any effect must be Placebo)
I can't remember where I read it off-hand (release notes?). I imagine the doc is out-of-date as it was a recent development.
I haven't used it as a remote-filesystem with non-svn-client on a day-to-day basis as the poster needs, I just tried it out was all. One of my friends also tried it using some Windows WebDAV client and informed me it seems to work OK.
Here Here. While older versions of subversion didn't support full WebDAV (just a subset needed by the svn client), the lastest versions do.
Subversion will also give you the option of using regular files or a SQL DB for storage and you'll have versioning for 'free'.
* Low speed PC server (Linux)
- File sharing (NFS,Samba shared)
- home automation server (Apache web server)
- TiVo app server (JavaHMO)
* Two desktop PCs (Wife: WinXP, Me: Linux)
* Spare PC running WinXP (headless, used via VNC)
* Two TiVos networked
* WiFi AP
* Two router/hubs incl. DSL wirewall/model
* Two Wifi enabled notebook PCs (WinXP & Linux)
Correct.
Perhaps. So what. The brain is comprised of multiple interacting systems on many levels - why would you expect it to be globally consistient like an axiomatic system? People hold beliefs in mutually exclusive facts all the time. It occurs at many levels and there is typically no good reason to reconcile them unless a specific task calls for it. Our minds simply wouldn't be possibly without that.
That is what went wrong with classical AI-it essentially advocated constructing formal reasoning systems, which hence suffered from the frame problem and result in horribly brittle systems. Systems that would break at the slightest inconsistiency due to imperfect perception and simplification of reality.
Yep.
Huh? Don't get the connection. There is nothing magical about a reasoning system that doesn't happen to adhere to the simplistic rules of formal logics. Hardly justifies the jump to quantum explanations. It may be true and perhaps Penrose makes a good argument that it is - but if so why isn't it accepted by the science community?
Don't forget that axiomatic systems have no intrinsic meaning. Meaning only comes about through interpretation by an intelligence. The problem is that people try to construct reasoning systems based on axiomatic systems that look meaningful, but they forget that the system is only meaningful to them (the designer) via their interpretation, whereas it needs to be meaningful to the agent itself through its own interpretation.
>You shouldn't judge programmers of CS curricula based on these competitions. The problems are all very academic in nature rather than practical...
practical? Which part of the S in CS don't you understand? I would never hire anyone from a university who's CS course wasn't academic. How can you possibly train great scientists without any academic content?
>Furthermore, the results of a single competition is hardly any reason to pass judgement on CS students nationwide
True.
anyone?
(I wasted enough time trying to find what was different already)
[...]
...
>"It's unbelievable that something so mind-bogglingly useful evolved all by itself."
Useful? - by what standard and to whom? Useful for reproduction perhaps?
>... No, and I think that's how it was meant to be...
Meant by whom? Meaning is the by-product of interpretation of the world by us - hence we each have our own meanings (many shared), but there is no meaning outside the relm of our minds. That is, meaning is not a characteristic of the physical world! Category error.
>... I think we're supposed to be responsible for living our own lives
Supposed by who?
>adamant total disbelief seems...unbelievable.
Each to their own I guess.
ikvm.net ( http://www.ikvm.net ) is a java VM for .NET/Mono that uses classpath for the JDK API. It can also statically cross-compile java bytescodes into IL code. For example, you can compile a .jar into a .dll (even the resources are preserved).
a) most Java apps have little direct contact with java bytecodes (i.e. only those apps that dynamically generate them for whatever reason)
b) the application environment is identical - you can use you usual java compiler to produce bytescodes and them translate them into MSIL codes. The usual Java library API is still available, including class loading & jar file resources, reflection etc. The added bonus is that you can use the enture .NET library API too (by prefixing cli. to the namespaces/packages). Not to mention the many other CLS languages that will seamlessly interoperate with your java code.
I'm using this route and it works fine. I've cross compiled many large java libraries and components and am using them from C#. For example, many of the apache libs - Xalan, Xerces, Ant, JUnit, commons stuff; IBM's eclipse.org rich-client framework - including SWT which uses JNI (x-compiles to P/invoke calls); the entire biojava.org suite; jython; swingwt; and others.
Some are even faster! (under Linux anyway - haven't tested under Windows)
Maybe. JNI is for calling native apps though - not sure how you'd easiy arrange calling .NET code (you'd have to embed an IL code VM)
On Windows, you can use either MS Visual J# to compile Java for .NET and then use the numeric libraries, or on Linux (and Windows) you can use ikvm ( http://www.ivm.net ) to statically compile java bytes-codes into MSIL code and run it (with .NET on windows, or mono ( http://www.mono-project.com ) on Linux & Windows).
Just because you can imagine the forces needed doesn't mean there aren't any.
Perhaps some kind of life on some low gravity planet around a dim star has large organisms that use active radar for communication between organisms. Due to the low gravity and thin atmosphere they can readily survive in space, and life has spread among some neighbouring planets in the system. Perhaps every mating season, huge numbers of such organisms (intelligent, but not technological) gather together and combine all their EM output and project it toward one of the other planets during its closest approach in the hope of attracting mates from across the planetary divide. Perhaps sexual attractiveness is directly proportional to EM output strength of synchronised sub-groups.
Perhaps not.
Point is, fact is stranger than fiction. Just because you didn't imagine a scenario that does indeed give rise to evolutionary pressures for high EM output from 'organic' life that can span inter-planetary or even inter-stellar distances, doesn't mean it is impossible.
If life is indeed as prevelent as we think it probably is, then it *may* even be likely.
Actually, I was thinking more of natural-selection style evolution rather than artificial-selection/technology.
Light-bugs/fire-flies 'transmit' EM radiation (although it is in the visible range, rather weak, for primitive 'communication' and would take an awful lot of bugs to sync together to reach another star :)
Please provide an argument for why numbers are 'universal' (I assume you mean among intelligent life).
There are contemporary human cultures that have no concept of numbers greater than 2 - and I doubt you'd argue that those humans are not intelligent.
Granted, New Guinnea highlanders don't build radio-telescopes, but that doesn't mean that evolution in other parts of the universe hasn't managed to come up with intelligent beings that emit EM radiation for communication but cannot count!
Cuttle fish generate and receive complex EM radiation patterns for communication (light!) right here in our own oceans and are also pretty smart - not so far from us (in evolutionary terms, compared to bacteria for example).
Numbers are just an artifact or our perception. Specifically, of the need to make and signal distinctions; upon which further 'higher-level' distinctions can be made.
Take colour as an analogy. If we didn't have three seperate colour detection mechanisms in our retinas, we wouldn't be able to make the distinction between 3 divisions of the EM spectrum of visible light (red, green & blue if you like). In such a case we wouldn't have 'colour' either. It is also an artifact of our perception (while not suggesting that frequency of EM radiation is).
I can just hear it now - some other intelligent species out there with billions of finely discriminating EM frequency detectors all over their alien bodies proclaiming on their equivelent of slashdot, that colour is universal and any aliens out there must intuitively understand the concept of communicating via 100,000,000 dimensional colour spaces. (OK, so the analogy doesn't work exactly, but hey - I don't known any aliens - and I'm tired).
Just because we can't imagine advanced intelligence without numbers is just a testament to our primitive imaginations.
Riiiiight. So Math is not a natural language then? Not invented by humans for humans? Of course it is. It is an artifact of minds through our perception, not a characteristic of the universe. To think so is a category error.
I agree, I don't know why it was modded up. However, your analogy is bad. Nobody can choose if they're gay - hence it can't be a 'bad' thing by definition, but anyone can choose enlightenment over the irresponsible and unethical ignorance of religion. That is simply laziness.
Why it is certainly their right to hold religious beliefs and advertise it on their own web-site, I think what upsets people is that it acts to promote further ignorance and bad behaviour.
How about: one currency for all occasions? or unemployment - wtf?